Handwriting

Yesterday I saw an article on the BBC website describing the declining quality of handwriting. Mobile phones, computers and voice activated devices, among others, seem the obvious reasons for this decline. However, we should also stop and ponder and try to understand what handwriting is really made of.

When we look at our handwriting, whether it is neat or less neat, one thing generally become obvious...it is composed of straight lines (either vertical or horizontal) and curves. In many ways, handwriting is almost a geometric exercise, one that requires us to form certain shapes, we call letters, in a particular way. The other intrinsic quality of handwriting is it reflects speed, pressure, and angle. This is what adds to the distinctiveness of the handwriting. Depending on our own individuality, the amount of speed, pressure and angle when we write will vary. No two people could possible write in the same way, applying identical pressure, for example when the write.

Although this all sounds very basic, when we reflect on it a bit more, we realize that handwriting carries so much of our own individuality; in many ways, it is a real expression of who we are.

This brings me to an interesting question: as skill in handwriting declines, does this mean we are losing our individuality?

The modern tools I listed above allow us to write in exactly the same say, the same font size with identical spacing. In fact, many companies have standard templates describing the size of fonts for given types of presentations. While it does look neater and it can be animated, it carries no impression of speed, pressure or angle. These three dimensions may refer to what Steiner schools call the three-folded human being: Thinking, Feeling, Willing.

Thinking is often related to light. When we have an idea, in cartoon form, a light bulb is shown. In fact, we when find the solution to some issue, we say, "I see the light". Thus let us say that light is a quality of thought and we all know that nothing is faster than the speed of light. The speed which is reflected in our handwriting is the reflection of our thought.

Feeling, not emotion but feeling has an almost tactile quality to it. Even when we apply feeling to emotion, there is weight or lightness in this emotion. When we love someone, we want to hold them close. When we like someone less, more distance is better. Feeling then involves pressure. When we express our love for our children and hold them tight, we understand what this pressure real means. Thus, the pressure expressed in handwriting is all about feeling.

Willing is about doing, going out and getting it done. We don't even give this a second thought sometimes. Our legs move and carry us where we are going, with no further instructions from us. This is willing at its most obvious. As willing involves movement, then in many ways, then angle of our handwriting determines the movement we can make.

In this short presentation, we can see a deeper implication of the decline of handwriting as a skill. We will lose our capacity to share, through writing, a little bit of who we truly are, of what we think, feel and do as individual human beings.

How to tell a story and other topics

One of the purposes of this blog is to build interest in Steiner education. We all hope that soon, some individuals will rise this challenge and appreciate that education is full of wonderful choices.

Encouraging a healthy imagination, understanding the role of television and computers, learning to tell a story are just some of the topics for conversation that will lead to an interest, hopefully, in Steiner education.

I am happy to sharing my understanding and the experience one these topics and how we, as parents may better appreciate the choices we may actually take to improve the educational experience of our children. We can agree on a common time and place, perhaps once a month, where we can sit and share our views on these and many other wonderful topics that parents, all to often, have no time to explore.

If your are interested in this option, please email me directly at raphael.lazo@yahoo.com or raph_lazo@rvlazo.com. I am happy to hold the conversation. There is no minimum number.

Other ideas on how to go forward with this sharing are welcome.

Warmest wishes to all of you.

When Alexandre Grothendieck went to school

Alexandre Grothendieck, born in 1928, is one of the mathematician geniuses of the XX century. He is also one of the initiators of the anti-nuclear movement in France, with the magazine Survivre et Vivre which he ran for a few years with fellow mathematicians, until 1973 when he suddenly disappeared from public life. The picture on the right, from 1988, is taken from Winfried Scharlau's web site: www.scharlau-online.de/ag_1.html.

What is known of Grothendieck's life is a real epic, and a testimony of courage. Son of a Russian Jewish anarchist and a German communist, he could escape the Nazi in his childhood (his father was arrested in France and sent to Auschwitz, while he and his mother were interned in a camp) thanks to remarkable people. His memoirs, Récoltes et Semailles, (“Reapings and Sowings”) was circulated among his friends from 1988 onwards, before being published on the internet. These are the very first words of this rich and dense, 1000-page document:

      “When I was a kid, I liked to go to school. We had the same teacher for teaching us reading and writing, calculations, singing (he used to play with a small violin for accompanying us), or the prehistoric men and the discovery of fire. I don't remember that we ever felt bore at school, at that time. He had the magic of numbers, and of words, of signs and of sounds. The magic of rhymes also, in songs or in small poems. It seemed there was in rhymes a mystery beyond words. The mystery remainded, until someone explained to me that there was a very simple “catch”; that rhyme is simply when we conclude two consecutive spoken movements with the same syllable, turning them, as if by enchantment, into verses. It was a revelation! At home, where I found much response around me, for weeks and for months, I played making verses. At a time, I used to speak only in rhymes. That time is finished, fortunately. But even now, sometimes, I still make poems – without searching hard for rhyme, if it doesn't come by itself.”

(translated from the original in French)

I wish we knew who this teacher was! It is unclear whether it was Wilhelm Heydorn,  the  pastor and teacher who with his wife Dagmar, brought up Grothendieck for a few years in Hamburg, along with a few other foster children and their own children, and saved him from the Nazi.

In any case, it is easy to imagine from the sensitive description of Grothendieck that his first teacher really knew how a school should be, and how to create these blessed moments when children build themselves for the rest of their life. It is also remarkable that Grothendieck put this description at the opening of his monumental memoirs on mathematics, science, philosophy, education and politics, and titled “Reapings and Sowings”! This prominent place, and the very lively description, testify how important were early childhood “sowings” for Grothendieck, and how it remains alive 60 years later in his life.

The complete text of Récoltes et Semailles can be found at The Grothendieck Circle, and also the complete archives of Survivre et Vivre (in French), as well as many mathematical and non-mathematical texts, in French, German, English and Russian: 

www.grothendieckcircle.org

Biographical information and other articles (in German) can be found at:

www.scharlau-online.de/ag_1.html

How I learned to write, by Binod Bera (English translation)

“My father died before I was born. I don't remember the face of my mother, but I heard about her from other people. I was one-and-a-half years old, I was still drinking her milk, when she died. I couldn't understand that I would not get warmth and love from her any more. The catastrophe of '76 (the great Bengal famine of 1943, following disastrous floods in Mednipur) has taken everything away from my life. Nobody gave me any food. Up to 12-13 years old, I didn't know what is rice. I used to collect boiled rice water from door to door, and drinking it, I survived. Early in childhood, I was very interested to know how to read and write. I was looking at the boys and girls going to pathsala (village primary school). I was sitting outside of the window of our village pathsala, and listening to the poems and rhymes, I was repeating and remembering.

At 8 or 9 years old, some boys of my age taught me the different letters of the alphabet. They were my playmates. At home, when my cousin brothers were studying their lessons, I was listening to them, hidden in the dark, repeating silently and remembering. From that time I started to practice writing, hidden behind the wall of the house. With my nails, I used to write on the mud walls. Also, I used to collect the discarded notebooks and small bits of used pencils from my friends who were going to pathsala. On every small space that was left blank on the pages, I was practising.

When during a village festival, I was listening to Kashidas' Mahabharata, loudly read through chanting, there was the particular passage where Abhimanyu is killed, and before the story was finished, everybody went for dinner. But I wanted to know what happened to Abhimanyu. One day, after working the whole day in someone's field, harvesting turmeric from the ground, I told that I would not take money, but I requested the owner to purchase one copy of the Mahabharata for me. Reading started from that time. The village had a library. I asked for one book to read, and they gave me a novel called "Chandrasekhar"(1). Then they told me to sign the register. But when I told the teacher that I never learned to write my name, he was very surprised and told me to learn to write first! And he took one pen, and holding it in my hand, wrote my name. From the library they gave me one book first. When they saw me giving it back after only two hours they were astonished, and wondered how I could finish that book so fast. Then they asked me many kinds of questions about what was in the book, and I answered everything. From that day, teachers told me, take and read all that you want. Within one week, I finished to read all books in the library.

When I had read any book, after finishing, I used to write my own opinion about this book. I like to read very much, till now. Another quality I got is to tell stories nicely, and tell to others the stories I read. For this reason, friends came to me to listen to stories. Many people told me that one day I would become a big writer... When I had to write the first writing of my own, it was difficult and I couldn't even start writing. After a lot of efforts, I wrote one story called "Dhulir bashar". Narayan Gangopadhyay appreciated that story very much, and told, you are very talented, and all villagers were very happy and proud. One monthly magazine, every month, published my writings.

In the '60s, I wrote a book "Chinar nam ghrina" which was praised by prominent writers for its insight. From that time I started to write for all big magazines.”

-------------------------------------------------------
(1) by Bankim Chandra 

Today, some school and college text books have poems of Binod Bera. He never abandoned cultivating the land.

Transcript by Bithi Bera.

How I learned to write - by Binod Bera

বাবাকে হারিয়েছি জন্মের অগে। মায়ের মুখ লোকের কাছে শোনা। দেড় বছর বয়সে মৃত মায়ের বুকের স্তন পান করার সময় বুঝিনি আজ থেকে আমি তঁার ওম স্পর্শ থেকে বঞ্চিত হলাম। ছিয়াওরের মন্বন্তর আমাকে নিস্বঃ অনাথ করেছিল। একটু খাবার কেউ খেতে দিতো না। বার -তের বছর বয়স অব্দি ভাত কি তা জানতামনা। এর ওর বাড়ি থেকে ভাতের ম্য়ফ্যেন চেয়ে খেয়েছি।ছোটো থেকে লেখা -পড়া জানার প্রতি বিশেষ ঝঁোক ছিল। দেখতাম ছেলে মেয়েরা পাঠশালায় যাচ্ছে। আমি পাড়ার পাঠশালার বাহিরে জানালার পাশে বসে সমস্ত ছড়াগুলো শুনে শুনে মুখস্ত করে মনে রাখতাম।

৮-৯বছর বয়সে সমবয়সি ছেলেরা আমাকে অক্ষর চিনতে পড়তে শিখিয়েছিল। তারা সবাই ছিল আমার খেলার সাথি। আর বাড়িতে যখন কাকা জ্যেঠার ছেলেরা বসে পড়াশুনা করত আমি তখন দুরে অন্ধকারে বসে সব শুনতাম আর বারবার মনেমনে বলে মুখস্ত করতাম। সেদিন থেকে সকলের আড়ালে ঘরের পেছনের দেওয়ালেহাতের নোখ দিয়ে লেখা অভ্যাস করতাম। কিংবা বন্ধুদের ফেলে দেওয়া খাতা পেনসিল কুড়িয়ে তাতে যত টুকু জায়গা পেতাম তাতেই লেখার অভ্যাস করতেন।

প্রথম পড়ার ইচ্ছা আসে পাড়ার এক অনুষ্ঠানে কাশী দাসী মহাভারত সুর করে পড়া শুনে। তাতে বিশেষ আকর্ষনীয় পাঠ ছিল সপ্তরথী ঘিরে অভিমন্যূ বধ। কিন্তু গল্পটা শেষ না করে সবাই খেতে চলে যায়। অভিমন্যুর কিহল জানার তীব্র ইচ্ছা আমার মধ্যে। একদিন লোকের বাড়িতে সারাদিন কোদাল দিয়ে মাটি থেকে হলুদ তুলে দিয়ে বললাম আমি পয়সা নেব না আমায় একটা মহাভারত কিনে দাও। 
সেই থেকে পড়া শুরু। গ্রামের একটা লাইব্রেরি ছিল সেখানে পড়ার জন্যে বই চাইলে ওরা আমায় "চন্দ্রশেখর" নামে একটি উপন্যাসের বই দিয়ে সই করতে বলল। কিন্তু তখনও আমি নাম লিখতে শিখিনি জেনে শিক্ষকমশাই খুব অবাক হলেন বললেন আগে লেখা শিখ ! তিনি একটা পেন দিয়ে আমার হাত ধরে লিখে দিলেন। লাইব্রেরিতে প্রথমে একটা করে বই দিত সেটা পড়ে দু-ঘন্টার মধ্যে ফেরত দিয়ে অন্য বই নিতে চাইছি দেখে তারা অবাক ! এতো তাড়াতাড়ি পড়া কি করে সম্ভব !! বইটির ভেতর থেকে তারা নানারকম প্রশ্ন জিঙ্গেস করতেন আমি সমস্ত বলে দিতাম। সে দিন থেকে শিক্ষকমশাই বললেন তোমার যে কটা ইচ্ছে নিয়ে পড়ো। এক সপ্তাহে লাইব্রেরির সমস্ত বই পড়ে শেষ করে ফেললাম।

যখনই কোনো বই পড়তাম পড়া শেষে আমার মন্তব্য লিখে রাখতাম। পড়ার ভীষণ নেশা যা এখনো ও সমান ভাবে আছে। এছাড়া আমার একটা গুন ছিল আমি খুব সুন্দর গল্প বলতে ও পড়ে শোনাতে পারতাম। এ জন্যে বন্ধুরা প্রায় আসতো গল্প শোনার জন্যে। অনেকে আমায় উত্‍সাহ দিতে লাগল তুমি লেখ একদিন অনেক বড় লেখক হবে... প্রথম মৌলিক কোন লিখতে গিয়ে বেশ মুশকিলে পড়েছিলাম কিছু তেই পারছি না। অনেক কষ্টে একটি গল্প লিখেছিলাম। নাম ছিল তার "ধূলির বাসর"। নারায়ন গঙ্গোপাধ্যায় খুব প্রশংসা করলেন। বললেন খুবই সম্ভাবনাময় এবং সকল গ্রামবাসীরা প্রবল উচ্ছাস দেখাল। একটি মাসিক পত্রিকায় প্রতি মাসে জোর করে আমাকে দিয়ে লেখাতে লাগল।

ষাটের দশকে "চীনার নাম ঘৃনা" নামে একটা বই লিখে কলকাতার বড় বড় লেখকের মনে আলোড়ন তুললেন। সে সময় সমস্ত বড় বড় পত্রিকায় আমার লেখা ছাপা হতো।

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আজ, কিছু কলেজে ও স্কুলে পাঠ্যবইএ বিনোদ বেরার কবিতা আছে।

লিখেছে : বীথি বেরা

Interview with Mr. Shourabh Mukherjee, Founder, Young Men's Welfare Society (YMWS)

Class 3 in Khelaghar, Raghunatpur (South 24 Pgs.), 26 Feb. 07

Q: How did you start YMWS?

Shourabh Mukherjee: St Lawrence Evening School is just 40 years old: We started on 2nd September, in 1968! There was social unrest in West Bengal, and Father Subir Biswas had created a platform of organisations in 1970-71 for working in the long run with the refugees. We focused on primary and pre-primary education.

Q: Where did you start?

Shourabh Mukherjee: We started in my house, with 2-3 friends. We had 29 pupils. We then went to St Lawrence School, where the Principal, Father Bruylants, was very responsive. He immediately gave us 2 class-rooms, then 4, then 8, and ultimately one full building, for free. Today, 482 children join the classes from 4 P.M. with 85% attendance. They come from all the neighbouring slums. St Lawrence School give us class rooms, free electricity, play ground, and to be in such a school also give a sense of pride.

Q: Are you a former pupil of St Lawrence?

Shourabh Mukherjee: No, this school was simply in our neighbourhood. Then, evening schools became a gradual movement.

Q:Like the Rainbow School in Loreto Sealdah?

Shourabh Mukherjee: And Don Bosco, Queen of the Mission, Teetly in St Xavier (where Father Bruylants went), and many others. Now, YMWS alone is running 8 schools with 3850 pupils. Among these schools, "Children's Foundation" in Taratalla and "Young Horizons" in Barakhola (E.M. Bypass), with 900 pupils each, can be termed "Regular Schools", under ICSE board. The other 6 schools are "Community Schools", or "Khela Ghar" (named after Tagore) with 2000 pupils. These include St Lawrence Evening School, the schools at Raghunatpur and Parvatipur on the road between Diamond Harbour and Kakdwip, the Kinder Garten on Theater Road, the primary school at Karaya Road, and since April 2007, Young Horizons Evening school. This one, the latest, already has 2 classes and 75 pupils. We campaigned by going straight to the people in the neighbourhood, door to door. We add one class every year, as the pupils get older, until class 6 when they join Young Horizons or an other regular school. We plan to open one new school per year in this manner. Children's Foundation is 25 years old, and Young Horizons started in 2002, on a land given by the Government, on a recommendation of Mother Teresa.

Q: I have seen the school at Ratghunatpur 2 years ago, on the occasion of the 5-day Waldorf Education Training by Aban and Dilnawaz Bana, that you organised for the teachers. I was kindly invited, and visiting the school next to the training centre, left on me a rare and durable feeling of plenitude and wholesomeness. This was so different from so many initiatives in direction of the poor, where things or processes often look shabby, improvised, or simply missing their target, as if things for the poor should "look poor", or a little inappropriate, or a little misplaced, for some obscure reason.

Shourabh Mukherjee: I hate this…

Q: But in your school, there was no broken pipes, no forgotten utensils in dusty corners, the painting was fresh, the garden was lush and tidy, and even the chappals of the pupils were neatly arranged on the steps of the veranda. The classrooms were full of beautiful and new drawings and paintings made by the pupils and their teachers, and the children were happy and active, but not excited, obedient but not timid, and I thought, this could be a good school for my daughter. I actually made up my mind then: If you could achieve that much in Raghunatpur, I became confident that Young Horizons, which is in my neighbourhood in Kolkata, must be an equally good school. What I perceived was this: Here is a clear and sincere interest for the children, unpolluted by any other consideration. This is what parents want, isn't it? Yet nothing expensive was there: no glazed windows, plain corrugated sheets on the roof, no false ceiling, extremely simple or no furniture, and nothing conspicuous purchased from outside, except the paper, pencils and colours. Or, from an other point of view: Nothing was there to intimidate parents or children, it was actually not very different from their homes, where they also remove their shoes before entering, and which are almost always clean and tidy, probably because when your life depends on very few possessions, chaos is an unaffordable luxury.

Shourabh Mukherjee: I believe in "Cleanliness is next to Godliness". It lifts the spirit, and gradually this spirit is invoked by you. You must give the children the best opportunities, and invest in infrastructure if you believe in the future. I also like what Narayan Murthy, of Infosys, says: "Check the toilets first"! Proper toilets, drinking water, clean surroundings, are essential. Children should be happy to go to school, they should feel in security, and parents should be happy to send their children to school. There are 326 pupils in our Raghunatpur school, with 90% attendance. It is a Muslim area, and the main alternative there are Madrassas. Pupils come from far away to Raghunatpur and Parvatipur, so we provide a bus service. But we also don't want the people to be dependant on charity. We give children a small tiffin (a cup of milk, biscuits, own-grown vegetables), because they need that energy to work properly, but that's all. It is not a lunch. It is not an incentive. And it is not publicised.

Every Human Being need an element of security, you can't give this security only from charity. For ensuring the long-term security of our Community Schools, we raise money from Young Horizons and Children's Foundation, to gradually build a fund. So if tomorrow one of our donors says, "I'm sorry, I can't continue", our schools will not close. They will never close.

Q: But the fees at Young Horizons are very reasonable, even cheap. How can you do this?

Shourabh Mukherjee: We are able to do it! Every year we raise about 40 lakh from both schools combined, and this goes to a fund, from which only the interest is utilised. Our Community Schools, with 2000 pupils, need 2 lakh per month .

However, these schools are only a part of our work in this area of South-24-Parganas. We also encourage women and children to save money in "savings groups". 764 mothers are involved. We also have a programme to provide drinking water to 100 villages, and we have conducted an extensive research on the state of Education in West Bengal. Our programmes are focussed on one area, along the road, so that people can see that something is happening, and get involved.

Q: Since 10 years, you train your teachers with the Steiner-Waldorf method. How did you come to know Steiner's method of education?

Shourabh Mukherjee: I met Berndt Ruff in Delhi 10-12 years ago. I then visited Waldorf Schools in Germany, and I found a similarity with Tagore's Education: "Children must grow in an atmosphere of aspiration and freedom". We also exchange teachers every year with Waldorf Schools in the U.K. We have one policy guideline for all teachers. 76% of our teachers are graduate girls, against 59% in government schools. We have only female teachers. Our work is an on-going process, we permanently seek to improve our work. For example, we had a 2-day Workshop for the teachers with Dr. Uday Parekh of I.I.M. Ahmedabad, and coming month (September 2008) we will have one more with him for 5 days, on "Spiritual Leadership in School". Because, unless there is an element of spirituality you cannot give your best.

We are also organising a big social conference on 20th January, 2009, on the "U.N. Millenium Goals": "Can we keep the promise?". There will be a Youth Festival in Kolkata, with contribution from people of different walks of life, food rights, education, etc.

Khelaghar, Raghunatpur, 26 Feb. 07

This interview was taken on 24th August 2008 by Laurent Fournier.

Child appropriate education

Earlier I posted questions from a Steiner school parent. These were questions asked to me by a good friend of mine who I convinced to enroll his children in the Steiner school in the Philippines. Some of his questions are common among the parents in the school. Others, are unique to him.

As a result of this Q&A, Laurent and I got to thinking, what are some of the unique features of a Steiner school compared to other schools. This is an interesting question and a very common question as well. It is easy to answer, yet a bit challenging to understand.

The easy answer to the question is that Steiner schools teach in a "child-development appropriate" way. What does this mean? It is best answered through an example:

One of the key challenges for parents placing their children in a Steiner school is related to reading. When do they learn to read? In most schools today, the alphabet and reading is introduced when children are quite young, even at the pre-school level. By comparison, reading in a Steiner school is taken up around class 2 or 3, quite late by modern standards. Why is this so? Let us look at what does it take to learn to read. It needs a few basic skills but the one key skill that is absolutely necessary is that the reader can sit still for the duration of what he or she is reading. It is very difficult to read while running about and jumping. Of course that's silly, I can hear everyone say, and yet this is a reality that is often overlooked.

Let us look at a young child, between the ages of 2-7 years of age (more or less). Being a parent with children that have already passed this age, I can say, with quite a degree of certainty, that at the age, my children just wanted to run and play. Sitting still was a real struggle for them. In rural areas, we see that running and playing are the key activities of children. This would mean that sitting still, even just to have dinner, can be a real effort and exercise for them. As they grow older though, you begin to observe that on their own, they can sit for long stretches without having to run and play. Once this happens, other activities may now be possible, such as learning in a classroom setting, and learning to read.

It is with this understanding of the characteristics of the child that Steiner education brings reading as an experience at a later age. And there is another approach they have.

I remember when I was learning to read. I read sentences like: "See Dick run. Run Dick run. See Jane run. Run Jane run." and so forth. To this day, I have no idea who Dick and Jane are. In a Steiner school, children first learn to write (in Class 1). They copy what the teacher puts on the board. By the end of the year, they have a book full of short sentences that they have written themselves. Come the next year, the same approach takes place. Again they copy what the teacher writes on the board. The difference is that later in that year, they begin to read it as well. What is it they actually learn to read? They learn to read something they wrote themselves, copying what the teacher wrote. Suddenly, it makes sense. It makes sense because they were part of the process that wrote the word and they can relate to what they wrote. This is what a Steiner school means a child development appropriate education. By this age (around 7-8 years old) the child can sit still long enough and allow his or her eyes to do the "running about". In other words, around this age, it is appropriate for the child to learn to read because they have developed to such a degree that they may now sit still long enough to learn.

All subjects and presented to the children in a Steiner school in this manner. This is why we can say that a Steiner school covers all the academic requirements of any school. It just does it appropriately.

Of course, some children will be gifted and will pick up reading earlier. This is a quality unique to this child. And, based on the above description, one can also see how modern life, TV, video games, etc, can have a strong impact on the child's development.. but that is another discussion.