Dharavi Transit Camp 4 Municipal School is bigger than you expect, and the kids; smaller. I was assigned grade 3 to talk to about journalism on behalf of Mint Lounge, and I thought why not instead get them to make their own newspapers–what better way than to teach them than to put them in the experience. I worked on a lesson plan all week: I’d put the 40 kids in teams of 4 and assign them each to news, features, opinion and desk. Chart paper, sketch pens, marble paper, and glue. They could handwrite their own newspapers and take it forward every week.
The school, in GTB Nagar in the heart of the Dharavi slum, was surprisingly large, with a ground and fairly sized classrooms. The kids were eating their mid-day meals – rice and daal – at 3.30 in the afternoon, seated in the corridors, which stank of urine. And yet, all you could see were smiling, happy faces all around. And children markedly thinner and smaller than an average 7-8 year old should be (I have a 10 year old so the comparison was inevitable in my head). The classrooms do not particularly have desks or chairs, except for a few – around 10 to the kids 40. The kids share between mats and the chairs and sweep up their own floors when they are done eating.
Photograph by Indranil Bhoumik
The Teach for India Fellow whose class I was addressing was Srini Swaminathan, a thirty something BITS Pilani grad who gave up a position earning the big bucks at Shlumberger in Melbourne, to spend his life teaching. Srini, who himself grew up disadvantaged and went to BITS on a scholarship, my coordinator at Teach for India tells me, realized the difference education makes in a child’s life, and came back to be the change he wanted to see.
His kids, in the class that now calls themselves the “Responsible Champions” have been divided into four groups: the Martin Luther King team, the Gandhiji team, the Nelson Mandela team and the Mother Teresa team. I chuck my copious lesson plans, inclusive of questionnaires for the reporters to fill out with their “interviews”, out as Srini tells me: “The kids are two levels lower in comprehension than the average 3rd grader, so we may have to help them with that”.
“We’ll wing it” I tell him. The game I had devised, giving them copies of Mint, for the first group to mark “masthead” “byline” and “lead” and other parts of a paper is also, I quickly realise, pointless. Even if I had explained the meanings of all of them as I had intended to do. The class is remarkably well disciplined–Srini’s notes and charts along the walls are a road map to learning– a six step plan for those who “choose to break a rule”. Picture driven, stickers for reward points, habit forming keyword based; it is friendly, not commandeering in its lesson plan. It is a treat to watch Srini, who has taught the class for two years now, be big brother to them with his even pitch and remarkably calm tone.
So, instead I spend a few minutes asking them what they think the purpose of news is, why should they read the newspaper, what constitutes news, and the basics of a newspaper – masthead, dateline, news story and the W sentence: who what when where and why. This is the most I can hope they grasp today. I realise these are not homes where newspapers are delivered on a daily basis. It is not habit here to wake up and see your parent read: something I had never realised till now I took for granted the nation as a whole does.
I pass around the white chart sheets and ask them to pick an editor. Group politics comes into play, and as the editor picks someone to write the name that they choose for their newspapers, assign colouring, writers for the date lines, favouritism and rivalries inevitably creep in. One doesn’t want to join the group as she was not named editor. One wants to colour before his editor says so. Or even before the masthead is written. Another wants to draw where he must stick. And if the editor is his friend, then that’s okay. And if he’s not, then “bhaiyya” (as the kids call Srini) is summarily summoned and half-truths told. As I watch them I think: this is a microcosm of life itself; as adults even, do we ever truly grow up? If only they knew that these are the same rivalries that play out in newsrooms across the world. They are closer to journalism than they know, in as much as journalism is a cross section of human society and behaviour everywhere.
The names they pick pretty much reflect their groups: again, the microcosmic societies that have begun to define them. Nelson Mandela team wants to be called the Times of India. They start writing MINT with capital letters and stiff letters, with a ruler, then turn the paper over, and settle for Nelson Mandela Times instead. Mother Teresa, a mostly girls team, straightforwardly pins ‘times’ to the end of their name, and gets busy drawing brightly coloured butterflies and flowers on their mastheads. Clearly far more important than this name settling rubbish. Gandhiji team, with one of the most sensible and quietly-in-control editors the class has, innovatively calls their team “Gandhiji Says”. “One of these will make it in media” I think. And Martin Luther King team goes with Responsible Newspaper, which they misspell, and change it to Responsible Report.
We assign one square of brightly coloured marble paper to be stuck on the ready mock-newspaper charts. Each will represent a news square for each student on each team. A child assigned to be the “sticker” sticks them neatly on the page. The rest of the group helps make sure she’s doing it right. Then, I explain again what a W sentence is, and ask them to think of things they heard/saw or that happened to them. They now need to write their W sentences down on a star shaped post it that Srini helpfully hands out. Once they write their sentence down, they need to hand it to their editor, I say. The editor must decide which star gets stuck on which square, depending on which is the most interesting.
Gandhiji Says is promptly stuck with post its listing the names of the reporter and the names of their best friends. (There are, let’s not forget, some papers like that). I tell them why they can’t do that and why that doesn’t count as news and they make note. Nelson Mandela Times is full of excellent reports of rain in China, flooding in China, and also one on a volcano in China. I make a mental note to go back and see if I have missed something on the news. But they got the principle of it right. And surely, in this world too, there is space for a leftist paper. Mother Teresa Times has sprung more flowers in the gaps, and their post-its are about everyday things: trees outside their windows, and butterflies. And Responsible Report is so afraid of writing the wrong thing that they copy down the W sentence. “Think about things that happen to you, or that you saw, or that you did” I tell them. They take it in hesitantly. Some of them light up.
Journalism? These are kids who are not used to being told that their opinion matters, that what happens to them in life, in person, matters, that they have a point of view, or that others can want to know it, share it and consider it valid.
These are the true failings of our education system.
Hopefully, a session in journalism can spark an expectation of a point of view from themselves. Who I am, who I am in relation to others around me, matters. When they begin to learn this, they will begin to expect, and then, hopefully, demand from society. First for themselves, and then for those around them. A better life.
This is what I learned today that the media, being a journalist, gives me. And I wish it for Team Martin Luther King, Team Gandhiji, Team Mother Teresa and Team Nelson Mandela too.
