My name is David Gardner, and I am a recently-credentialed high school math teacher residing in Kerala, India through August 2011. After finishing my credential classes at Mills College in Oakland, CA, I joined Sapna, my wife, for her year of PhD research in India. In addition to learning Malayalam (the language of Sapna’s family and everyone in Kerala), supporting Sapna in her work, and studying mathematics, I plan to use this opportunity to learn more about the education system and pedagogical practice in Kerala. India turns out huge numbers of engineers, computer programmers, and biochemists, and is lauded for its success in math and science education. Kerala in particular is celebrated for its high development indicators when it comes to education and health care.
Despite the strong reputation outside India, Kerala’s Ministry of Education is engaged in a series of reforms designed to make classrooms more “interactive” and “democratic”- in short, to move away from a system of rote memorization and towards a problem-solving approach to education. Since the high-note of 99% literacy rates in the early 1990s, Kerala has fallen to a 90.92% rate- still highest in India, but headed in the wrong direction. There is also growing concern that poor and working-class students aren’t getting the kind of education that will give them access to high-powered positions at engineering and medical colleges. That concern raises a fundamental question for me: is our (American) impression of India shaped by the fact that, in the U.S. and cities like Bangalore, we’re generally seeing the kids who make it through the system? Is India’s math and science education really that much better than ours, or are we seeing the best math/science minds of a country with 1.1 billion people? How many students drop out along the way, or have their career dictated by getting the 51st-best score on district exams instead of the 50th? I haven’t found very good statistics on these questions yet, so if you find any, please send them to me!
Above all, I’m interested in getting a sense of what classrooms in Kerala look like. I hope to volunteer in schools, share ideas with and learn from the experience of teachers here, and use what I’ve learned to be a better teacher when I return to California. Whatever limitations there might be to mathematics education, students here are working on challenging material that is more “advanced” than most American students the same age. The national curriculum has 10th-standard (the equivalence of 10th-grade) students working on everything from advanced statistics to trigonometry to arithmetic progressions. So clearly something is going right in terms of teacher expectations and faith in the intelligence of their students.
One important note: I am not doing an official study of any kind, and my thoughts and reflections on this blog will only reflect my personal, lived experience. There’s no theoretical framework or carefully designed research approach (statistical or otherwise) to the coming year. So unless I cite statistics or thoroughly vetted articles, assume that what you read reflects nothing more than one tall white guy’s experience in a very specific context. This blog will be nothing more than a space for me to reflect on my experience as an observer and teacher in Kerala, and use that to become a better teacher overall.
*Despite the unofficial nature of this blog, names of schools and individuals are still pseudonyms to protect the identities of everyone involved. Rants on American politics will likely not follow that rule.
I’m looking forward to reading more!
Mr Goldberg is thinking of going to Kerala and would love to accompany you a bit.