More than a child and more than childhood

For the children of the world; every single little boy and girl

Heaven plants a special seed; and we must have faith for these

Red and yellow, black and white; they are precious in the Father’s eyes

Like the Father may we see; that they have a destiny

And give them the light of love to lead; through the darkness around us now

To a place where hope is found…

-          Sims Grant Kirkpatrick

I always believed that my understanding of children started when I became the class teacher for grade 2 in a municipal school in Mumbai, but over the last five months and various visits to Sacred Heart Primary School I unlearned and relearned many notions I had built about children. Observing classes, interviewing children, spending time with them, walking into a slum, reading various theories, all taught me to look at a child’s life not only from an adult perspective but more from a child’s perspective. Over the course, my learning has been two way – one of a researcher trying to look at things from an objective lens and the other of an adult placed in children’s world, trying to understand their cognitive, emotional and social sides. While doing so there were two things that I came across repeatedly; one was the influence of adults, especially parents and teachers on children and second was the ever present overburdened childhood which had no space for creativity, leisure and exploration.

Reflecting on the influence adults, especially parents and teachers have on children, in my classroom observations, I realised how children did their best to get their teacher’s attention and felt ecstatic when they were praised. While interviewing them I stumbled on statements like “I liked my fifth grade class because my teacher was very nice”. When it came to parents, again children blindly follow what they are being told, be it something as trivial as the rules at home set by parents or something as major as career choices. It almost felt like children had blind faith in the adults who surrounded them. Family affect children’s lives and development and also different parenting behaviours impact children’s upbringing differently. The primary caregiver, i.e. the mother has a special role to play in children’s lives. She not only nurtures them but is also one of the constructors of their self-image and helps in development of emotions such as trust. It won’t be odd to say that what teachers and parents do is very much in line with Vygotsky’s idea of Zone of Proximal Development, where these adults hand hold the child to take them to a higher level of learning and understanding. But honestly, I have come to doubt as to how well are we adults playing this role. Are we letting children really be themselves or are we treating them to be similar to adults and develop an understanding of the world around them from what we can call an adults perspective. The question of child being an active or passive learner was challenged at every step of my practicum. On one hand, I saw children who were accepting of whatever they were told; on another there were a few who did question what they heard but in most cases their questions were not being taken seriously. I wonder what are we expecting from the children in today’s world, to act as children or become adults before their age, which then though would not be an expectation from today’s world but rather could be traced to the traditional concept of childhood given by Phillipe Aries.  And then we complain about them losing their innocence. Are we not responsible for what happens to children living in the same society as ours?    

During the visits to the school and even in my personal life I have noticed that we are pushing kids to become serious, but not giving them enough time and space to grow up at their own pace and enjoy their childhood. Here I can say that I can relate Urie Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Theory where the child is placed at the centre and is impacted by different social agents at different levels. Then doesn’t everything from the language used by adults to how they treat children have an effect on the children’s mindsets. The adults except them to become better at studies, learning things, participating in activities which they might not really enjoy, pushing them to compete, but not give them free will to take decisions and make simple choices or something as minor as having leisure and playtime every day. How fair are we in deciding what is best for children and what isn’t. Why are we not helping in enhancing their creative sides but supressing it for letting them become experts in mere subjective knowledge. I also feel that it is important to change this situation by removing regimentation from schools. And save children from becoming products of and for the society.   

All this impacts the cognitive, social and emotional development of children. How they construe their identity is dependent on their environment, which includes the adults around them. Charles Cooley (1902) talks about children’s self-image through the concept of the looking-glass self, according to which the child’s self-image is developed by, how others view them. He suggests that the self-knowledge and self-esteem of children largely depend on the way others perceive and react to their behaviour.

Childhood is a special phase in everyone’s life; in fact we adults at times wish to go back and relive those days. Therefore, we need to accept children for who they are at present, rather than focussing on what they will become in future, by constantly planning for them and wanting them to become like us.  

Children and Childhood

“Children are economically worthless but emotionally priceless.” - Zelizer, 1988

According to UNCRC, a child means every human being below the age of eighteen years (Convention on the Rights of the Child, 1989). This period of eighteen years called childhood is divided into different phases - early childhood, middle childhood and adolescence or early childhood, adolescence and late adolescence. It is divided differently by different psychologists. John Locke (1690/1913) explained that the child is tabula rasa, a blank slate. I believe he was right in saying this to a certain extent as it is we adults who direct the course of children’s lives.

My first step to seeing a child’s world closely was taken two years back when I started teaching 72 children in a government school. My students came from low income backgrounds and lived in a slum. From a teacher’s perspective, all that mattered to me was that my students should learn, grow and become responsible citizens of this country. Even though I had been to all their homes, I focussed on what went inside the classroom more and tried making it their second home. This time during the practicum visits, when I stepped into the classroom as well as the slum community, I tried looking at things from a third person’s perspective – not as a child, a teacher or a parent. My notions about schooling as well as childhood were questioned once again.

When I saw the kids in classroom blindly following and obeying the teacher, I was pushed to think are children really dependent, ignorant beings subordinated by adults. Or contradictory to what Piaget said play a passive not active role in their learning. Are they really the products and producers of their own development? I also saw how the appreciation of an adult, i.e. the teacher really gave the children a sense of achievement on one hand but on the other shaped their thinking about themselves. For example, the students in the school I visited had to attend extra classes incase they did not finish work. Students who attended these extra classes were called “dull”, by their classmates. Children do not build these notions about themselves, it is we adults who shape these for them. And if this is what education is doing by labelling them, then what are the aims of such an education? If school is a place for learning and growing, is providing midday meals, free uniforms and books, sufficient for carrying this out?

My mind was put through a bigger mayhem when I stepped into the slum. From basic sanitation issues to domestic violence, children here had seen it all at a very young age. Jean Jacques Rousseau (1762/1955) saw the child as a “noble savage”, basically good but ruined by the adult world. This statement holds true for a certain Jailaxmi who sees her alcoholic grandfather beat her grandmother everyday. There are more children like her who deal with many intrinsic and extrinsic issues of health, malnutrition, gender bias, lack of schooling, etc. throughout their so called childhood. We talk of ‘Child Rights’ – Right to survival, Right to protection, Right to participation and Right to development. But do these rights also exist for children living in an unauthorised slum area? If yes, then who is responsible for ensuring the fulfilment of these rights?

Looking at all these situations from the perspective of Urie Bronfennberner’s (1994) theory of bioecological systems based on process-person-context-time (PPCT), I now understand that it is needed to consider the entire ecological system of a child to know how his/her development gets impacted. Their microsystems including their parents and teachers help them form opinions about themselves and the world. It is said that they are the mirrors of their parents’ ambitions, and that is why another child Zeeniya wants to become a teacher since her mother says so. The religion they follow, the school they go to, the care they receive from the adults around them, all form their mesosystem and have a similar effect on their biological growth and building their mindsets. But for those living in poverty, this impact is much more.  Poor children are believed to be more vulnerable as they are abused, exploited and neglected by the world around them. In the long standing debate of heredity versus environment, they end up losing at both ends, as there doesn’t seem to be an escape for them from poverty.

For the longest time that I can remember, I had always believed that childhood was the most simplified period of one’s life, but after a visit to a school and a slum, I feel that it is instead a complex and complicated period. Everytime I thought of the word childhood, the only links that came to my mind were play, fun, imagination, creativity and carefree. But I have now begun to question that is childhood really about these five words or different children experience childhood differently? Is there actually a concept of childhood for the children living in poverty or is it an experience for the children of the rich only? For a child who lives in marginalised conditions, goes to a government school, does the future really hold hope? Or they have a short term orientation to future? (Sonali Nag) And what about children out of school or do not have access to education or other resources due to stratification of society?

With all these questions in my mind, I feel that my understanding of children and childhood is blurred and it cannot become concrete till I have a complete view of what all goes into constructing childhood.  

Just another slum?

This week’s visit to a slum helped me look at the life of a child and the other people residing there from a different angle. Even though this wasn’t a new experience as I have worked in a slum for some time but I tried looking at it from a more objective lens than an emotional one.

A slum as defined by the dictionary is ‘a heavily populated urban area characterized by substandard housing and squalor’. The image that comes to our mind when we think of a slum includes dingy houses, issues relating to sanitation, water, crime, illiteracy, poverty, etc. And this was true of the KS Garden slum that we visited. This slum like all others is built on encroached land of about 3.5 acres owned by a certain Kader Sharif and hence the name KS Garden slum. The land has been under his family for about a century and has been passed on generation to generation. The slum-dwellers have also been living here for a very long time with now their third generations growing up here. There are about 1200 families residing in the area but the census data states 800. The area is not visible unless one walks into the backside of Double Road in Lal Bagh.

The families are mostly Tamilian Hindus who are now converting to Christanity. Women primarily work as domestic helpers and the men as wage labourers. A few of them also work in the government sector. The community celebrates festivals such Ganesh Chaturthi by collecting donations from all the members. While on one side Ambedkar’s statue is set-up right where the slum begins as he is the symbol for rights for low communities, on another side, the Dalit community residing here is a huge vote bank for electoral parties.

Out of the many issues that the residents live with, the biggest one is of getting evicted as they do not hold any possession certificate for the land they are living on. One of the many things about KS Garden that disturbed as well were the fact that there were no toilets in the houses and there were only 20 community toilets catering to such a huge population. Besides this, there is a typical water shortage problem with the hand pumps drying up and a borewell supplying water. Also, there were no NGOs working in the slum to support the dwellers in any way. Earlier on there were a few NGOs such as Vimochana, etc. but they were there to only collect data or provide monetary help instead of conducting any concrete welfare work. Though there is presence of Self-Help Groups started by women. Education does not seem to be a major concern with presence of many private and government schools in the vicinity and we also heard the children speak in fluent English.

While interacting with Mr.Manohar, I heard that even if the residents are given a chance to move out of the slum, they’d rather stay here. But while interacting with a woman there, I heard the opposite. She was a mother of a 4 year old girl and wanted to move out to give her daughter a better life. She was learning English along with her daughter to support her, had taken up domestic work to match her child’s school hours and hoped that her child will get all the opportunities that children from affluent backgrounds get. What surprised was that she did not believe in the concept of religion but did believe in righteousness. This made her an outcast and she was being forced to convert to Christanity by her relatives. On being asked how this belief system of hers developed, she replied that she was working for a long time at a teacher’s house.

I also got the opportunity to speak to a ten year old girl who walked me around the slum. This little child lived with her grandparents and mother, as her father had passed away. Her grandfather was a drunkard and there were constant fights between him and her grandmother. Her mother worked to support the family. When I asked what did she prefer being at home or in school, she answered the latter. What she didn’t like about the area she lived in was lack of a place to play as she and her friends had to play on the road.

Walking around and meeting these few residents of the slum, made me think of a lot of things. I’m unsure as to who should take the responsibility of providing a better life to these individuals – the government, NGOs or the people themselves? Is there a better future for them? Is there something I as an individual can do to make their life better? Do the children living in slums really experience childhood or dealing with so many harsh realities snatches away the golden period of their lives? How does their environment (micro-, meso-, exo-systems) impact their self-belief and gives them hope to fight and continue with their education?

While Sonali Nag’s study on children living in poverty gave me an insight into their psychology, but interacting with the children made me realise there is hope and light at the end of tunnel but a lot is needed to be done.

Looking from a new perspective (Part 2)

The first week of observation helped me have a third person’s view of the school, and the interviews this week helped get a closer look into the lives of the people, who are part of the school, especially the students. I even got the opportunity to meet the Principal this time and understand her perspective towards education and the school. The school was started about fifty years ago with the aim of educating the girl child as in those days the emphasis was more on educating boys and the women were expected to only take care of the house and not step out to work or attain education. The government pays for most of the facilities provided at the school but, the students still need to pay a nominal fee. Many students are provided free education, mainly those of the workers of the school, and are also provided financial assistance for higher studies once they leave the school. The school includes a hostel, which provides shelter to the children of prisoners. All these things made me look at the school in a new light and realize what a great objective the school was functioning with and this belief is seen across the school, where all students, no matter from what background, are treated alike.

Last week I had observed three children. This time I got the opportunity to speak to two of them.  Interviewing these children helped me connect better with them and know them closely. The two kids come from very different backgrounds and this affects their outlook towards what they do in class. A typical day in the first child’s life starts at 7:00am with getting ready for school with the help of both her parents. School starts at 8.30am and finishes at 3pm, after which she walks home with her friends, eats lunch and goes out to play. A few hours of homework, dinner at 8:00pm along with TV time and then sleep. This daily routine is in sync with the timing of her parents’ work and shows how the exosystem affects her life. This phase of her life also shows that she is dependent on her parents for a lot of things, for e.g. her father drops her to school, mother helps with homework, etc. A strong family support system makes the child confident and this can be seen by the fact that she can approach her mother incase she’s facing any personal difficulties in school. She is the only child and has individual aspirations of becoming a doctor when she grows up and knows that working hard is the only way of achieving it.

Along with family, peers and teachers, i.e. the microsystem of the child, also advance their emotional and cognitive development. Even though the child joined the school about a year and a half ago, she has adjusted well with her classmates and has made many friends. She is the bench leader and is approached by her bench-mates incase of any difficulty, be it academic or otherwise. She has a best friend who supports her in many ways. This has built the child’s assurance in approaching the teachers and not being too scared of them. Behavior of other students, like a child bullying another, has sensitized this child and made her aware of what sort of behavior is acceptable and what is not.

What surprised me was that the child didn’t know what fairies, angels or genies meant. Maybe there is too much emphasis on the academics and the imaginative side of the child is not being explored enough by the curriculum being followed in school. This made me think of all the schools that are following alternative forms of education and how beneficial is this type of learning versus the alternative methods, which give space for creativity. 

The second child, who seemed lost in class last week, was in the same situation this week too. When I spoke to her I found out that she spoke Hindi and did not know Kannada as well as her classmates. She had been in the school since first standard but had not picked up the language even though her father helped her with it at home. She mentioned that her teacher was unaware of the fact that she didn’t understand what was being taught and the child was scared to approach the teacher in the fear that she might get beaten.  She tried avoiding the teacher’s eyes and kept looking into other people’s books. She also did not have any friends in class.  I felt that maybe these two factors majorly affected her learning in classroom, as there was lack of sufficient support. Back home, this child lives with a joint family with uncles, aunts, cousins, her parents and a brother. Therefore, she seems to lack the attention she needs from her parents and was unaware of many details that the first child knew and was confident in expressing. 

I now understand how different environments and social connections affect children differently leading to varying developmental outcomes. These children come from similar economic but different religious and social backgrounds. This impacts their meso and microsystems and ultimately the child’s growth and mindsets.

Looking from a new perspective

As part of my course work we visit schools every week and reflect on them...Here is one such reflection...

SHP School is part of SH Institutions which also includes a PU college. The school is meant for girls only and is divided into primary (I – VI) and secondary (VII – X) sections. Each standard in the primary level has two sections (A & B) with about 60-65 students in each. The school has fine developed infrastructure with well-ventilated classrooms, proper benches for almost all students, clean washrooms, staffroom along with a computer room, language room for senior students, sports room, a big ground for sports activities, black and green boards as well as electronic boards and projectors. These classrooms are supported by new  technological equipment. Even with the availability of all these things, the teachers seem to be more comfortable in using the old chalk and board methods.

The classroom I went to did not have a teacher for most of the day, so the observation was conducted during Kannada classes. I observed 3 children today. Sheetal seemed a bright child who was completely engrossed in her work. She also took initiative in finding out whether the class was allowed to go for sports or not. The second student was Zeenie. Zeenie was labeled as the “Hindi girl” by her fellow classmates as she was the only one able to communicate in Hindi. She sat in the adjacent direction instead of facing the blackboard and was constantly biting her lips, looking into the notebooks of other students, fiddling with her book and pens, and copying whatever was written on the blackboard without participating in the class at all. 

Tisha was the 3^rd student I observed, who sat on the front bench and was extremely helpful to everyone around her, whether it was her teacher who asked for chalk, a classmate who asked for pencil and even towards me when asked for more details about the class. The school holds remedial classes for students who need extra support and Tisha is one of them. But she and many of her classmates perceive that they are “dull students” and so have to attend these extra classes after school hours. Moreover, I got the opportunity to teach the students a few general knowledge things. This also helped me understand that school had a lot of focus on rote learning rather than concept building.

After the first visit to the school, I realized that the principal of the school is very supportive towards her staff. The school might also be promoting Christianity as there was the Holy Cross in some classrooms. Speaking in English is a golden rule in every class and the oral communication of most kids was fluent. What I feel is needed in the school is training of teachers especially in English as it is the medium of instruction. Moreover, I felt the students had “mugged-up” information and were not very clear in their understanding of certain concepts in science. When asked why certain kids were unaware, a student answered that those students do not pay attention in class; therefore, the students blame themselves for their learning and not their guide – the teacher. The school also does not maintain the ratio of 1:30 for teacher and students probably due to lack of teachers as well as space constraints. The classrooms were also not sufficient for 60 students and hence few students ended up sitting on the floor.

Being a teacher and after seeing this today in the class, I realized that appreciation from the teacher is a big motivation for the students. When the teacher pulled a child’s cheeks or said ‘good’ while checking their work, the students felt a sense of accomplishment.

Today’s observation made me think about the foundation of our education system which is dependent on teachers. They are the ones who nurture young minds and without basic support such as training they might not be able to carry out their job well. If one teacher deals with a thousand students in her lifetime, she has the power of moulding these mindsets in the right direction. Therefore, I feel training teachers and also helping them become tech-savvy, building concepts for children and acknowledging their hardwork can go a long way in making things better for schools such as SH.

P.S. Names changed to protect identity.

Language – divides, binds and rules

Statutory Warning - This piece in no way is trying to show one language below another but is an attempt to show how important is the role of language in our daily lives.

Believe me I am a proud citizen of this country called India and have always respected its diversity but off late this diversity has become a little overbearing for me. Here I am out on a field visit with a groups of classmates from different parts of southern India and almost at every step I realise the division between us which is nothing but language based. On the very onset of this journey I realised what language does…it divides! We are a group of 7, out of which 3 of us belong to northern India and the rest to the southern. It just wasn’t the fact that I couldn’t get some of the jokes my friends from south cracked to due to language issue, it was also the anguish my northie classmate faced when the bus we were traveling in had a Telugu movie being screened. The poor girl had to get up at 2 am and shout at the conductor as hearing loudly an absolutely different language gave her a headache. The same person couldn’t control her happiness when she saw our hotel room had a television. I’m still not sure what she was happy about – having a TV after 2 months or being able to hear things in a language she knew. I’m guessing at a subconsciously level it was the latter.

Language also binds as I saw a colleague of mine bond with the teachers, students and staff in the Telugu medium school we visited, while me and another friend gapped at everyone’s faces unable to ask or answer questions. I always thought it was about being from the same gender that men got along with each other and so did women (well almost), but this time I could bet that it wasn’t just gender that my dear friends from south shared but it was also the language and regional connections. While watching the popular show – Kaun Banega Crorepati, I also heard a southie friend complain that he felt no matter how educated he was, he wouldn’t be able to participate in the show. On being asked why he felt so, his simple reply was - it was meant for north Indians as there were questions relating to Hindi language. I wish Mr.Amitabh Bachchan could answer that because seriously I didn’t know what to say!

The one thing that is connecting us so far is not just being students of the same university but also a language – English! I hate to say this but the British are still ruling us! Well believe me if it weren’t for English I would’ve been at a loss of words for communicating with my colleagues.

So, yes we are one nation one country but then again we are divided due to language, binded because of it and ruled by it!

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