Reporting from Cambridge
Just wanted to note that an
opinion piece I wrote in the Harvard Citizen was published this week. The text is below in case the link changes.
“Che du… Cha de wu… cha du vu…” The children laughed heartily as I blundered through the phrase that they were trying to teach me. I’m confident that they considered me a bumbling idiot, not even able to parrot such a simple phrase.
Just seventy miles away from the economic miracle of Bangalore, India, with its gleaming IT campuses reminiscent of Silicon Valley, lies an obscure rural valley experiencing a miracle of its own: the Rishi Valley Education Center. While Rishi Valley may not have the media appeal of companies like Infosys and other upstart IT companies that are changing the way the world does business, it is having a profound and fundamental impact on the Indian educational system.
The mission of the Center is simple: provide a quality, village-based elementary education for rural children in multi-grade, one-room schoolhouses. However, as is often the case, significant cultural and economic barriers complicate achieving this simple goal.
In a region where most live on subsistence farming and every family member must contribute, education frequently becomes a low priority for parents and children alike. The realities of survival in such a poor area make it difficult to convince the community to embrace education. Additionally, students often live miles from the nearest government school with no option other than to walk miles each day to attend school.
Furthermore, the educators at Rishi Valley found that the families frequently required their children to be out of school for extended periods that did not conform to the standard educational schedule. These students, upon returning to the classroom, found themselves lagging behind their peers and consequently lost motivation to continue.
In response to these problems, the husband and wife team of Y.A. and Rama Rao created an elegant solution that they call “School in a Box.” The curriculum is modular, with simple graphics of plants and animals, color-coded by subject area, to depict the progress and level of the students. These graphical “achievement ladders” are simple enough for both children and illiterate adults to understand, leading to an increased level of parent participation. The self-contained lessons provide the teachers of the one-room schoolhouses with enough flexibility to support up to 25 children spread across five grade levels.
The Raos believe that in a society with such strong communal bonds, it is vitally important for the entire community be involved in the schools. To encourage community participation, they developed a program of math and science fairs, organized by the schools, but run by the students themselves. We, the HKS India Trekkers, were lucky enough to attend one such “Math Mela” over the winter break, and we were amazed by the turnout. It seemed as though the entire village attended. Eager students wearing sashes saying “Can I help you?” quickly split us up and took us to the various stations where we had to guess the metric measurements of sticks and weights of different foods. Each station had a student that graded our attempts to use Tangrams, measure our height, or use an abacus-like counting device. Despite some communication problems, we performed fairly well on our student-issued report cards, although there may have been some grade inflation.
In less than two decades, the program has made amazing progress, expanding from a handful of village-based schools to 15 across the Rishi Valley. The Center has also worked with regional governments in India and other national governments to bring the “School in a Box” process to one-room schoolhouses in other parts of the world.
Thus far, the results have been astounding. Graduates of the program are well received in the government middle schools and high schools, outperforming their peers in traditional elementary school programs. In this impoverished area where as many as 25 percent of school-aged children are considered child laborers by UNICEF standards and schools consistently underperform their urban equivalents, this success is encouraging. If India is to maintain the economic momentum it has achieved through enterprises like Infosys, the level of education provided to its youth must continue to improve. Innovative programs such as this offer great hope.
The Rishi Valley Rural Education program operates on an annual budget of less than $50,000, but struggles to raise even that meager sum. Luckily, even from Cambridge’s ivy-covered walls, we can help.
Just $2,500 runs one village school for an entire year. Please help the students of the HKS India Trek reach this goal and attend the fundraiser at Tommy Doyle’s on April 2nd at 8 pm. The minimum suggested donation will be $10 at the door, but please consider giving $15 - enough to fund a student for an entire month. We look forward to seeing you there - the students of Rishi Valley need your help!
Oh, and the phrase that I finally managed to repeat successfully? “Cha-du-vu, kor-e-ka.” It means, “I want to learn.”
Other than an infuriatingly slow bus trip, the day has been uneventful. I was impressed first thing this morning by a group of well-wishers as we boarded the buses. Apparently they're out there every week giving the sailors heading overseas a smile and a pat on the back. We each received a small care package loaded with delicious junk food, home baked cookies, and a note from a local 4th grade class. The cynic in me found it slightly comical, but I suppressed that impression and tried to appreciate the good natured outpouring of support as just that.
