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.