Thanks a lot for reading and I hope to be back online sometime between 4-6 months from now.

Last March, when I was interviewing a few teaching candidates, one told me that “Teaching was a Woman’s job” and that men “should find themselves something better.”

I have often wondered what some of the historical reasons for the predominance of women in our classrooms are. Last week, while researching American Education History, I came across an interesting fact that throws some light on this.

The Carnegie unit and the Graded classroom are typical of schools all over the world; so it is the case in America. But it has not always been so. Before Horace Mann, American Educator and Politician went across the pond, visited schools and came back with the idea of the graded school, American education and classrooms were vertically grouped.

What that meant was that students aged 5 to 20 were schooled together in the same class. Because of presence of older students, men were required to maintain order in the classrooms. As the graded classroom evolved and students of the same age started being schooled together to the exclusion of other ages, managing them because easier. This ushered in women into American classrooms.

The same is seen even today – the percentage of men teaching High School is significantly higher than the percentage teaching elementary school.

I wanted to share this fantastic quote by him:

“A great teacher never sets himself above his students except in carrying responsibilities.”

This one is going onto my softboard.

I’ve been in Cambridge (not the one in the UK) getting settled in before I start a chock full of courses in Education. Some interesting things I’ve noticed:

1. The Harvard Graduate School of Education has a Great Community Spirit. Everyone here wants to help in making sure you get settled in well, that you know who to turn to for anything and everything and that you make the most of the time that you have here. The Orientation last for 8 days- which is much longer than at most other schools at Harvard and possibly, at most schools around the world.

2. MIT is far more relaxed than Harvard. I went for a class over at the MIT Media Lab the other day and my classroom was more like a music studio. Lots of Computer Screens mounted on the walls (the large Plasma TV ones), music, leather sofas, a Lazy Boy and people sitting on desks (whatever few there were) etc. This was a real class. The Professor turned up in a Jacket and after making a statement about how that was important since ‘first impressions count’ – he proceeded to take it off and swore never to wear it again to class. Sure, grad school is very different from school but there is scope for considering a similar engagement in our schoolhouses- I definitely felt a lot at ease studying there.

3. Harvard is very complicated in the rubric and nomenclature across schools. One course means different things at different schools, and 30 hours of work (normally one credit at most schools) could be variously called 3 credits (Business School), 4 credits (Ed School) or 1 credit (School of Government) making it very difficult for people to fathom whether they are really meeting requirements for graduation. What makes it stranger is that all schools start at different times and even have different term-systems – terms at the Business School and just 3 at the Ed School every year, for example. But it seems that at the end of next year, after 350 years of existence, all the Harvard Schools are going to attempt to come to a uniform system. I’m sure that will be a huge relief to everyone concerned.

The most amazing thing I’ve learned, over at MIT of course, where everyone recounts it gleefully, is that Harvard once tried to buy MIT. This was a hundred years ago when MIT was not much more than an engineering school. Harvard didn’t have an engineering school so they thought it would behove them to take over their neighbours. As it turned out, all the faculty at MIT revolted and Harvard had to back off.

Now that I’m settled in and have got myself a new machine (from Apple- too bad they didn’t knock off $200 on their MacBooks like they did on the IPhone), I should be on the blog with the same frequency as before.

The process that kickstarted in 1998 with the Sorbonne Declaration is an attempt to get most of the European Higher Education system on the same page by 2010.

This would mean that across Europe (I am told that the US has shown interest in joining too) all schools would try and achieve equivalence of credits, curricula and calendars. This would make it easier for students to move between universities and seek jobs more easily within the EU.

Indirect benefits of this will be:

1. Greater diversity in classrooms across the EU.

2. Universities that have fallen behind in keeping with the pace of change would probably get their act together and come up to a common minimum standard acceptable to all.

3. Students would be able to cheery pick the best courses at the best faculties across all universities in the common area- this would again put pressure on universities to become more contemporary to remain competitive.

I am assuming that an important policy decision would be to strive for a common language of teaching across Europe as well. While universities would continue to teach in national language, English would have to be offered as a common language in order for this integration to be successful. It’s not much help allowing students to move from Sweden to Italy to study in classrooms where they don’t understand the language.

Read more about the Bologna convention and it’s timelines here.

Then I came across a nice story about behaviour modification in a six-year old. Homework goes Vroom, a must read, will tell you how a six-year-old was ‘gulled’ into loving spelling and giving up his precious train set.

(Post Rating: There is a little profanity, so if you think you’d be bothered by it, skip this, and head to our other posts here)

Once in Boston, it’s setting up the house that’s going to consume our energy.

I will try and blog regularly; do pardon me for any hiatus though.

Until I write from the other end of the world, Good Day!

Now it seems that part of the reason may be attributed to a selection bias. It seems that the stereotype of the male sexual offender is making men are less attractive to school Boards and Administrators an/or making teaching in elementary school less attractive to qualified male teachers.

A Wall Street Journal article has more:

Are we teaching children that men are out to hurt them? The answer, on many fronts, is yes. Child advocate John Walsh advises parents to never hire a male babysitter. Airlines are placing unaccompanied minors with female passengers rather than male passengers. Soccer leagues are telling male coaches not to touch players.

Child-welfare groups say these are necessary precautions, given that most predators are male. But fathers’ rights activists and educators now argue that an inflated predator panic is damaging men’s relationships with kids. Some men are opting not to get involved with children at all, which partly explains why many youth groups can’t find male leaders, and why just 9% of elementary-school teachers are male, down from 18% in 1981.

I’m not sure I agree with the reasoning here. I feel it may be a selection in favour of women not a selection against men that leads to the skewed percentage of male elementary-school teachers. You can however, read the entire story here.

Further Reading (click on numbers)

#1 Sex Offender Alert: Know when a Sex Offender moves into your area (Couldn’t help noticing that all the offenders profiled on this page were male!

#2: Men’s Awareness: A blog that showcases several examples to flout the male sex offender stereotype

I took music lessons from age six to fourteen, but had no luck with my teachers, for whom music did not transcend mechanical practicing. I really began to learn after I had fallen in love with Mozart’s sonatas. The attempt to reproduce their singular grace compelled me to improve my technique. I believe, on the whole, that love is a better teacher than sense of duty.

– Albert Einstein

Image Courtesy: Bill Viccaro

1. Briefly take you through the development of my relationship with Institutionalised Prayer

2. Offer a view of a remarkable factory-style temple operation

Since I was a child, I have lived in contradiction as far as my relationship with Religion and Puja (Hindi for Prayer) is concerned. I hated the idea of praying to God everyday- I would, as most kids are wont to, pray to him when I needed to. When I did pray, I would pray imagining myself to be the little cow-herd from the parable who forced the Lord to drink milk by by his earnest praying, crying and even begging.

I found visits to most temples hollow- I took an instant dislike to greedy priests, dirty corridors and the 5-second-blink-and-you-miss-God darshans before you were pushed along by the security-guard. I prayed best when I sat in silence, remembered my forefathers and God.

I was mesmerised by rituals- the sound of a smashing coconut (and the laughter when its watery contents emptied themselves onto my Father), the incantations (I memorised lots of the sanskrit shlokas) , the smell of camphor, the beautiful chunari my mother would wear and of course, the chum-chum or barfi that would come after.

Over the years, Visits to the Madurai Temple, Salasarji outside Jaipur, Tirupathi in the South, Sidhivinayak in Mumbai, Pushkarji (again outside Jaipur) and Dwarkaji near Mithapur in Gujarat confirmed my disenchantment with priests and their money-making ways. God is nobody’s pillion-rider. Prayer is not a covenant but a loving two-way relationship. I disavowed Puja and prayer for the new-fangled spirituality, good old personal prayer in new clothes.

But the contradiction still continues. I am still fond (not mesmerised any more) of rituals. I still like the camphor, flowers and festive atmosphere but have grown to detest the average pandit. What really binds me to rituals are the mantras, sutras and shlokas. I believe that the ancient texts (vedas and the upanishads) and rituals derived from these represent a body of experience and thought of the philosophers and prophets of the past essential for our continued survival. To ignore them would be conceit and to blindly take them on, foolishness. These texts are, even today, expressed in their own contextual syntax which is indecipherable to the average person and an ignorant or worse, a calculating pandit will misinform, misguide and confound him even further.

I like to embrace these texts with intuition, intellect and a good dictionary as guides.

It was with trepidation then that I visited the Trimbukeshwar Temple, fours hours from Mumbai, this morning to perform a 4-hour Puja ceremony. I hoped that it would be devoid of squabbling about money (just eight weeks ago when at Haridwar I had come face-to-face with an ugly display of naked greed by the priest performing Granny’s last rites) and be personal, a little one-on-one with God.

(Above: The main temple at Trimbukeshwar. Image courtesy Dharmesh)

Reaching Trimbukeshwar at 5 a.m. we were accosted by a drunk man en route to the sanctum sanctorium and even at that early hour had but a fleeting glance of the Idol. This was followed by a 2 hour wait for the priest who was to do our Puja, a period that saw the devotees standing in wait swell to the hundreds.

When we actually got to the Puja, I realised that this was going to be a community affair. The devotees were segregated by language ability into different lines and led to one of several large halls where all the ingredients and paraphernalia of the puja had already been placed by the team of coordinating pandits.

A senior Pujari led the proceedings in every hall, taking rows of gathered devotees through a series of synchronised actions and rituals, culminating in the final havan (sacrificial fire) in each devotees’ personal, portable kund (vessel).

At first, this batch processing of the devotees interfered with my conception of what pujas should be like. But as the puja went on, I saw that this factory manner was a very effective and efficient way to run the process.

(Above: Devotees wait before the start of the Puja. This picture represents a fourth of the hall. There are several halls of this size with pujas happening simultaneously)

1. The dakshina or fees for the Puja were spelt upfront- all ingredients for the Puja were included, no extra was asked for and there were no hidden costs.

2. The pandits had organised every conceivable item to be used in the Puja before-hand. All one had to do was sit down and start the puja. This ensured that no time was lost due to the devotees getting different (or incorrect) ingredients and misplacing or mishandling them.

(Above: flowers, milk, curd and various other items to be used in prayer)

(Above: Representations of a selection of the pantheon of Hindu Gods through nuts and wheat)

3. The pandits did their best to explain the rituals – as well as one could expect a hall full of devotees to be talked to anyway. If you wanted to understand the rituals in detail there was a provision to visit the temple the day earlier and speak to a member of the coordinating team in advance. It was perfect- they had discriminated between those who wanted information and those who did not- to the convenience and satisfaction of both.

4. There was no distinction based on class or income, everyone was treated in exactly the same way. This was a welcome change from temples where there are VIP or Express queues for those willing to make a payment for quick access to God.

5. The rather teacher-like Pujaris ensured silence and were quick to admonish any errant behaviour. This ensured that one got time for a little quiet one-to-one with God before, during and after the Puja.

6. From a demand-supply point of view, the small number of designated Pujaris managed to mediate the Puja for several devotees in a small amount of time. If this same Puja were to happen for each devotee individually, it would place an enormous strain on time and resources of the temple management.

(Above: The Puja in Progress at Trimbukeshwar)

7. Throughout you dealt with one main organiser so you didn’t have to take the trouble of finding the right person to answer any questions. As for the rituals- the Pujaris were available after the Puja to answer any questions and queries and to offer advice.

Most devotees gathered there after the Puja left satisfied. They had completed the Puja they had come for, been given all details upfront, avoided greedy pandits and ignorant ones and returned home in quick time.

It was simple. It was standard. It was quick. It got the job done. Ray Kroc would have probably nodded in approval.

As for me, the fascination with rituals continues.

Just before I started this post, I paid my regular visit to Charu’s blog and came across her nice post on rituals, inspired by Krish’s Priestly Matters, his account of his tryst with a Priest and Rituals at his Wedding. You must read both.