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| Ankita's 'I want to be a teacher' poster |
I have more questions than answers. But I will start with a small snippet from my yet to be written autobiography.
May be more than half the 2nd standard has done the migration from aluminum to steel lunch boxes. I am talking about the year 1980 -1981, no one brought plastic lunch boxes to school at those times. I still carried my blue aluminum lunch box. That lunch box might have given me a feeling that I didn't belong to the majority who carried steel lunch boxes. I don't remember now, but it is quite possible that I sat and had lunch with others who had aluminum lunch boxes. I do remember my lunch box every time I see any car in a particular metallic blue colour and get a sinking feeling in my tummy even now.
Some might think otherwise, but kids are a gang who is acutely aware of class division. So when we place the kids from a low income background with the ones from high income background, do we expect automatic integration of both. I don't think anyone is naive enough to think that it will be easy to integrate them when the 25% low income students are welcomed into the high income schools. But how difficult would that be, do we have an idea?
I have met and interviewed an awesome lady who has started a school in which she takes half of the students from affluent background and the other half from the other spectrum. She has started the school 4 years back. But she agreed regretfully that she is still struggling with the problem of integration. The rich kids and poor kids hung around separately from each other and she just didn't have an idea how to solve it. Remember these are kids of parents who are fully aware of the noble intentions of the school and have decided to send their kids to this school possibly because of that or at least irrespective of that.
Now when the rich schools are forced to take poor kids, with all the resistance from the rich parents, will there be any integration at all? Are the poor kids going to be treated differently than the rich kids? Are they going to be segregated? Shouldn't someone really figure out the psychological aspects of this move before we push forward with this in the next academic year?
As I said in the beginning, I have only questions. May be someone out there has the answers! Do you?
Whats the school? I would love to visit!
ReplyDeletePurvs, I couldn't find a mail id in which I could write to you. Since I do not have permission to publish the name, from the school I have mentioned, please send me a mail and I will send you the details of the school.
DeleteValid concern. Children are very sensitive to this divide. Worst, they can be very cruel too....
ReplyDeleteAnupama, very true.
DeleteWho is Rich? Perhaps More important - What is Poor?
ReplyDeleteRitesh, Let's not get into any philosophical discussion. When I say rich and poor, you know exactly what I mean.
DeleteIntegration is a very serious business. It is also tough to implement. I understand this lady's initiative. It is a brave one.
ReplyDeleteAgree.
DeleteI think, and I only think that these 25 percent seats in affluent schools will be taken up by people who have influence- like politicians' kids- who are not really poor, but they can prove that they are. I still think that the problem of integration will not get solved- its too deep rooted.
ReplyDeleteI still hang out with people who belong more or less to the same social class as me.
It is scary but if it works out it will create a whole new world.
Fiona, What you have predicted has come true. The applicants towards this 25% seats are apparently from people who can afford sending them to the same schools. So it is not really helping.
DeleteForming of social groups on the pretext of economic affluence is a common problem. Here are a few things that may help to mitigate the issues:
ReplyDelete1. Ensure uniforms in school, even the Book cover’s should be standardized.
2. School needs to provide lunch. That removes distinction due to food or due to the tiffin boxes.
3. Encourage group development for Craft, Sport and other activities. All these should be team activities. Each team should have equal number of rich kids and poor kids. all the resources for the activities needs to be provide by the school and within the school itself.
Basically, the school needs to provide an environment and the resources within the school that removes this distinction of poor/rich (atleast when the kids are inside the school).
Vinay,
DeleteForming social groups is something which comes naturally to humans. Even if we remove all possible artefacts which will distinguish the kids from each, they still know which class they belong to. A lot of sensitising will be needed for the teachers themselves to handle the situation. Your suggestions seem logical and at the end of the day, if the school really feels the need to integrate sooner or later, they will find ways and means of doing it.
Subhadra,
ReplyDeleteWe as humans tend to group with people who are like us, economic conditions would make for such behaviour in the schools where RTE is implemented. If the kids do not gel well and do not integrate, this is detrimental to the noble idea behind this law.
How to integrate?
It is also human nature that when we are put to difficulty, we bury our differences and join forces to overcome the challenge. In schools, we can come up with such challenges and make groups with a mix of kids from different economic backgrounds and ask them to get through these challenges. These assignments must be designed such a way that they can succeed only by team work, some of them could be just fun and some others with tasks on community development. When these activities are conducted regularly, every kid realizes that irrespective of background we can collaborate and succeed. Here integration is implicit and also implicit is the lesson that working together, joining hands to reach objective are the human values which should be put above the factors that separates us from each other.
This is not as easy as said, needs dedication and active participation of the teachers, finally the success of this completely remains in the hands of the teacher. These are the people who are like the lights on the path to the future, if these lights are not proper then we get lost along the way. Before we start this 25% intake, we must already have the necessary people with these skills in place, the schools and government must ensure that they are ready for this. Otherwise we are gambling on the future of our next generation, who are full of potential and looking for a direction!
Aravinda,
DeleteI really don't think the noble idea behind the 25% is to integrate or to make better humans out of the kids. Your suggestion seems good, but you have pointed the problem with the same thing, this needs dedication from the school and the teachers. I do not know when the schools themselves are against taking in that 25%, how dedicated they will be in integrating them.
One way of defeating class distinction in school would be that, take all the tiffenboxes in school and jumble them up and give them off randomly to another child. Most parents of today's generation should be ok with such an idea.
ReplyDeleteEach tiffen box should be opened and checked if the food is worth consuming. If there is a poor child or the quality of the food is inedible, then by using this system, the food from the others can be distributed to make up for this loss. That way, no child will suffer from malnutrition and the "sharing" culture, see no difference between "caste, gender or religion" is inbibed into every child.
Vinay Gaonkar's idea of the school providing food is very good, but it is an extra responsibility that most schools may not wish to take.
Sugeeth, I am really amused by your solution :)
Delete