The Rato Bangala School, Kathmandu, Nepal

I made my first trip to Nepal back in 1990. I was a teacher at the Bank Street School for Children at the time, spending my summer break in South Asia, and I knew that a Bank Street family had recently returned to Kathmandu after several years of graduate study in the US. I called them when I reached the city, they graciously invited me to their home for dinner ... and the rest is history. At least it's become a big part of my own personal history. The Dixit family was frustrated by the educational options available at the time for their own young children. They had been thrilled with their Bank Street experience and recognized the potential for progressive education to make a difference in Nepal - not just for their kids but for the entire country. We talked that evening about the dream of starting a new school and the possiblity of working in collaboration with Bank Street to bring quality progressive education to the region. The Dixits have long been prominent in the Nepali intellectual/literary community and they were willing to commit time and resources (even their house!) to such a project. By the time I left to return to New York I was full of enthusiasm and energy and one of the first things I did when I got back there was approach Nona Weekes, the School for Children Dean, with my scheme for a Bank Street/Nepal connection. Nona thought it was a great idea and with her support I managed to secure Bank Street backing and funding for our first official consulting trip in 1991, the following summer. Nona and I traveled to Nepal, met with the Dixits, with other educators in Kathmandu, with members of the faculty at Kathmandu University and even with Nepal's minister of education. We brainstormed. We problemsolved. We planned and discussed. The Dixits worked tirelessly throughout ... And in 1992 the Rato Bangala School opened its doors to its first two classes of students in grades three and four.

There's much more to come on Rato Bangala, but in my next few posts I plan to shift focus a bit and give a very cursory sketch of the history and current state of education around South Asia. In order to understand just how revolutionary the accomplishments of the Dixits and other educational reformers in the region have been, it's necessary to understand the system within which they work.

Any other suggestions/ideas for future topics? I'd love to hear from you!

-Beth

How To Make A Book, pt. 2

I'll conclude this Lucknow chapter of my blog with some final praise for the books that our students created. Not their stories this time, but the books themselves: the covers, the pages ... the works of art they made from the materials we'd collected around the city. We worked on bookbinding throughout the writing process so that while some students composed and illustrated stories, others took turns putting their books together. The process involved several steps. First, each child covered two pieces of pre-cut cardboard with cloth s/he had chosen. The cloth was cut and folded - wrapping paper style - and fixed to the cover boards with all-purpose glue (Fevicol is the most common brand in India). Next, the two pieces of cardboard were joined at the spine with bookbinding cloth - again using Fevicol. To create pages, we had pre-sized paper prepared and the kids used embroidery thread and needles to sew the sheets together. Finally, they glued their pages into their covers and the basic books were complete. (If you would like to try this activity with your students and need more detailed instructions, please email me and I'll be happy to work with you.) I discovered that my students grasped the mechanics of the bookbinding process very quickly and that once the first few of them had finished, they became self-appointed instructors for their peers. This left my me and my colleagues free to focus on the revising and editing of stories. When that process was complete, final text and illustrations were copied into finished covers and when that process was finally done ... then we got to everybody's favorite part: the decorations! In India it's easy to find a wonderful assortment of buttons, lace, beads, sequins ... all of the accessories that go with the thriving personal tailoring trade. There's a great store in Lucknow called Button House that carries all these products and we managed to make a deal there for a big bag of assorted end-pieces: the short remnants from the thousands of rolls of fancy trim they stock. The students loved personalizing their covers with our treasures from Button House and it was a great way of finishing up the project. The results speak for themselves. (Click on each picture to see a close-up version.)



Next post: Progressive Education in Nepal - The Rato Bangala School

-Beth

How To Make A Book

The basic materials for bookbinding with kids are just that: basic. There's nothing particularly complicated or expensive about any piece of the process, but it can take some searching and organizing to bring all of the components together. For this, my greatest assets in Lucknow were Ram Advani and Raju. Ram Advani is the owner of Lucknow's premiere book store, a man beloved by all of the many scholars who visit the city. He's always got an empty chair, a cup of tea and plenty of excellent conversation for those who visit his shop, and from the moment I met him I knew I'd found a kindred spirit. When Ram heard about the project I had planned for my students, he offered his assistance with anything I might need. And that's where Raju came in. Raju is Ram's very able assistant - a man who knows where to find things and how to get things done in Lucknow. Raju and I made several trips together to stationers' shops in the city where we gathered glue, scissors, markers, paint, bookbinding cloth, cardboard and paper. The cardboard was our biggest challenge. I wanted something nice and heavy (that wouldn't bend) and we found it - in large sheets that had to be cut to size. For that task, we were directed to Lucknow's small but fascinating bookbinding district, an area where I found artisans doing exactly what I was planning for my kids: covering cardboard with cloth, sewing pages, creating cloth spines ... methods still in practice around the world, but definitely not in mainstream publishing. I loved my visit to the papercutter's stall, where he used a huge old cast-iron contraption full of gears and pulleys and levers to cut 100 perfect sheets of cardboard and a big stack of page-sized paper. Tiffani had the job of choosing fabric for covers, but that's tough only because India offers such an overwhelming selection of gorgeous textiles. With all of our materials together, we were ready to work with the kids.

-Beth

Lucknow Publishing Party

Once our Lucknow students understood how to compose and illustrate their own stories, they took the idea and ran with it! Each child had a writing folder in which s/he kept all drafts and all illustrations, no matter how rough. When the time came for "publishing", each was asked to choose a favorite piece to be edited and copied into a final, bound book (more on the bookmaking process to come). In this setting, the editing process was the most difficult teaching task for me and Tiffani (my colleague). There were several reasons for this. First, the kids were working in English, a second language for them. This meant more grammatical and spelling errors than we would have faced if the books had been composed in Hindi (a project I would love to take on in future). Second, we faced a time crunch. Our own Urdu language program ended in late August and we were determined to have the kids' book project complete before then. Finally, the editing process required intense one-on-one conferencing with each student. We were working in crowded classrooms and had about 40 stories to edit, but with a bit of chaos, a lot of hard work and the cooperation of the Acharya Narendra Deva Academy faculty, we managed to be prepared for the publishing party we had planned at the American Institute of Indian Studies (AIIS). Invitations were prepared and delivered to the AIIS professors, to our fellow Urdu students and to members of the educational and literary community from throughout Lucknow. Over 50 guests attended and our program was a great success. Six students read their books to the entire group (one girl and one boy from each class, chosen at random) and then each child had the chance to share his/her book informally with the party guests.


There were refreshments of course, photographs and flowers for our chief guests. We even had an article published in one of Lucknow's Urdu newspapers (The Daily Aag) the following day. The students were proud of themselves and of each other and I was thrilled!

I'm including the text of one student's story below:

HOLI
by Sandeep

One day I celebrated Holi. I was running away and my brother hit me with water balloons.
I fell down in wet mud. I was looking like a ghost. After this I took a bath and my brother hit me with water balloons again.
We danced with my friend. Our favourite song was Rang Barre. We enjoyed the song. We went to Imambara. We saw the place where prayer was offered, a wall and big gate.
After that we came back home. My mother made chips, barfi and gajra. We ate the chips, barfi and gajra.
After that I was wearing new clothes. I went to the temple and to the cinema. I met my friends and relatives.
After I went to sleep and I dreamed I played cricket and I made a century.
After I got up, I had lunch and my brother served khir for me.
I went to the temple and I prayed to God.
I came back home. I watched T.V. I had dinner.
I went to sleep and I said, "Every day should be such a lovely day."

Next blog post: cloth, cardboard, glue and the bookmaking process.

-Beth

Bookbinding, cont.

After observing the Acharya Narendra Deva Academy students beginning to tackle the work of story composition, a couple of things were clear. They were excited about the project, willing to work hard and open to sharing ideas with one another. Also, there was a wide range of English language skill levels. What the kids needed first was help with topic choice and some direction to guide peer collaboration. The language and editing work would come later. A wealth of possible mini-lessons were open to us, but given time constraints Tiffani and I decided to come up with a sample story of our own - something that would model a number of different composition techniques. It was monsoon season in Lucknow and we all had become used to sudden downpours and flooding on the streets so I drew on one of my adventures of the day before and came up with "Two Frightened Puppies".

I read the story. I had several students read the story. I had the kids tell me "what they had heard" and we talked a bit about the elements of good topic choice. The result was a big step forward in the kids composing techniques, although I found that now they began to lean toward "disaster"-type tales: falls, wounds, trips to the hospital ... Still, we were making real progress and, having observed some modeling of sharing and feedback techniques, by the end of the session several students were able to share their own stories-in-progress and receive feedback. I'm including several minutes of video of this lesson for those who are interested (excuse the unsophisticated sound and image quality).

NOTE: Possible technical difficulties with the video upload. I'm going to try again a bit later.

More to come on writing and bookmaking in Lucknow.

-Beth

Bookbinding in Lucknow

I spent the months of June, July and August in the Indian city of Lucknow (500 kilometers east of Delhi) as a participant in the American Institute of Indian Studies summer language program in Urdu. Most of my days were spent in my own classes, but I was able to find time to work in a local school as well. The Acharya Narendra Deva Academy offers free/minimal cost education to kids from families who would otherwise not be able to afford it. Founded by Mrs. Meera Talwar in 1992, the AND Academy has grown from one small class of kindergartners to a fully-functioning school serving approximately 350 students in grades nursery through eight. I worked with fellow Urdu student Tiffani Jones, a master's candidate at Howard University, and with Ginger Cline, a University of Michigan undergraduate. On our first visit to the Academy, we were assigned to work with grades six, seven and eight and asked to focus on English language skills (classes are conducted in the kids' native language of Hindi and English is one of their subject areas). The students were eager, excited and seemed open to anything we might have to offer ... And thus our summer bookmaking project was born - a chance to bring together writing, reading, conversation, group work and art in the language curriculum. I'm quite sure the kids learned a lot; I'm absolutely certain that I did.

First, I wanted the kids to compose original stories, to be able to write about topics of their choice. But in the Indian system, there is almost never a chance for open-ended creative writing. I knew that my students didn't have a frame of reference for "anything you want to write about" and it was my job to help them make their way there. Still, I began at the beginning - with blank paper and pencils for everyone - and asked them to compose. Almost all chose one of two topics: "my friend" or "my country". They talked readily among themselves and freely asked one another for help. I was pleased to observe this easy collaboration although it did tend to lead to almost identical compositions as students "copied" copiously from one another. They weren't "cheating". They were doing what they were almost always expected to do in a writing assignment: copy out a sentence from a book or from a teacher. In this case at least, the sentences were coming from fellow students. Frankly, I considered that a step in the right direction.

More to come ...

-Beth

Back In The USA

I got back to the U.S. on Thursday after five months in South Asia: India, Nepal and Pakistan. I’m beginning work as a freelance educational consultant and my mission was to visit schools and foundations; to talk with parents, teachers and students; to assess (at least superficially) the state of education on the subcontinent; and to figure out how I might play a role there. I hope to use this blog to document my experiences and to engage with others who share an interest in progressive education in South Asia. I’m going to begin with a short excerpt from a lecture I presented in September at Punjab University, Lahore, Pakistan – a very brief first attempt to introduce my own beliefs about pedagogy.

Since I am, after all, an educator, I’d like to begin by asking you a question – the sort of question that I like best: one that has no single “correct” answer, the kind with many correct answers, the type that (hopefully) causes people to really think.

The question is this: What is the purpose of education? Why should we teach? Why should we learn?

The answers are many:
- We teach so that students will achieve high marks on their examinations.
- We teach so that students can be admitted to colleges and universities.
- We teach to raise the level of literacy among the population.
- We teach to offer students a better lot in life. Better health, better jobs, a better standard of living.
- We teach to offer students exposure to the history and culture of their country.

This morning I will take the liberty of talking about MY favorite answer to this question. Not the “correct” answer remember, but the answer that makes me excited about my own work as an educator, that keeps me going, that gets me up in the mornings. I believe that the purpose of education is the creation of meaning. The creation of meaning. Children are trying to make meaning out of the complex and crazy world into which they are born, a world of relationships, of symbols, of patterns and randomness, a world of things beyond the comprehension of their young minds. They need all of this to mean something, to make sense. They need the tools to create this meaning for themselves. This is why they learn. And this is why I teach – to offer children the tools they will need for this most important life work.

There is much more to come and I can't wait to begin making contact with others who are interested in progressive education in the U.S., in South Asia and throughout the world. Please be in touch.

-Beth