Ramblings of a Recluse on Dharnas, Leaves and Bradford Score

 

So, what are the options that you have when you have put in four hours of work and feel sleepy? Especially when you see that your tea flask is empty and you get that sense of anxiety that comes before a storm? I eat my lunch.

When eating lunch only makes you drowsy, what are your options? I message ‘You-Know-Who’. So here is a brief extract of our conversation…

YKW – ‘One plan which we are considering is to sit on a dharna with residents in ________ office and create a ruckus with press people in tow. We will give ___________ notice on the Dharna and then do it. (Wow! I thought the thing with Dharnas is you take ‘them’ by surprise...you don’t give notice. This is YKW being a total gentleman. Clap Clap)

YT – (some thought process has happened in a few seconds) I am game for it...it sounds exciting! And fun! (Time stamp: 13:08)

YT -   Let it be on a holiday. (Time stamp: 13:08)

YKH – On a holiday, even they will not be there. It will be on a working day. Dharna volunteers can take turns to ensure that the place is overflowing with residents. We intend to take the press out into the township and also given them a tour of how _________ is fooling us. (Time stamp 13:09)

YT – Okay, this is a noble cause. (Time stamp 13:09)

YT – I will take off. (Time stamp 13:09)

YT – I can also give sound press bytes you know. (Time stamp 13:09)

To this last statement, YKH reacted with a laughing emoticon.

Dear reader, what do you conclude from this conversation?

A. We are planning to go on a Dharna.

B. In all humility, I can think and process things faster than YKW.

C. There could be some difficulty for me to take off for this Dharna. (I thought for one whole minute before deciding that the Dharna was a noble cause….)

I am sure many of my readers can relate to the third point. There are numerous reasons as to why employees might want to take off. And there are a few organisations who would like to keep tabs on why their employees are taking off. 😊

What do employees cite as reasons for taking off? For instance, this afternoon SB has an appointment with his orthodontist. He had his braces done about a month ago and she called up yesterday asking me to bring him in for a check-up. The call came out of the blue. Now, if I want to take off for half a day, do I write ‘Dentist appointment for my twin son who had his braces fitted on ________ 2022?' (I know some of my readers are already judging me on how I can forget my kids’ dental appointment… I do hope to convince you otherwise by the end of this article.)

Some readers might feel why I might hesitate in giving that as a reason. In a couple of weeks, SB and SR will be having an exposition in their school. In all probability, parents will be invited. I need about half a day off. What will I write as a reason? ‘Kids’ expo at school?’

The other day, my mother-in-law’s nurse did not turn up for work. She called me up to tell me that she was running late because her kid was running a fever. I quickly called up YKW who told me that he can return from his work by 1 pm. So, I needed half-a-day off so that I can be with my mother-in-law who cannot be left alone. What do I write in the leave form? ‘Need to be with my elderly mother-in-law for half a day?’

Last week, the twins celebrated their twelfth birthday. The poor kids didn’t want any gifts this time round. All they wanted was a birthday cake with the picture of a basketball on it. I did my bit in ordering the cake but had to go and pick it up. For which I needed half-a-day off. So, what do I write in my leave form? ‘Going to buy a basketball-themed birthday cake for my twins?’

Notwithstanding all these, I just wanted half-a-day off just to sit by myself and ruminate. I mean when you get to it, there are many things you would like to ponder about – the rising inflation, the depreciating rupee, the high cost of tomatoes, the reduced quantum of noodles in a family pack, cost of kids’ clothes and cost of kids’ education and of course, the lack of poetry in life. I, for one wanted to drown myself in the intrigue-filled world of Ponniyin Selvan. (Reader – You are already wondering why I can’t do it on a weekend. Ask the mothers of kids if they can!) So, what do I write as a reason? ‘Cognito Ergo Sum, so I want to take off for half-a-day?’

And then I realised, I was thinking in terms of ‘half-days’ because, honestly, I thought that was the time I needed to finish the job and get back to my work. But then, I remembered the Bradford score.   Without dwelling on the details (the devil is actually in the details), it suffices to say that the Bradford score in organisational management is more like Bata or Birkenstock playing mind games with you with prices like Rs.1299 and Rs.10,990. It was only when I got the bills that I realised that I was going to become poorer by Rs.1300 and Rs.11,000 respectively.Bradford factor is a classic case of ‘what’s good for Peter may not be good for Paul’. So, I leave it at that. 

One more pearl of wisdom I learnt along the way was that organisations are different and the onus is on us to either shape up or ship out. But why? George Orwell told us the reason long ago in that fantastic fable Animal Farm – there are always exceptions to the rules.

And in due time, I realised that the reasons I might cite might actually make my position vulnerable. What would prevent my line manager from declaring that I have too many responsibilities at home and am too much invested in ruminations?  By that yardstick, requesting leave for a Dharna is a stretch!

So, I thought for a while, what reason should I cite for the Dharna? Something that would not make my position vulnerable? Any help?  (I do want to sit on a Dharna… I’ve never been in one you see! 😊)

Morning nugget of wisdom - Anger does not help in conflict resolution!

 

Note: Originally published on LinkedIn on Oct 23rd, 2019

Yesterday morning, I asked my twin terrors to give me all the colours which they didn't need anymore. SR straight barged into his room and took out everything, arranged them neatly on his bed and told me to have whatever I wanted. SB tagged along for sometime and then paused to ask as to why in hell I required crayons and sketch pens. I pretended not to hear him as I rushed into the kitchen. The chap picked up his glass of milk, followed me into the kitchen, settled onto the stool (his legs still don't touch the ground) and the conversation proceeded as follows:

SB- Why do you want our colours?

ME- For my class. (I was trying to be as laconic as possible. Conversations with this fellow almost always led to my dishes getting burned)

SB - But your students are all big students. What would they need colours for?

ME - For my class.

SB - (Placing his glass of milk on the counter and scratching his head with one tiny finger) - Are they doing a project? (I get the feeling that the word 'project' is getting bandied around quite a bit in the school...he had addressed the hideous eyesore of a cardboard box which he painstakingly painted in blue with the words 'Box for Bouncy Balls' as his 'art project'. My concurrence had resulted in the ‘eyesore’ occupying the pride of the place in our living room. SR noticed this and placed his ‘eyesore’…ahem… ‘art project’, right next to it. )

ME - Not exactly…they are going to do an activity!

SB - Ooooh! I love activities. In fact I love going to the tinkering lab in our school. By the way, you are taking away our colours and sketch pens…I hope you are planning to replace them soon.

ME - Sure thing this weekend! (Mental note - Top of the list this weekend - Get a new sketch pen set!)

SB - But amma…what activity are your students gonna do with OUR colours?

ME - An activity for conflict negotiation. (My responses are getting brief.)

SB - What is a con`FLICT?

ME - When you fight with SR over silliest of things….that is a conflict?

SB - How is that a conflict?

ME - Because both of you stop doing whatever you were doing, and instead engage in an argument. As a result, you don’t get ready for school on time and as a result, I get stressed out and end up having a bad day. So you see…conflicts are bad. (Which mother would resist an opportunity to impart some worldly wisdom to fellows who always decide to go off on a tangent…Try, Try and Try…Persistence is the key. Maybe in twenty years time, they’ll understand.)

SB - Oh….but do you know why we continue fighting like that?

ME - No…please do tell me. (Here I am Oh Buddha! Bring on your nuggets of wisdom!)

SB - When people fight….they get angry…when they get angry…they don’t want to listen…I don’t want to listen to SR when I get angry…so we continue to fight. So…that’s the thing…anger is the key. Deal with anger…you deal with the con`FLICT. (Am I dreaming or did I just hear Krishna’s flute in the background from the Bhagavad Gita as the rising sun's rays slowly made their way through the kitchen window and shone up the chap's face. He positively looked like an enlightened soul. And before I realised, the chap finished his milk, ran out and promptly picked up an argument with SR… Nuggets of wisdom are meant only for sharing…not for practising!)

Alexa in Service

SB wanted to stream KGF- Chapter 1 songs from my mobile phone by connecting it to a bluetooth speaker. Before any reader starts passing judgments on me, a disclaimer: my opinions on a movie that has taken the Southern film industry by storm are reserved at the moment. We enjoy a couple of songs from KGF precisely because of their symphonic overtones. SB and SR have recently started identifying such nuances and have been expressing a distinct preference for listening to such songs while travelling in the car. (Which is indeed a huge relief from Imagine Dragons' Believer, the Telugu version of Adiye Kolluthe from Vaaranam Aayiram, or All Rise by Blues. What more can you expect when their father used to play the trombone and their mother used to dabble in playing the trumpet! Once upon a time, I was a proud owner of a Yamaha trumpet...Now I have only its photograph). Digressions apart, SB has also recently discovered how to activate and use Alexa on my phone to play the songs that he wants. And we had some rather hilarious results (stuff for another post). 

So yesterday, in all of his 8-year old voice, SB instructed Alexa - ' Play songs from KGF'. Promptly Alexa identified the album and started playing the songs. Only problem was that by default, Alexa had identified the Kannada version leading me to run helter-skelter from the kitchen only to discover a baffled SB sitting at the dining table. He declared, 'Amma, the music is alright, but something is wrong with the words.' Time for me to take over - I said ' Alexa - play songs from KGF Telugu'. 

Honestly, I didn't anticipate that a voice assistant would take the rules of grammar so seriously, especially since the trend nowadays is towards dropping prepositions, articles and all those 'inconsequential' nuggets of grammar that provide structural support to an utterance and can dangerously alter the meaning if used wrongly. However, Alexa was a different ballgame - It said ' Playing Top 50 Telugu songs' and started off merrily. Now, it was my turn to look baffled and try again. (which yours truly did!) 

Fourth time, epiphany struck and I said - 'Alexa, play song from KGF in Telugu'. And when the song started, I turned to SB with a triumphant smile and said, 'This is how prepositions are used'. 

Of home, work and work-life balance

Today, I heard an eminent person take a position on the concept of 'work-life balance'. In fifteen years from now, he hopes that the 'work-life dichotomy will cease to exist' for all the right reasons. Ideally speaking, our work should indeed be our life (in all its visible and invisible manifestations) and our life should be our work (with all the concomitant acknowledgements and citations) and therefore for a man, work-life balance, for all practical purposes may appear to be a false dichotomy. A claim further supported from a capitalistic perspective which places a premium on productivity and efficiency. I reflected for a moment whether it would indeed be possible for me, as a mother, a daughter and a daughter-in law to do away with this dichotomy. The following is a reconstruction of my thought process in this regard.

For the past couple of weeks, I have been engaged in a long drawn-out job of spring cleaning. Not that my house is big and not that I don't have help. In fact, I had to struggle to keep my ever-helpful elderly mother-in-law at a distance before she finally remarked that if I didn't want her to do the job, at least I should maintain proper 'work-life balance'. Nevertheless, the spring cleaning will continue for a few more days because, I am out of the house from 8 am - 7pm everyday (five days a week) and have to catch up with grocery shopping and other chores over the weekend.

Last week, I was unwittingly stuck near Ikea Hyderabad during the evening rush hour. How was I supposed to know about Metro construction work on that stretch and factor that into my travel plans? Such are the moments when I celebrate the presence of Swiggy in my life. As I picked up the delivery ten minutes after reaching my home, I could remember the advice given by a well-intentioned individual -  I should try and wake up an hour early in the morning so as to finish cooking dinner as well. This would help me maintain proper 'work-life balance'. And my well-intentioned doctor says that I should try to sleep for at least 7 hours every night.

At around 4 pm everyday, I receive an update from my kids' school about the work they are supposed to complete at home. I check and memorise that to rattle it off to my twins as soon as I put down my work bag and rush into the kitchen to do the chores. And whilst making the Rajma curry, I step in occasionally trying to check whether the chaps are doing the work.  (Please refer to this earlier post on my kids' homework and you will get the drift - Dear Ma'am, I'm sorry my twins haven't done their holiday homework) I do this because I know at the end of the day, if SR does miserably in Hindi, it is because his mother is not able to maintain a proper work-life balance.

Everyday, at 4.30pm, SR gives me a call asking whether he can take his cycle to the park. This would be followed by a confirmation call from SB asking if I had indeed given permission for them to take their cycles to the park. Sometimes, I think about work-life balance and wonder if I should disconnect the call. But honestly...would it be worth it?

Last year, as my father-in-law breathed his last in the hospital, I was at my workplace, trying to prove my professional worth. I had made a choice to stay back on that day, because I had to be a 'professional'. In the recent days,  I find that I have been consoling myself by recollecting how I did manage to steal a few moments and visited him the night before he went into the last leg of his life's journey. And most importantly, convey that I was indeed there with him, just like on all the earlier occasions when I had accompanied him to the hospital.

So, for a woman like me, work-life balance is just a manufactured chimera thrown at me to explain my 'perceived' inadequacies either on the personal or the professional front. When I look back, I find that  I am often negotiating  across the various demands and responsibilities placed on me at various points of time. Sometimes, as a woman, I may be judged for my lack of work-life balance. But what matters to me at the end of the day is just tucking SR and SB into the new comforters that I had purchased for them and seeing them sleep peacefully, fully aware that I, as a mother,  can provide for them. And sleeping with the thought that the next day, my workplace would see me putting my best foot forward.

So... yes, I tend to agree with this gentleman but for more different, more domestic and more personal reasons.

Of school attendance, fake circulars and 'burning issues'

One of the distinct memories that I have of my kindergarten days was the ceremony which we kids knew would happen everyday. The first thing in the morning, the teacher would open this long book with yellow/green tinted papers in which she would have written all our names in neat handwriting. The whole process was ritualistic - each kid's name being called out with utter solemnity and our expected response -  'Present ma'am'. This would be done once a day (in the morning), though I faintly recollect attendance being taken for the post-lunch sessions as well. This must have happened during my fifth grade. Apparently some of the boys used to go home for lunch and would not return for the rest of the day. 

I tried my best but could not recollect any discussions regarding shortage of attendance between me and my peers. Of course we were kids and this was one lesser thing for us to worry about. Also, at that time, my tiny mind did not definitely deem it to be an issue of epic proportions worthy enough to be discussed on FM radio for about three hours because, well....there were other burning issues.

This morning, I put on my headphones to listen to the customary chatter on FM Radio. Two radio jockeys were discussing a 'burning issue' - an order supposedly issued by the All India Council for Technical Education scrapping the mandatory 75 percent attendance for engineering students'. As I heard the discussion between the rather enthusiastic RJ's (probably they had been engineering students in their earlier avatars? ) and the vindicated listeners (a good majority of whom appeared to be engineering students),  I realised that the debate was turning out to be pretty polarising. 'Is it a good idea to have mandatory 75 % attendance for engineering students?' -this turned out to be  moot point in the trend of the discussion on both the FM channels (till as such time the RJ's realised the goof up).

There were various strands to this debate, most of which can be summed up as follows. First and foremost was notion that after the rigmarole of preparing for the various entrance examinations, it is but natural to consider colleges as fun spaces and therefore, attendance appeared to be an  antediluvian concept in such spaces. Secondly, (and oddly enough) students are old enough to decide whether they would want to attend the classes because they are old enough to decide.  What was also happening was that these notions, with their polarising potential, were preventing a larger and more relevant debate through a brute majority of shallow opinions.

Let's take a step back and try and understand who are the students who 'opt to study' engineering, how are they coached for the entrance exams, what are the pedagogical methods/practices adopted by the corporate colleges who scream from the rooftops about the number of admissions that their institutions have secured, how the same system percolates and is sometimes reinforced in engineering institutions due to the lack of quality faculty and misguided 'vision and mission' of the institutions, and how all of this results in the majority of the institutions churning out frustrated graduates who find it difficult to secure relevant and purposeful employment or find it difficult to pursue higher studies. Answers to such questions would also throw into relief the increasing number of student suicides (both at coaching centres and engineering colleges) and the growing unemployability of the engineering students. And the debate would show that  emphasis on rote learning, inconsistency between the curriculum and industry,  lack of opportunities for relevant internships and vocational projects and limited access to hands-on learning intervene and make this cycle more vicious.

Therefore, we must step beyond the polarising aspect of this debate and understand how the right words and phrases used in the fake order enabled an instant connect with a growing number of disgruntled engineering graduates who are seeing limited scope for their campuses functioning as spaces facilitating a lifetime of learning and fulfilment. While doing so runs the risk of validating the issues raised by the circular (and I doubt if the NSSO indeed conducted such a survey as claimed in fake circular), it should rather be seen as an opportunity to deliberate upon the ways in which engineering education in our country can be made more relevant, purposeful and rewarding. And with the majority of the students in our country 'opting' for engineering, there is a critical need for such an engagement.


PS: This post was originally written in Jan 2018, when the fake AICTE circular started making its rounds. AICTE swung into action and established that the circular was fake.

Of Schools, Dystopian Realities and Mr.G.Neelakantan

One of my neighbour’s joyous exclamation that her toddler
had gained admission into a prominent school (about 20 kilometres away) led me to remember a few incidents that happened while I had been scouting schools for my sons. 

A highly recommended school was about five kilometres away which, to me, was a negotiable distance. However, the day to day affairs were being managed by the personal secretary of the Principal who was ‘missing-in-action’. The prospectus was a cool couple of thousands (school touting ‘prospectus’! ) and there would be a ten-minute interview to classify the tiny tots as ‘normal’ and ‘hyperactive’. Very innocently, I asked if any certified experts would do that and I was shown the door.

At the gate of another prominent school, I was informed by the security to fill up an enquiry form and pay Rs.250 per child before initiating any discussion. In yet another school, the head was nice enough to entertain me for about twenty minutes (it was a newly established school) to claim that the curriculum was drawn from the best practices of CBSE, IGCSE and IB, though they had affiliation for none at that point of time. And who decided on the best practices? I was shown the door yet again.

While at one school I discovered that I would be paying an arm and a leg for international cuisine, I found ‘ayyammas’ surreptitiously devouring food from the snack boxes of pre-primary kids in another. I also saw a school where the toilets did not have proper doors. A friend of mine who found the idea of checking washrooms pretty funny changed her opinion after last year’s incident in the Gurugram school.

The similarity across these schools was nevertheless astounding - in almost all of them (except the one where the ayyammas were eating the food from the snack boxes), the total cost for LKG education for my two sons would have costed me more than I had spent for my entire school education. And at the end of all this, I still had no guarantee that my kids would feel safe. 

The following incidents that happened in the recent times add credence to this — protests by parents in Hyderabad regarding the yearly school fee hike, an 8th grade student committing suicide for not being allowed to write an exam, a child not being allowed to attend classes for wearing the wrong footwear, a group of tiny tots being given TC’s because their parents belonged to a WhatsApp group, a child being mowed down by a school bus, and a child falling into a well in a play school (and the parents thought that their child would be safe there). 

All these incidents, when seen together, reveal two things: despite their well worded intentions and their elevated ‘ethos’, many schools today are sacrificing humanity at the altar of ‘profits’.

Hyderabad is one of the metros where school fees could be the highest (as per some news reports in 2016), and this is more often justified by the infrastructure and of course the ‘snob’ values associated with a particular school. Further, many teachers lack commitment because of two reasons: the monetary compensation is far from motivating, and most of them are not teachers by choice. Therefore, they fall in line with the institutions’ philosophy of running the school either as a resort or as a commercial venture. Some schools resort to in-house training of teachers, the quality of which is often questionable.

Despite the glossy promotional material with the photos of ‘happy kids’ talking about ‘great experiences’, teachers talking about their child-centred pedagogy and globalised curriculum, websites proclaiming qualified and experienced teachers and heads with wide and varied experience, there is a palpable sense that most of the schools today are directionless, rudderless, profit-making enterprises. And this is happening because there is a limited sense of accountability. Even if any exists, governments allow them to be circumvented. 

There is a tragedy waiting to happen — today’s schools are rapidly evolving into dystopian realities. They are rapidly transforming into places where dreams are being defeated… on a daily basis. And no one seems to be concerned. And the situation has become more alarming because schools are now unleashing the most powerful weapon in their arsenal — subtle manipulation. 

One morning, a parent shared that her Grade 2 daughter had written a series of Olympiads. The tiny one didn’t want her mother to talk about her performance and so she hid behind, tugging at her mother and pleading with her to stop the discussion. Oblivious to her daughter’s discomfort, the lady continued talking about how her daughter didn’t do well whereas her cousin in Grade 3 stood first in the school. If you would blame the mother….I would request you to pause and ponder regarding the origin of the mother’s problem. She had obviously seen the online portal of the school where the photos of the toppers were regularly posted. Like many other parents, she was pressurised into enrolling her child for the nerve wracking exams that involve preparation and practice; the parents were expected to train their children with the school’s support being restricted to registering and procuring the preparation material.

Parents who contribute to the school’s initiatives and respond positively to their policies are generally seen as star parents (appreciated during Annual Day/or any other function) whereas a questioning parent is seen as a ‘problem’. Therefore, neither did I raise questions regarding the sensibility of manipulating the tiny tots into writing the Olympiads, nor did I enrol my kids for those tests. In other words, I had developed a thick skin, just like many others. 

At that moment, I could not help but recollect this incident in Chennai. During a parent-teacher meeting, a former colleague of mine told a child’s parents that it was their responsibility to help their grade 2 child learn English at home. Very helpfully, she also suggested that the parents could begin by watching English programs/films and speak to each other in English. There was a problem though — the child was a first generation learner and the parents were vegetable vendors who were working hard to give their child a decent shot at education. In this regard, our prinicipal stated a simple fact to all the teachers - when the kid is in the school 8 hours a day and five days a week, what business does the school have to shove the responsibility of learning onto the parents? That hit a nerve. 

That man was Mr.G.Neelakantan, who was the principal of Sir Sivaswami Kalalaya in 2005. Having worked under his guidance for two years, I have seen him as a true educationist. He would have considered parents as equal stake holders with the school assuming primary responsibility for learning. He would have seen schools as spaces promoting happy learning, not profit-making entities. He would have understood the emotional quotient of children and made sure that they had enough learning experiences to last a lifetime. And he would have done all this without providing an international cuisine or an AC bus. Today, as my children attend school, I wish people like him were around, more particularly in Hyderabad. Then, this tragedy waiting to happen would be nipped in the bud.

Five Reasons on Why I can Relate to 'He Just Sued the Education System'! 

Over the time, I have become a social media recluse for various reasons. Call it the perils of multiple-tasking or whatever, but most of the videos, links, photos and motivational messages sent  to me end up getting cleanly ignored. And that is why on one early morning, many days after a well-meaning friend had shared it with me, seeing the video He just sued the school system turned out to be a revelatory experience.

I could relate to the video at various levels, because personally, it is an affirmation of what I had been experiencing/believing in. The education system in our country is something like the theatre of the absurd. People who matter know what is wrong, but various factors inhibit them from confronting the realities. In other words, we know what the problem is, because refuse to acknowledge and do something about it. Such a 'policy paralysis' often leads to the 'my way is the highway' approach on  various critical aspects regarding educational policy.

For instance, schools do not always encourage inputs/feedback from the parents. In fact, any intervention is seen as being antithetical to the school's 'vision'. For reasons related to privacy, I would not want to dwell into details, but the fact remains that schools do not encourage conversations across the stakeholders regarding syllabi, methodology of teaching etc, and so on. Statements like 'our teachers are trained by international boards' or 'have attended workshops' are enough to bully the them into 'wilful submission'. There was this rather frustrating conversation I once had with a teacher who kept  insisting that a kindergarten child should know how to pronounce the word 'embarrass' and other such complicated words even without comprehending the contextual meaning. This was because the 'other children in the class' are apparently 'able to' and she also darkly hinted at the possibility that if a child is not able to pronounce such words, probably the mother is not taking enough interest in the child's education. The teacher in question had clearly not heard of the concept of 'learning indicators' at various levels and 'differential learning', or her institution was encouraging her to restrict it to the fancy settings of 'workshops' and 'conferences'.

There is one more instance where schools discourage conversations. Processes and procedures are often opaque; this becomes very significant especially when parents are being made to shell out higher amounts of money for accessories like textbooks. I remember an email conversation that I had with a policy maker who was firmly convinced that the expensive foreign publications that they had chosen for their students was the best possible choice given the current scenario. What struck me the most was that the conversation did not acknowledge that they might be willing to reconsider/reevaluate/review their choices based on their experiences. My maid, who is fighting an almost losing battle to educate her children, tells me of instances when she has been issued threats that her children will not be able to write their exams if the 'exam fees' are not paid. And such information is not provided at the beginning of the academic year.

Very often, the teacher is held responsible for the failure of the system. However, as the video points out, much like the children, the teacher is also a victim. In our country, 'teaching' is seen as a convenient vocation for anybody who is not otherwise professionally competent.This may come across as a sweeping generalisation, but most of us who have had experience with the so-called 'international' and 'elite' schools who promise 'child-centered' learning methodologies, and a ' differentiated curriculum' in line with 'global standards' do not have teachers with even basic qualifications in education. How would such teachers understand various aspects involved in 'assessments', 'evaluation' and more importantly 'child psychology'? And this explains their treatment of children. More often than not, the child is seen as a 'client' who needs to be kept happy (parents must also be kept happy), or a 'product' that needs to be churned out from a factory. ('Poultry farm' would have been a more apt metaphor, but I fear to run into areas where angels fear to tread'!) Once,  I was trying to 'crowdsource' the content for an issue-based essay on the validity of praising positive actions as a strategy for teaching. Very astutely, my students pointed out how a false sense of achievement can actually prove to be a impediment on their journey of learning. (Thank heavens that their sense of perceptive insights are still intact!). While catering to learners as 'clients', schools almost inevitably adopt a strategy wherein all the stakeholders are kept happy. Or, depending on the kind of their 'philosophy' or 'vision', they go to the other extreme of treating children like 'robots' who successfully internalise procedures related to processing different sets of instructions with limited scope for innovative or lateral thinking.

Therefore, due to this institutions failure, the teacher almost always becomes the victim. Technological companies hire people with the minimum level of expertise (depending on their requirements) and then train them, as necessary. However, the minimum qualification for the teacher, as it exists in reality, is the ability to communicate. At lower levels of learning, where critical learning skills have to be built and consolidated, specialised qualifications are not even considered. In our system, anyone with a basic degree qualification and the ability to speak good English (maybe, throw in one or two unrecognised and unvalidated training courses) are considered to be good enough to teach. Once they join, teachers find that there there are limited incentives to at least try and enhance their skill set. I was speaking to this former teacher of an elite school a few weeks ago. Based on her personal experience, she had a rather interesting take on the situation - she is earning more from tuitions (one hour in the evening everyday, and she teachers kindergarten learners) than the eight-hour-a-day job that she had been doing. When the pay is low, and the working conditions are close to 'pathetic', there is limited motivation to think and strategise learning sessions from a different, more wholistic and a more relevant perspective. This outlook percolates into everyday modalities like creating materials (worksheets ridden with errors), lack of communication with the stakeholders, the tendency to form quick judgements about learner performance and of course, the lack of motivation to consider each learner as a unique individual.

Further,  in their efforts to fulfil the tag of a 'progressive approach to education', most schools invest in technology related aids and 'smart' classrooms. However, as any experienced educator would point out, such contraptions become effective only if the teacher perceptively understands how to utilise them. Otherwise, they remain emblematic symbols of 'futuristic schools'. Only that schools would be willing to invest in training their teachers in more effective methods of teaching.

So, in my opinion, it is a sense of obduracy and the unwillingness to accept a different point of view which is making educational institutions adopt their 'own' and often 'regressive' strategies to justify their existence. And we, as stakeholders, seem to be content. How else do we explain the fact that we continue to pay ridiculously astronomical amounts for  school education, with minimal intervention by the governments or the policy makers? How else do we explain the fact that today, education is becoming a corporate business with the primary goal being that of achievement in terms of marks and percentages rather than actual practical skills related to the subject(s)? Of late, while returning from work, I see two billboards of a prominent school which shows two blurbs. One blurb has 'London School of Economics' and the other has 'Tata Institute of Social Sciences'. And the message says something to the effect of whether we would want our children to go to the former or the latter institution. Implicit in this question is a challenge thrown - a challenge of standards that nobody will check or verify. And we seem to be buying such a specious argument just because the school's hoarding declares so.

Having said this, have I become cynical about our school education system? Strictly speaking, no. We may not be living in an alternative universe where we can actually put 'school education', as a person, into the witness box. Nevertheless, all around me, I see small changes in the air - people giving up their jobs to pursue full-time degrees in education, volunteering for educational initiatives etc. The other day I was speaking to a parent who was totally invested in her child's education. She was firmly convinced that she needed to distinguish between different types of critical reading skills before she attempted to teach her child reading comprehension. Such instances may be small signs, but significant nevertheless. They keep assuring me that while there are larger battles to be fought in a larger court, indeed there are smaller ones that can be won!