Viswanathan K's Thoughts

Poetry in those school going years. I was never a fan of it, to put it mildly. When most kids struggle with the language (English, or Hindi for non-Hindi speakers), why add a format that is not used in daily life?   In India, we make things even worse on this front. Take English where the books will have poems by Keats, Wordsworth, Dickenson, Frost and Blake. They may be great poets, but a lot of their poem involve direct or indirect contextual references to England. Like seasons that don’t exist in India. An example of this is etched in my memory. One of my cousins had this to say on the famous poem, Daffodils - What on earth is a daffodil, he vented? That was the pre-Internet era where one couldn’t whip up a photo or video of the daffodil. If kids didn’t even get what was the object in question was, how could the poem possibly make any sense?     Poetry is often about reflections and life experiences, personification and memories, nostalgia and parallels. All a...

Admission tests for new kids at my 13 yo daughter’s school are held in a way where the existing and prospective kids can see each other, even talk to each other (if they want to). The parents of the prospective kid can walk round the school, and check out the facilities after the test.   The existing kids have this tendency to evaluate the prospective kids for their “worthiness” – could they be members of their gang, should they be selected. Unsurprisingly, all new kids will be dismissed as un-cool, ugly or stupid and totally unworthy of joining the exalted ranks of the Cool Gang.   Recently, there was this fat girl who took this entrance test. After the test, as her parents went round the school, they spoke to the Sports teacher and said that the girl played basketball. One of the Cool Gang smirked, “ She plays basketball? Does she play the role of the ball ?”. To which another responded, “She’s a size 20, we only use size 7 balls here”. Uproarious laughter ensued. O...

The English teacher in my 11 yo daughter’s new school decided to play a game. “I’ll tell the first line of a story, and then we’ll go round the class. Each student should add one (and only one) line to the story”.   The teacher started with, “As I lay asleep at night, I heard a loud bang.” The first kid promptly responded, “I don’t know how to continue, m’am”. Really? Already? Minus one .   Thankfully, the next kid had seen plenty of TV. “I got out of bed to check what had caused the noise.” Good . “I saw there were burglars with guns.” Next . “I went back and got back my nerve gun.” Continue . “I then realized the burglars were in the neighbor’s house, not mine”. What?! The teacher accepted this outrageous line, probably because it added a कहानी में twist… The tale continued its way across the class. Abruptly, one kid decided to end it all, “Then I died”, he announced. The end.   Sometimes, a bad ending can ruin a great story or movie. In this case, it m...

Based on my 11 yo daughter’s ICSE books, I feel they are far better for learning than the CBSE ones I grew up on. The science books, for one, will describe easy-to-understand experiments to prove various concepts. I guess this model works, because I find my daughter will have (surprisingly sensible) queries on some of those experiments.   ~~ Like the Chemistry chapter on the states of matter. To prove gases can be compressed, it asked to take a toy injection. Seal the nozzle, it said. There’s still some air in the injection. Press the plunger down next, it said. Since the plunger went down and the air had nowhere to go, it proves that the air must have gotten compressed, it concluded.   The same chapter had a less satisfactory experiment to prove that gases occupy space. Invert a glass into a trough of water, it said. The water rises up into the glass, but only up to a point. Why only till that point? Because the air above it occupies space (and prevents the water fr...

Last year, we changed schools for our then-10 yo daughter because it felt like she was taking studies too lightly… and the old school allowed her to. The new school was one that cared about academics. A lot . So much so that while they are a CBSE school, they taught based on ICSE books till the board classes… since the ICSE curriculum is much tougher.   If there was any doubt on joining the school, it was removed by a brief interaction during the online interview (those were still COVID days). When the principal wished her good morning, my daughter replied, “Good morning”. The principal said, “Good morning what?”. My daughter was zapped, so the principal told her the answer, “Good morning, m’am ”. Academic rigor and discipline – just what the doctor had ordered for my daughter.   After one round of a test and exam cycle each, I saw some patterns: The focus was heavily on maths and science. Application oriented. In Geography, for example, the exam cited the longitudes...

As the come-to-school count of students remained low, my 10 yo daughter’s school started combining the sections. Inevitably, the kids have an opinion on the move. Unsurprisingly, it’s not a positive one. My daughter, for example, attributes this change to a different reason: “My teachers are too lazy to come to our class, so she makes us lug our heavy bags around.” To which I responded: “Given how useless all of you are, you’ll all grow up to become coolies. Consider this as practice for that.” She wasn’t amused. On the other hand, combining sections means one might bump into old friends. One boy went up to his “childhood friend” (that means they knew each other in Nursery) with a hearty “Hey there!” and a thump on the back. The Childhood Friend looked at him weirdly and asked: “Who are you?” Ouch! Of course, my daughter found this humiliation hilarious.   But as Shah Rukh Khan said, “Picture  abhi   baaki hai, mere dost ” . Or we could tweak S...

My 10 yo daughter’s been going to school for a few weeks now. While the number of kids who come to school hasn’t changed, the folks who do send their kids have the same two reasons: The kid learns more in the classroom than online (I know, I know, that’s a relative term, but still…) They, er, put on weight sitting at home. The reasons above are not necessarily in order of importance. Take this kid in the class who periodically announces that he will stop coming from the next day because of the Omicron variant. The next day, he’s still there in the classroom. After this had happened a few times, I asked his parents whether they really planned to pull him out. His mother’s response? “No, he makes these ‘decisions’ by himself… In any case, if he stays at home, he will only put on weight.” The war against obesity is very important.   Kindness. Compassion. Caring. All alien concepts with kids at this age. Like the time my daughter got hurt and needed daily dressing changes....

My 10 yo daughter went back to school last week. After a year-and-a-half of COVID-19 imposed study-from-home regime. Some parents are still scared to send their kids; and the school bus isn’t operating either. As a result, in my daughter’s class, only 7-8 kids came this first week in a class of approx. 40.   Not surprisingly, kids have forgotten a lot of “school etiquette”. One girl, for example, sauntered into class without remembering to ask for permission from the teacher. Unabashed, she then glanced at the teacher and said (believe it or not), “Sup?”. Here’s how Urban Dictionary defines the term: “Sup is something cool people say. It can be used as a greeting. People say "sup" when they don't feel like saying “what’s up” because it's too long .” Upon which a boy reminded her, “Bro, you forgot the hand gesture that goes with ‘Sup’”. This happened in English class. Sup, bro. I can imagine the teacher frothing at the mouth…   Another time, between c...

Increasingly, I’ve begun to encounter those awkward moments when the school book says something wrong, the kid detects it and asks if that’s really true. I am stuck between a rock and a hard place. Do I lie, “Yes, the book’s right”? Or do I tell the truth and risk the kid: -           Ask why she needs to learn something that’s wrong? -           Abuse the one instance as grounds to not believe/learn everything else? Take these two recent examples. In the word meanings section, the word “wagged” was defined as “waved from side to side”. “That’s correct for a dog wagging its tail”, my daughter countered, “but if I wave my hand to say bye,   that’s not called wagging my hand, is it?”. Fortunately, that one got resolved easily because she seems to have a feel that English is a crazy language. The other instance involved poetry where the answer to the question as to how a butterfly ...

Kids who are very good at sports obviously need to spend most of their time practicing. That in turn leaves no time for studies. Parents of such kids therefore get them admitted to schools that promote sports because then the school will ensure that such kids pass the exams. I remember my mom talking about the “nudge” to pass Ajay Jadeja when she taught him (if that’s indeed the word for a student who rarely comes to class) at Sardar Patel Vidyalaya. Some teachers resent the situation. Others let it go. Yet others feel it’s a necessary stance to take if we want to encourage kids to look at sports as a career option. Of course, the kid in question knows the situation. And flaunts it. Andre Agassi, in his awesome autobiography titled Open , admits just that from his stint at a hostel-like tennis academy owned by the then famous Nick Bollettieri, an academy that also provided schooling: “The teachers know that their jobs depend on Nick, so they can’t flunk us, and we cherish o...

The other day, my wife woke up sick and so the job of preparing the kid’s snack and lunch (they have a separate break for each) for school fell on me. My daughter didn’t believe I could prepare any thing, even though the plan was to just make a sandwich! If you replace “frozen waffles” with “Maggi” in the strip below, you’ll get exactly how our exchange went: Like all men who can’t cook, I told her that she should consider it a privilege that the Great Master Chef was preparing her lunch that day. And that I would be throwing in a (readymade) cake piece for her snack. Now her school is quite particular about the “no junk food” policy, and so she got hauled up that day. As instructed, she told her teachers that her mom was sick and that’s why she had brought junk food for lunch that day. Obviously, the teacher had to let it go (what else could she do, starve the kid?). But then, in passing, the teacher told the other teacher, “See, every time a kid brings junk food, she’ll say...

The old saying “Think Before You Speak” has long been replaced with its digital age equivalent, “Google Before You Tweet”. Continuing with that line of thought, CS Krishnamurthy wrote this article advocating the use of blogs in schools as a way to teach writing, to encourage “individual participation in the marketplace of ideas”. One of the advantages? “Typically, when students write essays in school, their work is mostly read by their teachers. Students spend hours together on Shakespeare, wars and history only to find one single person evaluate the end result. Blogging will help get a greater audience for every published piece.” Another reason: “Reading the blogs of their peers may spur the students to read, analyse and question more.” I doubt this would happen in our schools though because Internet access and computers/tablets are not going to be available in most schools. Ironically, even as Krishnamurthy recommends blogs, the digital world is already treating them ...

When Jeff Jarvis posted this pic below from a Texas school by Mark Simmons , he didn’t expect that the ensuing debate might well turn this pic into the Rorschach Test to identify if you are a Luddite or a geek ! If you’re wondering how, consider your reaction to the pic before reading on. Now take a look at some reactions to the pic, both from Jarvis’ article as well as the original Simmons’ pic. Jonathan Hébert said: “Real life interactions and physical activities would help more people instead of looking like zombies.” Jarvis himself: “New technologies bring new norms. The future is theirs, not ours.” Daniel Baker suggested: “Set up technology-free zones. When kids are outside they should be socializing and playing, not glued to a screen.” Paul Dickson had this to say: “They can have friends all over the world. Odds are, those might be a lot more interesting than the doofus in the next seat.” Some felt that this was: “Creating a generation of social misfit...

My soon-to-be-3 started school yesterday. She had been to play school for a year, but one never knows how a kid will react, so we weren’t sure what was going to happen. To our relief, she didn’t cry at all. In fact, the teacher told my wife that this one even told a few other kids who were crying, “Don’t cry. Mamma’s waiting outside”! A line she learnt from her play school days, no doubt. I was reminded of what my cousin’s wife said about kids starting at school: “They’ve just entered a very lo..ooong tunnel, one they will exit only when they are 18.” Of course, most kids grow to hate school. And teachers. And the education system. And soon enough they can fully relate to Pink Floyd’s lines: “We don't need no education. We don’t need no thought control… Hey! Teachers! Leave them kids alone! ” And pretty soon they feel that they are not being treated as individuals, and the schooling system’s belief seems to be: “All in all you're just another brick in the wal...

As we were returning from work, one of my colleagues was giving vent to his irritation with the kind of assignments his daughter is given at school: the kind that can only be done by parents. Looks like India has improved on a whole lot of thing since the time I was a kid, but (sigh) not on this front. But what was amusing about my friend’s ranting were the following “learnings” he listed for his daughter every time her parents did the assignment: -          Take credit for what others did, -          Lie if asked who made the stuff, -          Assignments will always be way beyond your abilities or skills or involve instruments your parents don’t want you to use (like scissors and knives). Sad to say but every one of us can say, “Been there, learnt that” about his list of learnings from our own childhood, can’t we? But I remember this one time when ...