“Who are you and what do you want,” was my greeting for my first Principal appointment with three of the top schools in Chennai, in fact, in India.“Ummm..” I stammered, having flashbacks to my own time in the Principal’s office, “Bala set up our meeting, to discuss the Curriki opportunity at PSBB.” Our goal was to try and get these leading schools to load their curriculum so other schools could benefit from their IP.
“Ah yes, so sorry, it is mid year exams and as you can see we are very busy here.”
Which was an understatement. I felt like we were at an Indian market, after 22 people came through her office interrupting our conversation for her signature or her direction on a discipline problem, I stopped counting. I have never seen anything like it, ordered chaos. The Principal managed to give me some clear direction on her opinion of Curriki between her loudspeaker announcement over the microphone to her right and calls with parents on the telephone to her left. Her comments were echoed in my additional meetings that day. First, focus on 8th standard and down, this is where schools have the most flexibility as they don’t have to prepare students for the Board Exam (which decides the rest of the students life, and is the root cause for the criticism of Indian education not promoting application and creativity). All teachers in primary school develop their own activities and worksheets and this is what we should consider putting on Curriki. There must be a certificate of completion for all teachers (this whole certificate, diploma thing is big in India). There should be a contest where Scott McNealy comes and gives an award to the best curriculum developed by a school.
And all of this sounded very positive until I met with a contact of mine that evening who knows all of these principals.
“The Principal of PSBB? She doesn’t make any decisions, it’s the Dean who makes all of the decisions there. You know that computer next to her desk? She doesn’t even know how to turn it on. But I am sure she told you to follow up in a week, in India, we never say no. We just keep giving excuses as “no” is impolite.”
I reflected on my thousands of no’s to shop owners, rickshaw drivers, dinner offers, etc. over the last two months, I must be a very impolite American.
2 comments:
Oh how different it is in India than in the US or at least where I taught. If you did what this principal suggested as far as a competion for the best/most successful curriculum you would be frowned upon for even considering it, yet alone winning it. If you did do it and by chance won, your staff would not even make suggestion as to how to spend any money the school earned for this teacher's success. Many of the teachers in US are so afraid of competing with each other because they don't want to look to good to their peers. If you look good, they look bad, and you have to work with them everyday. I envy the enthusiasm for education in India.
Just a heads up to folks about what's happening over at Curriki. The site has been adding content and updating tools so that members can develop, publish, and access open source curricula. The new Curriki.org includes something called the Currikulum Builder - it's an editing tool that allows members to develop curriculum materials through a collaborative, wiki-based platform. Here's an interesting lesson that one educator created using the Currikulum Builder:
http://www.curriki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Coll_rmlucas/Stoichiometry
There's lots of great stuff and the more the community uses it, the better it will be. If you haven't already, check it out.
www.curriki.org
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