A Note on Language Used in Teaching-Learning Process....

On Tuesday, we had a group meeting wherein one of the agenda discussed was on IEC (awareness campaign material) about SMC (School Management Committee) and the RTE (Right to Education).  One of the drafted posters has a group of figures with blank dialogue box for all the character to speak or say something about the issue.

We were yet to decide what exact words they will be saying, but the discussion was on in which language to write the dialogue and in what language should the overall message be written.  Most of them said that it should be written in Hindi only as there are some problem and grammatical concern when writing in the local language i.e. Chhattisgarhi.

The ground situation in Chhattisgarh is that, the teaching-learning process is in Chhattisgarhi whereas the textbook and reading and writing are done in Hindi. During the entire discussion, I never spoke or said any words as I’m relatively new here, and I still don’t know the ground realities.

But one thing I want to comment is on the kind of implication it has for such different languages in the whole teaching learning process for the various stakeholders. In psychology, and now in common parlance, the terms negative reinforcement and positive reinforcement are often used and in this situation, I wonder what kind of perspective we are reinforcing. 

As mentioned earlier, the textbooks in Chhattisgarh’s school are in Hindi, and everyone, despite speaking Chhattisgarhi had accepted Hindi as the medium of education and has no complain at all.  In fact they had accepted the difference in medium of teaching and medium of writing, if we make a study, an overwhelming majority would agree that Hindi is the proper medium because that has been the practice for a long time, and considering that it has been reinforced for a long time, it won’t come as a surprise at all.

Now regarding the poster, if the dialogues are written in Chhattisgarhi and the overall message of the poster were written in Hindi, it would reflect the ground reality and an overwhelming majority will accept the languages used and the differences in language.

Personally I think conducting the teaching learning process in two different languages smack of double standard.  Why give preference for a language which the locals don’t use in their everyday life?  And, by reflecting the ground reality, or making that distinction in our campaign materials, are we not reinforcing the prevailing language discrimination, or preference for Hindi? 

I understand that the NCF has given mother-tongue as the preferred language of teaching….but I don’t know what it says about the text book! So here are a few questions to myself that I have to understand in the near future, but if anyone can help me out or point me towards a direction, I would be more than happy.

• What does the NCF said about the language medium of teaching and the language medium of learning in the classroom?
• Why is Hindi so important when a majority speaks Chhattisgarhi?
• Do the people of Chhattisgarh ever asked their preferred language for education?
• Are policy makers aware of this usages of two different language in ?
• How bad or how impossible really is Chhattisgarhi language that textbook cannot be written in that language?
• What are the rationales for writing text-book in a second language?
• And, what is APF policy on this regard?

What would it take to score 100% marks in Social Sciences?

Attending SCERT conducted training session for Master Trainers in Raipur, I got an opportunity to interact with the participants during one of the activities.  The activity was from the previous day which I didn’t attend.  The participant were given an assignment – they were given a question which they have to answer in an essay mode based on certain (exactly 6) parameters.

The participants were grouped into three and each group were given four answer sheets (without names) to check based on the 6 parameters on a scale of 5 marks.   As a new face, the members in my group were pretty eager to tell me what they were doing and why they were doing so.  I watched them decide how much mark to give, what should be the rationale.  I saw them negotiate mark until one tired participant passed on to the next participant to give mark as s/he wished.

As they scored the assignment, I noticed that out of the 4 papers they checked, two got 3/5 marks, one got 2.5/5 while the other one got 2/5 marks.  They explained to me the rationale behind the score they give which I can understand.

But the surprise came when I asked what it would take for someone to score 5/5 marks (or 100%)! Their response is that such score is impossible because this is an essay!  Then I asked them to bring this situation to a classroom, and consider that –as a teacher, teaching student a specific subject, social studies, for one year, and the student studying that social studies for one year and giving extra efforts of studying each word of the text for about two months in preparation for the final exam, what are the chances that the student would score 100% mark?

One of the participants gave me a prompt response that the chance is 0.00001%!  Most of the participants nodded in agreement! One of the teacher told me about her personal experience of checking the exam paper of a class VIII student with the perfect answers. She said the paper was perfect, and there were no single mistake, the hand writing was good, and the grammar was good, but I have to cut 2 marks and give her 98/100 because if someone else check it again, there might be a difference in opinion and might not agree with the score I give, and also it is not practical to give 100% marks in social sciences no matter how good the paper is!

Initially I find that response shocking but on further reflection, that response gave me an idea of the complexities of social sciences as a subject, and also the grim reality student are faced with.  

In the subject matter, it reflects the differences in how we viewed knowledge and understanding, and not just the complexities and divergence with which we can look a particular subject/issue/situation.  For example, society can be defined in various ways, can be looked from various perspectives; and how would a teacher score such subject?

For the student, it is a very grim reality because no matter how hard they study, and no matter how much they understand and build their arguments, they would not get the perfect score simply because there is no specific answer like 2+2 is 4 which would fetch them 100/100 marks.

My First Impression of Dhamtari/Chhattisgarh

As you enter the town of Dhamtari, the first sight that will welcome you is the trees dotted fields full of lush green paddy crops!  But don’t be surprise if the first building you saw is an automobile showroom!

The first building I noticed when I first entered the town of Dhamtari is the TATA Motors and Hyundai Motors Showroom facing each other on each side of the road amidst a lush green paddy field.

That image keeps popping up in my head every time I think of Chhattisgarh.  I won't say that that image represent Chhattisgarh simply because I still know very little about Dhamtari or Chhattisgarh, and I’m yet to learn many more things and my views and opinions of Dhamtari & Chhattisgarh will be changed in the future as I come to know better.

To me, cars and bike represent ultimate consumerism, especially in places like Dhamtari which is a rather small rural town.  On the other hand, the very existence of the automobile showroom in the middle of paddy field also shows the agrarian based economy of the region. As we all know (even though debatable) agriculture is the lowest preferred or lowest ranked profession of all!

That mental image of mine also means to me that the people, despite their consumerism, still not deserted their traditional occupation, so here is the potential friction. Modernism and traditionalism.

It is pretty common, nowadays, to see traditional and modern culture and practice working parallel in our Indian society....but when it comes to traditional mindset interacting with modern mindset; it is a totally different thing.

But as I am going to begin working in Chhattisgarh, I think it is important to me to make a mental picture of what it would be like -and be proved right or wrong in every step because that is usually how I learn best, and what to me is an open mind. 

The above is my mental picture of Chhattisgarh as I begin with, and I would be more than happy to be proved wrong each day because it would mean I learnt something!!! 

Pay Slip, Decisions, Fears, Possibilities, Certainties, Regrets and everything else...

Blankly staring at my payroll file and subsequent months’ prediction sent to me by the HR Dept in my computer screen, my thoughts danced like pieces of a maze, trying to fit each other and make sense of the puzzles. 'Chaos' -that would have been a much better word than 'puzzles' to describe my state of mind at that time.

The IT projection was not what I expected and rather disappointing, and the certainty of going to work in Chhattisgarh and the possibility of being there for much more than a year -and to top everything, I have had higher pay/salary options before I took a very value based decision to join APF, and joining APF instead of going back home to work among my people as I always promised myself, etc. were some of my previous decisions that is spinning in my head now. 

All these certainties, possibilities and the eventualities made me almost puke.  To add to my woes, I don’t know what is in store for me when I go to Chhattisgarh. After one month of induction programme in Bangalore which impressed me somehow, I have some idea of what APF is doing, but I still have a much more vague idea of what I could do and how I could contribute....

I know what I want from life, my life goals are set, I know exactly how I want to see myself a decade down the line, but uncertainties and confusions had always been my biggest enemy and I am not very good at dealing with it.

Perhaps once I go to Dhamtari and started having an idea of what all is being done there, the puzzles might fit together. Perhaps things will fall in to place, and perhaps they will eventually come to make a perfect sense in the grand scheme of my life.

My beliefs and goals are not different from APF's, but what are different is the end beneficiaries. I have always made a point that I’ll go back to my home, to my people, so that I can contribute and enrich their life further...and I know the situation in Chhattisgarh, especially among the tribal, is as worse.

My point being, I’m a man driven by passion, and I don’t know if APF will post me here for forever, but once the passion in me come out or fail to come out, I'm afraid that I might got stuck here for forever.