Report No. 10

 

Project Name:                           AERC (Auroville Educational Resource Centre), Auroville

Contact Info:                             Subash (0413 623 350, isaimbalamschool@auroville.org.in) and

Lourdes (0413 623 350, nceert@aurovill.org.in)

Getting there:                            Auroville is a town from about 12km away from Pondichery. 

Previous Asha volunteer visit:     Shanmuga in 2000

Asha’s association:                    Asha received a resource-center proposal from Auroville. In the past, Asha partially funded the construction of one of its buildings.

FCRA clearance:                      Yes

 

Site visit date:                            March 20 and 21, 2002

Time spent at project:                2 days

Report written:                          March 30, 2002

Visited by:                                 Preeti & Raj Chauhan (for questions/comments, email--chauhr@yahoo.co.in)

 

Background of Auroville

            Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950) came to Pondichery in 1910 to explore the path of yoga.  The Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Pondichery exists even today for what he established.  Mairra Alfassa (1878-1973), a French lady, was the chief disciple of Sri Aurobindo and carried out most of the work of Sri Aurobindo.  She is called “The Mother” by the community.  In 1968 the Mother envisioned and established the foundation of a city named Auroville where “peoples of different nationalities, from different ethnic, religious and cultural backgrounds, could live and work together in a spirit of mutual respect and collaboration”. Today Auroville represents 80 settlements spread across 20 square kilometers and has about 1,500 residents from about 40 nations.  Auroville has a distinct legal status as a Foundation.  An Act of Parliament created the Auroville Foundation.  Although its goal is to become self-sufficient and generate funds from its various businesses (printing, electronics, food processing, handicrafts, etc.) it receives funds from Government of India and a number of domestic and foreign organizations.  The infrastructure and facilities built for Auroville are quite at par those in the West (swimming pools, tennis courts, libraries, dairy, bakeries, solar energy, etc.).

 

Education at Auroville

            Auroville has a number of schools that it runs for the children of its residents and separately, for the children of the surrounding village communities.  These schools don’t have any one model of teaching but generally do tend to subscribe to the way The Mother and Sri Aurobindo viewed education (e.g. no exams, etc.).  All these schools come under the umbrella of SAIIER (Sri Aurobindo International Institute of Education Research, main body for education in all of Auroville).  There are 4 schools (New Creation, Isai Ambalam, Ilaignargal, and Arulvazhi) and 35 night schools (11 operated by SAIIER, 24 by villagers) that serve only the children of the surrounding village communities.  In addition to these schools, Auroville has relationships with about 6 government schools where they have worked to incorporate some of their teaching methods in those schools (Auroville helps in the process not on content).  Finally, for the past 10 years Heidi Watts from Antioch University, New Hampshire, USA has visited Auroville on a regular basis and has greatly influenced the education and the methods used at Auroville.

 

Proposal for Asha

            The headmasters of 4 Aurovillian schools have gotten together and formed AERC – Aurovillage Education Resource Centre.  Through this organization they hope to impart what they have learnt from their experiments in teaching through non-traditional methods.  They want to create the proper infrastructure so that they can train outsiders (teachers from private or govt. schools) on some of the methods and techniques they have worked with and found useful.  Some of these methods include Project method, Rishi Valley method, Glen Doman method, and Audiotape method.  Subash (headmaster of Isai Ambalam School) and Lourdes are driving forward this effort of resource center at Auroville.  Steve is also involved in this effort on a part-time basis.  The need for funding this aspect of their education program arises from the lack of funding from other sources including SAIIER for such an initiative.  Subash, Lourdes and Steve are Aurovillians (i.e. full-time residents of Auroville and integral part of the community of Auroville).  Each one of them has an interesting story of how they ended up at Auroville.  Subash is probably in his late-40s and has been associated with the Mother and the Sri Aurobindo Ashram since 1973.  Steve, an American ended up accidentally in Auroville after leaving his nice/cushy engineering job in San Diego, California in the 1980s.  Lourdes, the youngest of the three, is a yogi at Auroville (hence keeps a beard!).

 

Asha & Auroville

            Subash, Lourdes and Steve repeatedly expressed a strong desire to work with Asha on the resource center.  In fact, their desire to work with people outside of Auroville is primarily due to Asha.  Shanmuga’s efforts and their attendance at Asha’s Chengulput conference have had a very significant impact on their strategy (for example, earlier they had little intention of working with people from outside Auroville).  They hold Asha in very high regard and want to work with us to make resource center plans a reality.  In fact, Subash kept embarrassing us when he introduced us to others and said that we are from Asha and hence VIPs!

 

The visit

We reached Pondichery on the evening of March 19th.  Fortunately, we found a place to stay at one of Sri Aurobindo Ashram guest houses, Park Guest House which is right on the ocean and provides excellent accommodation for a very reasonable price.  We got through in contacting Subash only in the morning of March 20th.  That morning we rented a scooter and went to Auroville to meet the Auroville team.  After a 30-minute interesting ride on the scooter through city traffic and then through quiet countryside we reached the New Creation School in Auroville at around 10am. 

Lourdes showed us around the New Creation School.  New Creation School has very good infrastructure (with cone-shaped individual classroom buildings – see picture).  The headmaster of this school is a 74-year old British man, Allistair Roy Wicks. He was not around that morning since he wasn’t feeling well.  We met the children and teachers at New Creation School who were busy in various learning-based activities. Watching children learn through activity (as compared to a traditional method of reading from a book) was very interesting.  Examples of some of project-based learning we observed that day—

Ø      The class of 4th graders was working on the project “light”.  First, 4 different groups were formed.  Second, they made a list of questions on the topic, light.  Then they went to gather information from various sources (books, friends, teacher) on that subject.  Finally, after gathering information they would make a presentation (charts and short skits) about the project to rest of the school.  The teacher typically designs these projects.

Ø      We saw a number of children (1st graders) play the domino game where each child is given one card, which has one picture and one word.  The picture and the word are unrelated.  The children have to put their cards next to another card so that the picture matches the word of the other card on the floor.  This way the children form a chain or “domino” cards on the floor.

Ø      A chicken’s picture was cut into a number of cards and each child was given one card.  The children were also given the names of parts of the chicken’s body as cards.  The children placed their cards in order to form the complete picture of chicken and then placed the name cards of the respective body parts. (See picture)

The children seemed very enthusiastic in these activities and wanted to show us what they had learnt.  The children seemed relatively well groomed.  The parents of these children are typically involved in farming activities.  We also visited the library at New Creation School.  It is housed in a separate building and a volunteer from Britain has done an incredible job of arranging the books.  She has managed to color code each book according to the learning level of the children at the school.  As children progress in their learning abilities they can move up the color ladder.  She mentioned to us that response from the children for her scheme had been very positive and the children were reading/viewing the books of their abilities a lot more than before.

Lunch at all Auroville is provided to all students and teachers.  We had lunch (saag paneer which was provided was quite delicious!) with Subash, Lourdes and Steve.  We spent about a couple of hours talking about the resource center and their future plans.  They were very excited to explain of how they intend to establish AERC and execute their plans.   They explained to us that lack of funds in 2001 had prevented them from training a larger number of teachers in contrast to 2000 when they had received some funds from SAIIER.  Subash invited us to see the Isai Ambalam School the next day where we could see a number of non-traditional methods in practice.

            Later that afternoon, we went to Steve’s house, which he had designed and helped construct. Then we went to see the Matrimandir.  Matrimandir, a large spherical structure, is the spiritual center of Auroville.  It is opened for non-Aurovillians for only 1 hour everyday.  The main and the highest part of this structure is quite interesting (like one from a Superman/space movie)—it is a very large white room with a ray of sunlight coming from the top of dome to the center where it is captured inside a transparent glass enclosure.  Everyone visiting is supposed to walk silently in and around Matrimandir. 

 

Day 2

Since Subash lives at the New Creation school campus we got there next day around 8:40am.  While Subash was getting ready to go to his school, Lourdes took both of us to meet Allistair Roy Wicks (the headmaster of New Creation School) at his home near the school.  Roy who is about 74 years is a very interesting person—he has been at New Creation for about 10 years.  He came to Auroville after his wife died in UK to see Auroville but has stayed there ever since.   In UK he was a traffic police instructor.  In India he has also gotten a chance to act in some Hindi movies including “Lagaan” where he was one of the cricket umpires.  All the proceeds of his acting career and personal income and wealth he gives to the school.  He has adopted a number of children locally who live with him.  We enjoyed meeting him—he was humorous, engaging and made us feel special.  However, he seemed a little down due to his sickness and that fact that he was unable to actively work with school children and teachers.  Regarding the standard of the school and the quality of education, he mentioned that much progress has been made recently at New Creation and more remains to be done.

After we meeting Roy we were off to Isai Ambalam School following Subash on his scooter.  The dirt road to school and the surrounding greenery was very beautiful.  (Thousands of trees have been planted by Aurovillians in the past few decades!).  When we reached there the school was already in operation.  There are a total of 125 children in the school.  There is one pucca building and the rest of structures are semi-pucca.  However, the schools has gotten funding from government to construct a new pucca school in the coming year. 

We met the school coordinator, Mr. Vincent (who likes to take photos!) and Ms. Mangai (outstanding teacher who is now going to start her own school in her community).  We went to the display room where they had displayed information on charts about all the different non-traditional techniques they utilize in classrooms. After viewing this information we spent most of the day seeing these techniques in practice at Isai Ambalam School.  Below is a brief description of each method and how it is being implemented at Isai Ambalam.

1.      Glen Doman Method is utilized for small children of ages between 3 and 5 (kindergarten).  It is used to teach language by showing words on cards (not pictures).  We went to see Ms. Vasantrani’s class of young children where she was employing this method. The children were reading information about Auroville.  Each child had learnt to recognize each word earlier and was now reading sentences in English and Tamil such as “There is a matrimandir in Auroville”.    The children we saw were very quick to recognize the words and then went on to read the sentences.  The class had 26 students. The teachers teach the recognition of words in groups of 2-3 children.  In one day they are taught 5 new cards and 1 week they are taught 20 new cards.  This is generally a low intensity affair where children are only taught for an hour or half-hour per day using this method.  The rest of the day the children play, work on thematic projects and artwork.  The class we saw was working on a thematic project with sugar cane as the topic.  A large picture of sugarcanes was drawn in the classroom and the children were telling us everything they knew about sugarcane.

2.      Audio Tape Method – We went to see Kavita’s class who teaches drop-outs (mostly from government schools) English using this method. The tape plays a story read out in English line by line. After every line of English is read it is followed by the meaning in Tamil.  The children follow silently reading the English text in their respective books.  This way English is taught for 45min. daily.  We saw a demonstration of this as children followed a story in English (they had already practiced this earlier).  The final step to this method is that students act out the story in front of others and we saw a demonstration of this as well. 

3.      Phonics Method is utilized for classes 1 thru 3 and for young adults to teach English.  There are a number of steps to this method.  As a first step, the 43 phonic sounds in English such as ai (e.g chain), ee (sleep), etc. are taught to students.  Later consonants and the blending of consonants with phonic sounds are taught (e.g. K + ING = KING).  Follow-up steps include reading simple books and introduction to non-phonic and alternate sounds in English.  We didn’t see a demonstration of this.

4.      Rishi Valley Method is the primary method that is utilized to teach students of grades 1 through 5.  Rishi Valley method is based on self-learning (i.e. it is learner centered) and the teacher is a facilitator.  3 subjects are taught using this method—Tamil, Math and EVS (sciences, history, etc.).  We saw a demonstration of this method and it is not very easy to explain unless one sees it in practice.  There is ladder of learning for each subject and for each class.  Once a step is finished in that ladder the child can move to next step.  As a result the learning pace and level of each child in the classroom is different.  Once a child finishes a step he goes through a test-card before he can move to the next step.  These steps in the ladder are organized in the form of cards.  The children learn by taking the card from the deck, doing the exercise that it asks and then returning the card into its original location.  We saw a girl complete a math exercise in a card, which asked it to add numbers that were inside a picture of a monkey (see picture).  This method requires a lot of upfront work from the teachers as curriculum and cards have to be created based on this technique.  But once that is complete it is question of proper implementation and monitoring.

At 11:00am all the teachers gather in one room for 5 minutes in silence to pay respect to Sri Aurobindo and The Mother.  After having spent all of morning seeing the different techniques Subash took both of us to the Life Education Centre, which is right across the street.  Here we met Zareena.  Zareena runs a vocational, educational, and skills training school for adolescent girls of the area.  About 31 girls come to this center every weekday from 9am – 4pm.  The girls are taught some basic English, Tamil and Math and are provided with some vocational training (e.g. tailoring, typewriting, etc.).  But more importantly in addition to the training the girls can discuss their problems such as gender and family issues.  In fact, Ms. Zareena gave us a copy of a publication, “My Life History” which is a collection of true case studies of the lives of adolescent girls who have spent some time at the center.  These stories are sad and are not atypical of their struggles.  We met the girls at the end of our discussion with Ms. Zareena.  All of the girls are very happy and jovial at the center—laughing, teasing each other, and loving Ms. Zareena.  They sang a couple of songs for us in Tamil and Sanskrit (one of them was quite long in my opinion :-) ).  Subash pointed out later that Ms. Zareena had struggled in the past to get funding for the center and may approach Asha sometime in the future.

We came back to the Isai Ambalam School and had a late lunch with Subash. By that time the children had already finished having lunch and were playing outside.  To our surprise, the children (especially the younger ones) got very friendly with us during our short stay at the school.  They would come hugging and touching us.  In fact, some of them wouldn’t leave me as I had earlier picked one of them and threw him high in the air—soon all of them wanted me to throw them high in the air!  To some of them there was no question of being fair as they didn’t want others to get a turn—soon I had to run away from their playground.

            Before we left Isai Ambalam school we had a concluding conversation with Subash about the resource center and Asha.  Some of the main points of the conversation are as follows:

Ø      Subash was wondering about the status of funding from Asha with respect to funding the resource center.  He hadn’t heard from anyone after the telephonic conversation with Jayashree, Anita and Ajay Dalmia sometime ago.  His understanding that it is still under review but doesn’t know its status.  (Some one who is involved with this needs to inform him of its status ASAP and please cc me on this as I promised him Asha will be getting back to him with some information soon).

Ø      The proposal to Asha has 3 parts: I) infrastructure costs, ii) program costs, iii) adoption of 2-3 night schools.  Of this (i) and (ii) are more important.  The amount allocated from AERC from SAIIER was only Rs. 12,000 in 2001-02.  Infrastructure costs include the construction of building of teacher training center (at New Creation School campus).  At a later point, he wants to create a proposal for the conversion of all night schools to learning centers.  He hopes that would get funding for this from SAIIER.

Ø      As we have said earlier, he was impressed with Shanmuga and wants to work with someone like him from Asha on a continued basis on resource center and similar issues.  This would be a non-monetary relationship. 

Ø      We both emphasized on the point that Isai Ambalam needs to better track and monitor (more quantitative data) on the use of its non-traditional teaching methods.  He agreed and stated that they had recently started to do that but right now the data is limited.

Ø      A number of people including some very high-ranking government officials have been impressed with the work Auroville is doing and they have garnered some high visibility.  For example, Amit Kaushik, Director of Elementary Education (Ministry of Education) is one of their recent fans and he is willing to offer Auroville a chance to hold a national education fair.

 

Opinion

            Our visit to Auroville was very fruitful and worthwhile.  The people we met were very genuine and provided us with detailed information about their plans.  A chance to experience Auroville was in itself a very good experience.  We think this is a project where Asha can play a greater role than just support it financially.  It makes sense to support this project financially if we are willing to work with them on their resource center.  We can help them by identifying teacher training opportunities and introducing them to some of our other projects in the region.  Unlike some of our other projects, Auroville is not as close to “ground situation” of people in villages but we can work with them to close some of this gap.  As such resource center has a fluid definition and here again we can have an impact and learn from this experience if we decide to fund this project.

            What we shouldn’t do is write a check and simply expect Auroville to train x number of teachers by certain date.  They want to make it work but they need some help in addition to money.