TMS Students Engage in a Transoceanic Dialog: http://lester37.edublogs.org/

Our girls at Railway HS have begun an exciting cross-cultural exchange with the students of North Shore Country Day School, located just outside Chicago, Illinois. The dialog, which is taking the form of a blog between the two groups of students, has been made possible by the enthusiastic support of NSCDS teacher Ms. Libby Ester. Both TMS and Ms. Ester realize the significance of encouraging our students to embrace diversity and to be curious about the lives of their peers from different corners of the world; thus, the blog is an attempt to turn our students into true global citizens who acknowledge and understand issues both within their community and beyond it.

The exchange between the two groups of students has started with their introducing themselves and asking questions about each other. It is wonderful to see the authentic curiosity and enthusiasm that both groups of students are exhibiting, and we really hope that this is the beginning of a sustainable and enriching dialog between our Railway girls and the NSCDS students.

We welcome your suggestions on this initiative and we invite you to follow their exchange on the blog that we created especially for this collaborative project:

http://lester37.edublogs.org/

A day in the life of a Modern Story Fellow

After posting many student photos, essays, and film pieces and following the impressions of leading Indian experts on The Modern Story’s work in Hyderabad, today afforded a good opportunity to describe to future fellows and the general community what a day in the life of a Modern Story Fellow is like. Morning began with a fiction workshop that I have fallen into as Hyderabad offers a rich literary culture and group of talented editors, screen writers, filmmakers and historians. Critique, responses and networking is done locally and on-line. Then the power goes out and I use the opportunity to un-plug for writing a script piece that a local filmmaker asked me to work on. Headed to class. Students gave ideas for a Public Service Announcement they want to do. Leading ideas include a public service announcement on drunk driving and making food sold on footpaths cleaner and healthier. As Bogota’s mayor once said, the difference between developing and developed countries lies not in their highways but on their footpaths. The students began story boarding today and hopefully soon we will move into animation and production.

This year presents a unique challenge to The Modern Story as new administrators and staff at local schools are asking that we complete more of the videos on campus and less time spent going ‘into the field’ for things like community media reporting or documentary work. The lack of props, vivid backgrounds, and unique atmosphere that we otherwise might have access to is unsettling. But, to get around this issue, we tested the idea of using colored chalk to do stop-frame animation drawings. This technique satisfies local administrative restraints, expands the possibility of student imaginations to take form for TMS projects, and also is much quicker to complete than working only with traditional ‘flip-book’ animation. Hopefully we will be able to demonstrate results soon.

After class the TMS team met with th Byrraju foundation to plan a story telling workshop in northern Andhra Pradesh in late March. Following this meeting, I went to hear a talk and have tea with William Darlymple at Saptaparni, Hyderabad which was an intimate but elegant setting that might prove to be a good location for TMS’ awareness event in late February. Darlymple is famous for his travel writing and published one of the best books in the genre at the young age of 22 titled, In Xanadu. He stopped by for a small reading and fielded questions about his recent work Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India. The talk was appropriate for those interested in the work of projects like The Modern Story as it addressed issues and problems related to storytelling, narrative art, and using prose, photography and film to facilitate cross cultural exchange in India. This week’s TEDx Hitec City event also shed a lot of new light on animation workshops for children and story telling in India. I would suggest both their professional work and the content of their talks be ‘required’ reading/viewing for future fellows coming to India.

After the talk with Mr. William Darlymple, I went to the Qutb Shahi tombs to see a contemporary Indian dance performance mixing martial arts and modern movements in India’s seven dance idioms. The performance, held at the last of the Shahi tombs, required the audience to rotate around the magnificent Persian architecture as the dancers evoked spirits of the dead into a display that employed martial art discipline of movement and the agility of world class dancers from Europe and across the Subcontinent. Then afterward I went exploring the burial houses around midnight that still remained open. The night ended with a local friend taking me to Basra Cafe, a great byriani restaurant near the TMS apartment in Abids where we had tasty garlic chicken kebabs and byriani rice. I hope this presents a small picture into the great opportunities the TMS fellowship provides.

The Modern Story completes the first week of the Social Justice curriculum

Students of The Modern Story program in Hyderabad, India completed their first week of the social justice curriculum created using resources from The Liberation Curriculum Initiative of the Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University. At Nalgonda, a school in a rural area 3 hours south of Hyderabad, students finished the week by practicing story boarding shots and using still photos in sequence to tell a story related to Ghandi and King’s principles. Most students used the Telangana issue to discuss ideas of non-violence.
“Turn the other cheek”

But one group insisted the most important issue related to non-violence in India is the uneasiness between Muslims and Hindus following the 26/11 attacks and relations with Pakistan.

Let’s stop the violence.”

And what a fitting finish it was to end a week of teaching non-violence by having tea with India’s leading political analyst and veteran of Indian media, Mr. Jyotirmara Sharma. He is American Eloquence dressed in an overbearing Indian. To describe him physically, he resembles the professor from the antedated TV series, Sliders, the big guy. His casual genius would be embarrassing in a smaller man. He remarked at a recent meeting with civil servants in Hyderabad, ‘they told me there would be a lot less poverty if I would simply stop eating so much’ to many chuckles in the audience admiring this handsome man’s display of Pillsbury wit.

Mr. Shamar said “the difference between Gandhi and Martin Luther King is that MLK pushed people to the brink of real violence, without which governments too easily co-opt resistance toward their own ends.’ He continued, ‘Indians assume democracy should be without friction’ and as a result ‘national myths go unchallenged’ even in the face of glaring government blunders and policy failures. One of his main points is that students should develop their own vocabularies when discussing ideas they’re interested in. Specifically, when a student wants to protest an injustice s/he should do so using different words than those used by the government or else the cries are bland, dismissed or worse co-opted to reinforce government rhetoric. For example, a young girl was raped in South East India recently. No media, no reaction, no investigation. So what did the community do? They did not use phrases such as human rights, corruption, or government neglect. Rather, they walked up to the state parliament building and marched with their underwear on their heads. A young girl was raped and the government, having no shared vocabulary with the protesters, responded in a different way, by doing their job. For another example, Mr. Shamar had stood next to a Palestinian protester in Israel. He has a nick in his ear where a bullet whizzed by his head during the demonstration. Shortly after, a young boy walked up to a soldier of an elite riot squad. He did not shout slogans of ‘illegality’ or human rights. He simply said the man looked ridiculous in that uniform, he looked silly. Without that uniform, the young boy said, the soldier might lose the veil of his ignorance and find some room for honest reflection on the situation. The soldier was taken aback and stood silent, letting the young man carry on with his demonstration.

Mr. Shamar then connected this discussion back to education. Especially education curriculum such as that of The Modern Story’s social justice program around Hyderabad. He said that if students are going to learn about non-violence and change, they must be allowed to develop their own vocabulary that is new, fresh and entirely their own. This was a convenient suggestion because earlier in the day I had a talk with Mr. Prosenjit Ganguly, an inspirational and leading figure in India’s animation sector. He said, ‘Animation is a language. It is a language first voiced by Charlie Chaplin. Animation is slapstick movement.’ Children use it best. And so I began to see a connection between the importance of language in politics and the artistry of animation that provides youth with a language that is all their own. Animation is a language of movement and is so easy to relate to. Animation expands the imagination in an education system that is often about regurgitation. Animation is, at the end of the day, a language spoken so frequently in India from Tollywood to Tom & Jerry that it is accessible enough to express ideas with a necessary and sufficiently fresh vocabulary for social change.

Ideas have power. But, as Mr. Shamar said, ideas have power when they are articulated with the creativity of animation and the novelty of slapstick, like the protesters turning fashion blunders into political victories. In other words, as Mr. Shamar said, ideas have power when they are articulated through new vocabularies that remind us of the meaning behind the message. For example, when a specific girl was raped few were outraged. When people feared their own daughters could be raped after the public demonstrations more grew concerned. When the demonstrators embarrassed themselves publicly by outwardly wearing their unmentionables, the novelty of their form of expression shocked meaning back into the message: any little girl’s privacy, sex and innocence could be violated. Afterward enough concern was generated and enough accountability resulted in reparations and investigations. She might have remained another faceless victim otherwise. Vocabulary, when applied to political action, must be constantly reinvented for social change to be convincing. Otherwise, Mr. Shamar noted, the myth of the ‘Tolerant Hindu’ speaks in a language as stale as his country is not, with complacency where change is due.

The Modern Story Fellowship affords countless opportunities in Hyderabad to participate in a national and often global debate about the intersection between education, politics and social change. I am happy to be here. I hope you enjoy the multi-media materials we have produced so far this year and those to come. Despite swine flu, school changes, Telangana riots and an unexpected extended holiday we are carrying on!

Student Reflections: The Tailiban’s influence and religious conservatism in India’s Muslim communities

The following is an essay by Humera Anjum, 13 years old of IX Standard Class, Railways Girls High School Lallaguda. I was so impressed by her submission for an on-line contest that I wanted to post it here.

Minaret punctuating Hyderabad's skyline

In olden days some people use to say that women should not study and they should not work out of their homes. In Muslim religion people use to say women have to be in burkha if they come in front of any people. In villages, people want a boy not a girl because they say boys have to take care of their property. And they love the boy. If a girl is born they will kill the girl because they cannot bear the expenditure of dowry for a girl.

Nowadays governments like the Taliban are pressuring Muslim communities elsewhere to prevent girls from studying past 4th class. Also, these girls are facing severe hardship under the rules, customs and traditions of her community. Today even if we are in the 21st century many people are following some superstitious and unscientific customs as religion becomes more important in politics like child marriage, dowry deaths and sati- where women throw themselves on the funeral pyres of their husbands.

As a result, in India many Muslim females are discriminated against before they are born. In our culture a girl is not valued as much as a boy. Among girls the drop-out rates are much higher, particularly among the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes, girls in rural areas and from poorer families. In rural areas only 9 percent of girls enrolled in class  reach class 10.

Also as a result, most of the women are engaged in household or domestic work. This consists of a vital but grossly undervalued type of economic activity. Domestic work does not qualify as productive activity as per the census of India’s definition. ‘Working women’ as per the census definition are those who work outside the households. Women do most of the household’s unpaid work e.g. cooking, collection of fuel, fodder and water, looking after children and animals, gardening, food processing, sewing and weaving etc. Yet they are not regarded as ‘working women.’ More than 90 percent of women workers are engaged in unorganized and informal sectors. When religious governments prevent women from gaining education it is difficult to work in anything but the informal sector.

So social evils more easily oppress women working in informal sectors. For example, these are the women first to face early marriage. Early marriage is a social curse against women. It is done to  keep families within certain religious and economic affiliations. With early marriages the troubles begin for the girls as these girls are not mature enough to shoulder the responsibility of families and motherhood. The Marriages Restraint Act lays down the minimum age of marriage for girl at 18.

For another example, the practice of giving and taking dowry has become a menace in India. Dowry means the money, goods and property demanded from a bride’s side as a condition for marriage by the groom’s side. You might have heard in your neighborhood and in your home people cruelly calculating and negotiating dowry amounts. In 1961 the Dowry Prohibition Act was passed. Dowry is a crime against women and society. Men and women should raise their voice against Dowry. The youth should take a vow to go for Dowry-less marriages. Economic independence for women is very important. Whatever little equality and freedom the working class woman enjoys must be due to their economic freedom, education and employment as only this will make women somewhat independent. I believe this to be even more true as governments like the Taliban pressure families to prevent women from gaining education and independence.

So, briefly, even today the girl is not given the respect, the freedom, and the position which a boy is given under the traditions of community. These community traditions are exaggerated by customs of religion in politics.

Photo Essay: Entrepreneurs creating change in India

During the long holidays, students in The Modern Story program at the Railway Girls High School went out and produced their first photo essays. The topic was to photograph people who own their own businesses, small entrepreneurs who are changing their communities by generating jobs and providing needed goods and services. Check out the VUVOX presentation:

http://www.vuvox.com/collage/detail/01df6d15d3

Young Women in India: How free? How equal?

In 2001, Brenda Gael McSweeney, the UN Resident Coordinator in India and UNDP Resident Representative, wrote a great report called “Women in India: How free? How equal?” After ten years, with a decade to measure progress and remaining obstacles, The Modern Story is working with young women to identify how the idea of women’s empowerment is shaping women’s lives in India everyday.

In Ms. McSweeny’s report, she begins with the quote,

“At some time or other, we have all heard the comment, Gender is a Western concept. We don’t need it in India.”

To a certain extent, this quote sheds light on the positive aspects of gender and development in India reinforced by Humera of 9th standard at the Railway Girls High School in Hyderabad:

“Till now I have just heard about all these problems faced by women but personally I have never ever experienced any inequality and any discrimination or partiality. All the people my parents, neighbors, our teachers all treated boys and girls equally”

Problems related to gender and development are most apparent when race, skin color, money and rural vs. urban traditions force families to make tough choices. For example, Humera wrote in a homework assignment “In villages people want a boy not a girl because they say boys have to take care of their property. And they love the boy. If a girl is born they will kill the girl because they cannot bare the expenditure of the dowry of a girl.”

I was very impressed by the students’ ability to handle complex topics. Note Ruhi’s report on how skin whitening creams influenced women in her family as they tried to get jobs and find husbands and define their image.

Before the political strikes and holidays, our girls had completed part 1 of their video on women’s empowerment. See the vimeo link below and also don’t forget to check out their other video, “I am a young woman.”

The Telangana Crisis

In this precise moment when Hyderabad is economically expanding, the city is paralyzed by an internal political and social struggle that seeks to separate the state into two parts. Major technological, consulting, and non-profit entities have offices here, a testament to the city’s strategic, international importance. Simultaneous to this growth, the separatist activists, the Telangana supporters, claim that the part of Andhra Pradesh for which they seek statehood, has been economically stagnant because of unequal treatment by the government authorities. In order to make their point, they call for frequent city-wide strikes. For fear of violence, government functions and commercial activities are halted. Schools and colleges are forcibly shut, as parents and administrators are afraid of allowing students to travel.

When classes are cancelled and our students fall behind, I can’t have faith that a new state will bring about the unrealized growth its supporters claim, and is worth the intense political activity and wasted human capital that is a result of it. Right now, we are in the midst of a ‘Social Justice’ unit, which explains concepts of nonviolence, connects the ideologies of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., and forces students to reflect on civil disobedience and the issues that impel individuals to such action. As we discuss the immediacy that Gandhi felt in his hunger strikes, the students must think critically about K Chandrasekhar Rao (KCR), the chief leader of this Telangana movement, and his hunger strike, which ignited the recent unrest. While the overall movement relies on violent tactics, what does the specific example of KCR teach students learning about the Gandhian struggle for independence at this political moment? Does it become just another example of protest or does it maintain its importance in the history of civil disobedience? In order to facilitate Amartya Sen’s idea of ‘development as freedom,’ I think that members of a community must feel connected with one another, a sentiment destroyed with the regionalism of the Telangana struggle. As we continue our work with The Modern Story Project and the Telangana issue appears to have no immediate resolution, we face incredible challenges in teaching underprivileged students the value of action to promote social justice.

Mentorship Program at RGHS

Last week, we began wrapping up our first video project on ‘Women and Empowerment’ at Railway Girls High School.  Danny and I were eager to include a segment featuring the students’ idea for addressing the barriers that women face.  While a few students were engaged with editing the first part of their video on Final Cut Express, the larger group of girls sat in a circle, while we asked questions about what possibilities for action existed at their school.  Many students suggested hosting a cultural show for which guests would be required to purchase tickets, whose proceeds would benefit a charity organization targeting women.  The idea was good, but it lacked the direct impact within their community (more specifically, school) that we were trying to encourage.

We continued to ask for more ideas, and then one girl suggested giving tuition classes to women living near the school.  Because of the difficulty in leaving campus during school hours, we pushed the students to think about how something similar could be implemented within their school gates.  After some more prodding, the girls suggested teaching the younger girls in elementary school at the Railway School.  This seemed like a good place to start.

After gathering these initial ideas, we introduced the topic of ‘Proposal Writing,’ as a necessary part of beginning any new project.  We explained that in writing a proposal, they would have the opportunity to more clearly lay out what they planned to do.  We asked what specific parts of their idea may meet resistance from the school administration, and then suggested that they think more carefully about these aspects of their idea before putting them down on paper.  One student immediately noted that teachers might be offended that the girls were attempting to replace their position in the classroom.  These concerns lead the girls to re-frame their idea as a mentorship, rather than teaching program.  We then asked the girls to think about the problems that they might face in mentoring young girls.  They answered that it might be difficult to work with many girls, which made them to specifically select 5th class girls, which would neatly work out to one of them per three younger students.

After some help in organizing their ideas, the girls wrote a letter to their Headmistress, in which they detailed the specifics of the mentorship program that they hoped to create.  They asked if they could carry it out during the ‘Guiding’ period on Fridays, when no formal class is held.  They shared some example activities that they might introduce to their mentees and explained their reasons for wanting to do the project.  The School Headmistress had some valid concerns about the proposed program, namely that it would interfere with already scheduled classes, and did not give immediate approval.  We hope though to figure out a way for the girls to implement this mentorship program in some fashion before the end of the term.  Although the program that the girls envisioned may not come fully alive, the process of developing the idea for action and refining it was a valuable exercise.

Railway Girls High School PowerPoint Presentations

The second batch of students at the Railway School are working on their first full video projects, but while those are in production please take a look at their recently completed digital stories at SlideShare:

www.slideshare.net/themodernstory

The topics were family, friends, and community members. It was several students’ first time with PowerPoint, and we were proud at their excitement for the different features of the program. The major skills that students learned in completing this project were: taking digital photographs, uploading them to the computer, and embedding them in slideshows.

Our School – A Video by the Girls of Railway High School

Here is a wonderful video written, shot and edited entirely by the girls of Railway High School. This is the first batch of TMS students working on PCs instead of Macintosh computers, and they make us proud once again, proving they are just as good editing on PCs as they are on Macs.

If I am to make a very subjective observation, let me tell you I especially love the transitions they choose to emphasize certain points and moods in their videos: the star (when talking about the success of the brass band) and the heart (when introducing themselves at the end) are perfect and adorable examples!

Enjoy the video! And a very Merry Christmas to you all!