S. Giridhar's ode to India's government school teachers makes its intentions clear right from its title. It is a book about ordinary people who turn into extraordinary teachers to bring about a difference. The founding registrar and COO of the Azim Premji Foundation, and COO of its university, Giridhar spent the past two decades of his life documenting the public education system. Meeting with hundreds of government school teachers in many remote parts of the country, Giridhar came back impressed with the commitment and dedication shown by the educators who defied all constraints because, as he points out, “of a burning belief that every child can learn.”
Teaching at a government school, Giridhar discovers, makes a teacher play a multifaceted role. Beside the evident lack of facilities in many remote areas, teachers also have to work at establishing community level rapport, something crucial to the success of a local school. They also have to navigate their way through bureaucracy, local politics, and not the least, the rising competition from 'private' schools. As the book notes, while the number of private schools in India rose by 75 per cent, government schools grew only by 15 per cent. “In contrast, the number of children studying in government schools has gone down by over seven per cent,” he writes.
But those seem minor peeves, as the book focuses on celebrating the sheer tenacity and resilience of the system, as exemplified by the one hundred plus schools he visits as part of his work, noting intricacies and practical solutions teachers come up with at their own initiative. Right from how at one place, classrooms double up as night hostel for students whose parents migrate seasonally, to how teachers themselves arrange text books and other teaching material, often at their own expense, to many more. By humanising an amorphous whole we often deride as 'substandard', using case studies from Uttarakhand to Karnataka and then unabashedly celebrating their little successes, Giridhar establishes his aim pretty succinctly – get off your high horse, urban peeps, and see how change is being brought about by real heroes at the grassroots level.
Don't go to this book for any balanced analysis or verdict on the Indian government education system. Amidst the usual stream of bad news and ineptitude that media seems to oft celebrate, Giridhar would rather focus on the silver lining. And those are stories of ordinary people who perform an extraordinary role, going against all odds and all the conventional notions to bring about a difference. For him, that alone suffices to make this a book about real heroes.
Book: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Teachers: The Heroes of Real India
Author: S. Giridhar
Publisher: Westland
Pages: 275
Price: Rs. 499
