Lets do some Research

Dear Friends
I would like you all to be part of some school based research on language, sociology or gender starting from July. I will specify the details of all three areas of research in my next blog entry. If you have some of your own ideas then please send in a comment. Also if you want to do something in one of the suggested areas, please send your response.
Eagerly waiting for your response.

Where are we heading?

I call out to Waris Shah today

to rise from his grave and

open a new page of the book of love.

Once a single daughter of the Punjab cried out,

and you wrote many dirges.

Today a million daughters weep

and look to you for solace...

Amrita Pritam wrote this poem sixty years ago during the Partition of India. But it is so apt for today’s times when Delhi has become so insecure place for women. Either a 5 year old or 50 year old women, everyone gets molested in one way or the other in Delhi. The moment a woman gets out of her secure home, she is in constant peril. Every other day, you will find a rape case or a molestation case in newspapers. Why is this happening? Has anybody ever considered this? The recent Noida rape case filled me with outrage. The sarpanch of Garhi Choukhandi village of Noida made those infuriating and exasperating remarks that ‘Rape is not a big deal’. Can somebody ask that damnable man, then what a ‘big deal’ is? Someone said that the punishment for a rape should neither be life imprisonment nor death sentence but castration that will be a ‘big deal’. It was as much a shame for a nation where we call a woman a devi, a goddess. What a paradox, isn’t it? These rape cases and such awful remarks by the men of our society reveal the decaying of the values and morals of our society. Neither boys nor girls are taught by their elders to respect a female body. A girl feels ashamed of her physical self while boys consider it as an object. Such a mindset has deepened the evil roots of crims against women. The need of the hour is to socialise our children in a gender neutral environment where girls and boys are not contrary of each other rather comrades. Then only we will be able to make this society a better place for both men and women.

EPTAF Meeting in January

Hi friends

You all are invited for the upcoming EPTAF meeting scheduled on 10th January,2009 from 4:00 P.M. onwards at Coffee Home, CP, opp Hanuman Mandir.

The agenda of this meeting is as follows:
1) Discussion on the topics chosen for our individual action researches. Preparing a broad outline of our research.Drafting next month's plan, objectives and activities.
2) Sharing of our school experiences. Some issues that came up and what did we do and any other experience that we would like to share.
3) Presentation by MCD school teacher on a research on reading that she did in her own school followed by a discussion based on her research work.
4) Sharing on a book called The Indians: Portrait of a people by Sudhir and Katharina Kakar, Penguin Viking, India 2007.

Post your comments and suggestions whatsoever about the meetings agenda, we will try to incorporate your ideas in the plan.
Please be there and enrich the discussions through your participation.
You can bring other interested teachers as well.
And please come on time.
Hoping to meet you on 10th January.

history and peace

Suddenly post 26/11 India has become an insecure nation. Every newspaper and news channel is talking about the carnage in Mumbai. Everyone has condemned this massacre. Whether you are travelling in the Metro or sitting in your college canteen or walking down the road, you’ll find people talking about the Mumbai attacks and cursing Pakistan to stage the onslaught. They wanted Indian Military to attack Pakistan and give them the taste of their own medicine. Indians have anguish for the people of Pakistan. But has anybody wondered how Pakistanis think about us Indians, do they have hatred in their hearts, do they consider us their enemies. We don’t know because we never cared about our neighbour. We never tried to know the perspective of Pakistani people. We only know the perspective of the people in power. What we know about Pakistan is that hey sponsor these terror attacks or what they call it Jihad. We never tried to know why so many young Pakistanis get ready to sacrifice their precious lives. Before independence we were the same people and fought for our beloved nation’s independence together against the British. But ever since we gained our independence and became two independent nations we have fought amongst ourselves. It’s been more than sixty years still we are fighting.
Does anybody ever wonder why we hate each other so much? Why we have such an outrage for each other? During our years in school we were taught Mahatma Gandhi as our national hero, Congress Party as the leading Party to uphold the flag of freedom struggle and abusing Muslim League or more specifically Jinnah for being the anti-national element and evoking the two-nation theory. Krishna Kumar’s Prejudice and Pride brings forth the history narratives presented in Indian as well as Pakistani history textbooks. Despite the fact that the two nations have common history, the two perspectives are in contrast with each other. Krishna Kumar in his book provided several instances where a particular incident of history has been presented in contrastive light. The historians writing history textbooks portrayed people as either black or white. Gandhi and Nehru have been glorified in the entire narrative while Jinnah and Muslim League’s contribution to the freedom struggle is completely neglected. The Pakistani narrative repeatedly referred to Congress party as a Hindu Party overlooking the fact that there were a lot of Muslims who were part of Congress Party. There have been instances in the history textbooks where a specific event is totally omitted in one perspective while the same event is elaborated in the other perspective.
The narratives are heavily influenced by the historians own perspectives which resulted in highly biased historical narratives. Such historical narratives are responsible, to a great length, for the jingoistic attitude of the people of the two nations towards each other. Krishna Kumar did not claim that the history narratives are solely responsible of inculcating such attitudes but if we try to recall our school days when we were adolescents struggling for an identity and when provided with such perspectives, the hostility for Pakistan did emerge. Neither our schools nor our textbooks encourage self expression which results in the political socialization of the children and they imbibe the political ideology without any rational thought. In the wake of terrorism attacks in both nations, it has become extremely important to understand the political nature of these terror attacks. Instead of spitting venom for each other we need to reckon that the terrorists are neither Hindus nor Muslims, they are just an instrument to spread hatred and if we continue to fight amongst each other then they will succeed in obliterating humanity from the face of the earth.

change in meeting timing

Dear all,
There's a change in the meeting time. We'll be meeting on 13th dec'08 at 4:00 pm at Coffee Home, CP.

EPTAF MEETING IN DECEMBER

Hi friends

You all are invited for the upcoming EPTAF meeting scheduled on 13th December,2008 from 11:00 A.M. onwards at Coffee Home, CP, opp Hanuman Mandir.

The agenda of this meeting is as follows:
1) Discussion on the topics chosen for our individual action researches. Preparing a broad outline of our research.
Drafting next month's plan, objectives and activities.
2) Sharing of our school experiences. Some issues that came up and what did we do and any other experience that we would like to share.
3) Presentation by MCD school teacher on a research on reading that she did in her own school followed by a discussion based on her research work.
4) Sharing on a book called The Indians: Portrait of a people by Sudhir and Katharina Kakar, Penguin Viking, India 2007.

Post your comments and suggestions whatsoever about the meetings agenda, we will try to incorporate your ideas in the plan.

Please be there and enrich the discussions through your participation. You can bring other interested teachers as well.
And please come on time.
Hoping to meet you on 13th December.

Minutes of EPTAF meeting: 8th Nov'08

For today’s meeting there were two of us: Baljeet and Nidhi. We were expecting more people but nobody turned up except Jitendra, M.C.D school teacher. So three of us discussed the issues.
Issues we discussed:
1. Jitendra came with the issue of discrimination of children on the bases of their religion and caste since his school is in a very backward area. Teachers are biased against the children who are Muslims and those who are STs and SCs. He and some new teachers tried to break this shackle but were discoursed by the senior staff. Nidhi said that such biases are prevalent in any government school whether its in the highly urban Gol Market or rural Alipor. On individual level we can tackle these issues in our classrooms by sensitising our children so that the biasness in the other teachers of the school does not affect our children.
2. Another issue that we talked about was regarding the textbooks. Jitendra find the current SCERT textbooks very boring for children. They do not have sufficient activities. Nidhi suggested why we can’t ask authorities switch from SCERT to NCERT textbooks. But this is an administrative decision where teachers have no say. I suggested that we can use NCERT textbooks along with SCERT textbooks. We can use the stories, poems and activities from NCERT.
3. Towards the end of our meeting we discussed about the themes that we want to pursue in the next few months. Since I’m working on developing reading-writing skills, so suggested this topic. What we have decided for the action research in our classrooms:
Baljeet: reading –writing skills with 2nd graders.
Nidhi: appreciating literature with neo-literate women.
Jitendra: yet to decide.

EPTAF meeting 8th Nov'08

for todays meeting there were three of us: Baljeet, Nidhi and Jitendra. we were expecting more people but nobody turned up.

EPTAF meeting: 8th Nov'08

Today was

Right to Education Bill

Hey people
Please read the following news that talks about the right to education bill. the articles have appeared in The Indian Express, Hindustan Times and Times of India newspapers. please read and comment.
The Times of India coverage:
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/Education_to_be_a_fundamental_right/articleshow/3659677.cms
Also read the comments given in the end, thay are very interesting and debatable.

The Indian Express coverage:
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/right-to-education-bill-cleared-by-the-cabine.../380176/

The Hindustan Times coverage:
http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?sectionName=HomePage&id=610b1773-6f2b-4a0e-ada1-eb3bad05f93e&MatchID1=4815&TeamID1=6&TeamID2=1&MatchType1=1&SeriesID1=1212&PrimaryID=4815&Headline=Education-for-all+Bill+to+be+tabled+in+winter+session