Happy Gudipadva (Hindu new year) from these three siblings!! Had a lot of fun touring around Mumbai and dropping off @mollykendall. We all miss you Molly. Eating khichidi with chaha is not the same this morning without you. All the best!
A long day at work easily offset by pani puri, kaju katli, and a ton of laughter. Only two days left of @mollykendall, but I get one more week of surprise boxes of sweets 😋👍.
I apologize ahead of time about how boring this post will be. I'm at a bit of a standstill with work right now and while I do have projects, they really wouldn't interest anyone. It’s a lot of excel spreadsheets and compilation of information. They just need to be done.
I am at a point in my time in India that is "in-between." I have almost exactly three weeks left here. Molly will leave in two and that's technically when my official time as an intern "ends", but I've decided to stay on for another week in Pune, which is technically everyone else's spring break. Next week Molly and I are going to Hyderabad to visit some friends and see the city and three days after we return she will leave. It's a short amount of time. And yet day to day it really isn't. My projects continue to be nebulous but nothing "big" or worth writing about extensively. Just to say, I'm plenty busy creating content for the digital initiative.
Whenever you're in an unfamiliar place, traveling, and alone, everything feels like sign you're either completely out of place or totally welcome. I saw a dead dog on the side of the road this week. The dog was, momentarily, a sign of everything wrong with my experience. It had been a hard day and I was taking a walk to clear my head, soon realizing the busy Pune streets may not be the best place to do this. Minutes after seeing the dog, I saw a ball rolling across the open road. Picking it up, I made eye contact with a small boy running after it. We spoke a few words of Marathi to each other. When I tossed it back to him, his face lit up. "I belong!" my heart exclaimed. The whole mood of the day changed. I smiled at the andi bhaji wallas and bhajya wallas on the street, the sun shined brighter. A success of the most irrelevant and minute quantity can turn everything around.
When traveling, success is huge and failure looms just as large. Positive attitude cannot be understated. It's sort of like the motto "fake it till you make it" -- you have to act happy and productive even when you are not. I excitedly talk up projects with family and friends I've made in Pune, even when I know that we are at a dead end with the project, or I have little faith it will be completed by the end of March.
It has been nice, now that we are nearing the end of our time, to actually verbalize everything I have been doing in Pune with family and friends back home. However, turning to the States has negative aspects to as I’ve felt pulled little by little out of Baner and Shivajinagar and Gokhalenagar and back into the Hill, SU, the CD, and current issues at home.
It’s hard to strike a balance. However, this is my fourth time being abroad for over a month in a foreign country and I can say that this is honestly the first time I’ve stopped counting my days. I really feel like I could stay in Pune and keep working for months, even a year or longer. The feeling makes me so warm in the thought that “Hey, I could do this sustainably for a long time.”
Riskiness in travel is so exhilarating. Putting yourself out there to make friends, meet new people, experience new words is a constant evolution of your thoughts and self. It’s not just the risk of fumbling either, it’s the risk of always putting your whole mindset out, without knowing what the result will turn out to be.
I love meeting people all over the world because of that vulnerability, because your beliefs are always open to being crushed by the world -- your whole worldview just waiting to be destroyed around the corner. There’s no better place for that than in India, a place of constant contradiction. F Scott Fitgerald once said “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” All my experiences here have constantly pushed me to do hold many opposing concepts and ideas in my mind at once. It’s an incredibly humbling process, but also rewarding practice to embrace.
In my last three weeks in Pune, I am trying to embrace it tighter than ever... and of course plot my return.
I’ve had the opportunity to re-visit some digital learning field sites in Pune in the last couple of weeks. I wanted to show you some of the contrasts between where I work and where I observe the technology in use in education efforts. This directly relates to my post “The T Word.”
1&2: Baner - Our white board in the office. We are shifting towards JavaScript and HTML games, moving away from C# and Unity code. Here’s some brainstorming about code databases we could possibly use. Shivajinagar - A young student playing Holi on the Maharashtran holiday Rangapanchami. The stairs on her left lead up to the small digital center afterschool program.
3&4: Baner - Spacious and quiet office space where we code and create digital content. Shivajinagar - A meeting of शिक्षक shikshak (teachers) in the digital office where they are paid their stipend, discuss local new and gossip, and share new teaching techniques.
5&6: Baner - The quiet and lovely courtyard where we stretch and take breaks from long hours at the computer or in meetings. Shivajinagar - the alleyway in the neighborhood where the digital centers are located.
7&8: Baner - My computer running ASER datasets from technology initiatives across all of India, containing baseline and endline data for thousands of children evaluated by ASER. Shivajinagar - Three children gather around an old laptop to play videos after videos about fractions before taking their assessments for that week.
9&10: Baner - An assessment test created by ASER and Pratham to evaluate Math skills. Instructions are clearly marked in Marathi, although occasionally English is used. I was happy to see that even on English assessment tests, questions were always both in Marathi and English. Shivajinagar - A twelve year old student in Standard 7, Pramita’s notebook filled with math notes from the interactive educational videos.
Is there anything better than Hyderabad chai and idli sambar after a 12 hour overnight bus? In the past week, I've had the opportunity to travel with awesome people (including @mollykendall and @andygorvetzian), visit four different Indian states (Maharashtra, Telangana, Andra Pradesh, and Orissa), move by nine different transportation methods (sleeper bus, public bus, plane, train, boat, jeep, rickshaw, two-wheeler, and foot), and have some pretty challenging and mind-opening experiences. But nothing beats the feeling of "coming home." See you tonight Pune and see you in two weeks Seattle. (at Hyderabad International Airport)
Fly enough, and you learn to go brain-dead when you have to. It's sort of like time travel. One minute you're bending to unlace your shoes, and the next thing you know you're paying fourteen dollars for a fruit cup, wondering, 'How did I get here?'
David Sedaris, Let's Talk about Diabetes with Owls
More Holi weekend fun. Got to take a trip outside Pune to meet the Pune international rotary club. It's national women's day and we met so many lovely and inspiring women -- and the men who support them. Many good discussions on culture and experience with the people here... Great end to an amazing weekend.
Everyone! It's almost March. That's crazy. I fly back to Seattle in just under 30 days (although I'm not counting I promise!). And yet there is still so much left to do here before I leave. At the end of this week, I'll be in Hyderabad visiting with some friends and hopefully (????) Andy? Andy, if you're reading this, I'm probably in Hyderabad. This week I finished my report on a Google grant for ASER 2015, clearing some time for me to concentrate on the Pratham's Digital Open Classroom, a new digital ops project that will give groups of kids the opportunity to learn different subjects using online tools.
At the beginning of the week, a representative from Delhi came down to Pune and we held meetings with my boss Prajakta, Madhav Chavan, and a U.N. team working on education and technology. We've been sitting for hours on the first floor of our building tossing around lots of ideas for the project and I'm pretty excited about it. It's amazing to be working for an NGO with as many resources as Pratham. For example, I suggested the idea for complementary hard-copy flashcards to accompany the digital environment we are creating. Rather than talk about how many resources this would take, we were able to focus solely on content and how the product would look, which is pretty amazing. Last Thursday, team members traveled to Mumbai to start talk about launching the English learning segment of the project.
Both my evaluation work for ASER and my current project, which is setting up the English learning portion of the Digital Classroom, have got me thinking a lot about English teaching and learning and the concept of linguistic imperialism, which is the topic of this week's blog.
The phrase "linguistic imperialism" was coined in the early 1990s by Robert Phillipson in his book by the same title. The idea of linguistic imperialism, however, has been around as long as multiple languages have existed. Linguistic Imperialism is the transfer of a dominant language -- the idea that language is power. During the rule of the Roman Empire, the imperialistic language was Latin, which was imposed on the rest of Italy and on other parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa, displacing previous languages spoken in these areas. Today, one of the largest examples of linguistic imperialism is English, but we could say the same thing about other languages as well. Russian, for example, dominates the region beyond Russia economically, socially, and politically. Put simply, linguistic imperialism means that if you do not have access to the language of the powerful, you don't have access to power.
Evidence of English language imperialism is easily produced. The majority of the internet is in English, and often sites that offer translation do so ineffectively. Most critical information or data is stored in English. Computer programming languages are overwhelmingly based in English -- up to 80%. When I was reviewing data for ASER, though the language my subjects communicated in was Manipuri, the language the information was catalogued in was English. When our ASER report is written and distributed, it will be done so in English.
In terms of native speakers, obviously Chinese rules. Native Chinese speakers out-flank native English speakers by almost three times the amount. However, while the Chinese language has 982 million native speakers to its 1,100 million global speakers, English has 375 native speakers to 1,500 million global speakers. That's a 1:1.1 versus 1:4 ratio. Studies also find that, while they aren't nearly as fluent, there are more people in both India and China learning English than there are native English speakers in the U.S.
Here's a personal example of the power in learning English. In the office, my English is far better than the English of my two fellow Indian interns. One day during work only two weeks into my time here, while the office manager was gone, two Indian-American Pratham donors came to the office to visit. I was the only person in the office at the time with fluent English and, while the donors understood Marathi, they preferred to speak in English. All of us were American too, and so shared this cultural bound and spoke a similar English dialect. I had been there the least amount of time out of all the employees in the office, and yet they only spoke to me. In this situation, I had the power of controlling what information these people received, and as donors, they obviously had the power of money. The thing connecting me with these influential people was not my knowledge, my educational background, or my experience. It was my ability to speak English. My two other interns have been here longer, and I know both are looking to start businesses in India, but a communication block prevented them from access to these donors. I am an idiot and I only speak a few languages poorly, and one with ease. Thankfully for me, that one that comes easily is English. That is a large part of linguistic imperialism.
The privilege peaking English affords me translates to being able to walk into any room in the world, and simply by existing as a native speaker, have my voice open a treasure-trove of opportunity unattainable for millions of people. Privilege means that even when I am a minority, I have power. Similar to the way my white skin carries power in almost every context, my words carry more weight in situations were power is in play only for the fact they are in English.
One of the chief concerns in linguistic imperialism is that other languages will fall out of use. I found this to be a huge problem in Nigeria, where 56% of the population speaks English to the determent of countless local languages. Where languages are threatened, culture is always in danger as well. I find this less of a problem in India, which is firmly a multilingual country with most people being able to speak a local language, a state language, enough Hindi to get by or are fluent, and at least some English if not fluent. Both countries were British colonies, and both have developed languages that combine English and local language - Hingulish, Pigeon, Nigerian-English, etc. In my brief dive into the academic world of linguistics while researching for the post, I found that a lot of researchers believe that these English-local language amalgamations are less harmful to local culture and language than English as monolithic. To me, it makes sense with the size and geographical diversity of India, that local languages might survive better in combination with English under British rule. The history of colonization in Nigeria, however, is of a much more single-handed municipal government -- one which punished those attempting to speak anything but English. Another historical point is that the languages of the tribal Nigeria were more fractured before British rule drew random lines around the political entity that is Nigeria today. This may be why we see a stronger hold on Swahili in East Africa, where the region is better united by a single linguistic alternative to English. In short, there is no "Hindi" for Nigeria. Thus it makes sense to me that Pigeon would be more common in Nigeria than local languages, and that language diversity thrived and survived in India. I believe that because of these socio-historical factors, India was better armed to face the pressure that globalization and the rise of capitalism put on the diversity of languages than Nigeria was.
I am beginning to get at the main crux of why people find the teaching and learning of English in these contexts so problematic. While today one might see English as a way to bring people together economically, socially, and politically, we cannot escape the fact that English is so prevalent because of Britain's colonialism and forced occupation of other nations. I also want to remind everyone who has not recently taken a colonial history class that colonialism was a brutal and violent period in which dominant countries oppressed peoples through war, torture, humiliation, and destruction of culture. English rules because the British prevented the growth of other languages, cultures, and future prospects for their own economic gain.
The theorists Frantz Fanon and Chinua Achebe were some of the first to talk about the "colonized mind." They call for the rediscovery and resumption of local languages, but beyond that the revolutionary language of recognizing linguistic imperialism. Colonization of the mind is a form of normalization in which the oppressed comes to believe that the oppressor's reality is the only normal reality and must be assimilated to i.e. learning English is the only way to have power and is right to learn. While, colonization, imperialism, and mind control are huge parts of the history of English's dominance, it's not the whole story. English threatens "dominant languages" as well such as German, French, and Chinese for dominance as a global language, so there has to be more going on than a 'power struggle' for dominance. David Crystal points out that global interdependence, desire to have a voice in world affairs, and economic actualization are modern drivers of English as a global language as well in addition to it's colonial beginnings. These points all support the adoption of a functionalist view of English where we can recognize the legacy of colonialism, but emphasize the functional purpose of learning English.
So this brings me to education, and English learning in particular. On one hand, teaching and working to bring English to more people in the world seems like a good thing to me. Higher literacy rates in English correlate with better economic success, political stability, and social change. Take the issue of gender equality, for example. Globally, there is evidence of women gaining access to and challenging male domains through participation in English literacy programs which give women the opportunity to learn the languages of “power”, which were previously only understood by men. For many women, learning English means gaining voice in household discussions. It means ability to speak in the “public” space of class -- newspapers, the internet, to the government, etc. Furthermore, English literacy provides a bridge to formal education and vocational training (think hotel services, or owning a business which requires a person to speak in the global English) for women who were previously excluded from school when they were children.
Beyond economics, if English is a global language, it means connection to the world and global issues. While a Nigerian might not speak Hindi and a Maharashtran might not understand Hausa, if both speak English they can collaborate. I have reviewed a lot of ASER data from principals in schools. In these surveys, principals again and again commented that English should be taught because it is the connection the students have to the outside world, and the vast knowledge contained in it. By limiting oneself to only one language, we effectively cut ourselves off from that world. Simultaneously, because of a brutal and violent history, the language that can connect you to the largest percentage of that world is English. Yes, it's colonial, but what else are we supposed to speak? We can't necessarily start from scratch with a new global language, so why not English? If English is power, is teaching English to others not a way to diffuse that power -- to give it to more people?
For me, and for Pratham, the question is less if English should be taught to children as it is how it should be taught. First of all, I agree with David Crystal's line on language as functionality. I further agree with Lysandrou's comments that attacking English is "to attack the wrong target." Solutions are more likely to come from radical action in the realm of economic policy (wealth inequality for sure), not language policy. With that said, protecting local languages is important. Rather than blame English, however, after observing ways in which English is taught, I think there is room for change there.
As I was been thinking about linguistic imperialism this week coincidentally, Rukmini Banerjee, the head of ASER, was speaking at Teach English India's annual conference. One of the comments she made to the audience is that the language landscape in India should be treated as a continuum, voicing concerns that there is too much polarization between English and the language spoken at home or in school. Practically, this means changing the English curriculum so it is not as monolingual and, in a world, difficult for children to keep up with. English shouldn't be taught in a vacuum. The curriculum should be shifted to realize that children in India are inherently multilingual. Further, it should embrace this fact.
There are a lot of opportunities for American and native-English-speaking students to use their English abroad, be it in teaching or functioning. When I was a freshman I once told a very obnoxious senior that I was thinking about applying for a Fulbright one day. She told me "Well don't apply for ETA. It's basically neo-imperialism." I think she was eliciting a debate without adding really any substance to it. The colonialist history of English is important, absolutely. But what is more important to me is cultural inequality -- the idea that English is more important than any other language. If, as a teacher of English or, like me, a strategist of English teaching programs, you can recognize that it English as a language is not more important than any other language, you have an opportunity to diffuse power while simultaneously curbing the imperialist nature of English. Learn the local language if you're teaching in a classroom and use it in conjunction with English lessons. Language is not a zero-sum game. It is, as Banerjee states, a continuum. Learning multiple languages makes us more emphatic. Even though English may hold economic and political power, us native English speakers close ourselves off from the world as well by not learning other languages. Meanwhile, we can better spend our energy concentrating on the pervasive and imperialistic nature of English through charging the economic, social, and political unequal privilege that lies behind it.
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