Teaching Peace…Learning about culture

It was typical, I think, of the work of my friend JPji--expansive, optimistic and hugely collaborative.

He has been encouraged and partially funded to develop a series of curricula for non-violence and peace training for the schools in Tamil Nadu. The curriculum here is largely secular and career-focussed (there is high competition among students for higher education and equally high levels of depression and even suicide). He and Ananthi had already hastily put together a book of lessons about peace and peacemaking for the elementary levels but, in part since I was here, he decided it was now time to take the next step and produce a work for the high schools.

So he convened a two day meeting and invited the young Swiss (Steiner Trained) pedagogue Georg as well as David (the architect), Ananthi and several local teachers to develop the basic materials. Three of the teachers are form a network of Montessori schools run in Madurai, another was from another private school in the city. We spent the first day brainstorming on lesson possibilities from the expansive list of topics that JPji (and I) had generated: Holistic Health and Individual Excellence, Interrelationships, Environment and Nature, Nonviolence and the Spiritual Dimension, and The Contemporary Challenges.

I must say it was wonderful fun and enlightening. The Montessori school is obviously working at a very high level, and its curriculum already contains many lessons and ideas in these areas. The young principal told us, for example, of the many uses of circle teaching with students. One is called 'open house' where students identify a problem in their school and then try to generate solutions. The girls recently spoke of the poor condition of the washrooms and, with the janitor present, worked out the details of how it could fixed. A small but wonderful example of student democracy! But they also have highly developed curriculum on bullying, diversity training (Indians really are masters of this) and general health and well-being. On the later, they send the students first to interview their grandparents and parents on their eating habits and food from the past, then identify the changes in what they eat today, developing a critique of commercially produced food. Their cafeteria has only homemade food and the children are allowed to work in it, learning practical skills. When the teach on the environment they assign students to research and then role-play the various animal species, convening what Joanna Macey calls a "Council of all Beings"

So the brainstorming led to some very positive lesson ideas. Tomorrow we will each present a couple of sample lessons on one of the sub-topics and then we will try to collectively write the book over the next month.

I thought of so many possibilities during the conversation and was so stimulated by their enthusiasm, I am still reeling a bit. I would not normally have thought of writing curriculum but the enthusiasm was so strong and the desire to have an impact so real that I feel quite taken up with it.

I will never use the word, padayatra/footmarch again without thinking. I have just returned (to Delhi for one hour in transit) after being with Rajaji on a padayatra in Rajasthan. On the last two days we walked 8 kilometers each day. Each day we ended with a large rally. About two hundred of us were walking. Each day's walk was about 5 hours. I have done fifteen marathons, I have done four ironman races. None of that even comes close. This was something deeply spiritual and overwhelming in many ways. To walk with the people I was walking with, to feel their strength and courage...I am still a little speechless. I will reflect over the next few days at Cesci and try to give a better account of this experience. It was an amazing way to spend thanksgiving... More soon.

In and about the Thieves’ Market.

I have been in a decompression chamber since arriving in Delhi; learning that night is day and day is night. I find myself suddenly awake at one in the morning and hungry for supper, or nodding of at 8 in the morning over my morning coffee. As Jill, speaking from years of experience, said, ‘just take a few days and arrive. After all you go back in time coming to India.’

Ekta Parishad has a third floor office in the Janpura Extension, an area of New Delhi near Nizamudeen Station and the Bhogel (or Thieves’) Market. It also doubles as a living space. When I was met at the new terminal, it was by Jill and Rajaji (who had just come down with a viral fever). Both were living in the back room of the office. Ramesh Sharma was also staying here and so, since the place was full, I was put in a room across the Market in the West End Guest Home. That is where I have been waking up at three in the morning suddenly expecting supper and generally decompressing from the time change.

I have not run into any thieves yet but have enjoyed watching the street awake and wind down at night from my window. It is hard to describe--so much takes place out on the street here ( as opposed to inside the houses)--a jumble of living and working and playing. Animal, vegetable and mineral in a lively kaleidoscope. The vegetable seller walks up and down with his cart of produce and distinctive chanting call. Four young men are sitting on the sidewalk and with a hammer and tongs, rhythmically breaking off pieces from some kind of mysterious metal plating. Saried women are everywhere sweeping up the nights’ refuse, hanging wash, shooing neatly uniformed children off to school. Two young men are carefully washing a new car on a street that is mostly rutted with mud and rickshaws and piles of abandoned bricks. And dogs. It is a wonderful jumble of the life and its smells that is urban India.

During the days, I have been happily following Jill around on various sorties in networking and advocacy work, uptown and downtown. Yesterday we went to India’s famous ITT campus (a bit like MIT) to visit Prof. Upadhyay, an economist involved in publishing the annual “Alternative Economic Report”. We had a nice tea and chat about the alternative economic possibilities and families. Today we went south of Delhi into the so-called industrial area of Hockla (?) driving with a man called Arvind, who knew another man called Arun, who runs a large PR firm with an office in the area. Arvind believed that Arun could help EP with its PR preparation for the march in 2012. The industrial area has become something quite other than was originally envisaged; there are factories (proudly acknowledging that they have no child labour), but there are small shack-like houses, working spaces and offices scattered along the almost impassable mud roads.

Our meeting unfolded slowly and unexpectedly in what I now have come to think of as a typical Indian fashion. Arun’s BMW broke down and he had to wait for them to pick him up, and he called to give us progress reports on his progress. So we met for several hours with two younger staffers, highly professional ad-men and asked for their advice (all of which was very good). Our friend Arvind eventually had to leave, but we were urged to wait for Arun himself and treated to many coffees and lunch at his desk by his staff.

Arun arrived with a flourish and much charm and we had an hour of his undivided attention and advice. Clear, decisive ideas about what should be done and a real nobility of spirit. Jill spoke to him at length about Ekta, Rajagopal and her own life while Arun himself decided to drive us all the way back to the Thieves’ Market, noting how rare it was for him to meet people who are working for a social justice cause.

As I come out of the decompression chamber this is all quite a wonderful reintroduction to the India I am coming to know: above all, this large- and warm-heartedness for what is noble and good. A kind of spontaneous generosity that is beyond expectations. I am sure there is the other, darker side about as well, and no doubt many thieves, but I have not run into them yet.

Rajaji has gone off to Kerala with his viral fever to an event he just could not miss (which is the only kind of event he attends) Jill and I will travel to Bhopal on Sunday morning.

FREEDOM WALK 2012

Ground Reality: France and India: The Beautiful Farms are all but dying

Ground Reality: France and India: The Beautiful Farms are all but dying
I cannot recommend the blog of Devinder Sharma too highly. This is a wonderful article on the reasons behind the death of the life of farming in India and France, two nations whose culture was shaped by rural life, local food and the community that went with it.

Global Peace Index 2010

Here’s the link for the 2010 Global Peace Index, it’s in PDF format. This 2010 Methodologies, Results and Findings is being launched today in Washington and London.
Certainly you will have some questions/arguments about the outcome but it’s interesting how countries are ranked in terms of ‘peacefulness’. It would be fun to try and guess how your country is ranked out of 149 countries included in this finding.

Click on the link: http://www.visionofhumanity.org/wp-content/uploads/PDF/2010/2010%20GPI%20Results%20Report.pdf