Teacher Training

Well Natasha left shortly after arriving, but when one door shuts another westerner arrives in Lucknow. Danielle is from England and came to India to attend the teacher-training course we’re currently running here at FAS. She’s twenty-five and plans to go into curriculum development. After the course she’s going to China to work in that field.

We’re currently holding a teacher-training course, which started last week and will last for about forty days. Obviously we’re training people to become teachers, but the essence of what we’re doing – and I use ‘we’ liberally because I’m doing very little – is so much more. The teachers that we are creating are very different from western teachers, and extremely different from Indian teachers. In India teachers still use corporal punishment and their main task is to force children to memorize information. They do not teach children how to gather knowledge, analyze knowledge and apply knowledge. Answering a question involves copy the answer direct from the textbook.

What is being done here is something of a revolution in India. What we’re attempting to do is create a curriculum, and teachers to teach it, that will produce thinking people. The students of these schools should fall in love with learning, should develop a desire to seek the truth and apply it to their own lives.

The day begins at eight when we set up chairs and such. From about nine to eleven thirty Melody gives English lessons, during which I usually work on my main project - Pathfinders. Around eleven Sohayl gives a talk, which I take notes from. So in other words I’m a kind of scribe. The talks are about education of course, and have covered practical techniques of teaching, psychology and the personal character a teacher should develop. It is incredibly fascinating stuff to listen to. The talk usually lasts for a couple of hours after which Danielle takes the participants through part of the curriculum they’ll be teaching.

I spend my spare time now a days, reading, writing, and surfing the Cyber Ocean. Often there are Bahai activities, and sometimes we go to the malls, or Sohayl’s mother’s house. It’s getting hotter, now averaging at about thirty-nine to forty, but it’s not really that uncomfortable.