Visit to a KV

This was one visit that I looked forward to, as it was from this school that my husband completed his schooling  right from 1^st to 10^th grade. He always talks about his school with great pride and has fond memories of his school  and his teachers.  We always have arguments on whose school was better, his ‘The Kendriya Vidyalaya’ or the Convent school that I had been to.

My first interaction was with the Principal, a dominating personality who  had just then concluded a meeting with a few teachers and authoritatively gave instructions and it seemed that the Principal was mounting up pressure to the creation of identity among themselves and in the process were negotiating identities for themselves.   Post that meeting, he greeted us and without asking us too many questions and put us to one of the teachers, who  guided us to different classes for our observation of the class room proceedings.

As I walked in the corridor,  I noticed that there was a performance index chart  giving target vs. achievement of each teacher on the Notice Board.   I quickly glanced at it and was wondering what and how it was being done.  But my thoughts were interrupted with the unifying voice of the students who greeted us, as we entered a 9^th standard class room where a revision in Hindi grammar was on.  The teacher greeted us rather nicely and told us that she was only doing a revision and not much of teaching happening and looked questioningly at us.  We said that was okay and occupied seats in the last few rows .   The students were surprised to see us and some of them were immediately trying to negotiate with their identities for some time  by pretending to be very attentive  or smiling  at us and expecting us to reciprocate. But this lasted for a brief period and the students went back to their self in a matter of few minutes.  The teacher was referring to a grammar book and asked students to come up with the answers for the questions raised.  A few  regulars mostly the conformists raised their hands and came up with answers and the teacher made corrections whenever incorrect answers were given.  She came across somewhat like an entertainer as she was trying to connect with the students to some extent and had a smile on her face and did not reprimand even when students gave incorrect answers.   When she explained the  terms, she also related to their context and thus the concept was being reinforced.    One could see the humanistic approach in her as she cared for her students and the students too reciprocated the feeling towards her.  After the class, I asked a student if he liked his Hindi teacher and he replied that she was quite strict, but then he enjoyed her classes.  Although, I did not get a chance to speak to her personally,  I could gather that as a person her personal and her occupational self,  seem to be closely related and  has invested some amount of personal identity in her work.  However,  with a pressure to deliver  ( I mentioned about the performance index), the teacher was unable to be her true self and is always in a dilemma  whether to be  friendly to the students or be like a ring master and extract the best behaviour as appropriated by schools.  She is forced to choose between her students as persons or between the bureaucracy in whom she needs to change and feel powerless when confronted with this change. 

The second class that I observed was a dampener.  It was a math class and teacher falls into the category of a ring master.  She was very impersonal and didn’t even know the names of her students.  I was aghast when she called out roll numbers instead of their names.   Her approach to teaching was very mundane and she could not get across to the students half of who were struggling with basic concepts, despite this being  a revision class to prepare them for their final exam.   Her method was rote and she was angry that some students did not know the formulas by heart.    She had a distinct identity and the one portrayed in the class seemed to be her social identity too, as she came across as a very insensitive person who did not have much of humanism left in her.  She seemed to be more conforming to the rules laid down in an hierarchical system and therefore made every effort to  please her superiors rather than have a child centered approach.   One could see that there was a clear case of labelling as she favoured a few students to the rest and therefore  could see some deviant behaviour in some children, who did not take too much of interest in what was happening in the class.

My visit to an International School

When compared to some of the elite International schools, this was a little mediocre as this school catered mostly to the ‘affordable middle class’ with a fee structure being a little modest for an international syllabus.  One reason being that the they did not offer all the fancy things that the elite schools have like breakfast, juice, lunch, ac bus, acres of sprawling campus with lush green lawn and ornamental plants, Wi-Fi enabled campus, fancy play area and all that.    This was more like a public school and children also came from middle class backgrounds.    The atmosphere of the school was like any other ICSC schools in B’lore.  They had a fairly big campus of at least 3-4 acres with a good play ground to play cricket, football, basket-ball court, tracks for running etc.   The class rooms were spacious enough to accommodate comfortably 30-35 students with their own desk spaces.

We observed one class in which the Principal herself took the class - a chapter in Chemistry for the 9^th graders.  Her knowledge on the subject was pretty good and ‘Class room Knowledge’ as told by Nell Keddie was quite apparent.  She was indeed trying to pass on information from the available knowledge that she had, rather than allowing students to come out with their own ways of seeking the answers. She was guiding them in a way such that the desired result is what she was getting at. Thus allowing for free thinking and autonomy in students were being restricted.  Although, I could not come across any differentiation in class, as all seem to be from more or less similar backgrounds,  I could see categorisation of ‘high and low ability’ students with differential treatment of the students by the teacher.  Even the body language of the teacher and her facial expressions to the so called ‘bright’ student vis-à-vis the ‘not so bright’  was different.   There was no contrasting views expressed by her rather could see the differentiation as given in Keddie’s article as ‘A’ and ‘C’ stream pupils and her view of the students who spoke in the class and got better grades were construed as more knowledgeable. 

The teacher introduced a new topic and did make an effort to find out if the students had any prior knowledge.  One of the student raised his hand and gave his understanding and while she was not completely satisfied with the answer, she did not probe further to see if any of the other students had any different things to say on the subject.  This was more like an ‘a’ stream student focussing mostly on the individual unit of their study and  not connecting links to see the topic as a whole.  

Post the class observation, we met her at her chamber and asked our questions.  It was clear from her talks that they aimed at academic excellence and all other activities took a second seat.   Like in Keddie’s article, the teacher has set expectations and they are based on her conception of what is ‘knowledge and ability’ which is to master the subjects and getter above 70- 80% of marks in the exams, irrespective of whether the child has memorised or understood the topic or whether his or her interests lie elsewhere other than academics.   One could clearly notice that she labelled the students according to their academic achievement and their socio economic background too, how much ever she tried to hide it    from us. Her mannerisms and communication with each student differed.  There was one senior student who walked into her chamber for her signature on some paper, and she very nicely asked him why he got into trouble with another teacher and this student who was deviant on some account, answered rather confidently that he was just playing the fool a little bit, to which she just smiled and signed on to the paper and he walked out.   The way he answered her question did give us a feeler that he was from a well to do family and was not afraid to voice out his opinions or distaste on anything. 

 We asked her about inclusion of under privileged children into the school as per the RTE act, to which she had different views.  She says it doesn’t work and the child from the economically backward section might be bullied, ostracised and made to feel even more low when they are a part of such schools and instead, these schools need to adopt a nearby Govt schools as a part of their Social responsibility and help them with infrastructure, stationeries and also spend a few hours every week in helping with teaching their students.  It made me think that they were not even ready to open their doors to explore this possibility.