Day 105: Pandemic and us

Ajangaon, July 2020 07/07/2020 Day 105 This morning we went beyond the little hillock on which the road climbs up immediately, from the coffee point where we sit during rides. It is a short ramp, about a kilometer long. It then descends into an expansive flat land until the next low rise hill range in …

Art of Monstrous Men

The Paris Review ran a thought-provoking piece last month by Claire Dederer, who reflects upon What Do We Do with the Art of Monstrous Men?  set against the backdrop of series of allegations of sexual assault and misconduct by several famous men, who have also been exceptionally good at what they do for a profession. As Dederer …

Learning with Tanzanite Group

Today, we close our sociology classes for the academic year. The group of kids (13-14 year old) with whom I have shared classroom time over the year were introduced to ideas of society, groups, norms and rules, sociological perspectives and institutions in a society. This was meant to be an introductory course. In two sessions …

Understanding Children & Feeling Naked

Last week in school, two incidents forced me to think about what does one really know about a child's mind. A better question would be to ask what do we know about a child through his years of growing up, until an acceptable, complying adult is formed out of her by years of joint work …

Observations from parent-teacher meeting

Last week at Poorna, we had parent-teacher meeting (PTM) spanning over two days. I was looking forward to this since the current academic year began. I wanted to see and get to know the parents of the kids I was spending time with in sociology classes. At Poorna these meetings have an unhurried and informal …

Teaching – Year 3

This isn't how it was supposed to be! Two years of teaching sociology and economics to senior secondary students was to end this year. The students have graduated and most of them are looking forward to the university now. I thought I have had enough of those everyday realizations of my ineffectiveness in classroom and …

Freedom of a real education

It has been a month since I left my teaching job at school. Since, this move was to make more time for other things I was doing, instead of a sense of relief, a constant sense of loss has prevailed over the last several weeks as I finished classes and bid farewell to the kids …

What is alternative education?

A few weeks back, a university professor in course of a conversation asked what "alternative education" means. She hazarded a guess - that it is about educating those who are differently-able. I figured she was hard at work making sense of the word "alternative" beginning with the typical process of ascribing "mainstream" or perhaps "normal" …

The best blah blee of the country

"You are in the best *** school of the country" is the most frequent starting line in this university, when the key guys address their flock of sheep students (I am attending a university for a master degree in public policy. This is my second masters.). I wonder if boys and girls also use some …

Subject knowledge of teachers

There is a rare corner in the Indian media (print and broadcast) where concerns about various aspects of education system in India are being pursued. This space, I am glad to see, has  a significant presence of researchers and academicians from the university I attended. Over the past year, these articles have aided my work …