Challenges of first generation ‘schoolers’

For want of an appropriate word, I have made up the word schooler. A scholar is generally used for a very learned person and the word learner need not mean someone learning in school! Since I want to write about children who go to school – I will use the word schooler.

My daughter and I were having dinner at an Udupi restaurant one night, and due to the crowd, the waiter seated a young couple with a three-year-old son at our table. The boy started looking at the menu card and spelling out all the items. I-D-L-Y, S-A-M-B-A-R etc. He didn’t have to be prompted and he wasn’t doing this to show off! The moment he saw a book it was his natural instinct to read from it. As an aside: It seems when they went to a friend’s house for dinner, he asked for the ‘book’ to order!

I contrasted this scene with the one I usually have every Sunday. Two children in 4th and 6th standards, and who have scored good grades and double promotions in their school, struggle to identify alphabets or understand words, while they can reel off answers from memory or even write them down. These two are the sincere students who come for my Sunday School, which I started more than a year back with a friend, Saraswathi. She also teaches on three week-days and five or six more children come to her. 

The parents of these children are not educated but are very keen on their children’s education. They pay fees and admit their children in reasonably good schools, but teachers can’t pay attention to every single child in school and private tutors aren’t doing any better.

Initially when I looked at their school books I was shocked that these children couldn’t read individual alphabets quickly and didn’t understand the words in the sentences. For example, they said “Kashmir is in the north of India” but didn’t understand the meaning of any word in it. They had division in mathematics but didn’t know even subtraction. They were literally at nursery level but studying in higher classes. And they were completely relying on some pattern matching technique combined with teachers giving “important” questions to pass their exams (with flying colors). They wouldn’t know the answers if the questions were changed in any way. As a college teacher, I know adult students still in that state.

Frustrated at the state of affairs, I had gone to a school named “Ananda Bharathi”. Started in 1989 by Late Mrs. Janaki Iyer, it runs with the support of volunteers and few employees. Ananda Bharathi conducts non-formal classes in Secunderabad for young domestic workers who live in a nearby slum. There are about 30 students between 5 and 16 years of age.

The goals differ from one student to another-those who have dropped out of school fairly recently are encouraged to give board exams privately; others acquire basic literacy in English, Telugu and Hindi. The curriculum for all the students includes knowledge about the environment, health and hygiene, and crafts. The school starts in the afternoon, when these youngsters have finished their work. And it goes on till 5pm. One of the teachers there told me not to try correcting the education which the children were receiving in school in the four hours, I spend on Sundays. Instead, involve them in educational games that would motivate them to study. This was an important lesson I learnt and used – I now make them draw, solve Sudoku puzzles, play word building games, identify words in letter grids, find differences in pictures etc. They enjoy the learning and their concentration and behaviour has changed over a period of time.

As education becomes more accessible (which is very good) we have students coming from diverse backgrounds, many of them first generation ‘schoolers’ in the family. These children have no support during their homework or anyone to check their school work.

So their foundation is not properly laid. With the examination and assessment system as it is, they move on to higher classes. And they struggle more and more.

Acharya devo bhava meant to look up to your teacher as God. But for these children, we teachers have to become the parents who would have sincerely cared for their education with no strings attached.

(The author is an expert on teaching learning process and regularly conducts workshops for teachers and students. She is a consultant at Centre for Education Technology and Learning Sciences, IIIT-H and Honorary Director, Centre for Faculty Development and Management, NMREC, Hyderabad.)