Tribal children. Foreign teachers. Classes named after fruits and trees. On the eve of a national educational conference to be held at its premises, Baradwaj Rangan visits the “educational experiment” that is Vidya Vanam.
Maybe the boy broke the bucket. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he just found the broken bucket, in the school’s premises. But about what happened next, there seems to be little dispute. When Aslam Ansari, a class four student at a government school in Betul, Madhya Pradesh, informed his teachers about his discovery, they began to beat him. The boy collapsed. His parents took him to a hospital, where severe backbone and neck injuries were diagnosed. They couldn’t afford treatment at this hospital, so they went to another one. There, the boy was declared dead. In the December 18, 2012, issue of The Hindu, Krishna Kumar, Professor of Education at Delhi University and a former Director of NCERT, made this tragedy the focus of his Opinion Page story. He said, “[The people] who brutally hit [the boy] got access to his body because they were recruited to serve as teachers. The court must ask on what grounds did the state satisfy itself that such persons could look after the welfare and rights of a small boy…”
Prema Rangachary, the 71-year-old director of Vidya Vanam, an education initiative for tribal and underprivileged children, was deeply disturbed by this story. Her first response was to write a piece titled Teachers, tread softly on children’s dreams, which appeared in the February 4, 2013, issue of The Hindu. She wrote, “Who gives this authority over the mind and body of the student to the teacher? Is it the state? Or is it the school? Or is it the society… So where do we fail? Is it faulty training? Is it teacher selection? Or is it the failure to understand the purpose of education?” The questions outnumbered the answers. She decided that something more needed to be done. “Krishna Kumar’s article got me thinking about how educators must create an environment of care and concern,” she told me when I met her last month, at her residence in the Vidya Vanam campus at Anaikatti, about 30 kilometres from Coimbatore, on the Tamil Nadu-Kerala border. “I felt that getting thoughts from people who have worked in education could help formulate an approach as to how we address this.”
On 29th and 30th May, Vidya Vanam will host the National Conference and Workshop on Educating for a Caring Society. The presentations in the morning will be followed by workshops on how these ideas can be incorporated in classrooms. Rangachary plans to get teachers from mainstream schools to attend. She said, “Some of these ideas are already there in institutions like Shantiniketan and KFI, but these are alternative schools. How do we bring these ideas to the fore, and say that these are not just for a small group of people but for the school system at large? Education has become impersonal and fear-ridden. It should be something that’s enjoyed by both teachers and students.”
* * *
Rangachary seems to enjoy her role as ‘Madam Paatti’, as the students call her. (‘Paatti’ is Tamil for grandmother.) With silver hair swept into a casual bun and a bone-rattling laugh that appears to emanate from her feet, she’s hardly the picture of intimidation you expect the director of an educational initiative to be. (Vidya Vanam is not yet recognised as a ‘school’, as the No Objection Certificate from the state government, which will allow Rangachary to apply for CBSE affiliation, is pending.) While we were talking, some students walked in holding a twig with a caterpillar they had found during Maths class. One of the boys claimed that the creature had two heads, “here also and here also”. Madam Paatti looked at where the boy pointed. “That is not a head,” she said gravely. “After some time, you’ll see poop come out from this end.”
The students at Vidya Vanam – most of them first-generation learners – are from the Irula tribe, the Adi Dravidar communities, and the BC, MBC and OBC categories. They are here because their parents, who are mostly daily wage earners, want them to learn English. Rangachary, who is from Chennai, first came to Anaikatti in 2001, when a friend asked her to help out with anganwadis in remote villages in the forest areas. There, she met parents such as Valli, whose child studies in Vidya Vanam today. Valli asked her, “Why don’t you start a school?” There were others too. Rangachary remembers what they told her. “Neenga pesara maadhiri avanga English pesanum.” They wanted their children to speak English the way she did, but they could not afford an English-medium school.
As it turned out, many of them could not afford any kind of education. When the idea of a school began to take root – thanks to contributions from Rangachary’s brother, a neurologist in the US who helped set up a foundation, and Swami Dayananda Saraswati, who donated the land – Rangachary called the headmen of the villages and asked them how much they could give as fees. After a brief discussion, they said they could give a day’s wage, Rs. 150, per child each month. But this has not always been possible. Next year, Rangachary plans to make schooling free for tribal children. “They are not able to pay anyway,” she said, “and they are embarrassed when we send them reminders. I’m afraid they may stop sending the children to school.”
* * *
Vidya Vanam was inaugurated in July 2007. Twenty children, aged three-and-a-half to eight, came on the first day. By the end of the month, the number doubled. Today, there are 270 students, in classes named after fruits (Orange, Mango), trees (Neem, Pipal, Jamun, Banyan), and rivers (Kaveri, Bhavani, Krishna, Alakananda, Ganga). These are the classes from kindergarten through elementary school to middle school. The high school classes will be named after mountains. “This way,” Rangachary told me, “the sense of failure is eliminated when we move children from one class to another”. You have to admit, there is a sense of a game being played in moving from Kaveri to Pipal, without a shred of the shame that might accompany a move from, say, Class III to Class II. There are no marks or grades till Ganga class. There are only evaluations for the teacher to understand where the student is. I looked at some of the report cards. One of these evaluations said, “Vishnu is regular in doing his assignment.” Another one said, “Plays only with friends”. There are no prescribed textbooks either. The teachers cull material from books and distribute photocopies to students. And the lesson plans are based on interdisciplinary interactions around the same theme. If the theme is water, then the Science class will talk about two molecules of Hydrogen and one of Oxygen, the History class will get into civilisations that flourished along rivers, and Maths class will calculate the volume of a dam. They even staged a dance drama based on the River Kaveri. Rangachary said that there was a constant endeavour to keep the children connected to their surroundings. They once went to a nearby village to study the flora and fauna, the community, and the river that flowed through it. “They need to know these rivers before they study about the Nile and the Amazon,” Rangachary said. I had to keep reminding myself that this isn’t an upscale, newfangled facility with avant-garde notions of education but a school for tribal and underprivileged children.
Rangachary doesn’t hesitate to call Vidya Vanam an experiment. “In a rural setup like this, I have a free environment,” she said. “It is not very structured.” The parents did not accept this the first two years. “Even though they were not educated, even though they could not help their child in any manner, they wondered what we were doing here, what their children were learning, whether the child would get a certificate. But they were convinced once they saw the changes in their children.” It helped that the teachers, at first, were from the same villages as these parents. “That increased their comfort level with the school. Now, we even have foreign teachers.”
I sat down in a class conducted by Faith Spencer, or Faith akka, as the students called her. (The teachers are called akka or anna, Tamil for elder sister and elder brother.) She began by asking questions about a film she had shown them earlier – Matilda, based on the Roald Dahl story. (Dahl seems to be a bit of a favourite in these parts. The library had a poster, made by teachers, which announced, “Before Roald Dahl started writing he made sure he had six sharpened pencils that each lasted for two hours before being resharpened.”) Faith akka asked the class the name of Matilda’s teacher. The kid sitting in front of me turned to his neighbour and asked him the same question in Tamil: “Andha teacher-oda per enna?” The children screamed out answers. A little later, there was a change of topic. Faith akka asked the class, “Who can tell me what biodiversity is?”
Spencer, who is from New York, majored in Psychology from Sewanee University in Tennessee. She toured north India for three months – this included a backpacking trip to the Himalayas – and then went back and did a marketing internship. She heard about Vidya Vanam from Rangachary’s brother. She came here last August. She is thinking about applying for a Masters in teaching. This was her last week at Vidya Vanam. “It was very difficult at first,” she told me. “I was expecting to watch a lot of classes and then get into teaching. But they threw me in right away, which was probably for the best.” She got used to the cultural difference, but the language barrier – both the accent as well as the level of English she spoke – was the bigger problem. “With younger students, I had to explain myself with pictures and activities.”
Ursula Heath, from West Sussex, told me that she dealt with the “accent problem” with a “lot of repeating, explaining, finding different words, and going over things slowly.” Some of the Indian teachers, too, have to resort to tricks to communicate with the students. Art teacher Arunangshu Bhunia, a 29-year-old from Shantiniketan, showed me what his class had done. It wasn’t the usual painting within the lines. One of the students was fashioning a scabbard from cardboard for his role in the school play. Bhunia showed me a scrapbook of costumes the children had designed from glossy magazine clippings. Only a close look revealed the print.
Rangachary told me that schooling is bilingual – Tamil and English – till the children are about eight, and later classes are conducted more in English. While there are many teachers who are locals (even if it does seem a stretch to call Srividhya akka, who travels 45 kilometres to get here, a local), the teachers from outside – outside the state, outside the country – are a logical extension of the parents’ original mandate to teach their children English. I spoke to Sivammal, whose three children are students at Vidya Vanam. She said that she liked Vidya Vanam because they teach Hindi here. When her husband, a welder, went to Delhi on work, he didn’t understand a word there. She said, “At least my kids will have a good future.”
Heath said the school “takes whatever they can get.” She is an archaeology major, so she asked her class to imagine someone stumbling into the Vidya Vanam campus 500 years from now. What would they find, and what would that tell them about the life we lead now? “I said, ‘This is my educational background, these are my ideas’. Prema said, ‘Fantastic. Teach what you like, as you like. We’re not going to monitor you.’ They’re very open to new educational theories, even classroom management styles. I’ve given them some ideas about how to structure the curriculum.”
* * *
Some of this free-style experimentation with mixed-age, mixed-ability classes may soon come to an end. Rangachary told me, “We are streamlining the senior classes age-wise because we want the children to be eligible for public exams three years hence.” The week I visited Vidya Vanam happened to be a rather historic occasion. For the first time, the senior-most students – the equivalent of Class VII (Vidya Vanam is seven years old) – were sitting for exams, having to answer questions within a fixed timeframe. For the first time, they will be awarded marks. “This is the training I want them to have,” Rangachary said. “And they will have this training for the next three years, when there will hopefully be a board exam here.”
I hopped onto the school bus one evening, as the children were being taken to their homes. Gopikrishna, whose father was a weaver and is now employed in Swami Dayananda’s Arsha Vidya Gurukulam in Anaikatti, told me that he had given a Tamil exam that day, where he was asked to explain ten kurals (Thiruvalluvar’s couplets). There was only one exam left: Hindi. He said he didn’t know Hindi very well, and when I asked him to say something in the language, he said, “Tumhara naam kya hai?”. (“What is your name?”) I asked him to say something else. In a scene right out of a K Bhagyaraj comedy, he said, “Tumhara mataji ka naam kya hai?” (“What is your mother’s name?”)
The next morning, I squeezed into the van that was going to pick children up from their homes. Babu, the 31-year-old driver from Mattathukadu, told me that he makes three trips every morning. The first trip – this one – is the longest, 23 kilometres one way, covering the villages of Kavundikal, Koolikadavu, Agali, Naakiyapadi, Ottathara, Mattathukadu and Vattalakki. The other trips are shorter. Babu said there were plans to buy a bigger bus so that all the children could be picked up in a single trip. As we left the Vidya Vanam campus, BJP flags in green and orange were planted on either side of the road. A half-kilometre later, when we crossed a small bridge and entered Kerala, the roadsides were plastered with red posters with a hammer and sickle, announcing the candidature of MB Rajesh.
* * *
The van has made it possible for parents like Krishnan from Kavundikal to send his children, a six-year-old son and a seven-and-a-half-year-old daughter, to Vidya Vanam. Earlier, the children stayed with Krishnan’s mother-in-law and went to another school where the van cost Rs. 450 for 5 kilometres, in addition to the monthly fee (Rs. 600). Food was billed separately. In Vidya Vanam, he pays only Rs. 500 per child all told. A few kilometres away, I met Anoop Pavithran, the father of Abhijith, who studied in an English-medium CBSE school nearby before the van made it possible for him to go to Vidya Vanam. Pavithran, a workshop mechanic, told me that he could see the difference in the way Abhijith speaks. He is happy that Abhijith can rattle off the names of motor parts and car models. The only problem seems to be Abhijith’s handwriting, which is bad. Pavithran wants to talk to his son about it, but it was 11 pm when he came home last night and the boy was asleep.
Babu isn’t just a driver. He collects fees from working parents who cannot come to the campus. He is also a messenger. One student’s grandmother, who was given a ‘fees pending’ reminder showed Babu a receipt and insisted that she had paid the amount. On the way back, the kids in the van began to clap as they broke into singsong doggerel: “Tom and Jerry. Christmas Mary. And an o-o-o. And c-c-c. Crocodile Pepsi.” Babu speaks no English. He has a toddler who he wants to admit in Vidya Vanam. He said he would feel proud if his son spoke English, but he didn’t know if his son would then be ashamed of him. He said, in Tamil, “If he is speaking in English with his friends, I will feel bad that he has a father who cannot join in the conversation.”
I mentioned this to Rangachary later. I asked if learning English could end up changing the dynamics in these households or even alienate the children from their parents. “No,” she said. “The simple reason is that it’s these parents who asked for it in the first place. When these children come here, they have no confidence, no sense of self-worth or self-esteem. But after a while, you have to see how much they are respected in their own environment.” From next year, Vidya Vanam plans to have a vocational stream as well. “These children should not think that the next step has to be a BA or an MA in a faraway college. They can also be an entrepreneur and earn a living in their village.” I asked if she thought her students, with their relatively late initiation into the world of examinations, would be able to handle CBSE question papers. “That is one question that has been bugging me quite a bit,” she said. “But I think we need to give them the freedom of learning up to Class VII. Today, they are not afraid of expressing themselves. I need that self-confidence in them before they can take an exam, and that has been built up over the years.” I asked her how she thought her students would fare in the board exams. “Of course they will succeed,” she said. After a pause, she added, “We may not have state rankers but we will definitely do very well.”
An edited version of this piece can be found here. Copyright ©2014 The Hindu. This article may not be reproduced in its entirety without permission. A link to this URL, instead, would be appreciated.
Snehnath
May 24, 2014
Fantastic article, BR
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ramitbajaj01
May 25, 2014
There is an underlying pessimism here. This absolute need to learn English, as if there is nothing more important to put our focus on. And sadly, English is even associated with confidence, especially in our surroundings. (though it may be true, but it didn’t have to be)
BTW, how effective is ‘National Conference and Workshop on Educating for a Caring Society’? I mean is it capable of bringing changes at school system at large?
It is really heartening to know that there are people like Rangachary who do such wonderful tasks. But with due respect, I want to ask 2 questions: 1. Is the Vidya Vanam experiment scalable? 2. Is it really required at a school system at large? I mean, does our present education system really need a replacement or even a competitor? (Surely, there are needs to strengthen it but…)
P.S.- The dance photo (though very beautiful) is posted 4 times here.
“She toured north India for three months”
north of India or North India (with upper case)?
Is it possible to put justified text on blog (justified as in ctrl+j of MS office)? If yes, I wish you do that. It would look smooth and beautiful. (now I hope u don’t say that beauty lies in the eyes of beholder 😛 ) It brings me to ur sense of humor. K Bhagyaraj comedy- nice touch in this solemn article.
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ramitbajaj01
May 25, 2014
umm.. the photo issue is corrected now. Or perhaps that was just my browser.
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brangan
May 25, 2014
Snehnath: Thank you. It’s nice to do these pieces once in a while. And the school was just fantastic.
ramitbajaj01: Why do you say pessimism? That’s what most Indians think — and I think with some justification, given that we live in such a global world today. What’s heartening is that Vidya Vanam (as mentioned in the last para) is also going to have vocational training, to provide an alternative for those who want to stay in their own villages and work.
As to how effective these conferences are, I really can’t say. I guess the way to look at them is that they initiate a dialogue, and then it’s up to people to take these ideas forward.
I don’t think they’re looking at Vidya Vanam as a “replacement model” for our educational system. Just like there’s Montessori and KFI and other types of learning, this is one. The main point of the story is how tribal and other backward-class children are being educated a certain way that’s made learning fun for them — which was not the case when they went to government schools.
I’m not a fan of justified text because the spaces between the words become different and that really freaks me out. Sorry 🙂
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PG
May 25, 2014
Love love love the article. Love the exposure you are giving to a very novel experience and experiment, even with the K Bhagyaraj touch. My son goes to a “elite” school that does very similar things – theme based, child centric learning. And as they grow older, his school too is facing the challenge of “mainstreaming” them and getting them ready to write timed exams. So for such opportunities available to first generation learners is beyond fabulous. I believe our job as parents and teachers is to instill a love for learning – from everything around us – in children. That is what “education” really is. And so glad to see that happening in the many educational “experiments” around us. Thanks for bringing this to us Baddy. And please connect me to them – would LOVE to set up a Seed to Table program with them.
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ramitbajaj01
May 25, 2014
Actually I envy Americans and Britishers. They have to learn just one language. Of course there are many people who love to learn many languages. But that is that. A hobby. But when it is forced on individuals, it’s not good. What if as I child I didn’t want to learn 3 languages and wanted to put my focus on other things (sciences or humanities or anything)? Did I have the choice? No. This is where pessimism creeps in. That, we can’t change the scenario for new generation, nor for a generation that would come a century later. After all, in this global world we can’t do without learning English. And in this fast world, our mother tongue can’t catch with the latest developments. And then there is a national language. Though beautiful and warm, but 3 languages sure distract us in our developmental years to bring out our absolute interest. I admit there are many advantages of learning languages but I don’t think that these are essential ones. One can do without it, I reckon.
Aur, justified text ki justification ne to dil tod diya. But guess I can live with it. 🙂
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Srinivas R
May 25, 2014
Very well written. A very interesting initiative and I wish it succeeds. If i want to make a modest financial contribution, is there a way I can contact anyone. I am of course assuming, some financial assistance is required, since there are plans to make it free education.
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Rahini David
May 26, 2014
Rangan: It is a nice article. But there is a certain discomfort when Prema Rangachary is refered to as Rangachary in the subsequent paras. I feel this particularly in south-indian names where the surname is not really a surname but the father’s/husband’s name. I can see that you do it make it sound formal as it calling Johnny Depp or Britney Spears, just Depp or Spears. But it doesn’t work the same here. Prema is her name.
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jussomebody
May 26, 2014
Great read. Another fantastic school to visit is the Marudam Farm School near Tiruvannamalai ( http://www.marudamfarmschool.org/ ). Inspiring stuff.
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arunaerande
May 27, 2014
it is because of such people that this world is still going on! thanks for letting us know about this beautiful school.
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brangan
May 27, 2014
Rahini David: It’s a standardisation thing. A lot of people call me Rangan. You just did. That’s not my name. Prema seems a little informal and disrespectful. Ms. Rangachary sounds somewhat clunky. This compromise is somewhere in-between.
jussomebody: Thanks for that link.
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Di
May 28, 2014
Very heartening to read this heart-warming article. Do write and expose us more. Swamiji has also other initiatives where tribal kids who cannot make to the school due to distance, stay in hostels right next to the school He has made 150 such hostels. Do visit one and write up on it.
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nagharajabishek
May 29, 2014
@brangan Brilliant write up. Right after reading this, I contacted the school about volunteering there and now, me and my girlfriend are about to do a 6 week stint. Additionally, a child in my neighbourhood who is growing up in a VERY dysfunctional and unsafe home is about to be enrolled there as well; All thanks to your article 🙂
@Srinivas R: Visit their website http://www.vidyavanam.org ; You’ll find the donation page there.
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Srini
May 30, 2014
Thanks Nagraj for the link.
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Nandita
May 31, 2014
Such a lovely write up! Is this Prema Rangachary TMK’s mother? I went to her Akshara Vidya Peet in Madras for music lessons as a kid and she was a fabulous teacher!
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Di
June 1, 2014
wow, your article already made a huge difference with one person going there to volunteer! You should also check out aim for seva, program started by Arsha Vidya, Pujya Swami Dayanand Saraswati’s initiative.
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brangan
June 2, 2014
nagharajabishek: Really happy this article inspired you to do something in the school. It’s a lovely place.
Nandita: Yes, TMK’s mother. She spoke about that school and how young TMK would sit in for lessons, but all that didn’t fit in with this story. One day, I have to do something with all these “asides” I have from all my interview recordings and notes. Even if not a complete article, these nuggets will make for interesting reading.
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Luke
March 6, 2017
Will they become Hindus now or retain their tribal status and culture and practises. We Indigenous still have our indigenous practises. I hope the parents sanction this are taught to conserve their livelihoods from the forest and not sold the illusion of the capitalistic world.
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PRAKASH KRISTU JAYANTI COLLEGE - AUTONOMOUS V C
February 5, 2024
hi
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Anitta Boban
February 5, 2024
Do you think the incident with Aslam Ansari in 2012 has had a substantial impact on the education system in India today? Such issues usually cause a stir but are never able to change any thing, especially in the rural areas where it is most needed.
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