Complete with Gaps : Unadulterated Constructivism and Facilitation

MAKE MOVIES NOT WAR

Divyashri Bhatt , Nikita Jain, Tarini Singh

In an age where people don't have the time and inclination to read history books, films are slowly becoming an excellent means of educating people. Although there has been an increase in the emergence of different types of new media, the fact remains that war films still are an immensely popular medium of entertainment and education.

Forms of media such as gaming have been gaining an increasingly strong hold over today's world of entertainment, desensitizing their viewers by making the violence and destruction seem normal and invoking sadistic appeal. Media such as these make war seem like a game where you can have control over death, they show killing to be something enjoyable and rewarding.

Glimpses of war are splattered all over news channels. When real pictures are flashed across channels, would people still watch a film that only aspires to be an accurate representation of the gory battle? We feel that the answer is 'yes'. In a film the director's point of view is put across to the audiences. Showing the war from a person's perspective gives a gripping continuity to the predicament of the war veterans. The constant interruptions of the news by advertisements and other new items takes away the real meaning of war, and leaves nothing but a piece of news to “savour” and digest. On the other hand, good war films take one amidst the battle, invoke in you what the soldiers go through, and leave you with food for thought and a pain that gripes at your insides, refusing to go away.

The 'war film' genre deals mainly with warfare or a story proceeding against the backdrop of battle being fought or civilians in the midst of times of war. The stories could be partly historic accounts or even documentary in nature.

Good war films manage to leave a deep impact on their viewers, as they consist of soul-searching, tragic consequences, the inner turmoil of the soldiers and a whole lot of sacrifices made by them. War films could often be paired with other genres such as romance, comedy, suspense and thrillers to hold the interest of the audiences.

The first ever war film to be documented was the 90 minutes ' Tearing Down the Spanish Flag' (1898). Films made in the years following the World War l tended to stress on the horror and the futility of warfare as in ‘All Quiet on the 'Western Front' (1930), or tended to just be a re-enactment of the drama of aerial combat in films like the 'Dawn Patrol' (1930), which made good action and adventure films. Other films are mainly about the bonding of soldiers in wars.

While studying war films the main questions that we were looking at was whether war shown in them sensitizes or desensitizes the viewer. The first films that came to our minds were 'Saving Private Ryan' and 'Life is Beautiful', both marvellous films in their own respect.

In Saving Private Ryan, the unsparing violence used by the director Steven Spielberg not only depicts the chaos and terror experienced by the troops but also the horrors of war at its zenith. SPR was released in United States in 1998.

Cast: Tom Hanks, Tom Sizemore, Matt Damon, Edward Burns, Jeremy Davies.

Editor: Michael Kahn

Screenplay: Robert Rodat

Music: John Williams

Camera:

Saving Private Ryan was nominated for eleven Academy awards and won five for the best director, best film editing, best cinematographer, best sound, and best sound effects.

War is something that intrigues many generations like ours who haven't experienced it. It is a mystery and movies such as 'Saving Private Ryan' and 'Life is Beautiful' allow us a glimpse into an unknown world, with feelings and experiences that we haven't felt. A very important question involved in war films is whether they sensitize or desensitize their audiences. The fact that war films deal with hugely complex issues of human emotion requires that they be dealt with immense care. The manner in which certain war films are made may take away from these issues and make the audiences completely insensitive to what war truly is by making it seem simplistic and possibly unreal. Saving Private Ryan is a movie that is extremely realistic, maybe so much so that it seems incomprehensible.

In 1945, the Allies were on the brink of victory over the Germans and their allies. The Normandy landing was a series of landings, which occurred off the coast of France. In the movie, Captain Miller (Tom Hanks) and his troops are waiting to land on the beach and as the ramp to their boat opens, men are gunned down violently and they struggle to reach the beach.

SPR opens with a 30-minute cinematic marvel which is one of the finest half-hours ever committed to any film. This sequence showing a soldier's eye-view of the D-day invasion of Normandy is brilliant not only in the technique in which it has been shot but also the depth of the impact it generates on its viewers. It is a most brutal depiction of war. We are presented with bloody images of bodies being pierced by bullets, limbs being blown off, viscera spilling out and various other horrors of battle. As the waves crash upon the body-strewn beach the water is tinted a deep crimson.

In addition to showing the mutilation of human bodies, the director uses other methods to capture the essence of battle - chaotic camera movements, a fleeting movement of images, muted colours except for the vivid slashes of red blood that gush and trickle out of wounds and brilliant footage that captures conflict at its most vicious. You can literally smell the death in the air.

After the landing is complete we learn that three of four Ryan brothers perished in war and their mother received all three telegrams on the same day. Stirred by her grief, the Marshall sends Miller and a troop into the French countryside to find and bring home Private Ryan, (Matt Damon) her only living son.

The movie proceeds and Miller and his troops set off to find Private Ryan. In one of the scenes here, amidst the war, Caparzo, a member of the troop is asked by a father to take his daughter to the next town and in trying to do something decent he is shot. This dialogue here, although simple, has great meaning to it.

Captain Miller: Caparzo, get the kid back up there!

Private Caparzo: Captain, the decent thing to do would be to take her over to the next town.

Captain Miller: We're not here to do the decent thing, we're here to follow f***ing orders!

This shows how brutal war really is and shows that the soldiers can't even do what is right because it is so dangerous and it puts their lives and the lives of the others in jeopardy. It is tragic because it shows these men to be vulnerable and yet heroic. The sensitivity comes from the fact that the audience feels a great deal of shock and compassion for his death, along with a great deal of respect. In the scene the gunshot is sudden, this creates the impact of how unpredictable and uncertain life is during war.

As the unit continues to advance, even though another life is lost and the men are shattered, Miller stands by his decision and strictly follows orders. Although throughout the film Miller is portrayed as strong and fearless, here he is shown in tears, devastated. Seeing him breakdown is extremely effective as it shows that even the most valiant men are weakened by death and are devastated by doing what is 'right', but wonder how right can be so wrong. As Miller cries, the audience begins to understand the complexities that surround war and how men are reduced to tears and forced to justify what is seemingly so right.

As the plot continues to unravel, the troop finds themselves with many other soldiers. They immediately start helping the wounded and during the time that they are there they have a very interesting discussion with another army official.

Lieutenant Dewindt: …Some f***ing genius had the great idea of welding a couple of steel plates onto our deck to keep the general safe from ground fire. Unfortunately, they forgot to tell me about it until we were just getting airborne. Well, that's like trying to fly a freight train. OK?.. We came down like a f***ing meteor. And that is how we ended up. And the others, they stopped easy enough OK, though, you know? We were just- we were just too damn heavy, you know? The grass was wet, downward slope and all. 22 guys dead.

Captain Miller: All that for a general?

Lieutenant Dewindt: One man.

Private Reiben: Lot of that going around."

This is a very important part in the movie, it shows the injustice that becomes part of everyday life and how they are powerless to change that, while also raising the persistent question; an idea that runs through the whole movie asking whether one man's life is worth more than another's. This sensitizes the audience by making them feel the injustice and understand a part of what they are experiencing.

Later, in the same scene, the lieutenant gives them a bag of tags, taken off dead prisoners, to check if one of the names is of Ryan. These tags seem to figure in the hundreds and the unit is going through them like poker chips while another company is walking past. Although at first it is extremely incomprehensible to us, it shows that lives were taken almost for granted, and treated as if they meant nothing. But as the audience absorbs how many tags there are in that bag and what exactly is happening, it is a shock and it creates a painful feeling as they realize that these tags represent lives lost and is as real as can be.

A common theme throughout the movie is how valuable a life is and as the movie continues this theme becomes even more evident and an answer seems about to surface.

There is nothing especially complex about the structure of SPR. The film is broken by two major battle scenes between which are alternating periods of small fights and quiet character-building moments that flesh out and give us a glimpse of the nature of the soldiers, rather different from the stereotype that we would make of them.

Every character in the film is developed into an individual whom we can connect with and grieve for if and when they die. They are shown to be ordinary men stuck in an extraordinary situation. It is no film of heroic tales; it is criticism of war interwoven with human courage and sacrifice.

Saving Private Ryan is an excellent demonstration of cinematographic skills. Filmed in documentary style with a shoulder held camera to capture the chaos. Spielberg studied photos and documentaries of the war and then re-created the settings, and the sound and the fury of war. Its accurate representation is what adds to the film's impact.

This could be labelled as one of Tom Hank's most poignant performances. His portrayal of John Miller is a mix of devotion to duty, war-fatigue, and the acceptance of reality. He is on a mission to save a single man's life, putting in peril his own and the lives of his men, which requires immense courage and faith. The film celebrates self-less acts of human decency made by its characters, despite the difficulties that discourage them from doing so. Miller is shown to be an ordinary man turned veteran, who survives the madness of war by recalling sweet memories and waiting to get back home.

Miller: Sometimes I wonder if I've changed so much, my wife is even gonna recognise me whenever it is that I get back to her, and how I'll ever be able to tell her about days like today. And Ryan. I don't know any thing about Ryan. I don't care.. he's just a name. But if, you know, if finding him so he can go home earns me the right to get back to my wife, well then, that's my mission.

The supporting cast brings out equally convincing performances. Edward Burns, Reiben uses sarcasm to hide his uncertainty about the validity of the mission. Jeremy Davies makes Upham a believable character whose horror at the sudden attack of trauma and violence is something that the audience easily relates to. Matt Damon is excellent in playing a character that is as much a symbol as an individual, and Tom Sizemore's character of Miller's faithful friend is engaging and stunning.

Saving Private Ryan is one amongst those few films that have managed to leave such a searing impact on its audience that even eight years after its release it still lingers in the minds of its viewers. It is so forceful that it throws you right amidst the battlefield. Although the film is only loosely based on a true story of Fritz Niland, who lost two of his brothers on the D-Day while a third was missing in war, and hence was taken out of combat zone, it is hard to believe these characters ars not real. Veterans of the war who saw the film say that this is the most accurate representation of the battle and what the soldiers endured that day in France.

The opening scenes in the film have been shot in the World War II Normandy American Cemetery and War memorial and many of the weapons used in the film are authentic pieces that add to making the battle look realistic.

But beyond the bloodiness of the scenes, the violence, and the expertise of technique, come knowledge and understanding. An entire generation who weren't living to see the war was made aware of D-Day and its role in history just by the power of these scenes.

Life is Beautiful is another awe-inspiring movie which sensitizes the viewer through a strong flavour of humour. The movie is unique because under the façade of humour lies a poignancy that brings tears to the eyes. Set in the Second World War, it does not aspire to paint an accurate picture of the plight of the Jews. Yet, by making a young family’s tribulation the central plot of the movie, it evokes a great deal of sympathy from its audience since they are able to relate to it on a personal level.

Credits:

Cast:

Guido Orefice Roberto Benigni

Dora Nicoletta Braschi

Giosue Orefice Giorgio Cantarini

Director Roberto Benigni

Editor Simona Paggi

Music Nicola Piovani

Camera

Script

The film is set in the 1930s. Guido, a Jewish waiter, who works for his uncle, lives in a Tuscan town. He falls deeply in love with Dora, a schoolteacher. She elopes with him on the day of her engagement to another man. Guido marries Dora who gives birth to a son, Giosue. The happily ever after story takes a serious twist when Anti-Semitism changes the lives of several Jewish families, Guido’s being one among them. They are hauled off to a concentration camp to suffer the inhumane treatment meted out to them. In spite of not being a Jew, her deep love for her husband and son makes Dora accompany them. Although she is put in a separate camp for women, Guido finds a way to communicate with her and assure her that both he and Giosue are perfectly fine. Guido, slowly but surely, hides Giosue not only from the Nazis but also from the horrors of the War. He makes the whole thing out to be a game at the end of which the winner would receive the grand prize of an army tank. Giosue, being a little boy, does not suspect even for a moment that the whole thing is as real as the birth of a child and not just a game. He follows all the rules, earning “points” for every time he successfully escapes notice. The most endearing point in the movie is the last scene where Giosue gets a ride in a tank, showing that life, a constant gamble, is truly beautiful.

Guido: What kind of place is this? It's beautiful: Pigeons fly, women fall from the sky! I'm moving here!

The film begins as a comedy clearly portraying the general predicament of society. The movie, beyond a doubt, sensitizes the viewer because it has been so beautifully handled. Throughout the movie, the viewer, unlike Giosue, is completely aware of the dehumanizing monstrosity of the war. Roberto Benigni plays the part of Guido to the hilt, carefully manipulating the little Giosue into thinking that the war is a game and in order to win this game he has to follow 3 rules.

Guido: You can lose all your points for any one of three things. One: If you cry. Two: If you ask to see your mother. Three: If you're hungry and ask for a snack! Forget it!

The backbreaking work that Guido does was only a small part of the hardship compared to the trauma of separation from his dear wife. The burning fire of hope that he clung on to took him from one day to the next. The ride to the concentration camp in a truck is the turning point of the movie because this is when Guido presents the war as game to Giosue with the complete knowledge that there would be no turning back. He harbours a great fear in his mind; fear not for his life but for Dora’s and most of all Giosue’s. In the end, it is this great love for his wife that is responsible for his death. He goes in search of Dora to the women’s camp knowing full well that this could lead to discovery and sure death. To think that the only crime he committed was to be born into a Jewish family! Throughout the whole charade Guido is truly afraid but for Giosue’s sake he showed no semblance of this fear. The whole war is a game of hide and seek for Giosue and he never realizes he was actually hiding from his murderers. Yet, he shows a young boy’s enthusiasm and competitive spirit and plays right into his father’s hands by being “the best player of the game”. The most poignant scene of the movie is when Giosue has a narrow escape.

Giosue: Daddy, I cannot find any of the other kids, and a lady came telling me to take a shower.

Guido: That's a good idea. You go take a shower.
Giosué Orefice: No!
Guido: Go take a shower!
Giosué Orefice: No!

Giosué Orefice: Buttons and soap.
Guido: What?
Giosué Orefice: They turn us into buttons and soap.
Guido: Who told you that?
Giosué Orefice: An old man was crying. He said they turn us into buttons and soap. They burn us all up in ovens.

Guido: How ridiculous. They were just teasing you! There are wood ovens, but there are no people ovens. Putting people in ovens creates too much smoke.

Much before this scene, a Jewish woman in the women’s camp tells Dora that little children are killed in gas chambers on the pretext of being given showers. Roberto Benigni skillfully introduces this at the beginning of the movie so that the audience begins to experience a great fear for Giosue’s life. Giosue hated taking showers and when a German woman came into the rooms demanding that all children “take a shower”, Giosue hid under the beds. Little did he know that all children who followed her were to be exterminated in gas chambers! The simple fact that he survived by accident makes us realize how short his life was, how easily he could have died, how one of those millions of lives that the war claimed could have been his. Also, the knowledge that Giosue was the exception to the norm, one among the few little children who survived makes the movie all the more distressing. LIB is a remarkable war movie that succeeded for its extremely delicate handling of script and direction. When Guido died, the gunshot was only heard and not seen. Yet, in our heart of hearts, we know that Guido died without fulfilling his wish, to say goodbye to his dear wife. The whole idea of presenting the war as a game is unique because it hides the brutality of the war from a young boy. LIB is a movie that can sensitize the viewer all the more if he is fully aware of the unspeakable trauma suffered by the Jews. However, for those viewers who are unaware of the predicament of the Jews, the war is always prevalent in the background, clinging on the backs of the Orefice family like a parasite that refuses to budge. The whole movie, however, clings on to the silver lining in a dark, gray, monstrous cloud.

“Yet for all its wacky humor and inventive gags, Life Is Beautiful is a moving and poignant tale of one father's sacrifice to save not just his young son's life but his innocence in the face of one of the most evil acts ever perpetrated by the human race.”

-------Sean Axmaker

War films deal with the delicate issues of human psychology, and hence may fail to sensitise the viewer unless handled with care. Saving Private Ryan and Life is Beautiful are rather different as they both sensitise their viewers in two different ways. On the one hand, where Saving Private Ryan is brutal to the eye, Life is Beautiful is brutal to the mind. In spite of the fact that they deal with different aspects of war, they both show that at the end of the day it is human emotions that prevail.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

www.imdb.com/title/tt0120815/ - 54k - 29 Nov 2005

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www.casenet.com/movie/savingprivateryan.htm

•movie-reviews.colossus.net/movies/s/saving.html

•www.backintime.com/moviereviews/savingryan

www.rinkworks.com/movies/m/saving.private.ryan.1998.shtml

rodp.ridne.net/node-23215.html

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•www.imdb.com/Title?0118799 - 56k - 2 Dec 2005

www.geocities.com.hollywood/studio/1327/

www.bigscreen.com/readerreview.php?movies=savingprivate ryan

www.imbp.com/title/tt0120815/quotes

www.historyinfilm.com/ryan/plot

movie-reviews.colossus.net/moviesis/saving.html

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/war_films

www.filmsite.org/wardilms.html

http://www.geocities.com/Broadway/Wing/6027/

Acknowledgements:

Ms. Suravee Banerjee

Dr. A.V. Koshy

Ms. Rema Nair

Mr. Subeesh

The English Seminar

A teacher wants , naturally, to showcase his best work.
I helped seven groups of three students each to do a project on different genres of film. The project was supposed to end in a written paper and a presentation after research , team work etc. The genres were chosen by them. As was the topic film, and the films. In all twenty films were chosen.
The results ranged from spectacularly successful to dismally abysmal. According to yours truly.

I was reminded of Beckett.In Worstward Ho.

"No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better."
I love that pun in the last bit.

One must have the courage to make gigantic attempts, make gigantic mistakes.....


To come back to the beginning.

I am showcasing two of the papers written for the seminar, the best of the seven. This one's for my/the students, a reward for their hardwork.

The Essay. Remarquez s'il vous plait.

Democratizing Learning English Language and Literature in India

Horace's dictum was that poetry should “delight and instruct.” If the word 'poetry' is replaced by the word' education', nothing would be lost. Education has to delight and instruction that comes through delight stays with the instructor and the instructed. Eden, which means “delight” and Paradise, was the unlikely place where Instructor and instructed first met in the unlikely time of twilit evenings for delight and instruction, proving that Life can be Paradise when it is a constant process of education where delight and instruction revolve around each other and are one in a continuous harmony that forms a circle. The delight that mastery of anything gives leads to the desire for more instruction, till gradually the mediator of instruction recedes into the background so that the ‘active receptacle’ can become an adept and even a new mediator in his turn, if so inclined.

What should concern prospective ‘professional’ educators, teachers, facilitators and theorists is, however, not just the definitions and the points of origin or the aims of education, but the process itself. It is constantly undergoing change and therefore needs to be monitored because it is the part of education that consequently has the least light cast upon it from the detached and meta-cognitive perspective of thinkers and practitioners who critique and analyze education. No amount of attention paid to the process of education can be too little if education is to constantly improve.

Jane Sahi, in the chapter “ Correlation as a Pattern for Sustainable Growth” in her book Education & Peace, borrows from Gandhi his metaphor for education; something Gandhi took from Nature, of plants being nurtured by a loving gardener. Taking a leaf from Jane’s book, the metaphor for me concerning teaching& learning lies in the parable of the Sower and the Seed in the Gospel of Luke (ch.8:v.4-15) with three or four of its possible explications connecting it to the topic at hand.

If it is looked at as a parable about the teaching –learning process, it offers us a rich mine of pedagogical and practical possibilities. Apart from the explicit metaphors of farmer-seed-ground(singular/plural) and guru(spiritual preceptor)- gnana(wisdom) –shishya (spiritual adept){singular/plural} three other implicit metaphors are man- seed-woman, teacher-vidya-student(s) and last, but not least, the triad of <> This last reading where the parable is seen as a metaphor for inwardness wherein a mature learner should apply it to himself as a student and use it as a checklist to see if he has gone past the first three stages of learning and gone on to the fourth one, is the most exciting of the hermeneutical options available to the reader. But in practice, it is an arduous task possible only for students who have the patience and application of an archer like Ekalavya.

The interesting thing about the three metaphors I have touched upon here briefly; the primal Edenic situation, the Gandhian gardener with his cherished, well nurtured plants and the New Testament farmer and his field is that all of them speak of education indirectly but per se, in its real sense and context which is real life.

These metaphors do not use the monstrously structured approach and jargon that schools and universities adopt that has arisen out of the latter’s masses –oriented struggle to pass on education. These three metaphors overthrow the ‘banking theory of education’ that Paulo Freire strongly objected against in his memorable Pedagogy of the Oppressed and they also ‘deschool’ society as Ivan Ilyich wanted to because the context is widened to include everything around you and the teachers in these situations have to work hand in hand with the benign natural forces around them, with the full co-operation of the students.

Adam was innocent and WANTED wisdom, the plant has IN IT “a force that through the green fuse drives the flower” and the field will yield good fruit only if it is like “a good heart that has prepared itself “ for the seed. This is holistic education at its best where there is a mellifluous melting together of content, context, mediation, mediator and the mediated. It is a-contextual learning in that the mediator needs the skill, knowledge, understanding, discernment and wisdom to decipher the student’s real needs and act/react with ‘auchithya; scientifically, creating the contexts suitable for him in which he can learn.Such behaviour on the part of the mediator does not automatically ensure success, because the mediated has to also actively participate in creating the conducive atmosphere to growth in which he creates and maximizes his learning potential to its zenith. What consequently takes place is not transference from one vessel to the other but collaborative discovery – slanted and inventive.

Anita Rampal in her essay “School Science in Search of a Democratic Order?” (1997) addresses the issues of the present as a pragmatic educationist in the forefront of the battle to make education a matter of quality for the students of the rural poor in India in the twenty-first century. Her success lies in the precision with which she writes of many matters, making the essay a catch-all for an amazing number of ideas so that it easily transcends its aim as given in the title, to include facilitators of the non-scientific community like me who teach the urban rich. She ends her essay with a definition of constructivism; one of the parts of the essay that helps me tackle the question of how to adapt and apply her insights to my present world of teaching- learning.

In a nutshell, she states that science as it is taught today in the West and consequently in India, is monolithic in its definition, methodology and aim. It encourages elitism in its search for the ‘genius’ scientist rather than have the ability to make itself useful and understandable to all the members of a democracy in sharp contrast to alternate versions of science like that of Rev. Dawes’s “science of common things” that attempted to give prominence to applied sciences and took into consideration the cultural context of the labouring classes in a genuine effort to make the children of the poor into street-smart scientists. The Vigyan Shikshan Karyakram that brings to the financially and economically lower rungs of a section of Indian society the kind of pedagogy usually available only to the rich in private, international, national and public schools in urban centres, a pedagogy that is student-friendly and of modest aims and hence able to meet its requirements, besides being low-cost in its technological inputs and eco-efficient , goes against this elitist notion of pure science.

How does Ms Rampal’s essay speak to teachers who come from disciplines other than the science subjects? Her points can be reasonably replaced, for instance, by someone like me, thus:

1. English literature is taught in India as if it is the centre whereas the centres of attention should be weltliteratur, national literature and regional or local literature. The texts could be in translation. English literature would naturally come in if the medium of instruction is English but not at the expense of the considerable wealth of other literatures.
2. Englishes and the polymorphous literatures in English, still very much a necessity because of the fact that in the discourses of power and technology all exchanges are made in ‘English’, need to be taught in a student-friendly manner. Japanese texts are a good example of how English could be taught in a very different way from the methodology used in India whereby the child’s multilingual abilities are fostered creatively instead of him being forced to opt for excellence in one target language alone, whether it be the mother tongue or a national language or English or some other language.
3. The approach taken towards the teaching of language should not aim merely at theoretical, critical and analytical returns but creative, literary and vocationally useful output. Reading a poem that ends in the student writing his own ‘good’ poem should be rated, to give just one example, equal to its capable exegesis.
4. Refining the skills of painstaking reading, writing, thinking, speaking, (re-)presenting, communicating, expressing, listening , criticizing and analyzing being integral to any discipline , language teaching and literature appreciation holds a very important place in any curriculum. A more radical approach than Ms Rampal’s would be actual democratization that would include students too in choosing the syllabus and textbooks, teaching, documentation, self and peer-assessment etc.

For all this to be possible one needs to find the golden mean between the realist and the constructivist positions mentioned by Rampal. “….the realist viewpoint …perceives reality as a stable configuration of objective facts , open to the identical inspection of all. Constructivism , on the other hand, is the belief that reality is personally negotiated so that each enquirer perceives a world depending on her (or his) preconceptions and where agreement , which constitutes factual knowledge, is a specific collective negotiation, with an often limited temporal validity. “(Rampal 255). The constructivist definition given by Rampal is of course not hers, but borrowed from cognitive psychologists like Jean Piaget, but she deserves notice in that she states it succinctly.

The Realist Position.

I teach a syllabus with prescribed textbooks and a written exam the students have to take at the end of the year, by which their "performance" will be assessed. At the parent-teacher conferences and some of the staff meetings and through feedback I have received from some of the more voluble students, I have come to realise that for most parents, for the majority of (Western/national) universities and for ninety-nine percent of the students what "really" matters is grades. There is also a "vast" syllabus to "finish/off" with only limited time to do it in. Added to these issues is the cumbersome paperwork connected to the Western idea of intricate documentation which has its plus and minus points, if looked at objectively. These are my job’s constraints. I can also call them, if I so wish, factors securing/offering security to the students, teachers, parents and school managements..
As for the children themselves, while the constraints irk them they also impart a certain sense of safety to them because of their strongly felt need for a "clear" structure. Can constructivism provide the balance? One would have to give a double-edged answer; yes and no. Two schools of thought ; one that believes in subverting the system gradually and the other that thinks of just getting rid of it lock, stock and barrel and ushering in the new in a revolutionary coup d'etat are both theories that yield mixed and not entirely satisfactory results in actual application. Facilitators like me who have moved through three positions, including the traditionalist one, (keep things as they are and make them function to peak levels in efficiency-) will understand what is meant. Another school of thought, meanwhile, opines "give the students what they want". There is a mélange or a Babel in theorizing on pedagogy, nowadays!

The absence of a cut and dried solution is “our” strength. As long as reflection and review goes on of the entire pedagogical process and things are in a flux there will be a vibrancy to our attempts to better quality education. It will ensure that we see ourselves as learners first and foremost and as facilitators second rather than as all-knowing teachers or “edu-actors”, always keeping us on our toes.

Solutions That Raise More Questions Than Answers.

When we think of major educators and thinkers India has had in the recent past like Gandhi with his metaphor of the gardener and the plant, Nehru (the three language formula), B.R. Ambedkar (abolition of caste inequality), Rabindranath Tagore (humanism) and J. Krishnamurti (choiceless awareness) and of the democratization of education , an issue that was felt to be of the utmost importance by all the afore-mentioned giants, one also thinks of the topic at the personalized level of one's own professional practice. It seems obvious that one has to work on two fronts. One front has to be broad, group activity that would include revamping the curriculum and the syllabus including the textbooks. The other front would be narrow, considering how to apply these things at the miniscule levels of giving attention to individual students and the varied need-based groups that we call 'classes' at present.
As far as English - an international link language that is also one of the nation's own languages (our window to the world, as Nehru called it) - is concerned, its democratization in the curriculum would have to include certain new drives in the latter’s framing. The curriculum being too vast a topic to handle here, I shall concern myself more with the syllabus.
Suggestions could be listed thus: a) The students should be consulted as to what they think their needs are and then drafts can go into the written form of the syllabus being prepared.
b) The syllabus must offer freedom to the teacher to teach in more than one language if it fetches results. This applies especially to ESL . This would be an option and not a must.
c) The rewriting of textbooks that such directives would result in must be rigorously tested for quality and their ability to interest the learners.
d) Where literature is concerned, the choice of texts must include international works of repute - in translation -, works from Britain in English, works from another English like American , works from IWE, works from Indian literature and local/regional literatures – (in translation or English.)
e) Another option would be choosing short pieces making the coursework light for the students, but taking into consideration different genres and forms and including different ideologies and cultures. A syllabus like this would teach some forms/types of poetry, a short story, a personal essay , a drama - preferably, a short one-act play-, a novelette and an essay (dealing with critical theory, theory or criticism) to be taught over a period of two years. The learning objectives would be limited to sound thinking, speaking, presenting, listening, writing and ‘reading’ practices by which I mean advanced literary and semantic ‘appreciation’ skills.
f.) Assessment would be entirely revamped. While grades and marks would need to be retained, perhaps, for the sake of the "system" the emphasis would be on effective thinking skills, creativity, innovativeness, effort , presenting, listening and writing skills and attainments collectively. Critical analysis would be as important as producing creative output, with both being weighted equally. Getting published in reputed ‘journals’ would fetch extra marks.
g.) The output of another “new” language-oriented paper besides the already existing papers on language and literature would be aimed at vocational use somewhere down the line so that teaching skills like writing CV's by introducing a subject called “Functional or Communicative English” would be a must. This paper would take into account new skills like translation, medical, legal and other kinds of transcription, technical writing, business English, creative writing, media savvy presentations, news reading, copy writing, script writing, reporting for journalisms –on radio, TV, film, print, web - editing, making publisher's choices, criticism, reviewing, research and scholarship, introducing teaching at school and college levels and other job-oriented vectors of language use.
Practical Application.

The real challenge for the facilitator is in the "class". It is possible to come to an assessment of a student which is accurate and easy to help him in such a way that he doesn't slip back but true democratization would include the satisfying result that each student actually improves in his skills over the period of time that he works with you. This is the real challenge. He should not go away feeling that he was taught well but, more important, there should be a clear difference brought about in his ability to learn and do. His potential to be a 'mover' must be tapped and maximized. This is an area fraught with possibilities. I feel the answer definitely lies partly in constructivism. It also lies partly in allowing contemporaneity, by which I mean working with what the student knows of the present and is interested in, and the latest advances of technology adapted innovatively to mesh with the latest teaching techniques. This, along with the radicalization that could be brought in by ensuring greater student participation in "all" the activities the teacher considers his forte at present, is a possible solution.

An example: In my class while teaching poetry I took some students over to the computer lab and showed them a few hypertext poems and hypertext fictions and this set them thinking about the difference in the forms of poetry and fiction when it is 'written' down and 'programmed' in. They became aware, to some extent, of concepts like interactivity, hyperlinks and lexemes and consequently of the complicated changes occurring historically in the two above mentioned forms without my having had to bring in the academic jargon connected with such modifications which might have ended up confusing them, as they are only in the beginning stages where literary theory is concerned.

The democratization of English and the teaching of literature in this beautiful language has, to sum up, to concentrate primarily on the objectives of ensuring that Englishes and the “new” dialects & registers (SMS English, the influence of the keyboard and the use of icons in chat language, Manglish, Hinglish, the polyphonic jargon of literary criticism and theory in English) are encouraged as much as British English and that this is not done at the cost of other languages or of quality in the target language. Literary appreciation has to deal objectively with real-life students and actual situations in a graphic and interesting way so that true democratization takes place whereby all the students are enthused to love languages and their infinite possibilities and go away considering the learning of Language to be a " poetic experience" that ignites their love for the ‘logos’ and the ‘mythos’ of language in a teleological way, as in the Parable of the Sower and the Seed, so that the memory of it will be one of progressive instruction and mastery gained through delight as Horace wanted it to be, and as Edenic as life's first learning experiences like breast feeding.
The only peaceful war “we” facilitators need to constantly wage, therefore, is one whereby there is a ceaseless effort to keep closing the gap between our notions of perfection and our consistently and constantly evolving ways of professionalizing our teaching and facilitating practices and strategies. This has to be done while continuing to sound each other out in the process of learning from each other. This may temporarily create the meeting point between real and constructivist teaching.

A Select Bibliography
Freire, Paulo, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, 1970.
http://www.english-test.net
Illich, Ivan , Deschooling Society, 1971.
Rampal, Anitha, Democracy and Education in India, Radiant Publishers, New Delhi, 1993.
Sahi, Jane , Education and Peace, Other India , 2000
The Book of Genesis, The Bible, New King James Version.
The Gospel of Luke, The Bible, NKJV.
Thomas, Dylan M, 18 Poems, 1934

Please comment if you can.

Derrida's article I was talking of :

This article by Derrida is one hell of a piece of writing. It transcends its meaning, hence there's a huge x over it. It's definitely crossed over/out. A perfect example of theory and practice becoming inseparable like content and form in modernist times.

"For the god of writing is also the god of death. He will punish the imprudent who, in their quest for unlimited knowledge, end up drinking the dissolved book.…To drink the tear and wonder about the strangeness of its taste compared to one's own…" Jean-Marie Benoist, The Geometry of the Metaphysical Poets .

Derrida.

To have a friend: to keep him. To follow him with your eyes. Still to see him when he is no longer there and to try to know, listen to, or read him when you know that you will see him no longer—and that is to cry. To have a friend, to look at him, to follow him with your eyes, to admire him in friendship, is to know in a more intense way, already injured, always insistent, and more and more unforgettable, that one of the two of you will inevitably see the other die. One of us, each says to himself, the day will come when one of the two of us will see himself no longer seeing the other and so will carry the other within him a while longer, his eyes following without seeing, the world suspended by some unique tear, each time unique, through which everything from then on, through which the world itself—and this day will come—will come to be reflected quivering, reflecting disappearance itself: the world, the whole world, the world itself, for death takes from us not only some particular life within the world, some moment that belongs to us, but, each time, without limit, someone through whom the world, and first of all our own world, will have opened up in a both finite and infinite—mortally infinite—way. That is the blurred and transparent testimony borne by this tear, this small, infinitely small, tear, which the mourning of friends passes through and endures even before death, and always singularly so, always irreplaceably. Jean-Marie Benoist, with whom I shared, among so many other things, a veneration for John Donne, will have spoken so well of what he called, twenty years ago, “the geometry of the metaphysical poets,” and of this tear of the world, of world, this world-tear in A Valediction: Of Weeping: A globe, yea world, by that impression grow, Till thy tears mix'd with mine do overflow This world, by waters sent from thee, my heavens dissolveéd so. Then there comes a time, in the course of a generation, the gravity of which becomes for some, myself among them today, more and more palpable, when you reach an age, if you will, where more and more friends leave you, oftentimes younger than you, sometimes as young as a son or daughter. My admiration, as well as my affection, for Jean-Marie has in fact resembled, for close to a quarter of a century now, that of an older brother who finds himself astonished, and more and more so, though always in a somewhat tender way, by the audacity of thought, the growing force, the justified self-confidence of someone whom he first knew, precisely, with the still tender traits of a very young thinker, but one already sharp, rigorous, ironic, iconoclastic, unsubmissive, covetous above all else of his freedom, his audacity, and his daring. During our first encounters at the Ecole Normale in 1964, I remember having felt some perplexity, along with a sort of irritated concern. But a certain complicity brought us closer together very quickly through our work and our reading, a joyful and confident complicity to which I owe a great deal: it reassured me at a time when I needed it, and it was to do so for years with a constancy for which I will always be grateful, the sort of warm fidelity without which things have little meaning. I like to say “complicity” because often, in the beginning, between 1968 and 1975, a deep agreement (I mean in our philosophical thought and interests) sometimes took on the air of an alliance in a symbolical conspiracy in the midst of the culture of the time. And I liked a lot, indeed I never stopped liking, the mischievous eye, the devilish grin in the middle of that somewhat childlike face, the sometimes biting irony, the polemical verve of Jean-Marie. I will not speak here of his work, or, I should also say, of his action, of all that is most readily accessible, public, and known: always intelligent and courageous, this work in action was a constant engagement with the philosophical, political, and religious debates of the times. A provocative engagement, sometimes ahead of the times, the conviction of an enlightened avant-gardist, of someone sent out ahead to enlighten us—and I mean this in the sense of the Enlightenment and of his dear Montesquieu. (It was particularly that beacon entitled Marx est mort—in 1970!—that, in spite of my agreement with the essence of the “theses,” an agreement that he invoked in advance, caused me to have some reservations, which I still have today—why conceal it?—concerning the effects sought after, the strategy, the connotations, or, so to speak, the “pragmatics” of the judgment, and these reservations, to which he was sensitive and which he judged, I think, with some severity, had silently begun to separate us, though even when they became more pronounced they never compromised the friendship I have mentioned.) He had an acute sense of the tremors that transform the landscape of history and the ground of thought. (I am thinking here of his very first articles, which announced an entire trajectory, “Towards an International Social Contract,” and “Marcuse, an Aufklärer against Enlightenment,” and then of the two beautiful books that followed in 1975, Tyrannie du logos and The Structural Revolution, which we must read again and again; you will notice, as I have, how well they have held up over time, resisting the various fashions of the day.) I wish instead to turn today to the “golden years,” those I quietly lament and that are less visibly public: the numerous visits in London at the French Institute or in Oxford when I would come for lectures, the wonderful hospitality of Jean-Marie and Nathalie, everything that happens between friends around an ambassador of culture who is open, intelligent, joyous, inventive, incisive (Jean-Marie Benoist was exemplary in these ways as well), the meetings, the discussions, the “parties,” the nighttime jaunts through the city. I am presently rereading all the letters from that period, and there are many of them (several spoke of his work in progress, of great books promised on The proper of man and the English metaphysical poets—promised and given through other books and under other titles), and since that time I've always kept on one of my shelves a strange and precious object, something more than precious, in truth, a priceless sign signed by his hand (his large and beautiful black handwriting, high, angular, quick, at once impatient and perfect): a white box on the bottom of which is written “This is not a pipe,” and then, right below, the word “is” under erasure with an x through it: “this is a pipe.” One day (and this is part of a long story) I had confided to Jean-Marie what a certain gift meant to me, a square pipe given to me by my father shortly before his death. This pipe, which stood upright on its bowl when I put it down on the table to write, had been lost many times, found again, broken, repaired—and one day forgotten in London, in the Benoists' living room. Having repatriated it after receiving my telegram, Jean-Marie himself in turn forgot to bring it when he came to visit me on the rue d'Ulm, so he then sent it to me through the mail, recalling, at the bottom of the box, that no, really, between us, and how right he was, this given thing, though it was also one, would not have been a pipe. I can feel that by writing with a certain tone, and by privileging some memories rather than others, I am letting myself be invaded tonight, at this hour, by English signs: English because I was so happy during our meetings in London (probably more than in Paris, which I blame in the end—blaming myself first of all, of course—when I think that it was things still much too “Parisian,” that is, too provincial, what might appear to be ideologico-political divisions but are, in fact, little more than petty infighting, things that did not concern us, that should not have concerned either him or me, parochial tempests, that ended up “clouding” our relationship; I blame myself for this more than ever today, and for having taken these things much more seriously than they deserved to be, as if death were not keeping watch, as if we were not supposed to see it coming; but I always knew—and I blame myself today for not having told him this—that these clouds left intact in me what they seemed to conceal of my friendship; and even when we had, as we say, lost sight of one another, I remained fascinated at a distance by the grand gestures of this hell of a man, even if I sometimes mumbled to myself); English too because I felt how much England had marked his thinking, about politics in particular; English, finally, because of certain literary passions, as I have said, that I shared with him, and that probably went beyond literature, toward what he called, once again in The Geometry of the Metaphysical Poets, “proper names in shreds,” or “the discourse on shadows,” and, particularly, “anamorphosis and the tear.” Yes, we must read and reread what Jean-Marie Benoist has left us. I will do so again, but for the moment, between confiding and thinking, which are never totally foreign to one another, I am trying to discern what he will have let us glimpse about tears: through tears. He does not teach us that we must not cry; he reminds us that we must not taste a tear: “The act of tasting the tear is a desire to reannex the other”; one must not “drink the tear and wonder about the strangeness of its taste compared to one's own.” Therefore: not to cry over oneself. (But does one ever do this? Does one ever do anything but this? That is the question that quivers in every tear, deploration or imploration itself.) One should not develop a taste for mourning, and yet mourn we must. We must, but we must not like it—mourning, that is, mourning itself, if such a thing exists: not to like or love through one's own tear but only through the other, and every tear is from the other, the friend, the living, as long as we ourselves are living, reminding us, in holding life, to hold on to it.

He came to this kind of writing after an ardous search which went through the complexity of "Of Grammatology/ie(?)". Some may find even this kind of writing too complex because the sentences are too long. It is impossible to inscribe complexity , as far as I know, in simple subject- verb-object sentences.

Why for me Derrida the writer is under a sign of erasure

You have to read his article on Benoist to get it.

The essay's last part/ Title : A tesseract on the democratization of the teaching of English language and literature in India

The realist position.

I teach a syllabus with prescribed textbooks; and a written exam the students have to take, at the end of the year, by which their "performance" will be assessed. At the parent-teacher conferences and some of the staff meetings and through feedback I have received from some of the more voluble students I have come to realise that for most parents, for the majority of (Western/national) universities and for ninety-nine percent of the students what "really" matters is grades. There is also a "vast" syllabus to "finish off" with only limited time to do it in. Added to these issues is the cumbersome paperwork connected to the Western idea of documentation which has its plus and minus points, if looked at objectively. These are the constraints that I work in. I can also call them factors securing/offering security to the students, teachers, parents and school managements. Structure is, after all, necessary. However, the studies done on this kind of a partially closed system leads to conclusions like the ones drawn by Anita Rampal , the remedies suggested always including the same objective of freeing children from the very strictures that it seems impossible to get rid of. As for the children themselves, while the constraints irk them they also impart a certain sense of safety to them because of their strongly felt need for a "clear" structure.Can constructivism provide the balance? One would have to give a double-edged answer, i.e; yes and no. Two schools of thought - one, that believes in subverting the system gradually and the other that thinks of just getting rid of it lock, stock and barrel and ushering in the new in a revolutionay coup d'etat are both theories that yield mixed results in actual application. Facilitators who have moved through the three positions - I mean, including the traditionalist one (i.e; keep things as they are and make them function to peak levels in efficiency-) will understand what the present writer means. Another school opines "give the students what they want".

The absence of a cut and dried solution is our strength. As long as reflection and review goes on of the entire pedagogical process and things are in a flux there will be a vibrancy to our attempts to better quality education . It will ensure that we see ourselves as learners first and foremost rather than as all-knowing eduactors , keeping us on our toes.

Solutions that raise more questions than answers.

When we think of major educators and thinkers India has had in the recent past like Gandhi with his metaphor of the gardener and the plant, Nehru, B.R. Ambedkar, Rabindranath Tagore and J. Krishnamurti and of the democratization of education , an issue that was felt to be of the utmost importance by all the above mentioned giants - and we also think of the topic at the personalised level of one's own professional practice ; it seems obvious that one has to work on two fronts. One front has to be broad, group activity that would include revamping the curriculum and the syllabus including the textbooks.
The other front would be narrow , considering how to apply these things at the miniscule levels of giving attention to individual students and the groups that we call a 'class' at present.

As far as English - an international link language that is also the language of technology and one of the nation's own languages- is concerned its democratization in the overall curriculum has to include ceratin new drives in framing the curriculum. I shall concern myself more with the syllabus.
Suggestions could be listed thus: a) the students should be consulted as to what they think their needs are and then the drafts can go into the written form.
b) The syllabus must offer the freedom to the teacher to teach in more than one language if it fetches results. This applies especially to ESL . This would be an option and not a must.
c) The rewriting of textbooks that such a directive would result in must be rigorously tested for quality and their abilty to interest ALL the learners.
d) Where literature is concerned the choice of texts must include an international work of repute - in translation -, a work from Britain in English, a work from Indian literature and a local/regioanl work - both again in translation, if need be.)
e) Another option would be choosing short pieces making the coursework light on the students but taking into consideration different genres and forms and including different ideologies and cultures. A syllabus like this would teach a short story, an essay , a drama - preferably, a short one-act play, a novel(a novellette would do just as well) , an essay (personal or dealing with critical theory, theory or criticism) to be taught over a period of two years. The learning objectives would be limited to thinking, speaking, presenting, listening, writing and reading by whichiI mean literary and semantic appreciation.
f.Asessment would be entirely revamped. While grades and marks would need to be retained for the sake of the "system" the emphasis would be on thinking skills, creativity, innovativeness, effort , presenting, listening and writing skills collectively. Critical analysis would be as important as producing creative output with both being wighted equally.
g. The output of another of the language-oriented papers beisdes teaching language and literature w/ should be aimed towards vocational use somewhere down the line so that teaching skills like writing CV's etc, i.e; introducing subjects like fucntional, communicative English would be a plus. This would take skills like translation, medical,legal and other kinds of transcription, technical writing,business English, creative writing, televisual presentation, news readers, copy writing, script writing, reporting for journalisms -radio,TV, film, print,web - editing, making publisher's choices, criticism, reviewing, research and scholarship and other job oriented vectors of language use into consideration

This list could go on but space doesn't permit it.

Practical application.

The real challenge for the facilitator is in the "class". It is possible to come to an assessment of a student which is accurate and easy to help him/her in such a way that s/he doesn't slip back
but true democratization would include the satisfying result that the student/each student actually improves in his skills over the period of time that he/she works with you. This is the real challenge. He should not go away feeling that he was taught well but , more important, there should be a clear difference brought about in his ability to learn and do. His potential to be a 'mover' must be tapped and maximised. This is an area fraught with possibilities and I feel the answer lies in allowing contemporaneity - i.e. working with what the student knows and is interested in, and the latest advances of technology adapted inovatively to meet the present situation to mesh with the latest teaching techniques is the way forward. This, along with the radicalization that could be brought in by ensuring greater student participation in "all " the activities the teacher considers his forte at present, is a possible solution.

Concretely speaking, what this means is discussing with students the choice of textbooks, self-assessment and peer group evaluations, sharing of lesson objectives and everything else with students who would be interested in knowing of the documentation process of the teacher, self-and group-teaching by the students and adapting the possibilities of technology in an innovative way to situational and contemporaneous needs of learning. The tech must be simple, low cost and environment friendly. Alternates should be kept readily be available, in case of one method not working, in the same way the teacher goes into a class with two or three options at least.

Examples: In my class while teaching poetry I took some students over to the computer lab and showed them a few hypertext poems and hypertext fictions and this set them thinking about the difference in the forms of poetry and fiction when it is 'written' down and 'programmed' in. They became aware, to some extent, of concepts like interactivity. hyperlinks and lexias/emes and consequently of the complicated changes occurring historically in the two above mentioned forms without my having to bring in the academic jargon connected to such modifications which might have only ended up confusing them in the beginning.

In ESL at least immersion and the dual language format has to be employed simultaneously and the stress has to be on simple performance related objectives rather than mastery . This is common sense and not very novel but a few things can also be taken from the antiquated systems wherever essential.

I am unable to say everything that has to be said on all these topics due to the word limit and all that has been said has not been comprehensive .But all of it can definitely be used as pointers to start meaningful discussions in the hope that they will lead to reification of strategies of learning and facilitation, for steady improvement to occur .

The great king and patron of arts of Travancore, Swathi Thirunal, was made to say by the script- writer, in a film about him, that we should start English schools in India because " We will conquer the language that is conquering the world." The sentence gripped my imagination . Fifty eight years after independance I can say that we Indians /I / many of our students have indeed conquered the language that is still conquering the world, even to the extent that we are producing writers in it that rival the best anywhere. But the price many of us have paid is less facility in our own languages. The democratization of English and the teaching of literature in this beautiful language has therefore to concentrate primarily on the objectives of ensuring that Englishes (SMS english, chat English, English in Kerala, English theory jargon) are encouraged as much as British English and that this is not done at the cost of other languages or of quality. Literary appreciation has to deal objectively with real-life students and actual situations in a graphic and interesting way so that true democratization takes place whereby all the students are enthused to love languages and its infinite possibilies and go away considering the learning of Language to be a " poetic experience"that ignites their love for the logos and the mythos in a teleological way, as in the parable of the sower and the seed so that the memory of it will be one of progressive instruction and mastery gained by delight as Horace wanted it to be and as Edenic as life's first learning experiences were and are. The only war we faciltators need to constantly wage, therefore, is one whereby there is a ceaseless effort to keep closing the gap between our notion of perfection and our consistently and constantly evolving practice.


By the way I removed the journalspace section so please don't click on it.





Tha's it folks. Now to edit and make it 2000 words. Wishing you all luck.

please read http://msn-cnet.com.com/Blogging+101--Web+logs+go+to+school/2100-1032_3-5895779.html?part=msn-cnet&subj=ns_3-5895779&tag=netcal

What would be a good title for this essay?

I'm unable to copy and post from MSWord doc to here. Damn. Anybody know the way to do it, please tell me.

I've already gone way past 2000 words, so this will need a hatchet.

Meanwhile, if you want to read my "work in progress" go here
http://papermoon.journalspace.com

If you can't go in just create a blog for yourself on journalspace; it's free, and look for the "papermoon" blog

The Essay - 3

What should concern prospective professional educators/teachers/ facilitators/ mediators/ gurus(experts/masters) and education theorists is, however, not just the definitions and the points of origin or the goals and aims of education, but the process itself. It is the process that needs to be monitored because it is the part of education that has had least light cast upon it from the detached and metacognitive perspective of thinkers and practitioners who critique and analyse what happens in education. They pay attention to precedents and antecedents, and study whether the new systems put in place of the old have met their objectives and have measurable outcomes that can be quantified as to whether they are more effective than what came before. While this might seem 'simplistic' generalization to some, and indeed it no doubt is if looked at from a positivist point of view, it is written with this end in mind that , to put it 'simply', no amount of attention paid to the process of education can be too little if education is to constantly improve.

The Essay (continued)

The simplest meanings of the words 'science' and 'education' , even after taking into consideration their etymological roots, are as follows:
Science: System of knowledge gained by systematic research and organized into general laws ; specific field of systematic knowledge; skill; proficiency
Education: Learning, instruction, imparting of knowledge, upbringing.
http://www.english-test.net/toeic/vocabulary/meanings/249/toeic-words.php#phpeducation
If science is basically - about - skill and proficiency all of us ought to be or are scientists to some extent. In the same way, all of us are 'partial' educators.

Stroke of luck and continuing frustration

Today I got into our discussion board and read some of the posts before I began getting the usual response of gateway error, server response unauthenticated etc. I am a bit frustrated because I'm unable to post either on the discussion board or on the ppseblog although I tried following Tara's directions. Guess tech has its flip side.


I want to play this by the rules of the game so I am going to stick to the 2000 word limit.

My essay starts like this.
First paragraph.

Horace's dictum that poetry should delight and instruct is where this tesseract would like to start drawing its lines from. If the word 'poetry' is replaced by the word' education', nothing would be lost. Education has to delight and instruction that comes through delight stays with the instructor and the instructed. Delight is one of the root meanings of the word Eden. In the evenings, an unlikely time for 'classes' to be held , the Maker (Vates/Poet) "came down" to have fellowship with mankind in the garden, an unlikely place for 'teaching', and asked him/her/them to give names to all the animals and spent instructive hours that were a delight/Paradise to the participants. Life can be paradise when it is a constant process of education where delight and instruction revolve around each other and are one in a constant harmony that forms a circle whereby instruction is passed on through delight and the delight its mastery gives leads to the desire for more instruction, till gradually the mediator of instruction recedes into the background so that the receptacle can become the new mediator in his/her turn. The father gives way to the son, the mother makes way for the daughter and the teacher gives pride of place to the student . The whole family of mankind yields to the next generation.

Just like starting over....

DoD, ABA workshop, PTC's, IGCSE Seminar ...... the rains
Now I hope to finally start on my first draft. Skeleton.
Define education briefly.
Then go onto teaching,facilitating...
Banking theory
Deschooling society
Unstructured learning
Structured learning of various kinds
Acontextual learning
Multiple intelligences and cognitive psychology
When does learning really happen
Constructivism - Anita Rampal's definition

Teaching in india
Teaching in our school, i.e. my teaching practice and the concept of professionalism

The idea that there were alternate schools of thought that were allowed to die out because of whatever reasons

Multifacetedness

The straitjacket of the syllabus
The focus the syllabus offers
Time
Discipline
The assessment system - flaws and strengths
The nexus of relationships - teachers- parents- management -students and the larger scenario like future demands, staying up to date , innovation, originality, creativity, a healthy balance etc...

Cost efficiency,
technology,
environment friendly,

political incorrectness ...

Rural india
Urban poor
Aditi kids and their purpose.....
Sensitizing and conscientizing them to pay it forward....

Reading done.

I have read all four essays.
They are all worth perusing. But I am sticking to my choice of Anita Rampal's essay on democratizing the teaching of science inthe Indian social context. This is because, as Miss kini says on the discussion board I'm unable to post on as yet, the essay lends itself to other applications as well.

Essay

Essay = assay to write something on any topic.
I read Anita Rampal's essay. One of her essays. On how to teach science in the Indian context.
What is education?
To instruct through delight is one of the definitions that comes to my mind because of my literary background. But a student actually told me " Be like Hitler, that's the only thing that works with our class." Eye - opening, isn't it? And their need for high grades for admissions to universities is quite amazing because it shows that they are focused in what they want.

Web tools in the use of teaching

SinceShuchi's assignment remains but the link hasn't appeared yet, I thought I'll kick off the discussion here.
Starting by just listing web tools that can be used for teaching.

Email. This includes individual mail, group mail, replying, forwarding and replying to all options. Email also offers attachments facility so text, data and pics of a limited- now expanding since the arrival of Gmail - quantity of bytes can be sent along with it.

Chat messengers = Like Yahoo and MSN.
allows for real time conversations and enables group conversations too. with webcam and mics even video conferencing can be set up on chat messengers.
Chat rooms for specific topics can be set up.
Linking up with others through chat who are also interested in the topic of study is also sometimes possible in the common chat rooms.

Search engines : resource and info etc. data banks.

Blogs

Groups like the ones offered by MSN and Yahoo

Threaded discussion boards.

Radio and TV stations that can be set up by oneself - This is a very exciting option i want to explore.

Websites and webpages like the ones offered for free by Bravenet or Yahoo Geocities.

Software like Powerpoint is not mentioned because I do not consider tham webtools. They are computer tools.

I have, together with two students , created my/our first educational blog and it's coming along in a nice way. I don't want to open it to the public but I would like all of you take a look at it an tell me what you think of it. And I can't do that without opening it up to the public :( Any ideas?
By the way Bala's work is stunning. one day I hope my students will come out with written things that have as much power. I mean students here in Aditi.

The next assignment

I want my blog to flow in every direction. I feel that what I wanted to say about the nature of the pedagogy used in Aditi wasn't said well enough by me because I haven't yet reflected deeply enough on it. WhatI want to say can be started this way. About four years ago I started a re-learning process regarding the use of the computer. My colleagues were using blackboard and chalk and handouts of notes that were photostatted. I felt the need update myself on what was happening in the world of technology so that I could think about how to use it in present day education. So I hit the net! It was an electrifying experience. Without being aware of what others around the world were doing I surfed freely and found out the myriad possibilities of the world wide web. Starting from the most commonly used interfaces of communication like email and its variations to really complex possibilities of expression and communication available on the net, I ranged freely around its bourne enjoying everything there. It had a fallout effect in the sense that I suddenly felt a gap between me and my colleagues becasue I wanted to bring in this technology into the classroom and they were petrified by understandable fears like are we too old to learn it , it's just a new-fangled innovation etc. Kerala has good , even excellent, teachers but their methodology is outmoded. I belong to that background. So when I came here to Aditi and Tara Kini's classes went on, my mind exploded with the same re-cognition that had happened to me when I started serious surfing for new ways to transfer information etc.
I realised that a teaching revolution had occurred in the world that I was not part of, that I knew nothing about. At the same time I felt at ease in the new dispensation because the thoughts were all familiar to me as my thoughts on teaching while I had sat alone and thought on these things in Trivandrum. What I had thought of they were already doing and had been doing for years here. The thought was both humbling and exciting. When I started blogging one of the first things that came to me back in TVM was how blogging could help my P.G students and what a pity it was I couldn't make them do it because of financial constraints. So when I came here and got the opportunity to start my own blog it was both self-confirming and exhilarating.
To come to the main point. I am now interested i ntrying to delineate for myself what this system of pedagogy is all about. What is the underlying philosophy? Constructivism? I have started reading Anita Rampal's essay on the Science curriculum and it has a good definition of constructivism in it. Piaget and cognitive psychologists are involved , yes, I know. Modern experiments in pedagogy are implicated too. But what is the structure?
In the next blog I hope to put in Anita Rampal's defintion of constructivism. I am reading the four essays and deciding which one to choose for my next assignment.
I want to write something clear, simple and fresh without compromising on the guidelines given.
Maybe I could start with a definition of education? I think I will use Tagore and Jesus a lot. Not sure. This is good , the mental cogs have started spinning -----
And thanks a lot, all of you for leaving such encouraging comments for me to read on the blog .
I want to acknowledge here that all of you have taught me more than you think and I can hope to give back.

I thought I'll reflect a bit on what has happened to me after coming to Aditi. First came the Mapping/ Evolving Professional Practice Course which was a real good orientation programme and helped induct me into the school system and aslo to the idea that we are professionals and need to know about pedagogy. I am learning. as a result of that course, to write tight lesson plans and have aslo learned how to write annual plans and unit plans. I also met wonderful teachers, primarily Tara Kini, Shuchi, Arundhati Raja, my seven "new" colleagues whom I really admire and many others like Nalini, Jyotsna,Satish, Aruna, Suravi, Anjana, Sneha, Vandana, Kalpana - too many to name in fact. I picked up many new techniques like mind mapping procedures, using planners and organisers etc. A video I watched on how to use time in Blocks was really entertaining and instructive. Moving forward into actual practice after that was therefore not so daunting . But I soon found out that theory and practice are two different things. I wanted to go in with the Learning is Fun approach. But my kids soon clipped my wings. They were more into exams and grades!!! I was a bit surprised I must admit. It used to be a little different in my days, if I remember correctly. Our problem with our teachers was that we thought they were too exams and marks centred and never seemed to realise that there were skills and attitudes outside the syllabus that were as relevant as what we were doing "in class." I guess the grass is always greener on the other side. anyway, always! Then came the PPSE course. Its use of web tools and the six hats exercise plus Tara's content-context mindbender and GN's inspirational talk on teaching with its unforgettable diagram , the essays and assignments given to us so far for reading and doing have all made a deep impact on me. Surprisingly the effect has been one of awakening to a fierce sense of competition in me. I find that I want to be the best and get a string of AAAAAA's !!!!!! As a teacher and a student. Facilitator, pedagogue, professional practitioner , educator - whatever word we use - guide, guru, mentor, friend and philosopher - I suddenly feel once again the drive I had when I was a research student. "To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield,/ To follow knowledge like a sinking star beyond the uttermost bound of human thought" to echo Tennyson's Ulysses's famous lines. Meanwhile i've also come across a simple fact -teachers out here in Aditi are definitely much better than where I come from ( and that includes me) and I need to be aware of this and learn from them before launching out on finding my own style of teaching as for as education in schools is concerned. I now want to read the essays by Anita Rampal and the other essays given to me by Tara and also read stuff by Gandhi, Krishnamurthy (J.K.), Tagore and also take a look at Paulo Freire and Ivan Illyich. Pedagogy of the Opressed and Deschooling Society are two books I always wanted to read but never got around to. Maybe now I can. I have started on Krishnamurthy's Education and the Significance of Life. It is slow going. But in the end it will be rewarding, I have no doubt about that.

The threaded discussion board was a good experience, as was writng down my timeline. In the company of people with deep, wide and varied experiences like Amarnathan sir, Srinivasan, Maheshwaran , Bala, Raji , Sandra, Gudrun, Geeta, Parbati, Joel, Gulab, Neela, Anu,Vijaya, Uday and indeed all my colleagues who form the 21 who are now taking the PPSE course plus new professional friends I'm making like Beena Babu and Vasu sir etc. - too many names and not enough names !!!! - so don't mind if i didn't mention your name - I am blossoming.

So there is generally a good feel regarding my profession in me these days. Let's see where all this goes. The tough thing is to be simple like Socrates could be in his dialogues and compassionate like Buddha or pure like Jesus in one's relationship with one's students while also being explosive in triggering of learning and interest and potential in them like some post-modern thinkers have made me explode in the realm of literary and critical theory............

The voyage is heady , anyway........... :)

Snippets

I've fiinished the basic minimum requirement for the assignments.
So taking a break . Time for some lighter moments.

A nice site to visit

Internet Humour:
The Great Game
The environment that nurtures creative programmers kills management and marketing types - and vice versa.
Programming is the Great Game. It consumes you, body and soul. When you're caught up in it, nothing else matters. When you emerge into daylight, you might well discover that you're a hundred pounds overweight, your underwear is older than the average first grader, and judging from the number of pizza boxes lying around, it must be spring already. But you don't care, because your program runs, and the code is fast and clever and tight.
You won.
You're aware that some people think you're a nerd. So what? They're not players. They've never jousted with Windows or gone hand to hand with DOS. To them C++ is a decent grade, almost a B - not a language. They barely exist. Like soldiers or artists, you don't care about the opinions of civilians. You're building something intricate and fine. They'll never understand it.

I think I'm a programmer!!!!!

The picture is from the Lord of the Rings scrapbook , look closely at the background ,you'll love the detailing. (http://img-nex.theonering.net/images/scrapbook/orig/12631_orig.jpg)

Aditi - the present.

So we come to the last phase - Juggling as a metaphor for teaching - personal commitments - school and teaching/learning processes - finding the answer to problems and solutions. Suddenly I am a learner once again.

I find a most interesting development occurring. My learning skills have suddenly blossomed again but it seems to be affecting my teaching skills............ !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I know it's temporary.

I love this uncertainty. Challenge. How to come out on top of this and every other new challenge that's ever gonna be thrown at me by life as its way of getting me to excel.

The game is for winning. As is the dame:) LOL.

End of timeline exercise. Summing up.
1985- 1993: teaching my friends in college unofficially
1993: teaching as a researcher
1994-1995: teaching in tutorial colleges
1995 - 2005: teaching in a Private, Govt. aided, NAAC accredited college under Kerala Univ.
1995-2005: Teaching as resource person for refresher courses for teachers and also conducting vivas for P.G students, guiding research projects officially and 'unofficially' for P.G. and M.Phil.

To sum up: Contexts are fluid, whichever way you look at it but content in the case of working with prescribed syllabuses is more or less fixed. The battle I'm now into is how to master the new demand of the context of teaching plus two students and high school students in a way palatable to them so that they pass the exam and get good grades etc without compromising on my inner drive to awaken them to see that there is something more to learning than basics like getting through an exam or getting good grades. In brief the content should be how they can be inspired to ask the "right" questions and find creative, original, innovative and deep solutions . And the context: Well , they need to know that there are concentric circles of contexts and each matters in its own way. The teacher has to creat contexts and not just know them.


Colour coding used: blue for theorizing, red for quotes and white for reminiscing.

News: I have started my first educational blog. Wish me luck!!!