This first-hand account is told by Dr. Joanne Arhar, EHHS Associate Dean for Student Services, Undergraduate Education. Along with eight other teacher education administrators from across the United States, Arhar attended a seminar in India sponsored by the United States Indian Education Foundation. The group visited the cities of Delhi, Chennai, and Kolkata. Within those cities, they visited universities, K-12 schools and non-governmental organizations with a focus on education and child welfare, and government officials responsible for setting policy on education. The goal of the seminar was to create better understanding of education policy and practice in India and to create future collaborations.
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What did you do over your summer vacation? That's the question we always hear this time of year. For me it was a trip of a lifetime.
While it will take me some time to reflect on this experience and what I have learned, there are some powerful images that are shaping my thoughts...
I visited an elementary school in a small village in southern India. English is the first language in all schools and universities so children learn their mother tongue at home and English in school. Children sat on the floor teaching one another to read and write in English and solve problems using mathematics while the teacher worked with individuals and small groups. Each child was progressing at his/her own rate. And at the end of the class, several children were ready to make their oral presentations while parents looked on with pride. The teaching methods were developed by Indian teachers to be child-centered and low-cost. And teachers visited other schools across the State to share what they knew about this approach. The end result is that small group, child-centered, performance oriented teaching and learning has spread to 37,000 schools in the state of Tamil Nadu within one year! They are looking for researchers from the US to collaborate with researchers in India to document this amazing transformation of education from children in rows with the teacher at the lead to children learning from other children.
The Indian legislature is about to vote on a law to ensure a place for 25% of students from lower castes to attend K-12 schools. We saw schools trying this out in various ways. At one private school seats were reserved for lower castes during the "second shift" after the regular school day ended. But a morning at a convent school in Kolkata created a different picture. The principal, a missionary from Ireland, integrated street children into the life of the school day. Each fifth grader spent several hours each week tutoring a street child in English. Street children were cared for in the evening - they were fed, clothed, and provided a place to sleep on floor mats in a large spacious classroom with open walls. And once a month the fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth graders took a school bus to a village school to tutor children who did not have access to a teacher who spoke English.
And then there was the morning at the orphanage started by Mother Theresa in Kolkata. Babies and young children... many with severe disabilities... were cared for by nuns, volunteers, and yes, American college students. A journalism major from Ohio University was finishing up a six week "internship" at the orphanage when I met her. She said she wanted to make a difference. Every day she took a one hour bus ride from her apartment she shared with other Americans to the orphanage where she cared for and tutored orphans from the streets of Kolkata. She said she had learned a great deal about resourcefulness and commitment and wanted to take those values back home with her.
We were all somber as our bus drove past the slums where these children had been abandoned. We smiled as we drove past rickshaws, families on motorcycles, and cows and elephants roaming down the streets on our way to Agra to visit the Taj Mahal. We were in awe at the music, and incense, and colorful clothing during a religious late night ceremony at the Ganges River and a military show at an Independence Day Ceremony. And felt incredibly welcomed and respected by the committed and dedicated educators and school children from the many schools we visited. While getting an education is viewed as the most important right of all Indian children, getting there is a struggle as over half of school aged children to do attend school. Yet there has been so much progress since Independence when even this was far from reality.
On my last day in India, I met a group of college students at the University of Delhi. During the class students were eager to talk to me about the American educational system and hoped that I would help to establish student exchanges. They would like to come here in the summer to study and hoped that American students would want to come to the University of Delhi. You will hear more from me later about those possibilities. Many students wanted to know about opportunities to study in graduate programs in our college and I hope this will happen. These college students believe they have much to learn from us. But what I have learned from this trip is that we have much to learn from India.
In our college, we have many opportunities for students to do international study. We want to provide more opportunities. Let your faculty and advisors know what your interests are.
