Glory Days: Patna as education hub?

The early 1900’s brought students from other states and neighbouring countries to Patna for education, will the 21st century see the resurgence of Patna as a destination or quality education? The jury’s out on that one, writes Frank Krishner

Every June, outbound trains and planes carry significant numbers of freshly graduated high school students towards colleges in other cities: Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, and even to towns such as Indore and Gangtok. These youngsters leave home and wing their way to mainstream and vocational courses, battling it out in competitive examinations, braving inhospitality and swallowing their pride because they believe that colleges, institutions and universities outside the state will give them a better deal.

Observers say that times are changing and that this tide may soon be stemmed. They point to the many ‘franchisee’ schools: the ‘big brands’ of private education that have set up shop in the State capital. Vocational courses that lead to better paying pay-packets are no longer exclusively available in the Metros. Bihar can boast of several players of national and international repute that promise world-class education right in the heart of Patna. Be it media studies, animation, radio and television, foreign language courses, business management or fashion designing, there are institutes that offer these courses right here.

TRYST
“Patna’s tryst with modern education started way back in the 19th century. Schools like St. Joseph’s Convent and St. Michael’s have traditions that span over 150 years,” says Anne D’Costa, who taught at the latter school for over 25 years and who now lives with her equally famous footballer and teacher husband Rocque D’Costa in Mumbai.

Patna College dates back to 1912. Patna Medical College and Bihar National College gave India and the world some of its brightest luminaries. The American Jesuits started St. Xavier’s, and the American Bishop Sullivan started Patna Women’s College in the tempestuous years of 1939-40. They read the signs of India struggling to break free from British colonialism and encouraged their students to prepare themselves to take on great responsibilities in the New India. Students travelled from Bengal, Orissa and neighbouring countries to schools and colleges in Patna.

PASS WITHOUT ENGLISHIn the seventies and eighties, Patna saw several upheavals, not the least in the field of education. There emerged a new category on the Matriculation certificate, “Pass without English”. The venerable Catholic / Protestant aristocratic English medium school ethos: stolid and elitist, underwent a drastic change as the Jesuits shifted gears and opened the floodgates to Dalits in their new-found ‘option for the poor’. Upper class Patna watched aghast as trusted traditions were thrown to the winds and first St. Xavier’s, and then St. Michael’s reversed gears and became Hindi medium schools. This resulted in the opening of several privately run English Medium Schools run by Anglo-Indians, the most famous of which was set up by a certain Alfred De Rozario.

ASPIRATIONAL LANGUAGE

“Let’s face it. English is the aspirational language of Bihar. In spite of all attempts to portray Bihar as a rustic place which has no place for English, several private English Medium schools opened in Patna,” observes journalist and educator Allen Johannes. “Schools such as Rose Bud, St. Karen’s, St. Dominic Savio’s were started and flourished. Soon other schools such as DAV and Krishna Niketan opened: all of them teaching with English as a medium of instruction.”

Post-modern, technology-driven, globalised India has an entirely different set of aspirations and values, and the shift is evident in the choices made by the prospering middle classes of twenty-first century Bihar. The air-conditioned designer schools have made a mark in Patna. If money is no consideration, one needn’t pack their kids off to strange boarding schools when brands such as DPS, Radiant, and Zee have arrived and unpacked their wares.

Gyan Niketan School Director Anita Kunal attributes the success of the institution to the dedication and devotion of faculty and students to their respective duties. “Team work, utmost sincerity and honesty towards been our USP. We just don’t rest on our laurels and allow complacency to sneak in. We are constantly challenging ourselves to set new but realistic standards,” she says. She denounces too much attention being given to academics alone. “The general tendency is to stress too much on academics once the students reach the 10+2 level. The extra curricular activities and personality development aspect of education which are an integral part of the process are given a backseat. This should be avoided. The idea is to attain equilibrium between studies and all round development, without which education loses its essence.”

Coomar Anunodaya, who runs the Krishna Niketan chain of schools says that the imparting of cultural values and sanskar are the basis of education. “In our schools, we do not stress only on grades, life skills are an integral part of education. The girls are taught how to be good daughters, mothers and daughters-in-law as well. Family values are important.” A similar line of thought is also held by the Premalok school, which has sessions with spiritual leaders as part of the curriculum.

There primary reason why the demand for higher education and traditional courses in the state suffer and students migrate to outside institutions is that little placement assistance is provided by Patna colleges, says College of Commerce (Magadh University) Principal Suresh Prasad. “This deters them from opting for courses from Patna institutions which don’t provide them with access to employment opportunities.”

There is evidence that the benefits of education to individuals and society are enhanced when its quality is high. For example, better learning outcomes – as represented by pupils’ achievement test scores – are closely related to higher earnings in the labour market; thus, differences in quality are likely to indicate differences in individual worker productivity. Empirical research has also demonstrated that good schooling improves national economic potential. The quality of the labour force, again as measured by test scores, appears to be an important determinant of economic growth.
[Photo by FK: Boys in a government shool in Madhepura, Bihar March 2009. This article was published in the Times of India in April 2008]

Author: Frank Krishner

Jaswant Singh at the Patna Golf Club

“People in villages losing confidence”: Jaswant Singh

From Frank Krishner

The country faces a crisis of governance, and this is the root of several problems India faces today, former external affairs minister Jaswant Singh told a section of Patna’s intelligentsia at a private function on Saturday [17 Jan]. Mr Singh, while delivering a talk on “The State of our Nation: Our Challenges, our Response” to an apolitical gathering at the Golf Club reminded his listeners that India still lives in her villages, and when the people in the villages lose confidence in governance, the administration ‘loses control’. The rise of the Maoists in parts of the country is the consequence of this loss of faith in governance, he said.

The challenges before us are economic, diplomatic, and political. Our legislators treat Parliament and the state legislatures as perennial election platforms, the veteran parliamentarian pointed out. Several statutes in the law books are out-dated, he remarked.

Touching on the November terrorist attacks and the aftermath, Singh, who briefly held the portfolio of Minister for Defence in 2002-03, spoke of the changing nature of security and national defence requirements. He also pointed out that legislation alone – the creation of more ‘anti-terror laws’ – is not a solution, and may prove problematic in the long run. He expressed his anguish over what he clearly perceives as India’s tame diplomatic strategy following the Mumbai terrorist attacks.

Reflecting on his tenure as Finance Minister of India, he dwelt on the initial challenges he faced at a time when the country was in the throes of an economic downturn. He realized that the key to economic resurgence was to enable the ordinary housewife to feel that she has some money in her hands – “it’s a tactile thing,” he affirmed, looking towards the ladies in the audience,” the lady of the house should be able to feel the money in her hands, money that can be spent for school fees, or food, or groceries.”

Dr. Shanker Dutt, Dr. Muniba Sami, Mr and Mrs. Tapan Ghosh, Mr Manik Vedsen, Secretary Golf Club, friends of Mr Raghvendra Singh IAS Principal Secretary to Jaswant Singh organised the talk. In the distinguished audience were Mr Justice Shiv Kirti Singh, Mr Justice Sudhir Katriar, Mr Justice Samarendra P.N. Singh, former LNMU Vice Chancellor Dr J.P. Singh, and Industrialist Mr S.P. Sinha.

Mr Jaswant Singh was his affable self, and despite his discomfort from a previous lumbar injury, aggravated by ‘Patna road conditions’ chose to speak from the podium.

Speaking in an informal manner, he gently drew attention to the deterioration in public life, and the ills affecting even the judicial system, especially among the lower judiciary. The ordinary citizen has begun to perceive the legal and administrative system as onerous and frightening, he stated, and indicated that the challenge for all would be to make the system citizen friendly.

Earlier, Dr Shanker Dutt while introducing Mr Singh, spoke of his various accomplishments: author, academician, army officer, polo player, parliamentarian, traveller, and golf enthusiast. The President of the Patna Golf Club Mr Justice Ajay Tripathi proposed the vote of thanks.

It was a pleasurable experience to listen to this distinguished speaker and Parliamentarian. The question session that followed was lively, and though the audience steered away from colouring the evening with ‘politics’, it was evident that the alumnus of Mayo College and the National Defence Academy didn’t think much of the current central leadership, though he was gracious enough to admit that the present problems were the result of low quality governance over the years and the rot spans across the political divide, bringing within its ambit parties of all hues and men of all persuasions.

Author: Frank Krishner

If only we had the same opportunities….

Sadhu Manhji squats on the floor on the veranda of Bahuada primary school. He wipes the sweat of his forehead. Bare bodied and dusty, he has interrupted his work in the fields to come to the school and talk to us about the new initiatives for education happening within his community. He is a member of the VSS, the school education committee.

“This generation has opportunities to go to school that we never had. And all our Musahar people must realize this. The efforts of the government to give our children an education are sincere. Our own people must take advantage of this and demand for education,” he says.

Thanks to an initiative by local Mushahar youth called Navachar Kendras, backed by the State Government tHrough the SSA (Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan), 138 Musahar children of primary school going age have been identified, and all of these have been enrolled in school, he says.

“I did go to school. I remember that I was in class two when things began going against my education. We would have to walk for some distance and go to the school. We would have to pass the fields belonging to the land-owners. The farmers would tell us that we had no business going to school. The bigger boys who belonged to the farmer caste would threaten to break our legs if we went towards the school. My own parents, fearing for my safety, or even for their lives said that it was our lot to work in the fields and that we could never hope to have foolish dreams of becoming officers. This was how things were twenty five years ago.

“Today, I am a member of the School education committee in this village. Whatever these volunteers [Tola sevaks] are doing, they are helping the children complete their education. They are taking the children by the hand and making them sit in the classrooms. The teachers are accepting these Musahar children. In our time, we would have to sit at a distance from the rest of the students, because we were regarded as smelly and dirty,” says Sadhu Manjhi with feeling.

At Pitvans Mushari beside the Punpun river, a young man named Birju speaks up. “The Musahars have always been outside the social circle. Even though there were winds of change blowing all around us, they didn’t touch our lives.

“Not only me, but practically every male above ten or eleven in my family had to find some sort of means to survive– servant, helper, brick carrier, factory worker. If your parents are busy the whole day to scrape together a handful of food, how can you go to school? You are left to survive as best you can. I studied in the school for about three years, but reality took over. I had to earn my living, so dropped out.

But now, things are very different. I would want my children to go to the school. Because they will be able to benefit. In the evenings, the tola sevak will coach my children as well. It is wonderful that educated persons from our own community are engaged in this process. This is a positive move by the government. No doubt there are problems, but this is a beginning. I am happy to say that I urged my relatives to support the tola sevak Ganauri Manjhi. This child in my arms will also go to school one day. Instead of just complaining about how we are being neglected, it is our duty to become a part of our own children’s development,” Birju asserts.

Ninety Musahar children of primary school going age were identified from the Pitvans area and all have been placed within the school system.
Photos by Frank Krishner
1.Sadhu Manjhi [right] at Bahuada PS

2.Birju Manjhi

Author: Frank Krishner

CANDLES FOR REMEMBRANCE

The time has come to remember those we have lost to AIDS. This is no remote AIDS campaign. This is an evening to remember friends, families, neighbours, lost to the pandemic.

We joined this international candlelight memorial movement in 2001, and we managed to raise the State AIDs Society out of its ostrich like slumber.

This Sunday, at 6 PM at St Xavier's School, Gandhi Maidan, Patna, join ACT India [Aasra Charitable Trust], supported by the Student World Assembley and Student Global Aids Campaign for a one hour memorial of music, poetry and reflection in memory of those we have lost to AIDS.

Several people and organisations have joined hands with us, since this is a community grass roots event. St Xavier's school has donated space. Rose Bud, Nav Deepti Academy, and several other schools have prepared items for the event.

SAMAR, a local youth group has also joined hands in helping us organise this function.

Contributions in cash or kind are welcome - this will help us defray expenses.

More information can be found here

http://fragbows2.blogspot.com/2008/05/light-candle.html

Author: Frank Krishner

Another Brick in the Wall

Education is fast becoming a fad-ridden industry, and nowhere is this more evident than in small town India.
Ride through the streets of Patna and you cannot fail to see a plethora of posters, wall writing, and billboards merrily advertising everything from ‘Dharapravah Angrezi in 30 days’ to ‘Cracking the Chemistry paper by Xyz Sir’.
Children are robbed of their childhood and enslaved to textbooks by first generation ‘urban parents’, whose daily chant is ‘get up, brush, study and go for tuitions’.

Teaching Shops
The employees of the so-called ‘English Medium’ teaching shops that masquerade as schools – they do not deserve to be called teachers – actually discourage children from reading books beyond the prescribed texts. I have heard in shocked disbelief that parents in Patna [and I daresay elsewhere] discourage their kids from reading storybooks!
School libraries that are supposed to be storehouses of knowledge of all kinds are reduced to textbook godowns that stock books on chemistry, physics and mathematics and nowadays, computers. General Knowledge is a ‘subject’ to be mugged up and not to be gleaned through leisurely forays into magazines, books, or life experiences. The so-called ‘teacher’ of a teaching factory thinks it is enough for a kid to ‘know’ that Dickens wrote a book called ‘Oliver Twist’, it is not necessary for the child to actually read it and experience it for himself.
If you are a schoolteacher who discourages your student from reading children’s literature, you are responsible for producing a half-baked human being. Worse, if you are a schoolteacher who does not read children’s literature, you are a half-baked teacher. If you are a teacher of English and have not read Harry Potter, or the books of Roald Dahl, or at least Enid Blyton and Amar Chitra Katha, your knowledge is severely limited.

Woefully Limited
Every year, I face a class of ‘English Medium’ students – products from ‘English Medium’ Patna schools. I happen to teach Journalism and Media studies in a Communicative English Curriculum at the undergraduate level. Most of these ‘plus two’ students who aspire to become communicators have very poor communication skills, or social skills for that matter. Their reading, by and large, is woefully limited to the English textbooks. Their comprehension is usually appalling. I have discovered that more than half the students no idea about Enid Blyton, Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, or even Cinderella. They do not read modern authors, not even the Barbara Cartland, Denise Robbins or Mills & Boon! Forget about the ‘more serious’ reading material. They don’t read. Period.

To teats their English comprehension skills, I play a common song like “Country Roads”, and more than half the students cannot make out the words. In a class of 35, there will be about five students who can tell me the names of five English singer/ songwriters or pop groups. These are English medium students who have been studying for 12 years in English medium schools and they cannot comprehend the first fifteen minutes of ‘The Sound of Music’ or ‘My fair lady’. Worse still, more than half the class have never watched an English film!

These students ‘read’ newspapers, but if you ask them what they think of Jug Suraiya, or Karan Thapar or Bagchi Karkariya (or any other regular columnist with the exception of Bejan Daruwalla) and they stare at you open-mouthed. Most of these young people do not have the ability to think for themselves, to engage in discourse. They spout generalities. They are shaky and diffident when the discourse leads beyond the textbook.

Frogs in wells
And to think that parents spend so much of money on an ‘English Medium’ education! English is supposed to broaden your worldview, but what are the end products of these teaching shops? Loud-mouthed brats with the perspective of a frog in a well!

Now ask any parent why education is important. Why do they strive hard to send their kids to a particular school? The answer will invariably be: to give them social graces, to instil a sense of discipline, to make my child a good citizen, so that my child learns values such as honesty, to make my child a well rounded human being. This is why they would pay through their noses, so that their children become world citizens, but with their feet firmly rooted in reality.
But does our school education system value the disciplined, the polite, the well-rounded human child? A child may be polite, honest, excel at dramatics and debates, do well on the sports field, but is he valued if he just brings home average grades in science and maths? Certainly not! Because punctuality, good leadership qualities, and honesty do not fetch ‘marks’. As a matter of fact, in the senior classes, the teachers themselves cast aside all value systems and honesty and allow (or may I dare say ‘encourage’) the students to cheat on project work and practical assignments. To ensure that the students pass, they award the highest possible marks to all students during internal evaluation, regardless of whether the student is a hardworking one or a shirker.

Teacher as salesman

In this mass-produced, throwaway consumer culture, it is not the durability or the reliability of the product that counts, as long as the package is fine, the goods will pass muster. So, it does not matter whether your student actually has an education, it is the marks on the report card that matter. No wonder then, that teachers have lost all respect, after all, they are just over-the-counter salespersons.
If you have the good fortune to have a teacher who believes that her profession is a vocation and not a career, you are blessed indeed.

The Master teacher is knowledgeable. She reads a lot. She has a worldview and knows that there is no such thing as a ‘superior’ or an ‘inferior’ culture. She challenges her students to explore, to experience life, to test the boundaries. She knows her subject thoroughly and strives to ensure that the weakest students are enthused by her teaching. She is impartial with a sense of fair dealing and fair play, and she is not impressed by how ‘famous’ or what a ‘big person’ a child’s parents are.

In the seventies, the rock band Pink Floyd, wrote an anthem, “Another Brick in the Wall.” The lyrics are telling indeed. “We don’t need no education. We don’t need no thought control. Dark sarcasm in the classroom. Teacher, leave that kid alone. Teacher! Leave that kid alone!”

When teachers themselves have forgotten what the true purpose if education is, when they themselves bend the value system for narrow pecuniary and political gains, then all that is achieved by this education are bricks for a wall, not human beings. The products of this ‘marks oriented’ mass produced education are faceless, square entities, devoid of humanity with facts and figures loosely rattling round inside their heads.

Has the teaching shop killed the traditional school yet? The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind…



Author: Frank Krishner

Reaching the last child

Twenty one year old Naheed Parveen has discovered a new passion. Whenever she visits her friends and neighbours, she asks about the health and progress of the small children around. ‘I keep a look out for news of new born babies, so I can motivate their parents to immunise them against polio,” she says.
While the eastern Indian state of Bihar grapples with an alarming rise in the number of poliovirus infections in the past year, unreached children continue to remain vulnerable in certain pockets.
Naheed is one of the 300 community mobilisers under an expanded SMNet programme who help build a bridge between their communities and the programme, helping to break down resistance and ensure better quality operations and reach to vulnerable children.Two years ago, Naheed’s grandfather, a Muslim cleric, had a marked apathy towards the Pulse polio programme. Today, announcements about the usefulness of the vaccine are issued from his mosque in one of Bihar’s ‘vaccination unfriendly’ blocks.
“Two years ago, vaccinators would be chased away from this neighbourhood,” says Najma Parveen, the block mobilisation coordinator who inducted Naheed into the Polio social mobilisation network. “Naheed is a bright girl and a college student. Her grandfather is a respected religious figure. Our vaccination team, who often had to face verbal abuse and sometime physical threats in the past, now reaches infants in the same problem areas, because the Maulana’s granddaughter accompanies the vaccinator.
“It wasn’t easy for a girl with my family background to step out of the house. My father gave his permission grudgingly when I pointed out that the honorarium for the job would help me pay for my college books. My grandfather finally came round to understanding that the polio vaccine did not have any side effects like making babies barren in later life. So he allowed announcements about the polio programme to be made after religious gatherings at the mosque,” Naheed says.
A local woman says firmly, “We only allowed our children to receive vaccination because the Maulana’s granddaughter personally accompanied the vaccinator, and we have her word that the vaccine is safe.”
Naheed says that motivation is an ongoing task. “I also ensure that the new born babies receive the complete immunisation package by accompanying the mothers to the PHC.” In traditional Muslim households, the women refrain from moving out of the locality on their own.
If refusals to the polio vaccine in Bihar have come down to 0.1 percent over the past three months, it is largely because of the consistent efforts of community mobilisation coordinators, Block Mobilisation Coordinators and the SMnet teams.
Community mobilisation coordinators work with the womenfolk in the family on a regular basis, assessing their needs and devising localised strategies for outreach.
Shagufta Naaz, a CMC in the Tripolia locality of Gulzarbagh block overcame the resistance of traditional Muslim families by donning the burkha (hijab). Says Shagufta, “Women in my family don’t usually wear traditional Muslim clothing, as is the case in most middle class educated families. However, I realised that to successfully ensure complete coverage in my area, I would have to penetrate families with a very traditional mindset. When I began using the burkha, I found it far easier to achieve rapport. I was not treated with suspicion. There were 19 refusals in this area four months ago. As of today, there is only one family left uncovered, but I am sure that with a little help from the local community influencers, we will be able to vaccinate the last child within the next two days.”
Shazia, a CMC from the Sher Shah Gali area, holds non-formal classes for small children in front of her house. “Some women asked me if I could teach their small kids, and I agreed. After all, as an educated young person, spending an hour helping children is time well spent. It also helps me influence the women to look after the children better,” she says. Shazia states that several women have begun to have their children vaccinated when their husbands are out of the house. “Even if the husbands resist, the women have begun to understand the importance of protecting their children from the polio virus.”
“Local influencers are an asset to the polio communication campaign,” says Naheed, “the success of a mobilisation coordinator can be measured by the number of local leaders she can network with to come out and support the vaccination campaign. We also support Anganwadi workers to update the list of newborns so that ICDS services can also reach the children.”

Author: Frank Krishner

Meena teaches and entertains

60 children from 13 schools were invited to Abhivyakti 2008 to take part on a special Meena animation film appreciation workshop sponsored by Kalyanpur Cements, one of Bihar’s leading cement brands.

Abhivyakti is the bi-annual documentary and short film festival held at Ravi Bharati, Patna.

“I don’t think that only boys bully girls, the bigger girls in my school also bully smaller ones,” said Aditya Kymar of Don Bosco Academy.
“It is a very bad thing, teasing and making fun of girls. Big boys and naughty ones do it along the roads. If a girl has to pass that way, she will feel frightened. A girl who is harassed should complain to the teacher or her parents,” said Aparijata, a 14 year old girl from St. John’s Academy.

But what happens if the girl being teased belongs to a very weak section of society, and the boys who block her way to school belong to very powerful village families?
The students got together to enact their own version of the Meena film “Whose afraid of bullies”. In their story, the parents were powerless, and the teacher afraid to take action, but the children persuaded them to take the matter to the Panchayat.

The Meena animated series of films that raises several issues is an excellent value education tool, and this has been demonstrated by me several times at various AASRA Charitable trust media workshops for kids. The Meena workshops at the video festival at Ravi Bharati were a bi-annual feature, and we were always thankful to Mr Augustine Veliath, the Child Rights Officer at Patna (now in Delhi) for his unflinching support till 2004.

This year, Kalyanpur Cements, who are known to support local community building initiatives, readily helped us out with the required funds, thanks to Mr Faisal Alam, the Vice President sales and marketing. Mr alam visited the workshop and praised the kids for their presentation and acting skills.

The film “Ladki hi hoga” based on the desire for a male child, had the participants marking out things girls were not allowed to do at home and in the neighbourhood. The list was long indeed. Then the boys listed things that they were not allowed to do, even if they wished to: some said they were not allowed to enter the kitchen, others said that they were scolded if they touched a broom or washed clothes. “Girls can wear jeans, but we are never allowed to wear girls’ clothes,” piped up twelve year old Prem from Nav Deepti school. Aman Sinha from Don Bosco said that his mother insisted that he help with the housework, so he had the freedom to wash, cook, and clean.
The children worked out ways to end stereotyping in their neighbourhood and among friends. “In the modern world, it makes good sense to learn cooking, or else when we go away from home, we’ll face trouble,’ said the boys.

The film “Ek Ladki ki kahani” brought home discrimination because of lack of knowledge and fear, and enabled the participants to talk about HIV AIDS and broader issues of discrimination. The film on dowry, had the children discussing the futility of laws that cannot be imposed because they do not have general acceptance. It also brought about the misconception that city dwellers have that villagers are fools and out-of-date. The Meena film showed that an aware village headman and enlightened citizens could resist the machinations of crooked city dwellers.
The show was compered by Miller school student Alok Kumar. [in photo handing over the memento to Mr Faisal Alam]

The children had loads of fun. There were games, snacks and a wholesome lunch that was part of the proceedings.

Author: Frank Krishner