Kajal, my eight year old student

Sometime ago I started something that I am now reconsidering the sanity of having got myself into. My maid Saroj, who I have already written about, has this adorable 8 year old daughter. A few weeks ago, in another one of our many conversations, it emerged that this little girl had failed in the 4th standard and was now repeating a year. I should not have been surprised, I’ve worked in education before and am well aware of the state of the public education system, and consequently of the students who are its inevitable sufferers.

I decided to look into the matter, and asked her to get her daughter, Kajal’s Maths and General science books the next day. Though why, and what I could possibly hope to achieve by it was still a mystery, even to me. To my dismay (and some weeks later, with the changed viewpoint, my utter relief!) I realized that her books were all in Marathi. But of course, the government schools in Mumbai are all Marathi medium, which is as it should be. So what do I do? Undeterred, I asked Saroj to get her English books and send Kajal for tuitions everyday, or atleast on days when I’m home in the evenings. That, I realize increasingly, is not very often. And every time it isn’t I am left with a sense of guilt for having failed the child. But I jump the gun…
So start my English classes with little Miss Kajal. She is sincere enough but woefully lacking in any skills beyond half-baked knowledge of letters of the alphabet and a few rhymes blindly memorized. It is going to be an uphill task.
As I try to go on, I realize I could write endlessly about my experiences of the last few weeks. Maybe over a few posts…
Spending time with Kajal and helping her learn has mostly been a pleasant experience. She is eager and that’s half the battle won. But there are a few things about her that are peculiar. She won’t for instance say if she doesn’t know an answer. She will instead, sit there with her eyes lowered, and keep trying to work it out. Except that there isn’t so much working out in a letter, is there? And if you haven’t learnt it before, you cant be expected to know it. But she hasn’t been taught to say ‘I don’t know’ without a sense of I assume, guilt or inability.
Sadly still, she hasn’t been taught to speak, to speak her thoughts, to try to find answers, without fear of making mistakes. That has been another challenge, to get her to speak, even if it is only to say that she doesn’t know an answer. Or to try to figure out an answer even if she makes a mistake. Or to explain how she tried to figure it out.
Today was a minor success. After repeatedly getting ‘b-o-x’ in reply to a question about the spelling of ‘boy’, I finally realized why she was making the mistake. She was trying to recall the letters as they appeared on the page on which she wrote them. Except that I changed the order of the words when I quizzed her. And that confused her. Not yet having made the connection between the spelling and the sound, she was trying to fit in one of the two options that she thought might be right from what she remembered written on that page in her notebook.
Now I am trying to get her to make the connections between the letters and their sounds. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe its too early, I’m not sure. But I’m trying.