Educating India

The purpose of this fellowship is to discover how globalization can impact the lives of students, teachers and their communities.  While in Bangalore, we had the chance to visit several primary and secondary schools in preparation for our work in Rajkot, Gujarat. The Teacher Foundation, which is an organization dedicated to enhancing the professional growth and competency of Indian teachers, informed us about and helped us process the complex education system.

There are two kinds of schools in India: government funded public schools and private schools. The public schools are required to follow a packaged, sequenced curriculum chosen by the Ministry of Education. Students are often given uniforms, shoes and books at no cost. Alternately, there is a popular private school sector that is in direct competition with the government schools. Parents have the option of choosing an "English medium" school for their children in the private or public schools. This means that the instruction and content are entirely in English. Parents are increasingly choosing to send their children to the English medium schools because fluency in English opens so many doors for college and career. There is also a prevailing belief that the private schools are better and more resourced, but we have found that that isn't always the case.

 We visited both government and an "affordable" private school in Bangalore. Every morning, schools have the morning meeting, where ALL students and staff gather in a common area to pray, sing songs and even have students read headlines from the newspaper. These meetings were wonderful to see because the tone is set for learning for the day and it gives everyone a chance to get settled in. The students are incredibly orderly, on task and disciplined. I couldn't imagine doing this in an American school because students would have difficulty organizing themselves and there would undoubtedly be behavior problems. We visited Government Higher Primary School, which is an English medium public school. Grade levels are called "standards" here, so I was in one classroom of 1-3 standard students. The teacher is responsible for differentiating three grade levels and working through the government mandated curriculum. Students were grouped by standard and would work independently on activities while she was instructing the other group. The private school served a mostly Muslim population of students who were first generation learners. A lot of community outreach has been done to encourage parents to send their children to school. Girl children are especially encouraged to go to school and the school will pay the families a stipend (2 rupees per day) to send their daughters to school. Many families believe that the daughter can become an earner to help the family out and that it isn't important to educate girls. That belief is slowly changing.

A teacher pays homage to the Hindi goddess  of Education, Saraswati,  before the school day starts.

All the children line up quietly and stay in formation for the 15 minute ceremony every morning. 

This is the grade 1-3 classroom in the public school. 

Grade 1 students, brand new to school, play with blocks. 

Students learning vocabulary.

Little ones at the private school. This neighborhood school serves the predominantly Muslim population  and all of the students are first generation learners.