Only Three Weeks to Go at the School

Tuesday, Nov. 15 (Part II), Kumbalam

Using a CD worked well for saving and transferring my blog and e-mail to the cyber café. My next task is to determine how many times I can re-use the same CD. It’s not re-writable, but I ticked the option of being able to burn more files onto it, since the ones I burned took up only a small portion of its memory.

I finished reading Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre this afternoon. I was so disappointed in it. The beginning was promising with interesting dialogue from the mind and mouth of a teenage boy. By the end of the book, however, I realized that as a whole it read like a good attempt at a novel by a graduate student. It did NOT read like a professionally written book deserving of the Man Booker Prize (which it got). I gave it 2 ½ stars out of 4 and will have no interest in reading anything else by the author.

I’m concerned about Rosalind at school. I can see she is unhappy at work these days. There have been so many times lately that Joseph has been displeased, and he seems to think that Rosalind is the problem. Personally, I just think the venture with the school has grown too big for Joseph to micro-manage, and his frustrations are getting the best of him and affecting others. Rosalind is a very dedicated worker, but I feel the strain of recent weeks may be causing her to question being here. For her, however, it is a complicated situation due to the fact that her family lives in an apartment above the other school. Leaving her job would mean having to find new housing and moving.
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I walked Rosalind to the bus stop, but we found the gate to the compound already locked. As I returned to the hostel to get the key, the bus drove by. Knowing it would be at least 40-50 minutes before another bus would come by there, I suggested that we walk about 1 km (½ mile) to an intersection where there are more buses. Unfortunately, there was a big gap between buses there, too. It took about 35 minutes before one came.

During the evening, I hleped Jerry study math for a test tomorrow. Then I talked to Joseph about my weekend with the Thomases. It was essentially a non-eventful night.

Wednesday, Nov. 16, Kumbalam

I finished the computer scope and sequence chart today. The biology teacher also proofread the biology scope and sequence chart. I printed them at lunch. It’s nice to have something physical to show for my work!

I also began reading Ship Fever, a book of short stories related to science by Andrea Barret. It won the National Book Award about 8 years ago. I will only have two books left after it, and it is only 254 pages long!

There may be a new volunteer coming to the hostel. Joseph heard from a guy who was here for one day while headed for a “paid volunteer” (meaning he paid $1000-1500 for the privilege of volunteering AND had to pay his way here) position. Apparently, he did not like what he was doing as a volunteer and left after a week or two to travel around India. Now he’s tired of that and wants to come back here as a volunteer. Joseph thinks he is from Spain, but he said the guy speaks English with an American accent. He may have been an exchange student in the U.S., or he could be a Cuban who went to Spain before immigrating to the U.S. and later returned to Spain. I hope he comes. If so, I’ll hold my tongue and watch to see his reactions to this place.
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There’s another god in my toilet. This time the spider is only about 3 inches (7.5 cm) in diameter—a baby compared to the last one. I’ll just watch for it and leave it there rather than altert Joseph. I don’t want a Hindu to get upset again.

I tried to plan my itinerary for Chile tonight, but there were too many interruptions. I’m tired from all the help I gave the children.

They got back their mid-term exam results today. In most cases, they weren’t good. Jerry was one of the better ones with only 63% of the possible points. Abin’s father called to ask about his exams, and I was surprised to see Abin crying afterwards. Indians put great pressure on children to do well in school as a way of assuring success in life. But I have learned since coming here that the U.S. and China really have nothing to fear in terms of competition from India. In the U.S., they may be known as good thinkers and hard workers, but it’s a different story here. I guess only the thinkers get recruited to come to the U.S. By far, the majority of these students doing well in school are NOT thinkers. They are memorizers. They don’t even comprehend what they have memorized. As long as the exams and the system are based on memorization, this won’t change. My guess is that those who do become thinkers and reasoners do so because they have some innate ability to do so. My experience here at the school with the faculty, the construction workers, the part-time coaches, the candidates we have interviewed, etc., is that the system certainly doesn’t teach or promote thinking and reasoning, and until it does, the millions of hard-studying children will not really be a threat to the rest of the world. Furthermore, over and over I have been told and have observed that people in India do not have the same work ethic that Indians display in other societies. People here do not seem to care to do a good job. They expect to be paid, yet they expect to take off work regularly without even giving notice and to never do more than is necessary. It’s rare to find someone who does something because he likes the challenge or because it makes him feel good to know he was able to do it. My guess is that the “hard working” Indians in the U.S. have just accepted the fact that their Indian approach to work will not allow them to keep their jobs there and have adapted. Most of them send much of their paycheck home to support their parents and the rest of their family still living with the parents, so there is pressure from families here for them to do their job and do it well so that the good pay check will not be lost.

Thursday, Nov. 17, Kumbalam and Tangassari

Joseph is having problems with Abin. He has lied 3 times in the last couple of days and has gotten caught. It relates to homework that needs to be done. I imagine it also relates to his being home over the weekend with no discipline and his having problems adjusting back to a disciplined routine. He got spanked this morning for it.

I rode with Joseph to Kollam today. I went to a couple of bookstores and found some math puzzle books. I think I’ll share a puzzle a day with them until I leave to get them interested in them. Then I’ll give the books to them as a group just as I leave. Maybe the interest I build with the daily activities will encourage them to look at the books more than they would if I just gave them to them now.

I stopped at the bakery and ordered 3 pizzxas for our lunch (Joseph, Rosalind, and me). Then I arrived at the school at 11J0. Joseph still wasn’t there. He had gone to his lawyer’s office. He arrived around noon. The pizzas were good and they had given me an extra one in the bag! Both Rosalind and Joseph were surprised that I had them. It was Rosalind’s first time to have pizza. Joseph liked it except for the sweet dough they used as a crust.

I saw Rajish, the English teacher, while in Tangasseri and finalized plans for the weekend. I will go to Kollam on Saturday and stay at the Sea Bee Hotel ($6) so we can get an early start on Sunday morning. His motorbike is having problems, so we’ll go to Kovalam by bus. I’m looking forward to it. I don’t really know Rajish, so it will give us a chance to get to know each other. We can talk on the bus, whereas the travel time would have been lost on the motorbike. He knows where I will be on Saturday, so he may find me sometime that day, too. I think, however, that he tutors students on Saturdays to make extra money for his family.

We have a new boy at the hostel today. His name is Seejin, and he’s in Standard V. He seems like a nice boy. We’re getting close to the maxiumum number at the dining table with all the kids we have now. And Prameela’s job of cooking and serving meals increases with each new students. If more students come, there will have to be some changes.
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I’m tired again tonight. I got lots of sunshine today. And I tutored a lot tonight. I’m also very thirsty (from the pizza, I guess). I’ve had over 1 liter of water tonight.

Friday, Nov. 18, Kumbalam

I started typing the scope and sequence chart for social studies this morning. When I was interrupted with 75% of the work done, I accidentlly closed the program losing my work. Usually I have saved it before then, and I guess I just thought it was already saved and passed the warning page in a rush. There was no backup copy, so I had to do it over again in the afternoon. Then I started developing charts for General Knowledge and for Moral Science. The former is a hodgepodge of info related to various topics--names of gardening tools, governmental leaders of India, men whose ideas changed the world, shapes found in our lives, etc. Moral science is a combination of religious studies and lifestyale guidelines (obey your parents, brush your teeth every day, etc.). I should finish my work early next week, then I'll have to figure out what to do the last two weeks or so that I am here.

I hlped Joseph change his e-mail password today. He has given it to volunteers in the past, and he thinks maybe one who became disgruntled has been logging into his account and sending e-mails to potential volunteers to discourage them. There have been 2-3 volunteers who said they were coming and then didn't show up. The new volunteer who was supposed to arrive today, for instance, didn't make it here. I'm still hoping he will arrive this weekend, however.

I gave Jerry a haircut tonight. He has no money, so he lets his hair get bushy. Eventually Joseph notices and takes him to get a haircut. Since I've cut Wes' and Arne's hair for years, I cut it for him. He looked so nice afterwards. His sister gave me an okay sign with her fingers and said he looked like a soldier looks (meaning the clost cut around the ears--not short all over).

I also had to teach basic multiplication and division to a group of about 6 kids tonight. They were assigned multiple-digit division, and they didn't even understand basic division or basic multiplication (which must be understook to know what the answer to a division problem represents).

I'll be off to Kollam for tomorrow and then off to Kovalam Beach with Rajesh on Sunday. Will have postings of those outings sometime next week.