Academic curriculum

How I engage students of India’s premier science school in folk arts

Bitasta Das

By: Bitasta Das.

 

This year, I am teaching the sixth edition of the undergraduate humanities course “Mapping India with the Folk Arts.”

In this course, we delve into indigenous knowledge, or common people’s knowledge, focusing on a different form of Indian folk art every year. By understanding the variations of this art across the country, we explore, infer and map cultural continuity and diversity. The assignments given to the students form an important component of the course, and it is through these assignments that a dialogue is established between science and art.

Having conducted this experimental course for a significant amount of time, I thought it was a good time to look back and reflect on the intention, process and outcome of the course so far.

Humanities subjects were incorporated in the academic curriculum of IISc from 2011, when the four-year undergraduate bachelor of science (BS) (research) programme began. The Centre for Contemporary Studies (CCS), under Raghavendra Gadagkar, assumed responsibility for designing and teaching the humanities curriculum. Students compulsorily undertook to learn humanities subjects in six out of the eight semesters of their BS programme.

While the conceptual thread across the courses remains the same, the humanities curriculum is designed to introduce the students to an array of disciplines and methodologies within the social sciences and humanities. Unlike in other science and technological institutes, the curriculum does not attach the humanities courses as disconnected subjects, rather, they are composed to provide a socio-cultural background to learning and understanding science.

Taking this philosophy forward, “Mapping India with the Folk Arts” treats the art of the common people as windows to their way of life. Drawing from the discipline of Folkloristics, the aim of the course is to understand the country, not from the outside in, but from the inside out.

As for my own education, folklore formed a large portion of my studies for a master’s degree in cultural studies at Tezpur University (Assam), and I qualified for the University Grants Commission’s National Eligibility Test (UGC-NET) in folkloristics. My first job in Bengaluru at the Art Resources and Teaching Trust (while I was pursuing my doctoral degree on ethnic identity and conflict), was to manage and commission an art exhibition involving 65 folk artists from across the country.

Travelling to various pockets of the country for two years, meeting and interacting with indigenous artists, gave me practical exposure to the dynamic world of Indian folk art.

When Prof. Gadagkar asked me to design and teach a course, I decided to offer a hands-on course rather than a theoretical one. I turned to my experiences with the folk arts, but was initially apprehensive about teaching a course of this nature here. I was not sure if at IISc, where cutting-edge scientific research takes place, a course on common people’s knowledge would be welcomed. I was anxious that the folk arts would be taken too lightly, as a mere source of amusement.

My intention was to invoke and engage with the arts to sensitise the students to the values of diverse people. I lay out the course to the students as follows—a “folk” is any group that expresses inner cohesion by sharing common traditions, whether the connecting factor is language, place, ethnicity or occupation.

In this sense, a group of scientists is also a folk group! India, with its multicultural populace, is home to a wide range of rich folk art traditions. To understand the nation, we must understand its people. The category “folk” provides an agreeable premise for appreciating various kinds of people that the category “citizen” is unable to include, like diaspora, refugees, nomads, people who are displaced, and so on.

Since we take up a different folk art form every year, it is imperative that I keep finding new study material. The methodological approach and teaching also varies every year, though the assignments always focus on the interaction between science and art. If enquiry in the field of art and science is rare, works on folk art and science are even rarer.

The folk art of this country has a large vocabulary, yet the processes of science have never been its subject. I decided that the students, who have enough scientific understanding, could deploy folk art to create pioneering art works. I create the theme, which they have to deliberate on and represent.

Every year, we discuss beforehand how folk arts entail skills that are passed on within families and communities for generations and generations, and folk arts are as much about the artists as they are about the product itself.

To claim that first-timers trying their hand at it can excel in the art would be grossly wrong. But it is the beauty of folk art that it is not standardised or codified. We can work in that flexible space, and explore what we generate. And it often comes as a surprise to the students when we are discussing a folk art from their region, and they realise they have been completely oblivious to it.

Sometimes students see it as a “homecoming” to create art works from their region that they only know of, but have never tried to understand its intricacies. In class, we also discuss questions like these: Can common people make sense of the workings of science? Can art represent science effectively?

In their assignments, students have to use folk arts to present complex scientific concepts. Paintings, music, plays, and dances about science, using folk vocabulary, have been created so far. Workshops on Dollu Kunitha, kite-making, and Chittara art have been conducted. Public performances like “Folk Theatre Festival,” “Sway with Science,” and “Jal Jungle Zameen and Science” were put together by the students.

A pictorial book, Arting Science, published by IISc Press, compiles the paintings that were made. Another book, Jal Jungle Zameen… in the age of Science and Technology, is in the works. The Institute has earmarked a distinct section on its official website to showcase the students’ art works, under the category “Arting Science.”

The assignments are planned consciously so that the creations are not just objects of communicating science, but both science and the folk arts demonstrate their tenability. The students are told that their works are not primarily for securing marks but are opportunities to co-create novel art.

The course has demonstrated creative ways of expressing science, at the same time, a new realm of content has been opened for the declining folk arts of the country—that of science and technology. The media has lauded this pioneer course at IISc and has frequently reported on our activities. This year the focus is on Indian folk tales, and we examine how the country can be understood by these stories.

This year is significant for another reason too—CCS has been reconstituted to form the Centre for Society and Policy (CSP), headed by Anjula Gurtoo. Humanities courses from now on will be conducted by CSP.

There are numerous examples where indigenous values and knowledge have enabled communities to live harmoniously with nature and with one another since ages. It is my argument that in the present times, when sustainable modes of living are sought, the philosophical foundations that inform community life calls for a deeper understanding.

Every batch of students has contributed to unfolding this understanding. Our efforts in treading untraveled paths have been filled with wonder and have been deeply enriching.

And for me, personally, it is satisfying to be able to work with the arts of India. It is saddening that so many of them are fading—they are soulful and bear the essence of the country. Discussing, engaging, and creating with them in a space like IISc gives them a new lease of life.

Source of the article: https://qz.com/india/1653995/an-iisc-bengaluru-teacher-is-mapping-india-with-folk-arts/

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It’ll take more than an app to get children school-ready, Damian Hinds

Fiona Millar

By Fiona Millar

If the Tories hadn’t cut funding for early years support, perhaps children would have a fairer start in schools today

So, Damian Hinds has woken up to the fact that there are huge gaps in ability between children from different backgrounds before they even start school. In a speech yesterday, the education secretary described the fact that children are starting school unable to communicate in full sentences or having barely opened a book as “a persistent scandal”, which meant some children never caught up with their peers.

I am not going to knock this blindingly obvious observation, since any recognition of a great social ill that may lead to more investment in the early years can only be a good thing. But when Hinds suggested that this area, and the home-learning environment in particular, is the “last taboo in education policy” he was just plain wrong.

Until the penny-pinching coalition government came to power in 2010, the issue of parenting support (even for babies in the womb), what went on in the home, and high-quality early years care and education, was an integral part of education policy. Then along came Michael Gove, whose first act as secretary of state was to remove the words “children” and “families” from the name of his department. Anything unrelated to core academic learning was deemed “peripheral” with the current schools minister, Nick Gibb, even describing the idea of social and emotional learning in the curriculum as “ghastly”.

Glaring inequalities in outcomes – the gap in GCSE results between children from disadvantaged backgrounds and the rest is still around 19 months, and will take 50 years to close at the current rate – were to be resolved by a new generation of the taxpayer-funded faux private secondaries in free schools and academies. Rigid blazers and ties, military-style discipline (charged up by a troops to teachers scheme) and a traditional academic curriculum would apparently do the trick.

In the intervening years, as many as 1,000 Sure Start children’s centres may have closed, according to the social mobility charity The Sutton Trust, leaving the Labour government’s flagship early years programme “hollowed out”. Meanwhile, savage cuts to local government funding and real-terms cuts to school budgets mean that services such as parenting support advisers, speech and language therapy, mental health support and the sort of extracurricular activities that Hinds claimed could help to build vital character and resilience, are also evaporating.

Hinds is right to argue that an individual child’s educational, social and personal development cannot by perfected by school alone. The DfE-funded Effective Pre-school, Primary and Secondary Education Project has spent 17 years tracking the development of children from age three to 16, gleaning evidence about how the complex relationships between home, school and family works. But just as it is slow, painstaking work to gather the evidence about what helps children and young people to flourish, so it is slow, painstaking work to change cultures, aspirations and behaviour in the home. In fact, this type of work is so slow burning that we might only now be starting to see the impact of the Labour government’s policies for parents and children if they had been allowed to continue.

Hinds gets maybe two out of 10 for at least putting this vital subject back on the policy agenda, but it will take more than a few extra nursery places and “how to teach your kids to read apps” to resolve a deep-seated national problem.

In my experience as a parent, school governor and former chair of the Family and Parenting Institute, set up by the last Labour government to examine exactly these issues, the families most in need of support are usually the hardest to reach, and the least likely to respond to short-term gimmicks.

We need to wind the clock back to a point where the bigger political argument was about children, families, young people and schools, not just academic learning, exams and school structures. Hinds may have started a conversation about that yesterday, but, sadly, we have wasted a decade – and thousands of children have been let down as a result.

Source of the article: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/01/damian-hinds-child-inequality-early-years-support-schools

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India: Viewing Education Through a Lens Broadens Perspective

Noticias

India/November 07, 2017/By MILES LIPTON/Source: http://mainepublic.org

Traveling abroad always forces me to respect my access to education in a much more profound manner. Recently, I took a trip to Ladakh, India, a three-day journey from just about anywhere in the U.S., to volunteer at the Siddhartha School, a private institution that values a strong academic curriculum and a culture of giving and compassion in India.

The school, which encompasses children from early childhood through grade 10, was started by the Buddhist monk, Khen Rinpoche Lobsang Tsetan, in his hometown of Stok, Ladakh, to give area children “access to a rich, thoroughly modern education that is in harmony with their Himalayan heritage and their cultural traditions.”

Siddhartha School itself lays in a shallow valley 11,000 feet above sea level, nestled tight in a ring of massive snow-capped Himalayan mountains, high on the Tibetan plateau. The surrounding land is parched and dusty except for the oases of farmland and trees created by thorough irrigation.

There were no other schools accessible to the children of this mountainous region in 1995 when Khen Rinpoche founded the school. Rinpoche took it upon himself to establish the Siddhartha School, turning down an invitation in 2000 from the Dalai Lama to become the Abbot of Tashi Lhumpo Monastery to instead work with local children.

Only 20 students enrolled in the school’s inaugural year, but as time went on and the school grew, Khen Rinpoche started a sponsorship program to help those who were unable to pay for tuition, transportation, or both. Sponsors enable children to attend the school for approximately $360 per year. Some students attend the school and live in the hostel for $400 annually. There are now 400 students at the Siddhartha School and half of them are sponsored.

During my two week stay in Ladakh, I interviewed students who needed financial help. In addition, I interviewed students that already had sponsors so that they could thank them. For the students that had sponsors,  I noticed that, despite their shyness and the language barrier, they wanted to make it clear that nothing meant more to them than being supported. One of the children our family sponsors wrote in the school newspaper that the day he was sponsored was the happiest day of his life.

When I was filming and taking photos for the sponsorship program, I found that almost every student, when asked what he or she enjoyed doing most, said approximately the same four things. The students all loved school, their teachers, reading in the newly constructed and furnished library, and playing soccer. I was humbled by how fondly they all spoke of getting the opportunity to learn and attend school.

When I was taking photographs of the students, I was most challenged by getting them to become comfortable enough with my camera to ignore it. The students had certainly seen cameras before, however, they were definitely not accustomed to seeing a young white male with one. Regardless, they were always glad to smile.

One afternoon I headed down to the boys’ hostel with an American friend who was also volunteering at the school. He had been visiting the school for six years in a row and was very close to all the boys in the hostel. We decided to create a video about where the boys were from and how they came to the Siddhartha School. The video never really took shape, however the project provided me with the opportunity to make friends with all of the boys living in the hostel. They taught me some rudimentary phrases in Ladakhi that became incredibly useful throughout the following weeks. Once the proverbial ice had been broken, I found it much easier to take photos that more accurately represented them and their school.

For me, the relationships that I established while photographing these children were much more rewarding than the photos themselves. In my limited experience, the story from which the photograph emerges is always what sets the photo apart. To me, photography is a medium through which I can explain things that I couldn’t with words.

For a photograph to be meaningful, it must evoke a feeling or establish a connection; the observer should be able to identify the story behind what made the image possible. The photographer should be able to write a comprehensive back story about the picture. How photographs make the viewer feel is very important for capturing their attention and drawing them into the story behind the image.

This step is akin to the first sentence of a paper because it must convince the viewer that it’s worth reading. The story of the photo, and how the photographer tells it, is far more important than the photo itself, even if the story is very simple. To hold the interest of the viewer for longer than the amount of time it would take to see a photo and then scroll past it on social media is as much an art as photography itself.

The most moving part of my trip was the connection I felt as I photographed the students, along with just getting to be so far from home. If schools could create programs that allowed students to travel abroad for shorter periods of time, more young people could experience the world as I have, learning from the stories they find along their journey.

Miles Lipton is a junior at Waynflete School.

Source:

http://mainepublic.org/post/viewing-education-through-lens-broadens-perspective#stream/0

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