Hello, India! We just met, but I think you're all right.: December 25, 2012: Enthusiastic Education

As we set up for the morning session, the younger kids scramble underfoot and put their hands on everything. “Back, back!” we have to say. They stay until we leave for lunch, then they follow us to the van. The afternoon session is for the older kids, and we have to force the young ones to stay outside. After the session the older kids hang around and help us clean up, then they follow us to the van. They run alongside the van as we are leaving and I hope they’ll stay out of the way of the tires. “Bye bye!” they scream; “tomorrow!” they insist. The kids love school. It was a wonderful way to spend Christmas.

The great thing about children, I am learning, is that they are childlike. These children bear no sense of sorrow or misfortune and therefore we, the teachers, feel no sense of pity. We couldn’t if we tried. They make it impossible to remember that this is a slum and these children lack the basic opportunities that Americans take for granted. I hesitate now to use the term I used before I left—“slum kids”—not because it is inaccurate, but because it feels inaccurate.

the kids love to have their pictures taken on my iPhone

more iPhone fun

still iPhoning

One of the girls runs toward the van as we’re leaving. Although the dust and light are not good, this is my favorite picture.

Nutan works long, long days to help these children. She encourages them to take whatever education she can give so they can move up and out of the slum when they’re older. She has taught at this classroom for five years. After teaching, she meets merchants and artisans in the marketplace in hopes of placing her students with them when the children are old enough. Nutan promises her students that if they learn, they can move outward and upward. She plans to keep that promise.

Although India is liberalizing, the society remains conservative. As I was showing pictures of Anne to the children, I asked Nutan for the word for “girlfriend,” and it was the same as for “friend”—in India, she explained, boys are not supposed to have friends who are girls, nor girls have friends who are boys. So there is no need for the word. A set of social rules governs when, and under what conditions, girls can be in the same room as boys with whom they are not related. Arranged marriages of boys and girls who do not know each other are still common. Nutan was married at 23 to a man she saw for the first time three days before the wedding. And even Nutan—who champions the liberalization of India, although wouldn't put it that way—must rise before dawn each day to clean her house and cook for her family.

Yet the social changes are obvious. Girls and women are attending school now. Yesterday morning, an irritated mother came to pull her daughter out of our classroom so that the daughter could fulfill her domestic chores—but the daughter came back later. Yesterday afternoon, we visited a classroom of grown women learning the days of the week and months of the year in English—preparing for jobs outside the home. I have not yet seen Nutan wear the cloth with which many Indian women wrap their faces and faces. And when we asked Nutan about what would happen when her own daughter reached marriageable age, she said: “she will choose.”

India is charging enthusiastically into the future, and feel lucky to be here.