Teaching Broken English is Broken English Teaching

For the students of Kadod High School, "essay-writing" does not mean the opportunity to exercise reason, give thoughts expression or otherwise practice the craft of writing. Rather, the teacher hand-copies a passage selected from the "Book of Essays," a slim volume with various editions prepared for each of the secondary grade levels (all are penned and approved by Gujurat's Board of Education). Meanwhile, students copy the passage verbatim into their notebooks. These notebooks are then given to the teacher, who is expected to grade her students solely on the merit of their ability to duplicate.

For a teacher, relegating students' powers of expression to pre-packaged uniformity is (at least, if I am any juge, it certainly ought to be) a pedagogical sin. More than a century has passed since Oscar Wilde wrote in his celebrated De Profundis,

"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."

Putting aside the irony of my own present reliance on "someone else's opinions," I can't help but marvel how from my current station in rural Gujurat, the quotable Mr. Wilde is (unfortunately) as timely as ever.

It would be bad enough if the worst outcome of this exercise in mass-production was the stunting of my students' creative growth and the effective strangulation of their intellectual apertures. Yet, I find it still worse that that the material my students are expected to copy is riddled with grammatical errors and altogheter bodes a lack of fluency and basic compositional coherence.

It would be difficult to overstate the frustration and sadness I felt when I was told that when (remarkably, not "if") the passages from the book are incorrect, I am to content myself in teaching strictly according to what they read. The logic here, I've gathered, is that students are tested according to the book, so that is how they should be taught. Teach them how to use the English language properly, and they may well be penalized for it on their life-making (or breaking) state-sponsored exams. Teach them to pass their exams, and into the workforce they'll carry the mantle of substandard language skills; a legacy which has barred many generations before them from competing with urban Indians for the chance of a better quality of life. Herein lies a profoundly discouraging dialectic.

How can I even hope to effect the quality of English instruction in this community, my community (if only for a year), if I'm to carry out orders from the top-down which, in no uncertain terms, ask me to teach my students that incomplete fragments may pass as sentences; that run-on sentences are perfectly copacetic; that prepositions are optional and capitalization is but a caprice (all of this, coming after I tell them the author's name is, 'George Bernard Show')?

I wonder how Gandhiji might respond to the irksome panegyric which I transcribed for my 11th graders earlier today:

"India got freedom...Mahatma Gandhi helped the backward people...Let's pray to God that another Gandhi of that stature should incarnate in order to liberate our Mother India from the prevailing fear, hunger and corruption."

Not least for the fact that Gandhiji was himself born and bred not terribly far from Kadod, shouldn't we be teaching students that they are the ones who can "liberate" Mother India? That Gandhiji did not fight for the freedom to shackle students to the status quo? That India didn't "got" freedom; it achieved it by daring to demand the possible in spite of what was? That Gandhiji never saw people as 'backward,' only as people? Does it go without mentioning that he could not have seen the day when India's banner would fly over the Red Fort if he hadn't had at his disposal the language skills necessary to make the plight of colonized Indians a priority on the international agenda at the 1931 Round Table Conference (then hosted by the British, in English)?

These are the questions that raced through my mind as, against my every will, the chalk in my hand mechanically traced the lines quoted above. The bell rang. Class was dismissed and my students eagerly adjourned for recess. I waited until every one of the seventy-two of them had made their exit before I erased everything I'd written.

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I'm a big believer that, at least from here on out, the power of ordinary people working together is a force to which Prime Ministers (as much as Kings and Presidents) will always be beholden. International grassroots efforts, from the Red Cross to Al Qaeda, have time and again demonstrated how nonstate actors are changing a world too long divided by political geography. At Nanubhai, we've boldly staked our interest in transforming rural education in India. For those of you reading this from overseas, I want to tell you that on the ground, I believe we're doing the best we can. But Gujurat is in need of educational reform from the top-down. As Gujurat's irrepressible Chief Minister Modi has declared this to be the "Year of Education," I'd encourage you to help us think of ways to hold his administration as accountable for Kadod and Madhi as he must be for Surat and Ahmedabad.

I left school today feeling rather discouraged because I know, we can do better. India can do better. I've seen it. But the notion that 'better is possible' is not the glimmer of hope; it is the beckoning call of work to be done, at least as much by those of us in the classroom as in the halls of Parliament. I will keep you posted as each of us here tries to surmount the formidable challenges that lie ahead.