July 7

During one of my lessons yesterday (class 3 girls), one of the girls seemed much older than the others. It turns out she is a few years older and she was one of many girls in India that had to drop out of school at a young age to look after the family, cook and clean, because both her parents are labourers. Luckily for her, she has been able to be reintroduced into schooling, but there are so many children, especially girls that do not have such a chance.

There are many theories about why boys are favoured over girls when it comes to education, such as expected returns, bride wealth and concerns over the safety of girls travelling to school. I had a long chat with the man at the head of the women centre and it seems that one of the main reasons is actually the illiteracy of parents. Parents are illiterate and therefore very narrow minded - these mothers never went to school so why should their daughters? They are illiterate so have to go to work for long hours on a low wage and so the daughters are seen as the ones that should look after the home, like their mothers used to do when they were young. This really highlights the importance of extending these projects to females in particularly so that the next generation of parents are more educated and hopefully will want the same for all of their children, not just their sons!

The reason why I have mentioned this girl is that she was very shy and not confident with her English, and at one stage she pronounced something slightly wrong and one of the girls decided to laugh - soon after the older girl seemed to get quite upset. It turns out she actually has problems with her sight so her eyes are strained a lot when trying to write or read for long periods of time. However, when I spoke to the man at the head of the project about my concerns over the children laughing at each others' mistakes, he told me something very interesting and really quite shocking. Apparently, at home girls are not allowed to laugh. They can smile but cannot laugh, whereas boys can do so. Some parents even tell their daughters that they cannot talk to any other girls or boys. How are the children supposed to learn to socialise and do well in a class when they are too scared to even talk to each other? One of the good things about this project is that they encourage the children to laugh and enjoy themselves so that they do not see it like a boring school but a place to learn where they are happy and comfortable with each other. The fact that the children in project why do much better than others in their schools I am sure is partly due to such a learning environment being provided for them.

A further reason why I have mentioned this girl is that during my chat with the leader, he talked to me about other such issues he had encountered with some of the children and why they may arise. What I found extremely interesting was to find out that all of these children come from very different homes, the sources of heterogeneity even within a slum village is much greater than I imagined. There are 1000s of castes across India, different classes, different religions (and within Hinduism over 30 Gods whereby families tend to follow a specific God) and different traditions (even non religious traditions - most of the people in these slums have migrated from very poor areas such as Bihar so many still follow traditions from their home villages). On top of this the incomes, despite being very low, differ between families, you often do not know the health of family members, and also how many siblings they have.

All of these issues can cause very different problems for the children and it is very hard to understand where the problem is and how to solve it. While the problems remained unresolved, they will not be able to learn well at the project, if they can make it to the project at all. It is therefore essential that these are resolved and children are able to come to the project every day and enjoy it without other concerns clouding their minds. The project has a really tough job to try to understand these issues and have the results it wants to have for these children. The fact that the children are doing so well is testament to the great work and care that everyone in the project is putting in on a day to day basis. As you can tell if you have read the other blogs, this project keeps impressing me more and more every day!