24 Nov 1998

Hi all,

It has been a long time since I last wrote to you about life on this tiny island. Much has happened and I have been struggling to keep a regular account. As I started writing this update I realized there was way too much to cover. I have been snatching moments on the train and some nights before I sleep to write a few lines but I never seem to catch up with all that has happened. Finally I decided to stay back from a swim trip this evening and complete this mega long update. Rather fitting I should send it on the eve of my b’day. (Hint: write to me! 🙂

So here is a glimpse of my life over the past two months. Parts of it might read like a report rather than a letter, b/c I have copied them
from a report I had to submit to DNS regd. my experiences and my growth as a teacher. Some of the arguments are not fully developed here b/c it takes too much space and makes this letter not as narrative as I would like it to be. Anyway, here goes …

Teaching at school

It has been a very rewarding experience so far, even if frustrating at times. I have truly enjoyed being at Gansager, where I think I have
learned a lot about myself – most importantly, I have discovered a well
of confidence and ability that I always suspected I possessed but I had
never known how to find it.

I have spent a lot of time in the classroom over the past month. Mainly
teaching Maths and English. There has been no structure to these
sessions because I had always thought it was just a stop-gap arrangement until the computers in our classroom were working again. However, it has been more than a month since we had working computers and if I had known this before hand, I could have organized myself and my class a lot better and taught a solid body of knowledge rather than some scattered pieces of information. More on this later. Before that, I want to describe one of the most wonderful teaching moments I have had so far.

The first one was during an impromptu voyage on the ship Store Bjorne.
It is a large wooden sail ship, more than eighty years old, with a Jolly
Rogers flying right next to the Dannebro. Thomas and I wondered why the Danish flag was a simple red cross on a white background. Perhaps it had something to do with the Vikings, I still need to find out. In any case, very soon I got a taste of the thrills of sailing.

After the introductory tour of the ship, the students and I helped unfurl the sails, and boy, was it tough! Learnt simple tricks on how to knot a rope, and found out that raising the sails is far tougher than one might imagine. No wonder these sailors are so well built. And here I was, puny old me, trying to tug away at ropes I could barely hold in two hands. Once the sails had caught the wind, I got a chance to climb the center mast. The way up was on a rope ladder attached from the port side
of the boat. I did not think it was too dangerous since I felt we would
be climbing the ladder from the “inside”. Moreover, I had a harness. Was
I in for a surprise when I found my guide leap on to the outside of the
ladder and clamber up the rungs like a cat without using the harness!
Swallowing hard, I followed him up the ladder – ten rungs up and I looked down – a definite no-no that I was not warned about. There I was
some fifteen feet up in the air, hanging on to dear life with my shaking
hands, looking down at the waves on the water that I would have fallen
right into if I had lost my footing. Pushing all these miserable
thoughts aside, I pushed my way up – after all I loved heights and had
always wanted to sky jump. What is a measly rope ladder on a sail ship?
When I did reach the top and was harnessed to the mast finally, I
realized the trip had been worthwhile. “King of the world”. Man,
Leonardo Dicaprio and Kate Qinslett must have had a whale of a time if
they indeed shoot that scene on a real ship on real waters. Somehow the troubles of the past weeks seemed to dissolve during those few quiet moments with the wind whipping through my hair (yes, it has grown back now!) and the vast stretches of water surrounding some of the 500 tiny islands that make up Denmark.

We set sail from Kolding (on the west coast of the main island –
Jutland) and initially the plan was to go around Fyn (small island
between Jutland and Saeland), but we turned around half way at
Fredericia. Before we reached Fredericia, we had to pass under the 33m
bridge connecting Jutland and Fyn. What made it really exciting was the
fact that the ship was 32m high from the water level to the top. We had
to lower a flag so it would not scrape the top of the bridge and we had
to slow down to a crawl so the wake would not whip us up against the bridge. After spending a few more minutes with Thomas (a colleague) discussing Danish and Indian mythology, I retired to the main cabin for a few quiet moments. Suddenly I got this urge to find out Newton’s approximation method for finding square roots. I had learnt it some years ago and it had slipped my mind. In January, my father had
asked me how to write a simple computer program to find the square root of a number and I was shocked to realize I did not know! I had tried to recall Newton’s method b/c I remembered it was inductive and thus
perfectly suited for a simple computer program but I just could not
derive the method. Anyway, on the ship, I decided to try again. As I was
working on the problem, one of my students came up to me curiously to find out what I was doing. So I told him “Matematik.” He looked puzzled and sat down in front of me. He watched me write down some equations for a while, before he pulled the pen from my hand and wrote down a simple multiplication problem for me to solve. Once I completed it, he gave me another slightly more complicated problem. Which I did. Then another, and so on. When he was finally convinced I was getting them right (he could not know b/c I answered a couple of them wrong deliberately and he was just as pleased), he asked me to give him a problem. Here was someone I had struggled to get to his desk in the classroom for two months and now he was asking me to give him a math problem. That too on a ship! Trying hard to hide my smile, I gave him a simple sum. Then he wanted another. And another. I did not bother to correct any of them in much detail – I just let him carry on as long as he wanted. Soon another student came by and asked what we were doing. The first student waved him away but the newcomer refused to leave. Intrigued by what was happening, he joined in. Soon, the first guy asked the second guy to give him a problem! A few minutes later, they were exchanging problems with each other and I was completely out of the loop. I was so tempted to point out to them that math need not be drudgery and they could choose to work and still enjoy it. But it was too good a moment to spoil, so I let them enjoy it while they could. What was most satisfying was that they were getting very creative with their problems. I had given them a triangle with three
medians, and asked them to count the number of triangles. As expected, “six”, came the first reply, as if I had asked a stupid question. When I pointed out the large one, the answer was modified to an “oh, seven”. When I showed them another one embedded inside the big one, they realized there was more to the problem than they had initially thought.

So they worked on it for a while before drawing a circle and a bunch of
diameters, and then counted the number of pies. Then they drew a hexagon and chords connecting the vertices, and counted traingles again. They were generalizing without realizing they had just latched on to one of the most important aspects of mathematics. If I had asked them to generalize, I doubt I would have gotten the same results. I guess
children learn to generalize at an early age, but it was a pleasant
surprise when it happened within an abstract and “boring” field like maths.

Fixing computers

I have been quite busy fixing the computers here at Gansager. The SDB
fails quite regularly and the computers need constant maintenance. In spite of my long education in comp. sci. I was embarrased at not being
able to fix some of the easiest problems. So in the space of the last
two months I have learnt much about the hardware aspects of the computer – at least I am no longer afraid to open one and tinker with the insides. That is a shameful admission from a CS graduate, but there it is. At least now I know that one can set the CMOS settings to the defualt by shifting the JP4 jumper pin on the motherboard.

However educational it has been to fix these computers, it has been
equally frustrating, as the time spent on the machines has been at the
expense of time spent with students. As a result, I have not gotten to
know the students as well as I should have for the time I have been here. Now that I realize this lapse, I have spoken to the headmistress to correct the imbalance, and she has agreed I should spend more time with the students.

Life outside the classroom

One of the things that struck me most when I first came here is the lack
of affection. I have stated this many times before and as the days go by
I am more convinced that what these kids really need is affection, which
is not some sentimental soppiness as some people seem to understand it.

I am talking of an attitude where one really cares for the child, and
guides him or her very gently. Often we are trying to “knock sense” into
the children rather than provide an enviroment where sense prevails and can be imbibed. Of course, I admit there have been several situations where I have lost my patience, but that does not contradict a general atmosphere of what I call “positive affirmation”. There is a lot of “no, you cannot do this” or “you must do that” – and very little of “well
done” or a simple pat on the shoulder. How can the children be expected to be gentle when they have not experienced that from their own teachers?

These children have been shoved around for a good part of their lives –
the last thing they need is to be told again how stupid or useless they
are. One of the girls spoke to me last week about moving to a new
school, where the teachers had given her time of one month, b/c they
were so confident that she would screw up before the month was up. As she said to me, “If they tell me I am going to fail in a month, of
course I am going to fail!” Perhaps I am being idealistic to think one
can run a school where discipline is based on a firmer base of respect
for one another rather than on rules, but I definitely believe it is
possible when the teachers form a group and set a solid example. From
what little I have experimented so far at the school, I have had some
very positive results. For example, most of the students speak to me
politely and are very careful not to abuse me – not because I demand it
from them but b/c I talk politely to them in turn. And I do not do it
because it is some societal more but b/c I accord the same respect to
them as human beings as I do to the teachers in the school or any body
else. That is often surprising to everyone. But the children latch on to
something as small as that very easily. When some new student joins the school and gives me the customary “fuck dig” greeting, many of the older students tell him/her not to do it with me. Soon they learn not to abuse me b/c I refuse to treat them the way they are used to – like dirt.

There are times when I feel at a loss how to handle a situation. So far,
I have gotten into a “physical” situation three times. For some one who
advocates gentleness it is not an easy thing to come to terms with such
violence. These are times when I feel like hitting back at one of the
students. But the wave of anger usually passes away. All three times I
have managed to come through without blowing things up – I think largely b/c I kept my temper from flaring too much. I am learning how not to be baited by a student looking for trouble. That has been my trap so far. I have found that when I lose my temper, the students really listen, b/c it is something they are not used to seeing. For instance, one day I had helped make lunch but we were delayed b/c the meat was not yet done. The veggie food had been placed on the table and the children just ate it all up. When I came out of the kitchen, there was nothing for me to eat.

So I told everyone that they have to learn to start thinking about other
people once in a while, and they were all so embarassed and sorry I had
to go hungry that day – many came up and apologized to me, including
some I would never have expected to. One of the teachers told me later
that I should just lock the doors and invite the children only when all
the food was ready. Fair enough but not good enough for me. I wanted
these children to learn to care for other people and that does not come
by preventing opportunities where they can exhibit some sensitivity. It
is perhaps tougher to teach them this (one might have to go hungry a
couple of times) rather than use the easier solution of just preventing
such a situation from developing. But then how do they learn to think of
anyone other than themselves when they are not given a chance? And when they fail, is it not important to show them a more sensitive option was at hand, without punishing them for their failure?

Working with the Tvind system

The ideas of DmM – placing the students at the center of their education – are very attractive. The computer is a major tool in realizing this goal. At least within the classroom. All the work is placed on a large
database and the students can work independently on any task of their
own choice. An important component of this method is planning – each
student must learn to plan their work, and seek to accomplish what they have planned. Students seek what they want to learn, rather than some esoteric pieces of knowledge that are deemed to be good for them by some educational ministry. There is much merit in this idea but I have had many misgivings so far – perhaps it has more to do with my own incapacity as a teacher to realize the high goal set by DmM.

Before I decided to join DNS, I had always felt education needed to be
more than what happens in the classroom. Ironically, now that I am in a
system geared for a more wholesome education, I am quite disappointed with the lack of rigor within the classroom and my own inability so far to achieve a certain standard of academic learning. Perhaps it is my own past education that is rearing its (ugly?) head. Or perhaps I am partly justified in my worries that not enough is done to stimulate the children’s minds. But then again, the schools offer so many opportunities – travel around the world (this in itself is such a
fantastic educational opportunity), activities of all kinds. What is it
I am looking for? Why do I feel the circle is not complete? Is it
because we are trying to solve these children’s problems at a
non-fundamental level? We are trying to develop citizens who can
function “sanely” within society. This raises the question of whether
education should be geared towards the development of the citizen or the individual. I do not think this is an either-or question, but it seems
to me that the emphasis is misplaced. An education that aims to create a better citizen, who is productive and contributes to the general life of the society, is conformational.

It does not allow for the growth of the individual in a unhampered
fashion, because such growth may lead to ideas and actions that go
against the current grain of society. Which is too frightening a
prospect for us. Instead, if education was concerned with the
individual, responsibility for the wider society can be a natural
consequence.

India trip

So we are all gearing to leave for India on Jan 12, a week later than
previously planned. Busy buying second hand run down buses, fitting
engines in them, praying they won’t break down somewhere on the Turkish mountains. I will be taking my bus driver course next week (in Danish) – that should be fun. Applying for visas, getting our vaccinations, studying about the various countries, contacing people in India, figuring out our travel routes, earning the money to make this happen.

All this while doing a full time job at the schools. Quite hectic.
We are 24 of us now, in two buses. My bus will travel through
Germany-Austria-Italy-Greece-Turkey-Iran-Pakistand-India. We will whiz through Western Europe and spend more time from Turkey onwards (six weeks on the road). On the way back, we will whiz through till Turkey and then spend 3-4 weeks in Eastern Europe – Yugoslavia (we have two girls from Slovenia who speak Bosnian so we are heading right in there), Romania, Czech, Poland, Hungary, perhaps Ukraine if we choose to take the ferry across the Black Sea to Odessa – not sure. Of course all this depends on things like US going to war with Iraq etc.

My project for the trip is to investigate the life of children. Across
the countries. Initially I had thought of studying only children in
hazardous situations but then I decided to broaden the scope a bit and
simply see the world from the eyes of children – happy, sad, poor, rich.
I will still be concentrating on children who are victims of our mad
ways of living. For instance, in India, I want to visit Dharavi, Sivakasi and Sonagachi. In Romania, orphanages which offer some unbelievable tales of torture, and in Yugoslavia, children of the Bosnian war. Perhaps I will get to see Auschwitz on the way back …. Of course the trip is not meant to be all depression. And we will see how much of the above I actually get to do…

DNS and beyond

DNS is not quite what I imagined it to be. But I suspected that. Some of
the ideas here are very attractive but the approach does not start from
the premise of good human relationships. It has led me to wonder whether I should continue in a system that I disagree with in parts at a
fundamental level or should I leave? It has been quite a tussle but
things are becoming clearer now. I see much that is possible here and I
have decided to stay for the next four years to make them happen.
Perhaps along the way, things might change, but I am not ready to leave
yet. I am certain I will never find a system that I agree with
completely and until the day I can come up with something original of my own, I am going to see what I can do to realize some of my ideas within this system. It is funny how I have become quite famous within these circles here. On a particular teacher training course, I got up and gave a rather lengthy speech on the ills of the system. All the other
trainees loved it but it did not go down well with the establishment.
Got quite a slap on the face in return for my statement, but surprisingly the teachers seem to have more respect for me now. Word travels fast around here and I have strangers (headmasters of various schools) come up to me and say “Oh you are Arvind – heard a lot about
you!” Oh well, I guess I have built a sufficiently decent reputation at
my school so far that most people take me seriously when I come up with suggestions or objections.

I guess I need to wrap this up somewhere, though there is so much more to write about. Perhaps I will write again later, after Dec 20, when the school closes. I will work through Christmas and New Year’s to take care of a couple of students who cannot go home for holidays. Then I will go with the school on a ski trip to Norway in the first week of Jan, before I leave for India. So I will try to squeeze in more thoughts before I
bus away. Do reply when you can. If any of you have contacts I can use along the way, please do tell me.

Hope you are all well. Take care.

With love,
Arvind