“I adopted two seemingly disparate liberatory paths, feminism and spiritual practice, to survive and make sense of what I was going through; that I, who was neither consciously feminist nor spiritually inclined, became both; that this personal revolution couldn’t have happened any other way, for me, is something I’m just beginning to grasp,” writes Nighat Gandhi in her book What I Am Today, I Won’t Remain Tomorrow published by Yoda Press. The book is deeply powerful, sharing the author’s own transformational journey, intertwined with her sensitive portrayal of encounters with women survivors of abuse.

It is easy for urban dwellers, especially well-intentioned ones, to make victims and martyrs out of the suffering of common folk, and glorify them for what it’s worth. However, Nighat treads carefully. She is acutely aware of the privileged position she enjoys in relation to the ‘subjects’ she attempts to represent. There is a sincerity about the questions she asks them, born perhaps of the desire to share their narratives as truthfully as possible, never degenerating into voyeuristic curiosity. What’s most beautiful is the constant self-examination on her part, never assuming that her own life is perfect while other lives are fraught with problems and fissures.

Here is an interview with Nighat, who I had the opportunity to meet in Varanasi in April 2010, soon after spotting her other book Ghalib at Dusk at store near Assi Ghat. We found that we were both staying on the same campus at Rajghat Besant School; she as a writer-in-residence, I as a workshop participant. It’s amazing how our paths crossed, and how a friendship was born over walks and conversations.

How did you decide on the title of your book ‘What I Am Today, I Won’t Remain Tomorrow’? Does it reflect on your personal philosophy?

The title is taken from Sadhana’s story–it’s what she says towards the end of her narrative. I tried to get chapter headings, as far as possible, from the speech of the actual participants.  And yes, the title does reflect my personal belief,  but earlier, what Sadhana said was an insight and source of inspiration for me. The fact that decay is as natural as renewal. Both are inevitable processes in nature.

I find it significant that you call the participants of your study ‘survivors of abuse’, not ‘victims of abuse’. Would you like to elaborate on this choice of words?

They are survivors! I think calling them victims would be a gross insult to their indomitable spirit of survival. All women, and for that matter, all oppressed peoples, are survivors–and should be applauded for the sheer act of surviving in a misogynistic milieu.

Your acknowledgements page starts on an unusual note ‘The chain of my gratitude could stretch to the ancient matter which makes up the universe and our planet, the primordial atoms and molecules, culminating in the body-mind, the ‘I’ through whom this book got written. For now, I’ll limit myself to the principal links in the performance chain.’ What brought about this feeling of deep gratitude?

I think gratitude is a natural outgrowth when you are on the spiritual path. I am filled with gratitude to that universal energy, presence, intelligence, of which I am also a part–every day, I take time out to offer thanks. I try to make a conscious effort to appreciate even the most mundane happenings in life –like the kids got back home safely–if you see the awful traffic in Allahabad, you’ll know what I mean!

In your acknowledgements, you also refer to ‘my weird hermetic ways’. I’m curious to know more.

Well, most writers have weird hermetic ways, don’t they? I mean the preference for solitude, and a room of one’s own. I can’t write in a café or public space like some writers can. Except if it’s a quiet library–those I love and miss–there’s isn’t such a place here.  So my office is my hermetic space. That’s where most of my writing gets done. And many of the non-writing hours are also spent there. But the preparation for writing is also happening when I’m not typing out the words–it’s happening in the head and heart all the time.

In the book, you frequently refer to Allahabad’s location at the confluence of three rivers Ganga, Yamuna and Saraswati. Has this held some kind of personal significance for you — in terms of your writing, or otherwise?

Being at the confluence of the rivers…Yes, it has a personal significance in the sense that it is here, in this town, that I came to realize my life was forking out and coming together–the many strands of it–mothering, activism, writing. And all of it came together in a magical, mythical manner. As if Saraswati had something to do with it! When I least expected it. I thought I would get buried in my domestic life and would never emerge as a writer or in any other role except mother and wife. I lived in that fear always. But somehow I did emerge. I learned to swim and float down the river of self-discovery.

You write of your ’long-felt unease with my assigned roles as a woman’. When did you begin to recognise this unease? What were the roles that fettered you?

I realized that my life was not going to be as I had wanted it to be—soon after marriage, and especially after the birth of my daughter. It was a shock but since it arrived slowly, it just seeped into my being, like slow poison. What were the roles that fettered me? Well, the domestic roles, of course, and loss of personal freedoms in a small town, and the middle class roles of a middle class woman.

You say that this unease ‘fed the inner compulsion to give voice to some of this town’s (Allahabad’s) most invisible women.’ What was the nature of that compulsion?

I think the compulsion was the feminist mantra–the personal is political, and of course, no woman is free until all are free. Once I realized the truth of these sayings, there was no turning back to the old way of life.

Did you feel that in giving voice to others, you’d be able to get at the heart of your own misery?

I knew what was making me miserable. So there was no element of surprise or new knowledge in writing about the lives of the study participants. But yes, in the process of interviewing them and writing their stories, I did gain much inspiration on how to change my own life.  Mostly, I gained confidence and courage about embarking on the road less travelled.

What did the listening and the retelling of those stories do to you? I mean, at all levels — physical, emotional, spiritual.

It made me grow and grow and grow! Ok, not physically perhaps! But yes, emotionally and spiritually, I grew so much, I hardly fit the old me mould anymore! I feel like I’m another me. It was a molting process, shedding of old skin.

You write, ‘It is in the criss-crossing of paths, the intersecting spaces of spirituality and feminism, a (con)fusion which continues to thrill and liberate me, that this book got written.” I’d like you to explain that. That one sentence seems to have a lot behind it.

As I wrote in the Intro, both feminism and spirituality became life quests, they became survival strategies. Both are philosophies that challenge social construction of roles and inequalities. So I see a lot of parallels in both as liberatory paths. Traditional spirituality has not necessarily addressed gender roles or gender-based inequalities. But if a movement is about the equality of all beings, if it’s about resisting oppression, then by extrapolation, one can apply it to the question of gender inequality also.

Intellectuals are often hesitant to use the word ‘spirituality’. What do you think is the reason behind this? Do they fear that their academic rigour would be compromised?

I think our present intellectual gains are assumed to be a fruit of the Enlightenment era–the age of rationality and reason. So we feel out of sorts when we dwell in the world of mysticism and spirituality because it’s not deemed a quantifiable, verifiable science! The whole idea of Social Sciences is questionable, at least if one follows the research designs for uncovering or proving a fact or testing a hypothesis, used in the  natural sciences like Biology etc. So ideas like intuition, spiritual awakening, ecstasy, etc are relegated to the realm of the superstitious, hocus pocus, not cool! Therefore, the truly objective person is somehow not supposed to be spiritual. Because we haven’t yet devised a scientific way of testing the truth of spiritual insights.That seems like a pretty unscientific approach to reality to me.

How did you think of your own spiritual journey? What have your primary influences been — people, places, reading, personal crises? Did living in various parts of the world have anything to do with this?

Yes, all the above have been influences. The path of self-development is strewn with such influences. The book’s participants have been very influential in my life.  I mention some of them in the Intro to the book. The authors I read—those I already talk about in the Introduction to my book, but there are so so many others too. Like Anne Marie Schimmel, Karen Armstrong, Rita Gross, Evelyn Underhill, whose names I didn’t mention. And music–sufi music  has played a transformative role too–listening to Abida Parveen, Nusrat Fateh Ali.
Living in different parts of the world definitely contributed to a lack of rootedness, which I see as a spiritual gift. It’s easier to realize the impermanence of the world and shed all illusions about what we call ‘mine’ if one has had to shed baggage literally and set up camp several times in a lifetime.

NOTE: To get a copy of the book, check http://www.flipkart.com/am-today-won-remain-tomorrow-book-8190666835

While facilitating a writing workshop with school students in the summer of 2009, I noticed a pattern of strange occurrences. Some of the pieces that were being turned in sounded nothing like their authors’ other work. Expressions such as ‘four-leaved clover’, ‘a poem as lovely as a tree’, and ‘jolly heaven above’ struck me as particularly odd, coming from my students. The words seemed borrowed, forced, even inauthentic. I could not get myself to be glad about any supposed gains in vocabulary, since I was sure something was not quite right. It took me a while to realize what was going on, and to name the problem—plagiarism! Thanks to Google, I discovered that my students had not simply ‘lifted’ a few words, but entire texts. Poems such as Joyce Kilmer’s ‘Trees’, Richard Edwards’ ‘Good Luck’, and Robert Louis Stevenson’s ‘The Vagabond’, among others, were being passed off as the students’ own work. There was no change in the actual wording of the texts. The poet’s name was merely replaced with the respective student’s name.

I was furious. Here was I, thinking of myself as a well-intentioned teacher, designing a new writing programme completely devoted to topics that students wanted to write about. I was certain that students would love the opportunity to write about things that mattered to them, experiences that held personal significance beyond pleasing the teacher and scoring good marks. The brief was simple: we’d work towards putting together a community magazine; students could write about any topic under the sun, as long as they kept their audience in mind; they would get peer and teacher feedback on their work; all drafts could be revised and shaped into final versions; each student would keep a portfolio consisting of drafts, feedback, and final versions.

All my certainties dissolved. My stance changed. From a caring and supportive facilitator, I became the image I loathed—the despicable authority figure. I felt wronged. I accused them of cheating. How could my students do this to me? Why were they taking advantage of my friendliness? Perhaps they didn’t deserve my affection after all. They weren’t serious about their work, so what was the point of investing so much of myself into what I envisioned for them. Huh! Nobody takes teachers seriously, especially young novices. A million such thoughts ran through my head.

Months later, as I looked through the journal entries written during that teaching stint, something hit me. I had missed something that had been staring right into my face. I had decided to work with learner-chosen topics because I wanted students to rid themselves of their dependence on essays memorized from composition books. How naïve of me to imagine that students would break out of their established patterns overnight! In the absence of a composition book to memorize from, they had simply gone home, picked up their textbooks, and memorized poems from there. When they came back for the next workshop session, the memorized poem wrote itself out in class.

While I had set out with wonder-eyed enthusiasm about the rich possibilities that lay in using learner-chosen topics, I had not anticipated the challenges this would pose to my students. The experience of another teacher, who tried encouraging student voice in academic writing in her own classroom, taught me that students resisted the new way of doing things because “they didn’t want to have to think that hard. They wanted me to tell them what to write. It was easier that way. And it was what they were used to.” (Gemmell 2008: 65).

It also occurred to me that my simple brief might have been excruciatingly daunting for those 10-14 year olds. Their previous writing experiences in school and at home might have been completely different from this one. Writing for a real audience, giving and receiving feedback after carefully reading and thinking about their peers’ work, and putting their writing through a process that includes multiple drafts to be entered into a portfolio—all of this could have brought on tremendous pressure, though it was intended to help them become better, flexible, resourceful writers.

From another compassionate teacher-activist, bell hooks (1994), I learnt that changing one’s habits of being involves pain; we must respect that pain. In the willingness to depart from what one’s mind is accustomed to, there is a commitment to transformation. This deserves recognition.

My certainties about what constitutes plagiarism also found themselves challenged after I read Pennycook (1996). I came upon question after difficult question; some raised by Pennycook, others that came rushing to my mind as I tried to struggle with his. Do notions of authorship vary across cultures and periods in history? Why are some acts of borrowing more legitimate than others? Quoting authorities on a subject is an accepted way of displaying scholarship, and researchers pride themselves on the number of pages their bibliographies run into. What about teachers whose lectures contain large chunks of material memorized from a particular book and delivered to unsuspecting students, without acknowledging the source? How must we respond to teachers who expect their students to reproduce answers from notes dictated in class, and penalize students for expressing their personal views? When a student copies from his classmate, why do we respond with moral outrage not meant for the one who parrots the teacher’s words?

Around the same time, I encountered a wonderful article written by Lakdawalla (2010). She narrates an incident wherein “a fairly bright and well-behaved” student was found copying from a hidden notebook during an examination. She considered various options—1. scolding him, tearing his answer script, and throwing it in the bin 2. taking him to the Headmistress’ office and getting him punished 3. calling his parents to school, and complaining about his bad behaviour. Those are the usual options. Instead, Lakdawalla approached the situation with great maturity. She thought of the child as someone to ‘relate to’, and not ‘deal with’. No, she didn’t let him off the hook. She pointed out his mistake and asked him to mend his ways; at the same time, exercised enough care not to violate his dignity. I love the fact that Lakdawalla was able to look at the ‘act’ as separate from the ‘individual’. She responded to the particular incident and behaviour, instead of passing judgement on the child’s character and upbringing or humiliating him in front of other students—something teachers routinely do when they sense a threat to their authority.

While my focus here has been on plagiarism, I intend to draw home a larger point—that of the classroom being a fairly unpredictable place, though we might try to domesticate it by introducing rituals of power and predictability. Being open to surprises, and responding to them creatively, is what we are called upon to do. It’s going to be tough, of course. But surprises are fun.

References

Gemmell, R. 2008. Encouraging Student Voice in Academic Writing. English Journal 98(2). 64-68.

hooks, b. 1994. Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom. New York: Routledge.

Lakdawalla, Z. N. 2010. We learn from mistakes. Teacher Plus http://www.teacherplus.org/notes-from-a-teachers-diary/we-learn-from-mistakes

Pennycook, A. 1996. Borrowing others’ words: Text, ownership, memory and plagiarism. TESOL Quarterly 30(2), 201-230.

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To read other articles published in Edu-Care, get in touch with Ramgopal Koneripalli at knramgopal@yahoo.com

To know more about Centre for Learning, Hyderabad, check http://www.centreforlearning.org/

Imagine doing such a study of a school, and capturing it on film! This is what filmmaker David MacDougall, an Adjunct Professor at the Australian National University, has been doing for a while. A wonderful storyteller, MacDougall takes you into the world of the school through the eyes of a few students, who share their thoughts and feelings about being at boarding school, the bonds they share with friends, the things they love doing, pranks, mischief, seniors, living away from home, etc. Sounds exciting? It is!

The other films in the Doon School series are: With Morning Hearts, Karam in Jaipur, The New Boys, and The Age of Reason. Apart from these, MacDougall has made a set of films on the Rishi Valley School in Madanapalle (Andhra Pradesh), and one on a shelter for children in New Delhi.

With holidays round the corner, perhaps you would like to do a small project like this? Of course, if you got friends to join you, it would be a lot more fun. There is so much you can do – prepare a set of skits, come up with a wall magazine, put together a photo exhibition for your school’s Annual Day, or start a blog to share your experiences.

So much of your life revolves around school: there are things you like about school, things you don’t like, your closest friends, the teachers you adore, picnics, assemblies, special events, your own drawings and poems, the games you like to play, your favourite places in school, the canteen, the library…the list can go on.

Sure, it is not possible to like everything about school. There might be bullying, strict teachers, piles of homework, unclean toilets, subjects that you don’t have the patience for, or just not enough time to play. You must share these things as well, but remember to suggest solutions whenever you can.

It is equally alright if you want to keep all this to yourself. Sometimes, there are things we do not feel comfortable sharing. A personal diary or scrapbook would be a good idea then. You can even invent a code language that only you can make sense of, to prevent the secrets from spilling out!

Start right away!

Note: This article appeared in Young World (Hyderabad edition) dated March 9, 2010

I watched ’The Doon School Chronicles’ at Prithvi theatre in Bombay, where it was screened by Vikalp: Films for Freedom

NOTE: This article appeared in the Hyderabad edition of Young World (supplement with The Hindu) on Feb 9, 2010.

To know more about the CFL library, check http://library.cfl.in/

To see pictures of the library, check http://www.flickr.com/photos/cfllibrary/404710489/in/photostream/

NOTE: This was published in Life Positive.

I am not surprised she’s got such good marks in the exam. After all, she’s a teacher’s child.

Let us stay away from him; what if he goes and complains to his mother? After all, he’s a teacher’s child.

Variants of such comments are commonly heard in school canteens and playgrounds. Do teachers’ children really have it so easy because of their parents? Don’t they have to work hard at their studies or follow disciplinary rules? And what about the teacher as parent? How does that double role play out in real life? The wearer knows where the shoe pinches, goes the old saying. We interacted with a few teachers’ children and teachers themselves, and found that their situation is quite contrary to the kind of popular beliefs mentioned above. It is tough being a teacher’s child, and the challenges are numerous.

Sharmila and Shantharam (Shanthu) are siblings who studied at Madhava Kripa School at Manipal, Karnataka. Their mother Shyla Rao taught at the same school. “My mother was not very different at school. She was strict and used to hit me at the drop of a hat at home; she did the same at school. I was not let off the hook at all. In fact, she used to be extra strict with me to avoid being accused of nepotism. My friends felt quite sorry for me,” says Sharmila.

Sreevidya Surendran, who studied at the Gulf Indian School in Kuwait, says that her mother Anuradha was always very conscious of the fact that she was teaching her children—Sreevidya and her brother Shreejith. “Amma could not be too comfortable, since that could have been taken as favouritism. One is always a little tough on one’s own children than the rest. In my mum’s class, I was never allowed to slacken. ”

Sharmila’s mother Shyla agrees that as a teacher, she had to make a conscious effort not only to avoid any partial feelings towards her children, but nip them in the bud. At home, she was Amma; at school, she was Shyla teacher. She recalls how her son once called out to her as “Teacher! Teacher!” when at home and immediately added, “Oh God! I forgot this isn’t school!” She taught her daughter for five months, and her son for two and a half years. Shyla says that it was not difficult for her to balance the roles of teacher and parent, because she is a practical person.

“When a ball thrown by Shanthu was lost, the other kids were wondering if he would escape the fine. But I bought a new ball the next day, and made him give it to the headmaster. Once he was part of a gang that had misbehaved, and all the children were to be punished. Shanthu was the first to receive the punishment,” recalls Shyla. She would refuse to judge events that her children participated in. When her son was in Class III, his friends said that he was lucky to be a teacher’s child, since he could peep into the question paper and score full marks. When Shanthu didn’t make the expected mark, the loose talk died down. “This built up my reputation as one of the most fair and impartial teachers in school,” says Shyla. Once in a while, she does wonder if her overzealous efforts to be perceived as impartial put her children at a disadvantage. This is a reality that teachers’ children often have to live with.

Anuradha says that she had cautioned her children never to do anything that would make the teachers complain. She recognises that the children must have felt pressurised and even irritated when they were expected to be more meticulous than other students especially in terms of uniform, hairstyle, etc. Anuradha adds, “My colleagues did talk to me about my children. I expected them to anyway. Thankfully, their comments were not in anger or irritation but as timely warnings or helpful suggestions when my children slipped up.” Anuradha thinks that a parent who is a teacher has the advantage of knowing where her child stands in terms of aptitude and interests; and one also feels less guilty about leaving the children unattended or in the care of domestic help as other working mothers have to do. The children’s and her work time and holidays coincided, and Anuradha saw that was a huge advantage.

Meenaa Sampat taught at Jamnabai Narsee School in Mumbai while her daughter studied there and a little after that. She used to work as a designer with an export firm, but became a teacher so that she could be with her daughter Dhvaani and attend to the child’s needs in her formative years.  “In the early years of schooling, it is good to have one’s parent around. I agree that the advantage was more on my side. I would immediately know if my daughter had faltered,” says Meenaa. “It was really nice to have my mother as a teacher in my school. I could travel with her, and I always had her at hand,” Dhvaani says in agreement.  

1. Both Meenaa and Dhvaani admit that things change as the child grows older. Teenagers are in the process of developing a self-identity, and there is often a felt need to break away   from parental supervision. “Teenagers want their freedom. They don’t like parents being around all the time,” says Meenaa. Her daughter confesses to the same. Dhvaani remembers getting quite troubled by the burden of expectations thrust upon her. She says, “Other teachers would threaten to complain to my mother. They would say ‘How can you behave like this?’ even when it was not a big deal. It felt like was being monitored all the time. I wasn’t this prim and proper girl, but I was expected to be perfect. I was supposed to set an example.” Meenaa adds that her daughter was told that she ought to know how to behave; that was the baggage that came with being a teacher’s child. Every little mistake of Dhvaani’s was magnified, even things that would have been overlooked if done by another child. Sharmila and Shantharam faced the same problem; so did Sreevidya.

Sreevidya was taught not only by her mother, but her aunt and uncle as well—all at the same school. While talking to her, I realise that teachers’ children perhaps miss out on all the fun and mischief that is an integral part of school life for many children. “I was very conscious of being a teacher’s child. I had certain extra responsibilities. I had to be a good student. I could never be lax about my studies. Else, people would go—Oh my God! She’s a teacher’s child…Look at her! I could never slip up. It was like having 20 mothers and fathers, everyone making a special effort to pick on me,” she says.

Anuradha points out that her daughter Sreevidya had few friends in school and probably missed a lot of fun because she lived up to the standards of being a teacher’s child. Sreevidya could not bring herself to do the fun things that bind students—like copying homework or tests, making fun of teachers, etc. However, Sreevidya’s brother Shreejith who studied in the same school has many friends, and Anuradha is surprised how. “My son does not copy, but he doesn’t get great marks either. He imitates most of his teachers even in front of them and gets away with it. While my daughter probably understood my ideas and behaved suitably, my son never considered such caution necessary. He would behave just like he did at home, showing the same intimacy and familiarity. I suppose I let him and got used to it myself. It happened also because he was similarly informal with all his other teachers as well. Perhaps after seeing my elder child’s plight, I didn’t set such high standards for him,” says Anuradha.

Being a teacher’s child can turn into a label that the child just cannot shrug off, however hard he or she may try. This can be very frustrating. It is almost as if being a teacher’s child is the only form or recognition that the child can ever get; and that he or she is incapable of doing anything worthwhile on his or her own merit. Sharmila shares a personal experience. Even when she shifted schools, and got admitted to a place where she did not have her mother to turn to, her Mathematics teaccher kept insisting that Sharmila performed well only because her mother Shyla taught her at home. Sharmila resented this because her mother never taught her at home. Anuradha also mentions that a teacher’s child is sometimes exposed to unfair treatment by classmates, even when the child wins prizes or scores higher marks.

Despite the challenges faced by teachers and children, there is sometimes a bright side to look at. Sreevidya says that a teacher’s child has the advantage of knowing what teachers go through. When her friends talked about the teachers they disliked and why they did so, Sreevidya was not able to participate. She, therefore, found it difficult to connect with her peer group. “When someone condemned a teacher, I would say—She is working so hard for you. Why are you being so ungrateful? I knew those teachers as persons. I knew they were really nice people… In any case, it’s a good life being a teacher’s child. It makes you richer. You can be nutty and completely mad, but you retain a core of seriousness that brings out the mature side in you.”

BOX WITH STORY

Annie Thomas, Principal of Sharon English School in Mulund, Mumbai was clear about the fact that she wanted her daughters Jennifer and Judith to join another school. She was the Headmistress when her daughters were of school-going age. She says, “We had a feeling that our children might become very spoilt if they went to the same school. Even if our children made mistakes, the teachers would be apprehensive of reprimanding them. The children might take advantage of this, and think they could get away with anything. We felt that our children would not be able to grow in such an environment. We wanted them to be treated as normal children, without any special treatment.”

However, the younger daughter Judith did study at Sharon English School for two years. “I felt that my daughter was feeling an emotional vacuum because I was not able to spare much time with her. She did not seem to be coping well, so I thought it might be a good idea to bring her to my school for a couple of years. Once she could manage on her own, we sent her to another school,” says the mother.

Annie Thomas says that she does not encourage teachers at her school to have their own children study there because of the various problems that could arise. She says that a teacher’s child might be given too much importance by other children, and he/she may use his/her parent’s position to bully others. On the other hand, there maybe cases where a teacher’s child has to be over cautious about the way he/she conducts himself/herself, to take care of his/her parent’s reputation. Apart from this, teachers who are parents may try to work against the rules of the school management when it comes to matters like completing homework, or passing the lunch box to the child while a class is in progress.

Jennifer Thomas, Annie’s daughter, says that having your parents run the school is different from having your parents simply teach in the same school. She feels that studying at her mother’s school could have been problematic for her, for two reasons. Firstly, because she might have got preferential treatment. Secondly, because she would have found it difficult to take criticism regarding the school management.

NOTE: This was featured as the cover story in the April 2009 issue of Teacher Plus.

A large number of children in India grow up disliking poetry because of the way it is ‘taught’ in school. There are two sets of problems; one pertaining to the selection of poems, and the other concerning the treatment of these poems as texts. The poems taught are usually the ones prescribed in textbooks, since few teachers go beyond these.

The Problem

Let us begin with the problems pertaining to the selection of poems. A substantial number of poems make it to textbooks only because they enjoy a canonical status within the tradition of English literature. William Wordsworth and Robert Frost are the staple of school-level English textbooks in India. At times, they also have John Keats, Alfred Tennyson and William Butler Yeats for company.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with exposing children to great poetry. In fact, some of the poems written by these poets are accessible to school children. The problem is with limiting children’s exposure to poetry to what Thomas, in his essay “Child Poets and the Poetry of the Playground” calls “official school poetry” [2], which is “the dominant mode of children’s poetry in the school, the kind of poetry written by adults and taught to children in the classroom” (2004, p. 152). This kind of poetry is distinct from playground poetry (a term Thomas borrows from Iona Opie), “a carnivalesque [3] tradition that signifies on adult culture,” and refers to “what children often do with language while outside grown-up supervision” (p. 152). The problem is with official school poetry being children’s only experience of poetry, for it fails to “regard children’s culture alongside adult culture” (p. 154). This is poetry written by adults for adults in an adult voice, but prescribed for children because it serves as a model of ‘good’ literature.

On the other hand, there are poets like Shel Silverstein, Roger McGough, Kenn Nesbitt, and Bruce Lansky, among others, who write wonderful poetry for children, but their work is rarely included in school textbooks. Their poems are filled with what I would like to call ‘the stuff of childhood’—mums and dads, friends and teachers, pets, picnics, pillow fights and chocolate ice cream, bullies and dog-eaten homework and such. They are packed with fun and humour, and are often critical of adult life. There is a familiarity and immediacy about them, which official school poetry simply cannot capture. It is almost perverse to keep children away from this kind of poetry. However, many would strongly disagree with me, in keeping with conventional notions of what is appropriate for children, and what is not. Baxi (2006) quotes one such voice (Tom Henihan) in her article “Muse in Manacles: English Poetry in the Indian Classroom.”

When student poets get up to read they almost always thank their teacher for making poetry fun. Poetry should be protected from fun. There is so much fun in the world it isn’t funny anymore. Poetry is essentially a solemn and devotional form. Funny poetry is a contradiction in terms…it’s the equivalent of kneeling in a church and saying funny prayers or chanting a funny ritual. I am not saying that there is no room for humour in poetry but I am saying that there is very little room. We need things that are serious. What could be more pessimistic than wanting everything to be funny? Like failed musicians and actors who become children’s entertainers, I sometimes suspect that comedians that aren’t that funny decide to be poets. (pp. 47-48)

Though textbook writers may not necessarily subscribe to such pedantic notions of poetry, they usually favour the serious variety, regardless of whether the child finds it conceptually difficult, linguistically complex, or just boring. The New English Reader V for Class X includes Emily Dickinson’s “Because I Could Not Stop for Death,” Rabindranath Tagore’s “Where The Mind Is Without Fear,” and Sarojini Naidu’s “Bangle-Sellers.” Beehive Textbook in English for Class IX includes Wordsworth’s “A Slumber Did My Spirit Seal,” and W.B. Yeats’ “The Lake Isle of Innisfree.” I am not taking issue with the selection of individual poems, but with the staid approach to selection. There are poets and poems that have, for generations, been part of school textbooks. Textbook writers ought to look for other poems by other poets.

There is a significant difference between what adults believe to be good for children, and what children actually enjoy. The appreciation of poetry hinges on children’s enjoyment of it. They should be able to see it in relation to their own reality, their thoughts and feelings and imagination, and their life and experiences. This point can be illustrated using H.H. Munro’s short story, “The Storyteller,” set in a railway carriage occupied by three children, their aunt, and a bachelor who is travelling alone. In order to keep the children from making noise, the aunt tells them “an unenterprising and deplorably uninteresting story about a little girl who was good, and made friends with everyone on account of her goodness, and was finally saved from a mad bull by a number of rescuers who admired her moral character” (p. 407). One of the children suspects that the rescuers would have saved her even if she hadn’t been good, to which the aunt only manages to say, “I don’t think they would have run quite so fast to her help if they had not liked her so much” (p. 407). Predictably, the children are not convinced by this poorly constructed argument. One of them calls it “the stupidest story I’ve ever heard,” while another admits to have stopped listening “after the first bit, it was so stupid,” and the third makes no comment “but had long ago recommenced a murmured repetition of her favourite line [from Rudyard Kipling's poem "On the Road to Mandalay"]” (p. 407).

Taunted by the bachelor for her unsuccessful stint as a storyteller, the aunt challenges him to tell them a story. He begins with one about “a little girl called Bertha, who was extraordinarily good” (p. 408). At the very mention of goodness, the children begin to lose interest, for they suspect another variant of their aunt’s tale, but there is “a wave of reaction” when he speaks of Bertha as “horribly good” (p. 408). The children have never heard these words in the vicinity of each other, and their combination is excitingly suggestive in its possibilities. “It seemed to introduce a ring of truth that was absent from the aunt’s tales of infant life” (p. 408). The children are completely engaged now. One question follows another, and the bachelor is able to answer each, and improvise accordingly. Bertha is honoured with three medals–for obedience, punctuality, and good behaviour–and the privilege to walk in the Prince’s park, which is out of bounds for other children. The park is full of pigs who have eaten up all the flowers. One day, a wolf comes “prowling into the park to see if it could catch a fat little pig for its supper” (p. 410). Bertha has to run for her life, and hide in a shrubbery of myrtle bushes. In her moment of fear, Bertha says, “If I had not been so extraordinarily good I should have been safe in the town at this moment” (p. 410). As she trembles, her medals clink against each other, at which point the wolf dashes into the bush, drags Bertha out and “devours her to the last morsel. All that was left of her were her shoes, bits of clothing, and the three medals for goodness” (p. 410).

At the end of the story, the children are not shocked, as might have been expected of them by their aunt. One of them wants to know if any of the pigs were killed. The children’s responses to this story are different from their responses to their aunt’s story. One of them says that “The story began badly but it had a beautiful ending,” while another calls it “the most beautiful story that I ever heard,” and the third child finds it “the only beautiful story I have ever heard” (p. 410). The aunt is least amused:

“A most improper story to tell to young children! You have undermined the effect of years of careful teaching.”

“At any rate,” said the bachelor, collecting his belongings preparatory to leaving the carriage, “I kept them quiet for ten minutes, which was more than you were able to do.” (p. 410)

Munro’s story makes it clear that there is many a gap between what adults consider valuable and what children find worthwhile. At times, textbook writers appear to include poems that might appeal to the child’s sense of fun and freedom. Their attempts are not as well-intentioned as they seem. D. J. Enright’s poem “The Rebel” in Honeycomb Textbook in English for Class VII [4] is a case in point. The poem is preceded by this note:

Do you know anyone who always disagrees with you or your friends, or likes to do the opposite of what everyone thinks they should do? Think of a word to describe such a person. Discuss with your partner some of the things such a person generally does. Now read the poem. (p. 33)

Then follows the poem, called “The Rebel” (the full text for this poem is found at: [http://www.ncert.nic.in/textbooks/testing/Index.htm]). This may look like an anti-establishment poem, but it is not. It trivializes the concept of rebellion. It takes the position that a non-conformist is an idiot and attention seeker. The textbook writer’s introduction to the poem furthers this agenda. It reduces the rebel to a person who “likes to do the opposite of what everyone thinks they should do.” It equates ‘the rebel’ with ‘the rebel without a cause.’ One might argue that children would find it difficult to understand the concept of a rebel, if not explained in simple language. However, this is nothing but an excuse. If one is not prepared to engage with a concept at a reasonably mature level (even with children), why introduce it in a simplistic (not simplified) and pretentious way? What do children stand to gain from this poem? At the most, they can look around in their classroom and try to spot peers who engage in such behaviour, and label them ‘rebels.’ The agenda behind this poem appears to be to create obedient, rule-abiding children, and to convince them not to be rebels.[5] The questions that appear in the ‘Working with the Poem’ section further this agenda.

(iv) Why is it good to have rebels?

(v) Why is it not good to be a rebel oneself?

(vi) Would you like to be a rebel? If yes, why? If not, why not? (p. 34)

We are already in the realm of problems concerning the treatment of poems as texts. The teaching of poetry in the classroom is largely built around stock question types like ‘Paraphrase this poem,’ ‘Answer with reference to context,’ or ‘What is the central idea of this poem?’ Students gain little from such exercises. They are able to engage with a given poem only at the level of its content. They do not have the opportunity to consider its multiple meanings, compare it with other poems they have read, or even explore its resonances with their own experience of life. It is a pity that poems are treated like prose texts, with the entire paraphernalia of multiple choice questions and short answer questions aimed at giving practice in skimming, scanning, and factual comprehension.

New! Learning to Communicate Coursebook 4 features C. E. Carryl’s poem “The Plaint of the Camel,” (2002, pp. 104-105) followed by a section called ‘Let’s Enjoy this Poem a Little More.’ It is difficult to think of a child who would enjoy the poem a little more with a question like this:

What does each stanza talk about? Match the stanzas with the right descriptions.

A part of the problem with treatment of poems has to do with the way textbooks are structured. They are usually made up of units, each of which has to cover certain areas in grammar (structures and functions), vocabulary, and some amount of reading, writing, listening and speaking. Since textbook writers face this structure, they must look for strategies to make a poem ‘teachable.’ Take, for instance, The New English Reader V for Class Ten (1991), which features Shel Silverstein’s poem “Jimmy Jet and his TV set.” (The full text for the poem is found at [http://www.turnoffyourtv.com/poemsessays/jimmyjet.html].)

Though the poem and the glossary are followed by a section called ‘Appreciating the poem,’ the exercises given largely focus on comprehension. The child can quickly look through the poem and answer them. One is a multiple-choice question which requires the child to pick one of three statements to best describe Jimmy; the alternatives are:

(a) He sometimes watched TV.

(b) He watched TV quite often.

(c) He watched TV too much. (p. 57)

Another question reads: “Did Jim watch only some of the programmes on TV or all of them? What happened to him as a result?” (p. 57). None of these questions asks the child to use his or her imagination. The answers are all too obvious. One is not required to read between the lines or beyond the lines. There is no challenge to think and answer. These exercises are, at best, teacher-centric, for the teacher who is happy for having adopted a participatory mode of learning. In effect, however, the teacher has only been able to elicit some responses, which do not really excite the child’s imagination.

There is another interesting question here. “Is there a ‘moral’ (or a practical lesson) that this poem is perhaps teaching?” (p. 57). This question is interesting for two reasons. Firstly, it represents the adult enthusiasm for teaching, meaning that some essential lessson for life has to be distilled from any given text that is read. There ought be a justification for the reading. The enjoyment that comes from the reading is not considered valuable in itself. Secondly, Shel Silverstein is known for the funny poems he writes for children, and they are far from didactic. However, the way his poem is framed as a text represents his poetry in an altogether different light. It comes across as a reprimand for excessive television viewing. The next question asks the child, “Wouldn’t it be an enjoyable experience for you to memorise and recite the poem?” It is surprising how such questions could find their way into a section called ‘Appreciating the poem,’ when there is no room here for the child’s personal subjective responses to the experience of television viewing, the child in the poem, and to the poem itself.

In addition to this, the meaning of a poem is often fixed and pre-determined by the textbook writer. Before the poem is presented to children, they are told what it is about. In Beehive Textbook in English for Class IX (2006), Frost’s poem “The Road Not Taken” is introduced: “This well-known poem is about making choices, and the choices that shape us” (p. 15). The child is forced to accept this second-hand interpretation. There is little room to think differently. Even before reading the poem, a lens with which to view it is given. If the child thinks differently, there is hardly any opportunity to share it.

An Alternative Approach

Now that I’ve articulated a critique of poetry in school textbooks in India, it is important to acknowledge that inspired and enterprising teachers can make the best of a bad situation. They can help students gain exposure to a variety of poetry besides what is found in their textbooks. The Internet is a valuable resource for this purpose. They can also have them listen to audio books, which are recorded versions of poetry readings. Not many Indian teachers had access to audio books in the past, but Karadi Tales has now brought out a set of CDs with a compilation of poetry readings based on the syllabi for Classes IX-XII prescribed by National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) and Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE). Teachers can also have children read parodies [6] of well-known poems, in order to infuse an element of fun and adventure in the learning process.

Another way to involve children in the appreciation of poetry is through poetry writing [7] workshops. Sircar, in her article “Poetry Writing in the Classroom,” speaks of poetry writing as a liberating experience that helps them get in touch with their “imagination and creativity.” She writes:

Poetry is one aspect of language use where rules, system and structure can be flouted and not condemned. Let us see what rules poetry can flout? Capital letters can be thrown out. Words can be used, coined and made (as long as they are understandable). Line breaks can be given wherever the poet wants them. One thought need not strictly follow the other. Everything is acceptable and correct as long as some idea or thought is communicated, or where there is a fresh way of looking at things… Poetry is creativity, unleashed imagination at work and this articulation of imagination is not only a learning experience but reassures in the child the feeling of being important and creative. (2005, p. 59)

Patel (2007) has further suggestions to add. His introduction to Poetry with Young People, a book that emerged from several decades of poetry workshops with children at Rishi Valley School, has some beautiful insights to offer. Patel tries to diagnose what ails the teaching of poetry writing in classrooms[8].

Young people are particularly beset by instructors who want them to express such [noble, heroic, elevated] sentiments in poetry, irrespective of the many other qualities that good poetry calls for. Or they want to be given something cute, dainty, quaint, a false adult notion of what goes on in young minds. No wonder many student readers and writers tend to find poetry uncongenial, and think of it as something at one remove from the specificities of their own lives and experiences. (pp. xix-xx)

He prefers that children write about things that are familiar to them, things they feel or care about, and emotions they have personally gone through. This is more rewarding than intelligent imitations of established greats, for poems born of this process are “authentic little documents of the concerns of various individual lives.”

Notes

[1] A version of this paper was presented at the Seminar on ‘Reality and Fantasy in Children’s Literature’ organised by St. Andrew’s College, Mumbai and Children’s Literature Association of India, September 16, 2008.

[2] Thomas Jr. has an interesting point to make. He writes, “Poems selected for classroom use are principally the least politically and formally vexing; they appear easily thematizable and interpretable, and thus are classroom friendly. Their politics is often difficult to excavate, even as they implicitly privilege the adult poetic tradition” (p. 153).

[3] Thomas Jr. borrows this concept from Mikhail Bakhtin’s Rabelais and His World.

[4] I was unable to acquire a hard copy of this book even after repeated attempts. It can be accessed online: [http://www.ncert.nic.in/textbooks/].

[5] I am grateful to Swathi Rajan for this point.

[6] Refer to: Creech, S., Love That Dog. New York: Scholastic Inc., 2002 for ideas. This verse novel features parodies of Frost’s “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” William Blake’s “Tyger Tyger Burning Bright,” William Carlos Williams’s “The Red Wheelbarrow”, and other poems.

[7] Refer to: Maley, A. and Moulding, S., Poem into Poem: Reading and writing poems with students of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985. The authors offer wonderful ideas to try out in the classroom. They believe that “the process of composing poems” encourages “real discussion,” helps learners “try out different ways of saying the same thing,” involves them in “playing with language,” and gives them “a purpose in writing, and allows [them] to bring in [their] personal feeling and ideas” (p. 1).

[8] I am not in support of two of the decisions made by Patel for his poetry workshops–to “keep [children] away from the reams of poetry written specifically ‘for young people’,” and to “discourage [children] from writing about witches and fairies, stock subjects in the horrid writings of junior school” (2007, p. xx).

References

Baxi, P. V. (2006). Muse in manacles: English poetry in the Indian classroom. The ICFAI Journal of English Studies I/2, 40-51.

Beehive textbook in English for Class IX. (2006). New Delhi: National Council of Educational Research and Training.

Honeycomb textbook in English for Class VII. (2006). New Delhi: National Council of Educational Research and Training.

Munro, H. H. (1949). The storyteller. In L. B. Cook, W. Loban, O.J. Campbell, & R.M. Stauffer (Eds.), The world through literature, (pp. 406-411). California: Harcourt, Brace and Company.

New English Reader V for Class Ten. (1991). Hyderabad: The Government of Andhra Pradesh.

New! Learning to communicate coursebook 4. (2002). New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Patel, G. (2007). Poetry with young people. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi.

Sircar, S. (2005). Poetry writing in the classroom. Journal of English and Foreign Languages 35, 56-68.

Thomas J. T. (2004). Child poets and the poetry of the playground. Children’s Literature 32, 152-77.

NOTE: This paper was published in Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language 12 (3) http://tesl-ej.org/ej47/r1.html

NOTE: I wrote this poem for Young World, the children’s supplement that you get with The Hindu.

Walk into Anurag Tated’s house in Baroda, and you are more than likely to find the eight-year-old jumping about from sofa to table, playing with cushions, pulling someone’s hair, cooking up his own lingo, or inventing his own steps to go with the latest Bollywood dance number. He loves playing ‘dark room’. Getting blindfolded, running around, making all sorts of strange noises before you eventually get hold of someone who will then get blindfolded and do all of the same – the sequence is thrilling enough for Anurag to want more of it. He enjoys playing badminton, with a racquet usually snatched from one of his sisters, although he is still learning to hold one properly. There’s a lot of energy and enthusiasm bubbling inside him, and he needs to use it his own way. If you try to force him into staying put, sitting quietly, and learning math tables, he’ll find a way to dodge you; else, he will stay glued to cartoon films on television.

Unblock their creativity

Anurag is still young, and since the burden of studies isn’t too overwhelming, he can make enough time to have fun. But older kids are so caught up with school, homework and tuitions or coaching classes that there is little time left for recreation. Their natural impulse to play is curbed under the pretext of equipping them for the competitive world.

Lavina Gulati, who was formerly a counsellor at Bombay International School, feels that play is the only way in which children get to express themselves freely. She says, “When children play, their creative potential comes out. But parents want to structure every moment, sending them from one class to another – dance, art, music, swimming, etc. They want their children to be super kids. Kids are hardly ever just allowed to be, and to do their own thing. Thus their creativity gets blocked.”

Lavina’s two-year-old son Ahan loves water. He finds it soothing, so Lavina often takes him to the swimming pool, to let him enjoy it. She also takes him along to the bookshop, the zoo, and other places. He always finds something fun to do. Lavina feels that it is important to let children make what they wish to of what is given to them – be it toys, colours, or pieces of paper. “These bring out a lot of things going on in the child’s mind. Kids cannot come and tell you about everything that bothers them. They express through their play. But look at the kind of toys parents are buying these days, operated using batteries and buttons! Everything happens for you, and you just sit and watch. Play becomes mechanical. One should just give them stuff, and let them play in their own way. This will enable them to try out different things, learn on their own, and discover their creativity.”

In her book The Treehouse, Naomi Wolf records a conversation with her father Leonard Wolf, a well-regarded poet and teacher for 60 years. Leonard says, “We played with pebbles, corks, spools from thread. We built cities out of mud and twigs. I haven’t the slightest memory of a single toy in my childhood. But there was plenty to do. There was a grain warehouse owned by a Jew — ten- or twelve-feet-high bins filled with wheat, corn, and oats. He would let us play in the bins: we would climb to the top of the mounds of grain, slide down it, roll in it. It was marvellous.”

 
Allow spontaneity

The argument about play becoming increasingly mechanical, and far removed from unstructured joyful expression, is a strong one, and is supported by many who work in the field of education. Aban Bana, who teaches at Tridha, a Waldorf school, run in keeping with the philosophy of Rudolf Steiner, is among these. At Tridha, children play in specially built sand pits, with sand from the nearby Juhu beach. They also frolic about in water, and play with wooden planks. In addition, they learn eurythmy, an art of movement practised to infuse oneself with health-giving rhythms, and develop the body, mind and soul.

Aban advocates playing with traditional toys as opposed to the plastic, battery-operated, so-called ‘educational’ ones.  She says, “Children can learn so much from traditional toys. The skipping rope is a wonderful way to co-ordinate movements. It gives the child a certain lightness. When children play together, they give and take and share. One holds the rope, and the other jumps. It’s a great way of learning rhythm. How many children play marbles these days? It is beautiful hand-eye-brain coordination. They push and pull and make a lot of noise. It’s so exciting. The more they play, the more guileless, innocent, natural and spontaneous they will be. Let them fight. What’s wrong with a fight? It shouldn’t get ugly, parents should keep a watch on that.”

Be natural

Comet Media Foundation, a Mumbai-based organisation has been holding children’s festivals called ‘bal vividha’ in different parts of India, exploring and making accessible alternative approaches to learning. The idea behind each festival is to provide hands-on and activity-based learning, to de-stress the learning process, and to make it joyous. A section of the festival is devoted to interactive corners, where children can play with toys, meet rural artisans, and learn to make handicrafts. This concern with encouraging creative play has led Comet to take up the promotion of toys made from organic materials like wood, lacquer, bamboo and cotton fabric, which provide employment to rural crafts persons. Chandita observes, “Playing is often children’s way of recreating the big world in a miniature form, and trying to make sense of it in manageable proportions. That is why you see them playing shop-shop, doctor-doctor, home-home, mummy-daddy, etc. There is another kind of play, which is logical, and involves strategising – hopscotch, ludo, chess, etc. That helps to develop skills of another kind.”

Chandita feels that children should be allowed to play with puppets, because this gives a boost to their imagination and encourages storytelling abilities. “No tale is static; it is constantly re-told in the light of one’s values, emphasising the parts one liked, reinterpreting the parts one didn’t like.” She speaks of a child who swore that the woodcutter was the real villain in the story of Little Red Riding Hood, while the wolf was the victim. How could the poor thing survive when the woodcutter was chopping down forests? Understandably, the wolf was compelled to encroach on human territory, and devour people! This was the child’s explanation. And the line of argument is quite convincing, especially in an age where environmental consciousness has become so important.

Bridge barriers

Chennai-based Kreeda is another organisation actively trying to revive and popularise traditional games, many of which are played with stones, marbles, shells, tamarind seeds, cups and coins. Vinita Sidhartha, founder of Kreeda, believes that play is crucial, for it goes a long way in breaking down barriers and building relationships. “Today, with nuclear families, it is sad that kids are losing touch with their grandparents. There are many single-child families, and sometimes, even one of the parents is missing. This is becoming more and more common. Relationships don’t have a chance to blossom beyond a structured environment. The beauty of traditional games is that they can bridge any barrier. My son is 15, and my grandmother – his great grandmother – is 95. There is an 80-year gap, but when they play together, it is bridged effortlessly. Old people may not be comfortable with a computer game, but traditional games appeal to the child in everyone.”

When the Kreeda team was working on their gilli danda, Vinita showed it to her father. He talked about how he used to play with his friends and siblings, the mischief he did, how he cheated, etc. She says, “There is something so magical to see the child in your parents. For most people, their happiest memory of childhood is laughter, and this is often associated with playing. To win a game, to lose with a friend – these are such important things to learn.”

It is important we that we recognise the significance of play for its own sake, and not merely as a distraction from a serious academic routine. Play constitutes an important part of a child’s growth – physical, mental, emotional, spiritual. It helps him channelise his energy in a creative way. It equips him with social skills.

Deal with eyeball addiction

Parents are not always the ones at fault. A number of kids today prefer computer and television screens to the playground. During a recent Comet workshop at Devlali, Chandita met with a lady whose eight-year-old son has a tendency to obesity because his attention is constantly focussed on one screen or the other – the television or the computer. Even here, there is no concentration involved; the child is either switching channels with a remote, or browsing a couple of websites simultaneously. Recalling her conversation with the worried mother, Chandita remarks, “All the play is intellectual. The kid has to be sent out to breathe some fresh air. And there he meets with another kid. They sit together and speak in low voices like old men, using the football as an elbow rest rather than a toy. The mother finds it absolutely strange, because as a kid, she used to spend most of her time playing outdoors.”

Monil Dalal from Chennai has encountered several cases of children who are unable to experience the joy of play because of their addiction to either the computer or the television. A post graduate in Toy Design and Development from the Ahmedabad-based National Institute of Design (NID), Monil now works with BSA Cycles, a company that manufactures bicycles for children. For his research project at NID, he interacted closely with some latch-key kids (children of working parents, locked in at home with little to do), and developed a play unit based on their needs and problems. “These kids spend a lot of time eating junk food, watching television, and playing video games. Many of them are obese. There is a lot of strain on their eyes to understand the environment around. I made a toy that would help them improve concentration, kill time, and also provide acupressure therapy.”

Let them make their own toys

Perhaps we need to do something more in addition to encouraging creative play — get the children involved in making their own toys. It is not as unthinkable as it sounds. Arvind Gupta has been doing this for years. Formerly an electrical engineer from IIT Kanpur, he is now at the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), Pune, popularising science among children by sharing the art of making simple, ingenious, cost-effective toys from used tetrapacks, syringes, film roll cases, straws, wires, pen refills, matchboxes, cartons, etc. “If you let children play with toys that they can make themselves, they’ll have more fun. We live in a consumerist society that generates enough garbage, much of which can be used to make creative toys. Even if children were to break such toys, parents wouldn’t scold them. These toys have a strong component of recycling, so children learn to respect the environment. These are simple to make; once children get a taste of this joy, they get hooked. They can use all their senses, and play with their hands and heart. I used to make toys out of garbage when I was a child. Those were my happiest days.”

Sudarshan Khanna, who heads the Toy Innovation Centre of NID, and is also on the board of the International Toy Research Association, supports Gupta’s idea. In the preface to his popular book Joy of Making Indian Toys, he writes, “This simple, straightforward resource book has been prepared for two basic reasons: one reason stems from my belief that every society has a great deal of practical and useful knowledge which is often expressed most creatively and effectively through the tales and toys of that society; the other reason is based on my own experience with self-made simple toys. This gave birth to my interest and fascination for design, science and technology. Today we find children and their parents are obsessed with glossy, high-priced, factory-made toys, perhaps not realising what a child can gain from simple self-made playthings.” Both Gupta and Khanna have written several books giving detailed instructions on how children can create their own toys, and these books are very low-priced, so as to reach the average Indian child.

Remember to gift

After this long spiel on the importance of play, I hope you’ll let your child discover this wonderful gift. And if you still need a reminder, nothing could be more fitting than this quote from the Waldorf Education Exhibition Catalogue released on the occasion of the 44^th Session of the International Conference on Education of UNESCO in Geneva. In this document, Joan Almon writes, “Play is the serious work of childhood. In play, children take hold of the natural and cultural worlds, and, in so doing, take in the qualities inherent in those realms. They recreate human cultural development, and can later contribute to its further evolution, because they have understood through their hands. Kindergarten-aged children grasp the world in play; they experience with all their senses, they move with their whole body. Sure-footed, coordinated movement, balance and tactile sensitivity are schooled in play. This forms a basis for the conscious experience: I can shape the world because I have grasped it.”

Contacts

Arvind Gupta

Ph: 020-25604602

www.arvindguptatoys.com

Aban Bana

A-1 Building, 5, Proctor Road, Grant Road, Mumbai 400 007.

Ph: 022-23863799

abanbana123@rediffmail.com

www.anthroposophyindia.org

Tridha

Bhuta High School Building, Shahaji Raje Marg, Vile Parle (East). Mumbai 400 057.

Ph: 022-32921768, 022-26827258

tridha@hotmail.com

www.tridha.com

Chandita Mukherjee

Comet Media Foundation, Topiwala Lane School, Lamington Road, Mumbai 400 007.

Ph: 022-23869052, 022-23826674

cometmediafdn@gmail.com

www.cometmedia.org

Vinita Sidhartha

Kreeda Games, 755, Anna Salai, Chennai 600 002.

Ph: 044-28522423, 044-28528730

info@kreedagames.com

http://www.kreedagames.com/

 NOTE: This article was published in Life Positive. Here’s the link http://www.lifepositive.com/Mind/Alternative_Education/Let_Them_Play82007.asp

NOTE: This article was published in Life Positive.