My short journey as a teacher with adivasi students

This part of my life was the toughest, yet one of the defining moments of my life. A week after our wedding, I had to report for work at a small unheard village called Talukoppa*(name changed to protect identity) in the Kodagu/Coorg district. During and after my Masters, I had always missed spending time with kids so much and working directly with them, that it really pushed me to take up the role of a teacher at an Ashram school in this small village.This meant spending the next six months (starting September 2016), working here as a teacher for environment education implementing curriculum developed by WWF called Ek Prithvi. I was also required to facilitate projects based on sustainability and also improve English comprehension among students. So, for those of you who are not familiar with Ashram schools, these are residential schools set up by the Tribal Welfare Department across India. 

This experience is something that had opened the pandora's box of education in India for me. Though I have experience of working with schools in rural areas, this one challenged me to dig deeper and really question the role of a school in a child's life, especially children from indigenous communities. How is the school influencing their identity, confidence, and learning in general. I was constantly observing and registering these experiences not realising how they were all adding to my perspectives and helping me gain a better understanding of public education in India. 

Working here day in and out, spending time with teachers, students in this small campus, gave me a peek into the world of adivasi students and their life at the school. I could gain an understanding of the subtle ways in which social hierarchy works in the society and how it translates to pedagogy at school and inside the school premises, that is perpetuated by the teachers and administrators at the school. Since, I was also working as a teacher at the school, I was not an outsider. Hence, I witnessed the teachers' unfiltered belief systems, and how it reflected in their actions and words towards to the students. 

Teachers here considered adivasi culture to be inferior and thought that students needed to be pushed to be 'civilised'. It was during the casual conversations in the staff room that brought the deeply held prejudices against the adivasi community to the forefront. Teachers would talk about how students from this community are 'not educable' because they were born to adivasi parents and belong to adivasi community. One of the conversations that startled me the most was how teachers perceived that these students did not care much about the academics or learning and are only interested in 'love'. They would talk as if adivasi students cared only about falling in love and finding partners, because they belonged to the tribal community. In general, teachers in even urban private schools tend to ridicule the students who are outspoken about their relationships, or are 'caught' showing affection. This in general points to the lack of understanding and acceptance in the society that biological changes during adolescence often lead to physical attractions, and what students need is acceptance of these changes and not belittlement for what they feel within their bodies. This kind of misconceptions often magnify along with class differences when it comes to students from adivasi communities. 

What really helped me question different practices in school was witnessing how children were ridiculed for not wearing uniform, 'proper uniform' (e.g. just the uniform shirt but a casual shorts, torn uniforms, etc.) and for not wearing 'proper shoes' (e.g. wearing chappals, or not wearing any footwear, etc.). I remember going through my own school when we had a routine of 'inspection' after the morning prayer. So, during this time, the school prefect/leaders would check whether you are wearing proper shoes, proper uniform, etc. etc. Now, standing in this school as a teacher, and witnessing the act of ridiculing the students, making them feel dirty, less of a human because they did not wear a proper uniform, really blew my mind, allowed me to question this very act, and how even I went through schooling without questioning this. Why? What does a proper shoe or uniform has to do with student's learning. Why is the system allowing this in the first place, this very act that leads to oppression and belittlement because of what you wear. Also, being a 'tribal' brings in the notion of 'dirty', 'primitive', so administration and teachers often feel students need to be pushed further to keep themselves 'clean' and 'tidy' (which is often the elitist notion of what is considered clean and presentable). It was only years later that I tried to question, why this practice has been in place in so many schools, and slowly I started finding out answers which I will talk about in my next set of blogs. 

In my observation and experience, these deeply held stigmatisations and other factors like 'poor teacher education', 'lack of training in teaching students of indigenous communities', etc. resulted in a shallow teacher-student relationship, and often reduced overall efforts and investment towards teaching these students. But the students would be blamed for their 'lack of educability' and their parents for being 'illiterate' and 'uncivilised' for their poor performances and general lack of interest in the academics. In my experience the lack of interest is due to several factors like dearth of contextual curriculum, alienation from their families, and landscape, prejudices against adivasi communities that plays out in the pedagogy, classroom interactions, and other interactions within the school premises. 

Well, let me talk about my dear students now. These students studying in this particular Ashram school were from the Jenu kuruba/Jenu Kurumba community. It really took some time to build a relationship with my students with very little time I was allotted for my period. I was teaching environment education, and that too a curriculum set by an external party, so, I had very little time in the already cramped school timetable. My 'unusual' ways of teaching, for example taking them outside for an activity, and working on fun hand's on projects, spending time with them during their free time like lunch break, evening hours, etc. playing the games they were playing or just talking to them slowly made me their favourite. Over the months with the limited time I had, what I realised is how much these children know about their landscape and how this was of no value to the teachers or the school. Their knowledge about the trees around them blew my mind. But the curriculum developed by WWF was actually catering to the urban students, it was not developed keeping these children, their landscape, their knowledge, their interest, etc. at the centre. This meant I put aside these books and start doing what is relevant to my students. I decided to create a space for their knowledge and give them an opportunity to explore their landscape and their perspectives of their landscape, and created a value in the academic world for their knowledge. 

By the end of six months here, when it was time for me to leave, the school had organised a farewell for me, and what students reciprocated was sheer love and respect. Some of the students were in tears when they read their parting words to me and some were crying out loud, and I was so moved by their affection, I was also in tears. What surprised me was the reaction of the teachers, who chose to give wicked smiles and laughters at each other, which showed their indifferent attitude. How I wish they knew that all these students needed was a teacher who could trust them, believe in them and show genuine care and love towards them because they are no less humans, and them being adivasi did not make them less 'educable'. It will be over the next few years that I would realise how the education system is so exclusionary and get to the roots of why all this is happening to adivasi students. 

The intention of this blog is not to put the blame on teachers as an individual, or to put the onus of education entirely on them. Living in this tiny village for six months, all I could hear from the privileged and upper class of the village was how the adivasi community was 'inferior', and consisted of 'drunkards', some of them even saying, 'why are you wasting time on these students?' My intentions of this blog are to bring out the social hierarchies that are imbibed in the minds of the people and stigmas against adivasi communities that people carry forward with them. It is only to show the society that perpetuates this, and until we tackle that, education for students from indigenous communities is going to be a demeaning, demoralising experience. I will try and address the root causes of these prejudices as well in my upcoming blogs.

My experience here triggered a turmoil within me, something was unsettled within me. This unsettling would lead me subconsciously to form my own questions and set out on a journey to find the answers. 

Here are some of the questions, that lingered in me as I was leaving the school: Why did teachers consider students of this community to be of inferior culture? Why did teachers perceive that students of this community are not educable? Why were students from indigenous communities taken away from their home, family and landscape and put inside a residential school, and doesn't this lead to students alienation from their land, culture, and knowledge? Why did the education system, the school, the teachers not value the knowledge of the students, the knowledge that they gained from their parents, and elders in the community and through their lived experiences in their landscape? Why does the system try to 'assimilate' the students to the mainstream population by perpetuating elitist views of culture and education? Why does the education system provide opportunities for belittlement of these students and make schooling an unpleasant experience for them when it is actually suppose to empower them? How do international organisations push their agenda of 'nature' through education? 

Well, well, well.. I will be on my journey to finding the answers, and reframing several of these questions over the next few years and I will talk about them in the upcoming blogs, so stick with me on this journey, I promise it will unsettle a few things in you! 

Two students from this school created this artwork on a peepal leaf. When I look at the picture now, juxtaposing this against the book signifies a lot of questions about education in these students' life.