Dear Landon, Lyn, and Lydia,
This afternoon we had our orientation to Indian education and learned a little more about what is expected of us in the classroom. My mentor teacher was a presenter at the meeting and I am excited to work with her, she is very knowledgable and passionate about teaching. One of the many things I learned this afternoon was the challenges facing Indian teachers are similar to those in the US. India, I was told many times, is a diverse country, both culturally and economically. Some families here might live on less than one US dollar a day while others can afford to pay full tuition at top US universities.
In 2009, parliament passed The Right To Education Act, making schooling free and compulsory for all children up to age 14. This is a huge program to implement and teachers are feeling much of the burden. With class sizes of 30 to 100 students Indian teachers must balance the need to educate all children with the quality of the education. These teachers are aware of the different learning styles (multiple intelligences) as well as the loss of quality and individual attention when class sizes become very large.
At the same time, schools use multiple assessment from state and central government to determine student's progress and to place them in specific 11 and 12 year classes. Students here seem very dedicated to learning, and many of them want to go to college, the very best hope to go to the US or Singapore to study. However, teachers realize that their content must share some kind of link to contemporary life, that the study of Wordsworth and Shelley cannot give students enough, and that there must be some kind of value-based education included in the curriculum. Doesn't this all sound familiar?
At dinner Subhalakshmi and I continued the discussion, joined by another teacher and a higher education coordinator who works out of the Consulate General here in Kolkata. I asked them what they thought of so many of India's best and brightest students leaving to pursue higher education in the US. Subhalakshmi told me that thirty years ago this phenomena was considered a "brain drain", but today it's more of a "brain exchange". The best and the brightest of India's students no longer stay in the US after graduation, but come back to India to work and contribute to the growing middle class. I can see how this is mutually good for both the US and India. Our research universities benefit from bright, motivated students who contribute to research projects for several years before they leave and take their knowledge with them back home.
Indian teachers face a huge paradigm shift, both with the challenge of teaching a vast and diverse population, and with their own changing careers that demand a different kind if teaching. I sense a lot of hopes amidst all of the change, a sense that India is moving Ina dynamic and positive place.
Walking home tonight, the chaos and noise of Kolkata overloading my senses, I only wished we had the same hope back home in the US
Do you think that India's students are leaving the US after graduation to come back to India to work because the US is sending more and more jobs to India instead of keeping them in the US?
ReplyDeleteDani,
ReplyDeleteI don't have a complete answer to your question, but it seems that most Indians come back to India because it is their home. One of the teachers who sits across from me in the staff room told me that her fiancee lives in Australia. When I asked her uf she plans to move there and live with him she told me that a few months would be ok, but she does not want to raise her children anywhere but India.
With India's rapidly growing economy, fairly stable central government, why wouldn't students who are abroad want to return to the US?
Caitlin,
ReplyDeleteI came across an e-mail with the link to your blog today. I read a few of your posts. It sounds as if you are having an exciting and enlightening adventure in India. Your post about hope got me to thinking. It is inspiring to see unbridled hope in action; it is infectious can either inspire us or cause us to reflect about where our hope has gone. You’re probably right; we do not have the same level of hope as the Indian teachers. But, I still think our teachers have hope. I believe many of us are cautiously hopeful. We go along everyday hoping things will be better, but that is not the case. After years of changing policies or reworded policies, we tend not to get our hopes up. For the past eleven years, I have found hope to cause more hurt and disappointment than warm, fuzzy feelings. To be overly dramatic, teachers need a call to action—not blind hope. For teachers to be excited and hopeful about education again they need to do something about it. We need to be open and willing, creative and innovative, and collaborative. Education in the U.S. can be outstanding again, but it has to start with our teachers. No longer can we sit in our rooms and crow about how we have done the same thing for years. Our teachers have to be open and willing to change. We are not teaching the same students we were five years ago. If we want our students to be excited and willing to learn, we need to bring creativity and innovation into our room. This can be bringing people into the school, using technology, and using multiple approaches in our rooms. Finally, I think collaboration will motivate many of our teachers. We need to work with each other in our school, state, nation, and world. If the world is flat like Friedman contends, teachers need to start opening their rooms to others. We will be giving our students the opportunity to succeed. Our students will be exposed to different cultures, and “hopefully” create tolerance in our small corner of the world. Hope can be a nice thing, but it won’t fix our school system.
Landon
Landon,
ReplyDeleteThat is exactly why I participate in these educational exchanges, and why I work to be more collaborative. You're right, as teachers it's all too easy to blame the system, parents, administrators, but never to look at ourselves and what we are doing.