Some experiences from being in schools in India

I am tempted to share some nuggets from my experiences of being in the education sector although at the periphery. Listen to this and you would wonder whether there is any hope at all of having a good schooling system in this country.
 
A higher secondary school teacher: "The different seasons are explained by the fact that earth has an orbit which is elliptical and when the earth is farthest from the sun it is winter and when closest it is summer."
 
A teacher in high school: "I did my BA not B.Sc. I do not know negative numbers."
 
More than fifty percent of teachers in a state in the central part of the country failed to clear 8th standard exams in Mathematics.
 
This one takes the cake. This is from a Maths teacher in the northwestern part of the country. "In our schools the method of proving that sum of angles of a triangle is proved by drawing a triangle, measuring the angles and summing them. But since the measuring instruments are not accurate, the sum generally becomes 178 or 181 or some such numbers. We ask the students to adjust the angle measurements to get the sum of 180."
 
This one would be a suprise for  you as to why it is noteworthy. At least it was for me.

A teacher in a workshop in SCERT: "Hindi is our national language."
 
You might have read the issue of Saraswati Vandanas in schools in newspapers. I see  them on a regular basis.
 
Going to the schools is once in a while a completely discouraging experiences. When you visit the schools, the teacher would offer water to you. Now the water will be brought to you by a child. The child will always be from the upper caste. There are huge issues in schools in this country where teachers ensure that during mid day meals children are seated separately according to their caste. There are teachers who would refuse to share food handled by lower caste children. But this should not surprise us. A look at the Malayala Manorama matrimonials would be sufficient to show us that the grip of caste is yet to be shaken off in this country.
 
But inspite of this, my interaction with teachers give a lot of hope to me. Engage with them deeply and you would find that most of them, like us, are struggling to live in ways which they believe are right. We may disagree with their understanding of what is right and wrong. But that to me is the foundation of hope. We will all make our mistakes and still add some value to someone.