T&L Music and Language - Here, There... Where?

Upstairs, downstairs, in my lady's chamber...

The contexts in which private music classes for beginners are held and a school classroom are surprisingly similar in certain ways.

Anyone who has studied in an Indian school is familiar with how classrooms look and classes function. With no change over 60 years that I remember. (That dates me, eh?) About 40 students at least squashed into a room meant for half that number. Desks in straight rows, facing up front. The aisles too narrow for an average teacher to walk to the back of the class. Or for students from Row 3 to approach the teacher. So any movement is confined to the teacher oscillating in the narrow strip of space between the board and Row 1. So students through the day see a succession of teachers and the uninformative backs of their classmates' heads. The room is bare with no charts or posters on the walls.

More progressive schools may have round tables with chairs in the kindergarten and perhaps even in Grades 1 and 2. But by upper elementary the teacher is expected to be the focus of all students’ attention and we are back to serried states of desks and chairs. Some teachers may put up student work on the walls but most have artistic work done by teachers. Still, some colour in the room to feed the aesthetics of students.

What do music classes look like? In my salad days, the music teacher came home. The classes were one-on-one and were held in a secluded room just off the main part of the house. Both teacher and student sat on the floor with the harmonium between them. I remember my first teacher Soundaram mami easily able to lean over to keep rhythm on my thigh quite forcefully. No frills, at least no more than the room always did. My grandmother always kept an ear open to the doings in the class though she did not sit in on the class.

Much has changed since then. No more individual classes. By and large, they are small group classes of 3 to 10. Students assemble in the teacher’s house. It is usually crowded with little wiggle room. Students usually still sit on the floor. 
The teacher may or may not, depending their age and physical limberness. There is still not much to indicate that this a room devoted to music. Maybe a thamboora in a corner. No bookshelves with music books or pictures of musicians and composers. Parents who hang around waiting to collect their child are discouraged from sitting in on the class but urged to socialise in another room.  

So two or three times a week students essentially go after 6 hours in a regimented, unaesthetic environment of their classroom to another closed, confined room for 30 to 45 minutes, which may be more homely. Getting to look more and more a regular classroom, isn't it?

Music teachers moan that fewer young people are interested in classical music, that they have neither the patience nor the time to invest in learning it. Well, if it is an extension of school, why would students be enthused about it?

Private music teachers are also heard to chastise children with, ‘Would you behave like this in school?’

No, probably not.

But why would you want children to relate back to school, where they have just spent 6 hours, and are longing for something different? And being one of 40 in a larger group of 2000 to 5000 is not what a child would want to repeat through the evenings or weekends.

So how can music classes look and feel differently from school? More like music and less like English or Hindi? Remember that music classes are not school classes, I guess. Music is primarily an aesthetic experience. Cater to it. Allow students to express themselves freely.

Dress! In a music class, we can see children dressed in anything from shorts to flowing skirts to pavadais. It adds colour and vibrance to the room, and it will change the mood of the child. A far cry from the constricting and unimaginative uniforms prescribed by most schools. If anything, discourage children from wearing their school uniforms to music class. A young friend recounts a tale of an established and very well-respected teacher who threw him out of her class because he showed up in shorts. I understand the respect for tradition but can we focus on the joy that music should bring?

Brighten up the room with pictures of musicians and composers, easily available in calendars and flyers, and on the web.

Encourage students to socialize before and after class. Forming friendships will keep children attending music classes long after the pull of the art has faded away.

Schools are institutions with a specific role in the larger society. Private music classes do not have to seek to replicate that purpose or process to justify their existence. Children need different learning contexts, not the same ones twice over…. Hmm, need to explore this more in another post.

Image: https://musicacademymadras.in/academics/part-time-classes/

T&L Music and Language - Music, Language and Me

Meri aukat kya hai? What is my arugadai? How am I qualified to write about teaching and learning, both music and language? A fair question.

The latter is easy to establish. I have taught English and education  for over 40 years in four countries across three continents. I have published and edited about 85 books, chapters and articles, made 120 presentations, and conducted over 50 workshops for teachers. Most recently, I edited an English language textbook series, and co-authored 20 of the 32 books, published by Indiannica Learning. Google me if you want to test the veracity of my claims. Go on, feed my ego😑

My musical experience is both by heritage and as a student. I grew up in a family of dyed-in-the-wool Carnatic musicians. I grew up waking to and going to sleep with music, and dissections and analyses of music and concerts in the inbetween hours. 

My grandfather T.V. Rajagopal was a scholar of music and served as a Secretary of the prestigious Madras Music Academy and its music college for decades. My grandmother Rukmini Rajagopal and various aunts and cousins in the immediate and extended families were, and are, well-respected performers as well as A grade AIR artistes. Both my grandmother and my mother Indira Ramanathan taught music formally for 35 years of their lives. In fact, my grandmother was awarded the prestigious Sangeeta Kala Acharya award by the aforementioned prestigious Madras Music Academy. No, I am not mocking the MMA (well, may be just a tiny bit) but more seeking to establish the distinction of my musical heritage. I am not claiming any special cachet for this heritage but the cultural capital it bestows on me is considerable and I am merely acknowledging the reality of it. And the impact of cultural capital is incontrovertible as much as it is unrecognized.

As for my personal experience with music, like most South Indian brahmins girls, I had music classes ‘inflicted’ on me from the age of 4 or 5. I formally studied music under four different teachers in the early years. In my adulthood I saw the value of music and studied a few years with my grandmother and two years with the illustrious M.L.Vasanthakumari. I am a regular attendee of the music season in Chennai,  and have been  for 40 years, since I was a child, with a hiatus of about 20 years.

Music is in my blood. I love it. I am an enthusiast. I respond to it viscerally. I choose different kinds to mediate and influence my moods.

But I am not in any way, shape or form an expert, not even close. I cannot and will not identify ragas or match composers and compositions. I am flummoxed by complicated calculations and rhythms of talas. I refuse to dissect and analyse concerts. I have perfected the art of forgetting the contents of a concert the minute I walk out of the auditorium.

So for my comments and descriptions of music pedagogy I will rely on my own expertise of the art and science of teaching and learning. I will also call upon my extensive and continuing conversations and dialogues with teachers and students of Carnatic music.

If you feel I am overstepping my bounds, feel free to point it as gently or forcefully as you like . I promise not to block you - unless you overstep bounds of decency!

Oh, and the three links (hold down the text in green):
- A speech by my grandfather
- A viruttam by my grandmother
- A blog about my grandmother by her student, Sanjay Subrahmanyan

Teaching and Learning (T&L): The Arts and the Languages

In April of this year, CBSE, the most influential examination board in India, released a handbook in support of its effort to promote Arts Integrated Learning. An approach after my own heart, it has been in the forefront of my mind.
 One of the underlying requirements  for Arts Integrated Learning to succeed is team work. Subject teachers and Arts teachers (to distinguish between the two, not that the Arts are not subjects, too) will have to communicate with each other. As of now, though they may be on the rolls of the same schools,  these two categories of teachers inhabit two different universes. While Arts teachers may have some experience of how Subject teachers acquired their content knowledge, most Subject teacher have never learnt the Arts formally and may be unaware of the context, condition, content and pedagogical implications of an Arts education. If they don't know where each of them is coming from,  how can they build trust or respect? Understanding how the Arts are learnt by Arts teachers will expand the horizons of pedagogical practices in schools.
This gap in information needs to be filled. To do this, effectively,  as a teacher Educator I need to understand the learning experience of Arts teachers better.
I'm beginning with music.
Why music?
Music is said to be a language that cuts across languages. Sounds like a conundrum but I am sure all of you know what that means. That music is expressive, communicates thoughts and emotions. It is an art, like language, highly personal, and elicits subjective responses. Its grammar 😱 is very complicated which takes years to master. People use musical language with varying levels of expertise in it. And yet it draws people together and builds communities of performers, audiences and administrators.
Also, ‘tis the season of good cheer. And lots and lots of music. It is December and the music season is on in Chennai. For four weeks about 50 sabhas organize about 1500 concerts by over 600 musicians and dancers. So I will be immersed in all things music. South Indian classical Carnatic music. I will listen, listen again and listen some more. I will also haunt the canteens and gorge food that makes my NRI friends sigh nostalgically.
And as I sit in the hall with waves of music washing over me, I think. I think about who the musicians are, where they learn and who from and  their musical lineage. I wonder about how the teachers teach, the context in which they teach, the content, the pedagogy. How is music actually taught? What is the most common pedagogy of music? How does it differ between teaching novices and more advanced students? How much and in what ways do music teachers consider the psychological and developmental profiles of their students? And I think about what this means for education in schools as we know it.
Thinking about all this leads me naturally to write about it. Not with the rigor and social science-y writing I am accustomed to.  But to resurrect my moribund blog. Blog a series of short articles on different articles every three or four days.
The scope of the series will focus on South Indian Carnatic music and novice learners. The topics will range from the contexts of private music class, content, description of learners and pedagogical approaches. Each post will also compare teaching and learning music to English in schools.
Feel free to point out misconceptions, highlight concepts and ideas I have glossed over and add your perspectives and experiences. And feel free to share on social media and with friends. I look forward to moments of clarification and instances of deep learning from this process.

IT’S TEACHERS DAY (not Coach/Guide/Mentor day)

Sept. 5 – Teachers Day in India – is about teaching, not about learning. It is the one day that should be dedicated to Teachers, not to learners. It should be a recognition of what teachers do for 30 years of their lives, five or six days of the week. It should be an acknowledgement of what it takes to be a teacher with a class of 30 students or thereabouts, on a conservative average.

That day should be dedicated not to learners from but to those who teach us whether we want to learn or not. We may learn from all guides, mentors and coaches - but they are not Teachers. All teachers may be coaches, guides and mentors (CGM) but the reverse is not true.

Is there really a difference? You bet there is!

Context: Teachers work in the formal sector, in institutions called students and colleges which are strictly regulated and accountable to various stakeholders. CGM work in non-formal sectors. Schools are public service institutions, regularly inspected by boards of education, often written about in the press, and open to being challenged by parents and the public. Contrarily, coaching classes may be structured and run like clockwork but they make up their own rules and set their own standards, accountable to no one except their own internal administration. If parents complained about them, the wards (to distinguish them from their role as students) would be shown the door! Guides and mentors, of course, function in the personal space, where formality of any kind is absent.

Professionalism: Teachers are professionals, unlike guides and mentors. They are appointed based on formal credentials, which may be true of some coaches. Teachers qualify themselves through formal teacher education programs, passing exams, having pieces of paper that guarantee that they have the requisite education. On the other hand, CGM’s credibility is based on their experiences. They must have played their sport at competitive levels and have name-recognition, or served in positions of note in relevant organizations. Vastly different professional profiles, right?

Selectivity: Schools may have entrance exams and interviews for students and parents. But once they are given admission, teachers don’t have a choice of who they will have in their classrooms. The rosters are made for them and they have to deal with the numbers and personalities in their classes. The matching of CGM to their wards, on the other hand, is usually a choice made by both. Mentors especially have a choice of who they will and will not mentor. The what, how and when of CGM-mentee meetings is usually defined by the CGM, perhaps in consultation with the mentees while teachers increasingly have little control over the curriculum, content and pedagogy. Mentors may decide to take a walk along the beach with their mentee on a fine day; teachers have to fill out multiple forms in triplicate days and weeks in advance for a field trip, if such a thing is ever part of the curriculum.

Expectations: Students, parents, and the society at large, have high (sometimes unrealistic?) expectations of teachers. Teachers are then held accountable for their own and their students’ performances. When these benchmarks are not met, all the stakeholders feel free to air their disappointment and anger in public, loudly and clearly. Teachers are not allowed to have reciprocal expectations of parents, and cannot expect parents to take a child to a museum or ensuring that the child is adequately nourished. On the contrary, when a child does not win a tennis tournament, the coach is not blamed but is paid more to offer more intensive, individualized sessions. Mentors and guides, of course, are exempt from any accountability since they do it out of the goodness of their hearts!

Motivation: All of the above have a huge impact on the motivation of wards and students. Wards are in the coaching and training program or mentoring relationship because they choose to be. The topic is of interest to them and they trust the CGM. Students, on the other hand, attend school because they are forced to and study subjects they have no interest in. Motivation is thus built into CGM interactions while teachers have to swim against the tide of student disinterest and begin with a built-in disadvantage. Further, guides and mentors function in a one-on-one setting where building trust and confidence is much easier and less stressful, while a teacher has 25 to 90 students. Not quite an even playing field, is it?

What does any of this have to do with Teachers Day in India? We learn from many people, at different points in our lives. By all means, respect and honour your coach, guide and mentor. But on Sept. 5 could you honour your teachers, and only your teachers, and not conflate them with your coach, guide or mentor? One day, just that one day, let teachers be remembered for who they are and what they do, not who we are and how we learn. Maybe then we will begin to understand and respect how much we expect of teachers, and value what they truly being to our lives.

Private Enterprise in Public Education: Cautionary Tales from the U.S.

Invited presentation at Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi, India, July 13, 2015. 

Video posted at  http://cprindia.org/events/4511

Handout at https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7uT6saUYAa_MzJIY2R1clRzd0k/view?usp=sharing

Abstract 

Private entities are a major player in the educational field in the US and have an increasingly high profile in India. They are closely involved in managing and running schools, and providing infrastructure, classroom materials and teacher training. Publishing companies in the U.S. have an inordinate influence over the enacted curriculum and teacher education while a non-profit is changing the face of the teaching force.

This paper will describe the impact of private entities on teacher education and the profession of teaching, illustrating with Pearson and Teach for America. The applications of these impacts to the Indian context will be discussed.

What a Movie Teaches Teachers: Kuttram Kadithal and Corporal Punishment

Ordinary and Realistic – Two attributes of Kuttram Kadithal that set it apart from recent films that addresses important educational issues, and I am not discounting Dhoni and Taare Zameen Par. In Kuttram Kadithal, a teacher casually slaps a Grade 5 student for misbehaving and acting cocky. The student falls down unconscious and is rushed to a hospital. The movie details what happens in the next 24 hours. Mind you, corporal punishment has been explicitly made illegal by the Right to Education Act.

The sheer ordinariness of Kuttram Kadithal

In the genre of realistic cinema that shows routine ordinariness of life, Kuttram Kadithal establishes early on that this is just another day in the life of the teacher, except for a few minor things. She has trouble getting her husband out of bed and ready for work. She was married only three days ago, and it is her first day back at school. A teacher skips the last period to go to a movie with her husband and asks the protagonist to substitute for her, commenting wryly on the high spirits of the class without denigrading them. Even the moralizing speech, an essential ingredient in Indian movies, is confined to a couple of minutes in the end when the teacher ‘fesses up and declares that while her action may not have precipitated the crisis, she did not treat the student with love and dignity, as she would her own child.

The student at the centre of the storm in Kuttram Kadidhal is perfectly ordinary with no features that would make him an instantly sympathetic character or a teacher’s pet. He is not brilliant at cricket or painting but is endearingly mischievous and the apple of his poor mother’s eye. He has an eye for girls but is not cute or handsome. He kisses a birthday girl on her cheek and then cheeks the teacher when she calls on him to apologize, both developmentally recognizable behaviours in a Std. 5 student. In this flow of naturalness, it seems to be the natural reaction of the teacher to give the boy a quick, hard slap. The resulting series of actions seem to flow along with the natural order of things, contrasting sharply with the intensity of emotions.

However, education has not enjoyed naturalism in movies till very recently. Schools and teachers have usually been demonized for the most part as caricatures with glasses and a tight bun or stereotypes who ineffectively yell at students. Even in a movie as well made as Taare Zameen Par, watching the scene in the staffroom without subtitles, my students in the US were able to pick out the stereotype each teacher represented.

Kuttram Kadithal is not without its moments of melodrama: The teacher’s inter-religious marriage establishes her open-mindedness but she fiercely washes away the bindi in an emotional outburst. The principal’s personal loss of a daughter in an accident gives him moral authority in his claim that he would do the best for the student. At the meeting with the shocked mother, the teacher wails uncontrollably, and then keels over dramatically. (No, she doesn’t die to give the student life; she merely faints from emotional exhaustion).

Realistic response to corporal punishment

However, the central educational question of corporal punishment in schools is not made dramatic but is dealt with matter-of-factly and in a low key. The movie raises practically all relevant questions: What are the courses of action available to a school when a teacher uses corporal punishment on a student? What should be done when a student is hurt? What effect does administering corporal punishment, especially if it precipitates a crisis, have on the teacher and on the student audience? What kind and level of support can the teacher, students and parents expect from the school in such a crisis? What responsibility do teachers have to their students in the name of discipline?

Many of the procedural suggestions offered as the action unfolds are probably in place in most schools.

• ·       Have a connection with a hospital and doctor close by for emergencies.
• ·       Take the child to the hospital immediately with a teacher in attendance.
• ·       Inform the parents.
• ·       Have one spokesperson who represents the school, and has the authority to make decisions. In the case of minor accidents, it may be a teacher. In a full-blown crisis, it should be the principal.
• ·       Do not talk to the media.

It is in the matter of how the procedures should be conducted taking into consideration the emotional aspects of the event that schools usually fail to measure up.

Most schools tend to avoid admitting to an error to avoid legal culpability and also perhaps because they wish to be seen as infallible. So the standard response is to meet the parents as minimally as necessary and refuse to take responsibility of any kind. On the other hand, most parents trust schools and are often looking for help while dealing with their grief. Working as partners to resolve the crisis and get the best medical help possible for the student will avoid further exacerbation of relations. The first step is for the school authority, be it the principal or the assistant to be available to answer questions and be seen to take responsibility. As happens in the movie, it may be more politic for the teacher to keep away from the family at the initial moments of the crisis when tempers are running high and parents need to play the blame game. However, it is imperative for her to share in the grief of the family and acknowledge her role in the events. A simple act such as an apology, or the teacher’s heartfelt tears, often de-escalate tensions, and is necessary for the healing of both parents and teachers.

It is also essential for the school to be supportive of teachers. Teachers who may have caused a crisis do not do so with intent to harm. Nor does such an incident leave them emotionally unscarred. Very few teachers are sadists or masochists, who like to inflict pain on their students or on themselves (Students may, of course, disagree with this statement!). As in the movie, the principal should take charge efficiently, even pushing back quietly at the management’s order to suspend the teacher with immediate effect.

The only affective area the film does not portray is what to do about the effects on students who may have witnessed the incident. The question is thrown up when a student asks her mother, “Will he (the injured student) return to school tomorrow?” It is essential to reassure students who may be encountering peer mortality that normalcy will prevail. The trauma caused by witnessing such violence must be processed. Counselors should be made available to talk students through this. Teachers are the most familiar adult figures to students and often the persons they will reach out to in a crisis. A short and pertinent professional development session should train teachers to recognize signs of trauma in students, especially those teachers who teach the grade and section of the injured student and that of the siblings.

For making a movie on a ‘touchy’ issue that teachers can watch without apologizing for their profession, director Bramma deserves the national award for Best Tamil Film 2014. As Tamil cinema comes of age, perhaps corporal punishment in schools will die a natural death. 

I (and millions of others) don’t count as Indian Americans

Building Worlds: A Place in the Sun

Direction & Script: Priyanka Kuriakose

Creative Supervisor: Siddharth Kak

Producers: Ministry of External Affairs & Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs

Presentation of: Surabhi

Bottomline: MEA needs to re-define what success means

  

Going by the documentary Building Worlds: A Place in the Sun, the Indian Ministry of External Affairs and the Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs does not consider an Indian American worthy of representation unless he is

-male.

-associated with Harvard, Columbia, Stanford or Berkeley as a student or teacher.

-working in New York or the Silicon Valley.

-living in New York or California.

-preferably a millionaire.

The documentary mainly features 'neo professionals': entrepreneur, IT professional. A Hilton franchisee represents the ‘hotel-motel-Patel’ face of the business Indian, suitably upscale.

The difficulty of getting a US visa is represented by a Silicon Valley dude who was turned down three times but eventually got it because his father worked at the US consulate and berated the Consul General. An opportunity available to every applicant, of course.

The three professional females featured are a professor at Columbia University, a Bollywood dance teacher, and a doctor who is shown playing cards with her daughter, not in her professional setting; she can only be recognized in her role as a mother. The fourth female is a wannabe documentary maker who hung out with this crew to learn the craft, or so we were told at the Q&A at Indian International Centre, Delhi.

The creative director Siddharth Kak blithely confessed that they had not considered gender representation (forget parity) when planning the script. They apparently tried hard for an appointment with Indra Nooyi, the Pepsi CEO. Don't know if they even attempted to do so with Nikki Haley, the governor of South Carolina.

The only person featured who is in public life is Ami Bera, a male. Women who strive to make the U.S. a fair and just society such as Deepa Iyer former director of South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT); Kamala Harris, the current Attorney General of California or Bharavi Desai the executive director of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance – Were they all difficult to pin down for an interview?

I guess since Bollywood dance has been represented, it is okay to ignore all other forms of art and culture such as literature (with a whole host of writers to choose from, many of them female) or journalism (Lakshmi Singh of NPR, Fareed Zakariah, and Rajiv Chandrasekharan spring to mind). Not to speak of a variety of ‘non-traditional jobs’ ranging from standup comic (Kal Penn and Asif Mandvi) to cab driver (take your pick in New York).

A photo of Bobby Jindal could be flashed - while he is desperately trying to deny his Indian heritage – but not one of astronaut Sunita Williams?

And there is certainly no awareness of the American geopolitics of 'fly over country' or the ‘forgotten’ South.

There are no themes, no arguments, and certainly no sociological, anthropological or historical perspectives. There is no attempt to situate the community in the larger context of living in the U.S. No mention of the micro and macro aggression that we as Indian Americans overcome, and still live peacefully in our communities (Wisconsin Gurudwra shooting or the case of Purvi Patel testing the abortion and feticide laws).

How difficult is it to access a Wikipedia page on Indian Americans for a more complete picture of who we are and what we are up to?

And Kak bemoaned the difficulty of covering 50 years of achievement in 45 minutes. Really? Perhaps he needs to take a leaf out of another MEA documentary Natyanubhava which gracefully spans 2000 years of Indian dance in 52 minutes. (Disclaimer: The director is my sister Sharada Ramanathan).

This public diplomacy initiative (not a documentary) looks more like an opportunity created to hang out with the "rich and famous" than represent different ways in which Indian Americans have found their ‘place in the sun’ in all parts of the US.

The objective of the MEA may be to make promotional films that showcase the best of India and its culture. If this is a sample of the other 10 documentaries in this series, most of the diaspora can deem their lives wasted, unremarkable and immaterial.