No national language

Second semester already! Three courses again

- Language, Mind and Society conducted by Rama Kant Agnihostri. Started off with linguistics and peek into the Indian constitution. Hindi is not a national language! Yo! Only an official language. I t was cute when a classmate claimed that 'There is no human being who has Hindi as a mother tongue'. Hmm.. what are the implications of such a statement... Out of the 25 in our class 20 are from Daaleee. You know there is a universal grammar of cvcvcv alternations. Can you think of a word with ccccv format? If you do please let me know..any language..

- Curriculum and School by Padma Sarangapani. We also had two lectures of Krishna Kumar of NCERT. Very interesting one about modernity in pedgagogy. This is guy is a thinker, no doubt. It was pleasurable interacting with him.

- First Language Pedagogy by Maxine Bernsten and Jane Sahi. Strangely both women are not of Indian origin but have chosen to be Indian citizens. Expecting it to be very interesting. Do you know why when two men who have Tulu as their first language prefer to speak in English? That way they will not disclose the class of society they come from and also will not have to worry whether to show respect to the other or not.

Another interesting fact - by the time a child is 4 they are an linguistic adult. I have deliberate lydecided to change the grammar to use plural instead of revealing the gender! Language is not a thing, you cannot reify it, it is a process after all...

Constructivism

After several years of deliberation on whether Asha Bangalore should fund physical infrastructure in government schools, it was finally decided to go ahead and build a compound wall around Chandranagar school and also fund for drinking water supply and additional bathrooms.

The government funds were not sufficient to build the compound wall and further the money spent towards it was able to create only a half-constructed wall. The teachers and students felt that a compound wall was an absolute necessity for the school considering the hostile local environment.

• There had been repeated instances of local youth loitering in the school premises and pestering the students.
• Tourists cars were also frequently parked in the school campus and sometimes disturbed the classrooms by playing loud music.
• The school play ground was unusable since it was used as a public garbage dump and latrine

Considering the above factors and also a hope that a more formal school space would improve the sense of a school amongst the students, Asha Bangalore has decided to go ahead and construct the wall.

Asha Bangalore has also been trying to get the parents to be more actively involved in the school issues, but the response has been lukewarm. The last time when a meeting was organized to go and demand additional teachers from the BEO only 20 parents (for 340 students) turned up. It was felt that Asha’s involvement was not visibly felt in the community and if we contribute to a visible asset may be it would motivate the parents to participate more. This theory is yet to be tested!

The construction started on Oct 9^th, 2007 and here are some photographs of the work in progress

Sump for drinking water (15000 litres)

Wall (to the right of entrance)

Wall (to the left of entrance)