Summer Camp

The schools are closed for the summer vacation. This year the Karnataka government has decided that they would provide the noon-meals even during the vacation time! So the teachers are expected to come during the summer vacation and keep the schools open. I have taken this opportunity to have a kind of summer camp for the children with more informal sessions. The government’s plan is, as usual, not very well thought. There are around 25 students (out of almost 300) who turn up. The meal provider has so far (it has been one week) not provided the noon meals.

I now handle 10 children and it is lot more enjoyable. There is direct interaction with each and every child and I am not playing any policing role at all. We still do English and Math. I bought these bi-lingual picture books from Tulika, which has both English and Kannada on the same page. The idea is that the children would read the Kannada and know the story and I would help them read the English bits and slowly they would be more comfortable reading and speaking English. I also work on Math using the decimal blocks and Cuisenaire rods.

Since the class strength is reasonable, we have lot of conversations outside and along with the teaching/learning. Here are some snippets:

Dogs

Out of the 10 students almost all of them have been chased or attacked by stray dogs. 3 of them have actually been bitten and had to get those horrible injections for rabies. Anyone in Bangalore or even outside of it would have heard of the recent happenings in this context. The dogs are a serious health problem and I really don’t understand these “animal lovers”. Do they let cockroaches roam in their houses and not kill them? Are dogs endangered? Would they upset the ecological balance? Just cull them. It is nice to sit in houses with security gates and travel in cars and wax eloquent about their concern for dogs. Let their children be chased every day by dogs and be bitten by them and then I would like to hear from them.

Mobile Phones

All their families have mobile phones. Some families have more than one. Most of the children remember the 10-digit number of the phones in their families.

Private Schools

There are 3 children who come to my summer class from private schools in that area. They belong to the same socio-economic background as the other children. Two go to “Blossom” school. They have better capability than the government school children but only marginally. A class 6 student, Annapurna, who has supposedly learnt English from class 1 can just about read a simple English book. But her attitude was amazing. She took the book back home, worked on it hard and the next day could fluently read it. This is very different from the government school kids. Though I have given them the books for a week, I doubt any of them even open the books at home. This drive to perform could definitely be seen in the private school children. Another kid, Hemanth, goes to “Orchid” private school. He is in the 1^st class and he is very good! He can already read simple English books. His brother Manjunath, who just finished 4^th class in the government school, can barely read English. Seeing the difference in performance from the same family but in different systems makes me wonder if I should re-calibrate my opinion on private schools, at least in the urban slum context. For "Blossom" the kids pay Rs.85 per month and a Rs.750 donation. I was not able to find out how much is the fees in "Orchid".