Reflections on a bright green bus

July 17, 2010

Deeply engaged in a moment, we often forget to take stock of the entire experience, as unique as it might be.  That moment envelopes us in a comfort that makes it seem normal, as if we had always been engaged thus.  However, if we step back even a single step, how surprised we can be by what is actually happening around and about us. Sitting in a bright green tourist bus that I rented for the day to transport a group of 5th standard children to the architectural site of Mahabalipuram, I took such a step back.

Returning from our visit, the children’s energy and excitement seethed such that the majority of them engaged in singing cinema songs from Tamil films.  As they did so, one boy stepped forward and sent the group into giggles as he enthusiastically wiggled his way through a series of imitation dance movies from the self-same movies.  This boy, who speaks little English, has difficulty with Tamil as well, a speech impediment keeping him from clear communication.  As he danced his staccato boogie, several girls sitting about me competed with the noise level to insistently teach me Tamil words.  As the dancing and singing picked up pace, so did the girl’s teaching.  They discovered a kind of new game of seeing who could come up with the next word to introduce and correct my horrid pronunciation of this complex language.  When I would succeed, they would sit back in pleasure, saying ‘Correct,’ and move onto the next one.  They proceeded to test me, too, expecting I would have learned a dozen or so words in under a minute.  All I could do was count and that minor feat moved them to all applause.

As we engaged in this multifarious Tamil adventure, the bus pulled to the side of the road.  The local police had stopped us because the bus driver wasn’t wearing his uniform.  Despite arguments about this being a school trip, the principal (yes, she was on the trip with us) paid off the policeman.  As the bus started up again, it became clear that the uniform was an excuse and that this happened on a regular basis.  In point of fact, the bus driver had to show a document to a couple of other policemen further down the road to show he had already done the pay off. I add that the bus I rented was provided—at a great savings to renting local buses—by the mother of one of the students.  The student, an autistic girl, vacillates between participating and not in drama class, but since her mother called to volunteer the use of this cheaper alternative, it is clear that the girl had carried information home about drama class and the impending trip to Mahabalipuram. Her mother accompanied us on the trip, but followed the bus in a taxi.

So here I was, a Fulbright-Nehru Scholar, in a large green bus rented from the mother of a somewhat reluctant drama student, learning Tamil badly, giggling at a young Tamil boy dancing and all of it drowned out by the excited singing.  The teachers laughed along with the children, despite the momentary pause for paying off a policeman.  How did I come to this moment, I wondered as I stepped back to take stock.  And then I thought, ‘Who cares?’  And at the insistence of a small girl who got everyone else to be quiet, I started singing songs from the Marshall Islands.

Not to kill the punch line here, but I can’t help but reflect on a moment that resonates so strongly within me that I can almost feel the pulse of it. We had spent the morning on the bus dealing with vomiting children, only to arrive at Mahabalipuram and have the children cry out in a chorus of ‘Statue! as the bus passed the first rock carving.  They eagerly lined up to gawk at the stone carvers along the roadside and then the goats we encountered climbing to the rock caves.  They took to their writing work with much more clarity and completeness then when I had guided them in practice sessions with a small, boxed replica of the Mahabalipuram caves.  In other words, progression.  Through worksheets and drawings, the children had good conversations about the carvings and were well-challenged to consider what they were seeing.  A small handful of budding visual artists even had a hard time ending their work.  Throughout a few tourists came through and even took pictures of the students working, so impressed they were with what the students were apparently studying and learning.

So what’s my point?  As we left Mahabalipuram and the joy continued to pour forth from the students, I couldn’t help but wonder of the strength of such an adventure.  Despite the continued challenges I face here, which match evenly with the challenges I face on my home turf, it just seems so obvious the kind of impact this experience has on the children. Granted, I have no evidence and will have little but the anecdotal to go on after this is all finished, but what is happening right in front of us that gives insight into what motivates children to learn and we choose to ignore it in the long-held, but not often enough questioned, beliefs about education.  Do we accept the comfort of what we have always known in lieu of stepping back to take stock of what we are actually experiencing?  I am sure there are hundreds of philosophers who have tread this pathway before and I am now just catching up, but to catch up on a green bus singing along the East Coast Road couldn’t be a better experience. Now how do I get the rest of the educational world to join me on the bus?