THE PHYSICAL CONTEXT OF SCHOOLS: AMBIENCE

Looks familiar? Like your classroom in school? Except that this was 100 years ago. The one institution that has not changed physically in 100 years is, you’ve got it, schools. After two punishing years of lockdowns, how unlikely is it that they are going to look any different even as we blithely consider cutting back on the curriculum or spout off about technology in classrooms? 

There has been much discussion in Indian education circles about how the pandemic has affected schooling. Research studies have documented many struggles: inequality of technology access, student drop out, ‘learning loss,’ curtailed curriculum, and teachers managing students rather than teaching.

Now with schools reopening everything is back to ‘normal’ but what is the ‘new normal’ for teachers? They have been irrevocably changed by experiences of the past two years which have been a strange mixture of comfort and inconvenience, of familiarity and strangeness. How will they fit back into school buildings that have remained static?

Pandemic-while

During the pandemic, for close on two years teachers were forced to mix personal and professional settings creating modern ‘one room schools.’ This sudden change in physical context made for conditions of working and living inconvenient and comfortable simultaneously.

Like most of us who live in flats, teachers’ houses are not large enough for a dedicated room per member of the family. When a private place could be spared to work in comparative solitude, patriarchy determined that menfolk had first rights so that the husband or son in the family closed the door to the room and left the womenfolk and children to share common areas.

Various shared spaces perforce functioned as ‘multiple classrooms,’ whether it was the drawing room, a bedroom or the kitchen table. They had to be frequently rearranged to accommodate ‘school’ and ‘home’ functions. Dining tables had to be cleared every morning for laptops which in turn had to cleared off at mealtimes. Beds had to be remade several times after constant use. These arrangements naturally were very inconvenient and upsetting for the entire family.

Most schools avoid placing children in their parents’ classroom to circumvent accusations of favoritism. Teacher-parents were reminded of how welcome this unwritten rule is! In close proximity at school-home, instances of irony abounded. Teacher-parents had to tune out a colleague’s professional practices, hoping the Golden Rule[1] would apply to them, too. They could hear their child’s teacher echo their own calls for attention. They watched helplessly as their own children, just like their students, muted their audio and turned off their video to watch TV. They heard their children offer a familiar, specious complaint - ‘My internet is not working, Miss.’

A brighter side to this was that teachers were in their own homes, in familiar surroundings, on familiar territory which, to a large extent, they could negotiate to suit themselves. Even called on more often than was convenient to serve tea or clean up after a meal, they were conscious of the convenience factor of being in their own homes, in a place of comparative physical comfort brought on by familiarity. They could regulate the ambient ventilation, lighting and noise. They sat at ease under their own fans or in air-conditioned comfort. They closed windows when the noise from neighbours became too loud.

Though these convenience factors may outweigh the crowd factor for short spells, they could not for the interminable two years that Covid-19 sanctioned. It is not surprising that teachers were raring to get out their houses and back into school buildings.

Post-Pandemic

With schools in full swing again, teachers are back in a very familiar mode. They are back in the whirl of school assembly and bell to bell periods, and hurried lunches and even shorter tea breaks. Students are in one room, under their eagle eye, unable to remain unseen, anonymous or absent. Life is back on track. Phew!

But do they see schools as the Garden of Eden before the fall?

Furnishing classrooms

The most depressing thing about schools is their physical set up, how they are furnished and maintained. Rooms are usually packed tight and the narrow aisles are most inconvenient. In fact, unless the teachers are as thin as walkway models, they can scarcely get to the back of the room.

The quality of student furniture leaves a lot to be desired. Gouges and scratches bear witness to the boredom of generations who have graced the building, and quickly descend into a state of dilapidation. They are not regularly painted or varnished and are not replaced until they become unsafe.

Teachers’ chairs, if they are provided one at all, are hardbacked with even harder seats that are murder on their backs and bums. A definite disincentive to rest tired legs.

The poor ambience of the classrooms is exacerbated by the fact that teachers have little to no say in the location or arrangement of their classrooms. Why then would they have a stake in it and take ownership of the state of the room?

 

Ventilation

Classrooms are hot and not well-ventilated. Schools have little choice in the placement of their buildings, especially in overcrowded cities. So while homes may run north-south to let in air but not direct sun, classrooms windows, where they open to the outside, are perfectly positioned to trap the heat of the day, which is multiplied by forty warm bodies.

A majority of the classrooms are equipped with at least fans, if not air-conditioning. Though it must be acknowledged the intermittent, unreliable electricity flow make these fittings moot. Further, teachers are discouraged from switching them on to conserve on utility bills. End result is that classrooms are sweatpits.

Is it any wonder that by the end of the day the fetid atmosphere in the classroom makes teaching or learning untenable?

 

What can school do?

No, I am not advocating for existing schools to be torn down and rebuilt, though most of them beg for it, let’s be honest. Even within the existing infrastructure, life can be made a little less unpleasant physically for teachers.

1.       Encourage teachers to rearrange furniture to serve their pedagogy. If they can turn chairs around, or pile up desks and chairs against the wall, they may use interactive activities rather than lecture.

2.       Require teachers to switch on the fan in every classroom and leave them on through the day. Even when students are not in the room, the fans will sweep out the stuffiness and swelter.

3.       Equip windows with wooden blinds or shutters that can be closed against direct sunlight. They will be less expensive and require less maintenance than curtains.

4.       Invest in and maintain generators for the entire school, not just the administrator block or IT labs. Regular sources of power should be considered as essential as furniture.

Then may be the school building will be the teachers’ workplace of choice, and not just an escape from overcrowding at home!

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[1] Do to others as you would have them do to you. Luke 6:31

ON LOCAL LIBRARIES

 Talking of books, again (do we ever stop?), while every major city has its USIS and British Council libraries, the greatest pleasure that bound us all together was the local library. You know, which was just about within walking distance from home, the one had something for every age group in the family.

Which was teeny-tiny with perhaps just about enough room to turn around rather than crawl out backwards. 

Which was dusty and musty, where the books were so tightly packed on the shelf that you had to pull out two or three at a time. Where you wanted to get to the books first, before their spines cracked and they fell apart.

Where the owner had a record of every book you had ever read in all the 15 years you had been a member. Who knew who had borrowed the book you desperately wanted. Who kept an eagle eye on you and wouldn’t let you borrow books your parents forbade you to bring home.

Who when you go even 15 years later instantly recognizes you. Who still keeps your membership current and knows your membership page number. And suggests what authors you should have moved on to since the last time you borrowed a book. And doesn’t hesitate to dun you for the book you lost 20 years ago. Or will return the Rs. 2 which he owed you from way back when.

All of us in major metros have grown with such a library even as the city grew around it. In Madras it was Easwari Lending Library. An institution in itself.

By the time I could make my way to Easwari, I had ‘graduated’ from Enid Blyton and Agatha Christie to Romances. Mills and Boon, as they were then called, was much in demand but I was also an indiscriminate reader, willing to peruse almost anything printed. No one commented adversely on reading habits, though my father was totally unappreciative of my literary taste; he insisted on picking up my M&B only with a hanky so as not to pollute himself with ‘rubbish.’

Mr. Palani, the founder-owner, is a fairly short, thin man who ruled his library with a rod of iron. We were allowed to borrow only 10 titles at a time. Actually, we began with five. When Mr. Palani deemed us sufficiently trustworthy to return the books in time and in good condition, he upped the limit to 10.

Ooof. The relief!

Even that was insufficient for me. I was a fairly fast reader, devouring one or two books on a weekday and few more over the weekend, and ran through the new books in short order. Fortunately, there were a couple of other patrons of Easwari who stepped up. My friend Bharati’s mother, for instance, was another avid reader of M&B who would sub-lend me her borrowed books, keeping me well supplied. The only provisos were that I returned them safely to Easwari before the due date to avoid late fees, and in time to enable them to borrow a fresh lot without hitting the max ceiling.

The reading was an all-absorbing enchantment and thrill but returning the enormous number of books threw up many issues. First of all was the timing since I had to juggle the deadlines of three other patrons apart from my own. Sitting up nights to finish a book was standard practice, which my family tolerated. It also required late-evening runs to the library, not a practice my family approved of.

Returning 15 to 20 books at a time to the library, which was not on a bus route, involved huge, heavy bags. They were special trips from home, not combined with other errands in the area or on the way back from college. Definitely not the last as the books would have been seized upon by various friends to be read between the pages of the English textbook in Mrs. John’s class probably, not to be seen again for a couple of days, well past the due date.

Secondly, I had to look sharp to avoid paying unnecessary late fees. Palani was not above pulling a fast one on me, slyly failing to cancel books I had returned. Fortunately, my prodigious memory served me well and I countered by tracing them back on the shelves or to my friends who had borrowed it after me.

My nephew Rama, as he is now known, shares my mania for books. When he was old enough to read, I insisted that he earn his privilege of a library visit by walking to it. The five-year-old would trudge 1.5 km through the hot, humid evening to choose books that were first vetted by me and then by Palani. We would get a ride back if the book load was too heavy or it was much too late in the evening.

Even before Easwari was the Children’s Club mobile library. In my days, the club membership consisted of friends and family who lived within a 10-minute walk of each other. The club was run by my extended family who called the shots on all details of the library service.

Every Saturday, Munuswamy would ride the library van around the neighborhood (and no, that is not his picture and the van was a dull gray!) and we’d fall on it like vultures, ready to pick it clean. We were each allowed one or two books and one magazine, a paltry number. Ritakka, my cousin, as always came to my rescue, allowing me to appropriate her slot, setting a custom that I later took for granted. I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t have first choice every week because, of course, I was the most avid reader in our group, I whined. But more dispassionate heads made sure each household was fairly served in the rota system. And Munuswamy had strict instructions not to permit any reservations, so I had to wait my turn for a coveted book. We were strictly not allowed to trade across households, even those next door or just across the road, a decision easily enforced since the chief librarian, invariably an aunt or an older cousin, kept informal tabs on our weekly reading list.

I read my first Enid Blytons here, stories about Amelia Jane and pixies and elves. And Highlights with its puzzles, mazes and  puns, also my first introduction to crosswords, a passion that still rules me. We couldn’t colour the pictures, of course, but traced the maze or did the crossword in pencil lightly enough to erase it without a mark.

In total contrast was the school library. With musty books run by a dragon who didn’t seem to have any interest in reading and had no idea who the passionate readers in a class were. But the library did have books and authors I couldn’t find anywhere else, probably because they were so dated – the Chalet school series, Angela Brazil and the Dimsey books. And I found classmates and friends who were non-readers very willing to check out books for me, so it wasn’t a total loss.

Maybe now that I am back in Chennai, perhaps Easwari beckons, though it looks pretty hifi. Or payback time in the Children’s Club library, to (re)introduce its membership to the delights of a local library?