Who am I?

Who is the individual, the me, the I?

This is the question that our facilitator has asked each of us to address today, treating it not as a philosophical exercise, but connecting it to the way in which we see or describe ourselves.

It is hard not to slip into ruminations of the philosophical sort when I think of this question since there is a whole literature out there on issues of biological identity and individuality that I have encountered when working on the history of immunology. Much of it is beyond me, or at least requires more time than I’ve been willing to spend on it, so I will leave it well enough alone. But there is one thing that I have to mention, because it was touched on in class as well. It is the fact that notion of a physical “I” as a living individual being is in fact a bit of a fallacy or illusion. What “I” am made of is numerous (billions) of cells in a dynamic state–some dying and others being born virtually every  second that make up a human body, that shares certain characteristics with other bodies–a face limbs torso etc, but with a face that is not quite identical to anyone else’s. Each of the cell has the same DNA makeup. Separate one or a few of them from the rest of me and give it/them the right substrate–medium and surface–it/they will reproduce and grow into a new set of cells, but though these cells may share my DNA, this new growth are not me (at least what anyone would recognize as me) or even a part of me. As in Neeraja Sankaran. These separately growing cells are living without a doubt,  although whether they have a consciousness is debatable. But even if they did, that consciousness is not shared with me.

What I mean by consciousness, I may try to articulate further along. Meanwhile though, in the physical me that is Neeraja are several million cells, in my gut and certain other places as well, that do NOT share my DNA make-up. Incredibly these cells–they are bacterial cells–outnumber my own cells (those with Neeraja DNA) by a factor of 10, but yet they make up just 1-3% of my body weight. None of these bacteria (which grow divide and die like my own cells) is me, but I cannot survive if they were removed from me.

So much for the physical self. How else do I describe myself?  It really depends on context. At the outset of this TEP for example, I introduced myself to my classmates as a historian of science & writer who has taught in college and was interested in exploring how the KFI approach to education might work in the context of a liberal education college. Many years ago, in a rather different program, we were asked to identify each of our classmates with an adjective. I was the proud and pleased recipient of what had to be the most original and charming adjective; “peregrine” is what my classmate called me, recognizing, more presciently than either of us could have guessed then, my tendency to move around from place to place like a peregrine falcon. I was so charmed by this label that I appropriated it in the title of this site–“Peregrine Chronicles.” Another time, as recorded in a post some ten years ago, I was asked in an exercise to identify three objects that would help to tell the story of my life. Without a second’s hesitation I chose my passport, my spice-box and my laptop, which seemed to representative of 3 integral facets of how I saw myself: the wanderer, the culinary experimenter and the writer+historian. (I still see myself this way actually, although the spice-box has not been in evidence at all in the Valley). In the context of introducing myself as the new editor of the quarterly online newsletter of the History of Science Society (HSS) I described myself thus: “People who know me will tell you I’m an enthusiastic, often goofy person with a foghorn voice, left-leaning if chaotic politics, and a talent for finding good (and often unusual) restaurants at different conference venues.” When I sent this article to a lady that I stayed with for a few weeks this past March, she wrote back to say she thought this portrayal apt.

Each of these descriptions is not only dependent on context (or environment) but also built on images, which are themselves derived from various past experiences and memories, and in some cases, aspirations for and projections into, the future. Each of them gives a snapshot–all reasonably accurate–of me. But that’s all they are, snapshots in a given moment, different “facets” or “moments” of my personality. All are true of me, but none are me. I am more than the sum of those and indeed, many more parts.

Then there is the consciousness that make up the individual that is me, the me that my parents named Neeraja when I was born. “Cogito ergo sum”–“I think therefore I am”–Renée Descartes famously said centuries ago, meaning, (I think) that he knew he existed through the act of thinking. But the Neeraja who was born, mewling no doubt, into this world, did not think, at least not the way she thinks (I think?) today. Moreover, not everyone agrees with Descartes. Indeed Krishnamurti and various mystics decidedly disagree, claiming rather that thinking gets in the way of truly realizing the self. But such ruminations are the realm of philosophy and since I was asked not to wander down that route, I shall refrain.

Who am I then? Do I know? And if even I don’t, then who else can tell me? Whoever I am, I live and as I live, I learn. I am changing, as dynamic a creature in my mind and spirit as I am in my body.

 

Landcare reboot, Aug 20

Sometimes a hiatus can reveal wonders. Keeping my tryst with the planted plots and paddy after nearly a month, I was greeted with green green expanses of paddy, sunflowers almost as tall as me and sesame plants in full flower. The fact that there has been more rain in the last 3 weeks than there had been in the 3 months before that might well be the reason for the growth spurt. Here is a 3 point progress report of the usual plants preceded by some pics of the living fence and the paddy.

Our living fence from a distance

The verdant paddy fields (funny coincidence that Paddy is also a nickname or dimunitive in Ireland, which also celebrates the color green!):

3-point plot progression, June 22, July 25, & Aug 20:

June 22

Spinach, Then to now disappointingly sparse but same 3-point progression:

June 22

Sesame, Stunning change–so many flowers but many leaves look vaguely eaten: June 25, July 23, Aug 20:

June 26

Jul 23

Aug 20

Green Amaranth, Overtaking its spinach buddy, June 22, July 23, & Aug 20:

June 22

Jul 23

Aug 20

Purple Amaranth, Somewhat greener now that it’s grown, June 27, July23, & Aug 20:

June 27 (2)

Jul 23

Aug 20

Sunflowers, Truly the grand finale, June 27, July 15 & 25, and Aug 20 in all its varieties:

June 27

Jul 15

Jul 25

Aug 29 row

Aug 20 bud

Aug 20 bloom

 

Among Rishi Valley children

Quoting words from the opening stanza of a poem,  the title of which I have shamelessly borrowed and mutated to my purposes here:

The children learn to cipher and to sing,

To study reading-books and history,

To cut and sew, be neat in everything

In the best modern way—the children’s eyes

In momentary wonder stare upon

A sixty-year-old smiling public man.

Replace  the “sixty year old smiling public man” that Yeats presumably was when he wrote those lines, with a fifty-something “big akka” as a spunky and very young and small school boy described me, and the “cut and sew” with paint or dance, and the lines are a rather apt description of my two weeks among the school children in Rishi Valley.

It has been an illuminating and refreshing time, with the largest chunk of time spent in grade 11 history and biology classes. And in those classes and in virtually every extended interaction I had with the students–during a Sunday morning bird-watching walk, in the nursery (prep as they call it here) classroom, folk dancing, a painting class, drama practice and a visit to a teacher’s home–I had the opportunity to experience first-hand the importance of really connecting, of what Krishnamurti called forming a “relationship” with an individual. And each one of them has been precious in the best sense of the word, a relationship to cherish.

Eleventh-grade history was certainly the anchor, the class I most regularly attended. It was a world history class, early twentieth century USA being the focus in my weeks here. In tandem with the regular sessions,  the first several of which involved presentations by students on topics of relevance in that period–American Presidents, the “Red scare,” immigration, women’s rights and racism to name just a few–the students watched the film Lincoln. It is a great film with stellar actors of course, but watching the film in the context of this class, with the teacher punctuating scenes with relevant background and explanations of various events every so often made the experience that much more interesting. With just a couple of sessions left to spare in my time here, the unit ended and the teacher began the unit with the Russian revolution speaking first not about the revolution itself but about Marx and his influence.

The history teacher had also invited me to give a lecture to the class toward the end of my time here, to tie in my own background in the history of science with this class if possible. In yet another curious instance of life imitating art (explanation to follow), the title of my lecture was “American History XI,” after another movie. Subtitled, “from nineteenth century science to twentieth century legislation,” it was about the early history of eugenics in the U.S. I’ll cut and paste the way I introduced the lecture to the class since I think it both answers one of the students’ questions to me before I began the lecture, “What do you do?” and demonstrates the unforeseen way in which one can bring experience such as mine (hitherto confined to college classrooms) to bear in a high school setting:

When introduced to the class KM sir told me that unit being covered was early 20th century American history, through WWI and into the interwar period. And yet most of the figures we’ve talked about/are talking about have been from the nineteenth century: Lincoln most notably  Karl Marx. because their impact on the 20th century, has been immense.

Today I’m going to begin this talk with some more 19th century figures–from my field, which is the history of biology–and consider the very concrete ways in which their ideas had an impact on history and society in early 20th century America.

Darwin, who shared a birthday, Feb 12, 1809, with Lincoln was the first figure, and the next was Mendel, whom some in the class were able to identify (Kudos you all, should any of you ever read this). I went on to Francis Galton who invented the term “eugenics” and gave the practice a start and following, before moving across the pond so to speak, to offer glimpses into Roosevelt (Theodore, not FDR, naturally) and his warnings against “race suicide” and ended in 1924 with the passage of several acts of legislation that were the direct result of eugenic principles: the Reed-Johnson Immigration Act, the Racial Integrity Act, & the Eugenical Sterilization Act, the latter two passed  in the state of Virginia. The infamous episode of Buck vs. Bell was the end point.

Very quickly, why the title was so appropriate is that the film American History X is about racism (Nazis now) and precisely the sort of judicial miscarriage that I spoke about in American History XI, where as renowned a personage as the jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes handed down his disgraceful verdict approving the forced sterilization of a 17-year old girl on the grounds of feeble-mindedness and promiscuity. I’ll paste the slide for impact:

So much for American History XI, which my friend and colleague Bhaveen who attended the lecture pointed out and has seen the movie whose title the lecture riffed on, was even more apt than I had imagined. For the movie is precisely about the type of prejudice that believes that more minorities are in jail because they commit more crimes (WRONG!) rather than the falsely skewed system that puts a disproportionately larger number of them in there in the first place. The story seems all the bleaker because nothing seems to have changed 100 years later; witness Trump telling minority Congresswomen to “go back where they came from.” Of course similar arguments have been, are being, leveled against minorities in India, a point I brought in my lecture, albeit very briefly.

On to happier subjects now, because my time among the school children and teachers of Rishi Valley has been remarkably happy.. the happiest I can recall being in a long long time, living in the present without thinking about it, and not worrying about what tomorrow may bring.

My second anchor to the classes was biology (also grade 11), a subject that has been my home base now for more than 30 years. It was here I got to see a teaching technique called the “marketplace” in action. Am I convinced it works? I am not entirely sure… I think I need more time to deliver a personal verdict. Certainly it fosters peer learning which is in and of itself a great thing. But the peers are using exactly the same material as everyone else, and not going beyond to think about metaphors, analogies, other explanatory devices etc. So I am not entire sure how innovative the marketplace really is. The subject matter was the cell. Apparently they had talked about the nature of life the previous weeks… I would have liked to be privy to conversations on that topic. A second unit (once a week only) on human biology was taught by a medical doctor. I enjoyed these sessions, especially the relationship between the students and the teacher, , who also runs a rural health center managed by the KFI. We got a chance to visit that as well… and very interesting it was too (sorry for repeating that word overmuch but really, that is the most apt).

A session with the “prep” class–that is to say, staff/faculty children up to grade 3, after which they join the regular school–was where I acquired the title of the “Big Akka,” and had fun imagining a scene with flying cheese dosas that went “splat” and bouncing imaginary grapes that went squish. Too bad I couldn’t revisit but I did meet the kiddos later the next evening. The type of unconditional love and liking one gets from children is just so priceless.

A visit to one of the KFI-run village schools–mostly Telugu medium but with an English class for grades 1-6, using the multi-grade, multi-level approach was illuminating. One of the take-homes (unintended perhaps) was the disparity between the main school (for much more affluent folk) and the local schools. At our final round-up the teachers did raise the point that one had to strive to not make going to these schools akin to visiting a zoo or museum for the English medium kids.  I am glad that the issue was spelt out because there is no doubt that a boarding school is a bubble. In which case its up to the teachers and other organizers to make sure that the bubble is not too insular. One problem is the language barrier and that is one barrier that is not being worked on enough. It behooves us as educators, I think, to be respectful of the local environment where we choose to build a school. Really I think multi-lingual education–teaching children to appreciate and use languages more organically (teaching in a language rather than just allocating classes to teaching those languages)–is an imperative in our multi-lingual country. Else we are building reinforcing various class barriers that are already in place. It won’t be easy, I know, but I do think that the matter must be treated with some urgency.

Perhaps the sessions that I was most underwhelmed by were the culture/general studies classes, because of the specifics of the most of the sessions that I attended. They were conducted by a couple from the IAS who were rather too gung-ho about their respective topics–mining and urbanization–and relied too much on text heavy power point slides. I will say though that the students themselves conducted themselves well and asked sharp questions.

The senior school library, is a wondrous bubble within the bubble, one that I think I could have happily gotten lost in as a student and one in which I spent many a happy in-between hour (or even, dare I confess, bunked hours). The dining hall produced very nice home-away-from-home meals and there was the fabulous muruku hut for those in-between pecking moments.

The stalwart Shankar for whom the old guesthouse where I roomed is informally named, must be thanked. Just for delivering hot tea to my door every morning reason enough to sing his praises, but he did so much more to ensure we had a great stay.

Rishi Valley translates roughly as the valley of the saints. I don’t think there are too many (if any) saints there necessarily, but my two weeks there were heavenly. I hope I get a chance to go back.

 

From Rishi Valley

Believe it or not that is a picture of a cockroach and not a beetle! A very different and rather pretty (an adjective I NEVER thought I’d use in connection with roaches) specimen of cockroach that we spotted while on our bird-watching walk early Sunday morning in Rishi Valley.

And just like that.. I am now in week 8 of the Teacher Ed program. I am still in a valley, but it’s not the Valley School–6 (well 7) of us from the program are in Rishi Valley, the first and arguably, most famous, of the KFI schools first established in the 1930s in rural Andhra Pradesh near the AP-Karnataka border. It’s beautiful here, and the people here have been most welcoming and though it’s supposed to be in a hot and dry part of the Deccan, the weather for most part has cooperated and so the whole experience here thus far has been lovely (even though I was laid up the first two days with some sort of stomach bug but no more on that).

Backing up, I was going to try and reflect on the lessons learned in week 6 of the program while we were still at the Valley School. That module, on comparison and competition was an interesting topic which took me back to the whole notion of needing to “unlearn” some stuff and get back to my earlier living attitude of not comparing myself to others. It was led by Tanuj Shah, a teacher at Rishi Valley and a great week it was. But somehow I never did get around to writing that week, at least nothing reflective.. I think I probably overdid it the week previous. Well, I did complete the parrot poem (July 28) and also post my weekly landcare photo diary on July 26 but being out of town, will miss several weeks of growth, and possibly even return to harvested plots? I’ll just have to wait and see. Meanwhile though, one of the great things about Tanuj’s module was his attempt to connect various things we were talking about with actual practices in Rishi Valley, and this week in our internship I’ve gotten to see some of those methods and approaches first hand.

Mostly, I’m shadowing biology and history classes for grade 11 here in Rishi Valley. In the general biology class last Friday, I had the chance to see a group cooperation exercise known simply as “the marketplace” in action, played out in the domain of the cell. Students were divided into groups of 3 and each (there were five) was given a particular topic that they had to discuss and come up with a poster for. The next stage is the market–2 students from each group go information shopping to the other groups while one stays one behind to explain their topic to shoppers from other groups. Following this shopping period there is a regrouping session where the shoppers pool their knowledge back home and each group attempts to put all the information together and synthesize it to form a bigger but not quite whole picture of the cell. Come the next class, they will be quizzed on how the whole thing hangs together–not for a grade but to see what holes still remain their understanding.

The history class has me revisiting American History, a subject that I haven’t studied in a cohesive fashion since I was in grade 9 in an American School. The focus is on the late-nineteenth early twentieth century and the teacher has them learning from one another bu assigning each student a topic to present, while he fills in various blanks. Am loving those sessions too.. and I will be giving a lecture myself to these students, talking about some of the ramifications of Darwin’s ideas twisted rather unscientifically (IMO). THey’ve already covered the Scopes trial and so I thought I’d talk about eugenics.

A human biology class on the eye and vision, run by a doctor was good fun and also gave me added fuel for my favorite peeve about the dangers of dropping a subject too soon, because really how any of what was being taught about image formation could be understood without physics (a subject most had dropped) wais beyond me.

Today I also got to observe a 5th grade math class, where the kids teach themselves almost completely. Cool approach, though I think it assumes a certain level of English comprehension that would not work in other local government schools.

So much for the academic stuff.. on the social side there’s been karaoke with the teachers here, the afore-mentioned bird watching morning walk on Sunday morning, a rousing round of folk dancing (I was a spectator) among other things.

Oh and the library. Did I mention the senior school library? What a marvelous place it is with seats to sink into and a treasury of fiction that I would have been hard to pry away from as a school girl. All the Agatha Christies and many P.G. Wodehouse books are there. Indians will remain Anglophiles in their reading habits for years to come I think.. not really a bad thing. But meanwhile I found a new fantasy that I think I may need to purchase on my Kindle because I don’t think my limited time in the library will allow me to finish–the intersect between my free time between classes and the hours it remains open is too narrow a strait.

Bye for now…

 

Squawk of the Ghost Parrot

Explanatory note:  This poem is my response to Rabindranath Tagore’s The Parrot’s Training. As is evident from my earlier response, I was quite affected by Manish Jain’s re-telling but also thought that it would be fun to try and tell the story from the parrot’s perspective. I am by no means the only person to have this idea, in fact, my classmate, Suman, presented her own version of the parrot’s take in class that very week. But meanwhile, I remembered of my long ago (fifth-grade) efforts at rendering a story in rhyme (then it was a class trip to Manimajra) and came up with the first stanza quite in jest. But once begun, the idea wouldn’t shake itself out of my brain–after all, not for nothing is Tagore called the Kobi-guru or poet-teacher in Bengali/Bangla; he is truly inspirational. Over the past two weeks I came up with the following, adding images from the web to the verses. I must also pay homage to another source of inspiration, Vikram Seth, whose books Golden Gate and Beastly Tales taught me that it is not only possible but possible very wonderfully, to render stories in verse.  Here it is then, the parrot’s training, resquawked:

Squawk squawk squawk squawk,

That’s the way I used to talk

Red of beak and feathered green

When I had a parrot been.

One day in the royal gardens

when I was perched upon a tree

squawking in my usual fashion

the rajah strolling by, saw me.

Admiring of my bright green feathers

the rajah clapped hands merrily

“Welcome welcome Thotha Beti

Won’t you sing a song for me?”

Given that he’d asked so kindly

What else was I supposed to do?

I wiped my beak upon my feathers,

and sang the only song I knew.

“Squawk” I sang and squawked again,

Singing for him my merry tune

Hopping up and down, excited

I sang and squawked for him till noon

But alas! my gay abandon

did not the mighty king impress,

What to me was free and joyful

he considered backwardness.

“This raucous squawkous so-called singing

is really painful to mine ear,

What this parrot needs is training

To chant scriptures and Shakespeare.”

So the Raja called his mantris

and a Sabha did convene,

to discuss the weighty matter

of how to plan and intervene,

in what they called my education,

ridding me of ignorance

training me to a vocation,

To them all this made perfect sense.

First the mantris called some pundits

& consultants from round the world

They all sat and pondered deeply

“how to train this stupid bird.”

“First things first,” said one man sagely

“We must all our knowledge pool,

and build a proper place for teaching

this squawking hopping poor fool.”

So they called the royal goldsmith

Who built a wondrous cage of gold

Sumptuously decorated

’twas a wonder to behold.

Flying by the cage so shiny

I too stopped to check it out

“Come on thotha hop on in there

And you’ll see what school’s about.”

Foolishly the cage I entered

With nary e’en a single squawk

And no sooner did I enter

Came the folks for me to gawk

“Culture, captured and encaged!”

Did one enraptured man exclaim,

and the mantris and the pundits

were complacent they’d reached their aim.

Then came scholars, men of learning

Bringing with them books galore

Reading, (w)riting, A-rithmetic,

 from the ceiling to the floor

“Come on Popat* we will teach you

we are here to educate,

Reading (w)riting, both are better

when  you learn to conjugate.

*[Swift aside, a translation,

just in case you didn’t know

that popat is the word for parrot

in Marathi, there you go].

Starting with some basic grammar,

in Sanskrit, they bade me recite

“Gachcham, Gachchhe, Gachchaami,”

till words and cadence I got right.

Now dear readers, you may have heard

That parrots can like humans talk,

Well, ’tis true for few words maybe

Beyond that though, we just squawk.

So while I can say one two three…

and if prodded, a b c,

When it came to speaking verse

my squawking diction just got worse.

Meanwhile others: teachers, scholars,

of math and economics came,

and for their role in my schooling

they too claimed a share of fame

When from the stress of all my lessons

I hopped up and down inside my cage 

and begged to fly out in the garden

my teachers turned on me in rage

“Lazy thotha, Ingrate Popat,

think you this is fun for us?

If you’re really all that depressed

take your meds and stop that fuss!”

Oh! my spirit slowly dwindled

I grew silent and morose

This they took as signs of progress

and stuffed me up with still more prose

All their lessons and their scoldings

My confidence did so decay

That even with the cage door open

I did not, could not, fly away

By and by the rajah wondered

whatever had become of my

education that he’d ordered

so one day he stopped on by

As soon as the rajah entered

the teachers clamored ’round in joy

showing reports of their success

in executing his noble ploy.

Some gave lectures, others keynotes

there were power points galore

of pedagogy, teaching methods,

not used nor heard of ‘ere before

Amid all the pomp and splendor

of  the Curriculum complete

I the so-called object of these

efforts was made obsolete

It took a skeptical fault-finder

who found the whole thing quite absurd,

to ask in tones of polite mocking,

“Whatever became of the bird?”

“Oops,” said raja quite embarrassed,

for he too had forgotten me, 

“Pundits, mantris, bring the thotha

Display her for all to see.”

As I told you dear readers

I was by then in deep depression

but to the raja and his chelas,

I really made a good impression.

Said they, “The parrot squawks no more

her silence like her cage is golden,

She has clearly learned her lesson

she knows to whom she is beholden.”

Naturally the rajah was

extremely pleased with such a verdict

and to continue their good work

in my training was his edict.

But the fault-finder was punished

for daring to speak his mind, 

’bout my training programme with which

he had had many faults to find.

Dear readers I grow weary

in the telling of my tale

as you must too, let’s be honest

these verses must be growing stale.

Lets fast forward to the ending

of my story, of my plight,

… One day, just like that I gave up,

from my body, life took flight

So intent were all my teachers

in cramming knowledge into me

that they did not even notice

that I’d simply ceased to be.

Now for the very final stanzas,

to Kobi-guru I will turn,

He who first wrote down my story,

so that everyone could learn.

“When the raja with his finger

the parrot’s inert body poked,

all he heard were sounds of rustling

pages on which it had choked.

Meanwhile outside, it was springtime

and the April morning breeze

murmured wistfully as it blew

through budding asoka leaves.”

 

Why peregrine? (March 11, 2008)

Once upon a time (a highly unoriginal beginning I know, but hey, one has to start somewhere and all said and done one can’t go wrong calling on the classics) – a long time ago (1993), though it was not “a dark and stormy night” (and there’s two instances of plagiarism in my very first sentence! I can imagine what a field day my students would have a if they saw this) – a very dear classmate characterized me as peregrine. Now a peregrine is a falcon, but Rusten had used the word as an adjective, in keeping with our programme director’s edict to choose single adjectives to describe our classmates. A peregrine Neeraja then, simply meant a Neeraja who moved around. Ever the kindred spirit, Rusten had already recognized this propensity of mine and chose to celebrate it. I was so flattered and charmed by the description that I was determined to make it as part of my identity whenever the right opportunity arose. And now’s my chance. As a tribute to the prophetic Rusten – Eric Rusten Hogness to give him his full name (funny expression that, now that I think of it… as if his name were mine to give) – my blog bears his adjective in its title. Stories about Rusten, the program we graduated from and my peregrine tendencies will appear in other pages of this blog as and when I have the time and inclination but I just thought I’d explain my title. Anyway — this is my blog – the “peregrine chronicles.” Join me for whichever parts of the hell of a ride my life’s been (mostly in any case) thus far. Be warned, the chronicles may be prosy and overlong, but I do hope that those of you who do visit enjoy yourselves.

Neeraja

 

Landcare diary, July 26

A few weeks ago we built a wall; today we built a fence. Actually I should say we “planted” a fence, because the posts we used were stripped branches of a tree locally known as “seema konai” which literally translated means “border blossoms.” The botanical name, according to Wikipedia is Gliricidia sepium. The posts will take root and over the next months grow into trees, thus forming a living fence, with beautiful pink blossoms. Moreover the leaves are a great source of natural fertilizer. Probably not with the same frequency, but every few weeks at least, I think I’ll post the progress of this growth as well. The site is just beyond the paddy fields leaf-patches from the first week’s activity after all. (Photo credits for these first photos of the fence go to Jenner Prince, fellow TEP participant).

Speaking of which, here are the pics from the June 21 planting.

Panoramic view of the plot, June 24, July 3, 15, 23 & 25:

June 24

 

Spinach. I think something is coming by and eating the spinach leaves, because having been planted a week earlier and showing promise in the early weeks, the crop seems much less lush than the others. Jayaram mentioned the fact that certain animals (wild boar, maybe) do like to much on these leaves. I’ll have to ask him. But meanwhile here’s the progress: June 22, July 3, 10, 17, 23 & 25:

June 22

Jul 3

Jul 10

Jul 17

 

Sesame, June 24, July 3, 12, 19, 23 & 25:

June 24

Jul 3

Jul 12

Jul 19

Jul 23

Jul 25

 

Green amaranth, June 27, July 8, 19, 23 & 25:

June 27 (1)

Jul 8 a1

Jul 19

Jul 23

Jul 25

Purple Amaranths, June 22, July 2, 12, 19, 23 & 25

June 22

July 5-a2

Jul 12 a2

Jul 19

Jul 23

Jul 25

 

Sunflowers: June 27, July 12, 15, 19, 23 & 25

June 27

July 12

Jul 15

July 19

Jul 23

Jul 25

 

Landcare diary, July 19

For the first time since arriving in the Valley, I missed the Friday morning landcare activity, which involved the entire lot of workers transplanting paddy onto the fields so lovingly prepared in the weeks prior (the July 5th transportation of leaf manure and the field preparation last week). But I did go around later this eve and get some pictures of both the paddy (above) and the plots. Here are the pics chosen randomly for each

Plot: June 22, July 4, 12, 15, 17 & 19

June 22

July 4

Jul 15

Jul 17

Sesame (June 24, July 4, 12, 15, 17 &19)

June 24

Jul 4

Jul 12

Jul 19

Spinach, June 22, July 15, 17 & 19:

June 22

Jul 15

Jul 17

Amaranths (both green & purple), June 22, July 3, 15, 17 & 19

June 22

July 3

Jul 19

Jul 19

Last but most… the sunflowers: July 2, 10, 15, 17 & 19

Jul 2

Jul 15

July 19

 

Two new articles

Since I occasionally announce my academic accomplishments here, here’s news of the latest:

1. First a chapter written with Warwick Anderson (rightfully the first author) on the historiography of immunology for a volume titled, Handbook of the Historiography of Biology (Springer, 2019). Quite technical and frankly only for those looking for a thesis topic in the history of immunology or something along those lines. Here’s a  link to the webpage where a PDF might be available.
2. A far more general interest sole-authored biographical piece on the protagonist of my dissertation in an online magazine called Inference: The International Review of Science. As a friend, Scott said upon seeing the article “You know you’ve definitely arrived when they’re doing the caricature!”

 

To avoid prejudice

Shailesh has posed this question three days in a row now (including today), and he is right to do so, for I think that it is the most profoundly important one we’ll be faced with in our path to becoming good or better educators: How can a teacher avoid contaminating children with his or her prejudices? Or less harshly worded, what can we do to avoid passing on our own conditioning, biases, & prejudices to the children whose education has been entrusted to us? The latest version used the word image-imprint,  which is an interesting way to think about conditioning or preconceptions

I think the first thing one would need to do is to look inward and examine oneself very honestly–without judgement or expectation as has been reiterated to us in the weeks that we’ve been here in the valley–to learn about what mental baggage of this sort we carry. It is not an easy task and what we learn may shock us, but unless we bring this sort of self awareness into the classroom, I think that the prejudices, biases or whatever else we wish to call it, will be transmitted to the children in subtle, non-verbal ways, much like the electrical transformer we learned about in week 3 transmits its amplified or reduced electricity through induction.

Facing up to one’s own prejudices is acutely uncomfortable; in fact I’m quite sure the first instinctual reaction when coming face to face with one is that of denial. And yet, I think prejudices are deeply ingrained into each and every one of us. There are the obvious ones–against race, region, religion (faith), caste–oopen and egregious examples of of which were displayed in the film India Untouched. But there are instances of  equally blatant displays couched in politically correct terms or expressions of preferences. Some of course are outright contradictory; I remember many years ago now, a very well-spoken Indian woman who had moved to the US for higher studies in medicine insisted that she was not racist (her word not mine) and believed that black people deserved the same opportunities and that she was  willing to treat them, but that they should live “somewhere else” as in not in the same apartment complex as her. Meanwhile she was quite happy to talk about a white doctor as charming, because he flirted with her. They are just “different” and expect too many concessions and quotas, said another Indian, of both blacks and Hispanics, unconsciously or deliberately echoing the same sentiments as would have been expressed in India against the quota systems in colleges. Color consciousness is a form of prejudice I have encountered in an ironic way. As a South Indian growing up in Panjab, I can’t count the number of times I was told that “you can’t be madrasi because you’re not dark” like them, with the assumption that this–the color of my skin over which I had no role–was a compliment. Upper-caste, upper middle class South Indian have expressed their prejudice against a lower caste or a non-Hindu in terms of food preferences. “I don’t want them cooking in my kitchen because they stink of garlic” might sound innocuous, but such a statement has very damaging repercussions–the difficulty for many Muslim students to find housing, for instance–which ironically are also decried.

I could go on, but I suspect this litany is an avoidance mechanism, a reluctance to face my own demons. For prejudices do not have to be about such stark matters. In class today, Shailesh offered the viewpoint that the world-over the concept of “religion” has been conflated with “faith.” Not only did that open my eyes to the deeper original meaning of the word, which has nothing to do with faith or a deity of any sort really, but also to the fact that I’ve harbored a prejudice–couched in terms of “mistrust”–of overtly  pious people. Or a prejudice toward (as in having a tendency to like) a well-spoken articulate person or someone with a nice aesthetic sense, even though neither makes them any nicer or better or more trustworthy a person. My prejudice to root for an underdog might seem harmless enough at first glance, but without facts at hand it could have very damaging, even tragic consequences as for instance a tendency–if not to believe than at least, to suspect–without even a modicum evidence, any charge made by a female of domestic abuse.

So I have made a first inroad toward owning up to some of my own prejudices, but then what? How can I make sure that they are not transmitted to a child? Here’s a scenario that strikes me of how one of my prejudices might translate into actions with potentially damaging spin-offs. The constant correction of a child’s pronunciation in English (based on my prejudice for good language) for example, might have two unintended consequences. First, it displays my greater to attention to language than what is being said. I am not listening to or understanding the child am I? (This consequence, now the first thing that occurs, is by the way something that I would not have realized without my weeks here at the TEP in the Valley–I just felt that had to be acknowledged). It also transmits the tacit message that somehow how something is being said is more important that what. And can breed a totally unnecessary snobbery in the child. The only situation I can see this sort of correction useful is if the child were to be prepared for a trip to a foreign land and one needed to train him or her to speak in a way that the majority would understand. In that case however, we’d both be aware of that need and well, then there is a change in parameters.

The scenario is a simplistic one but instructive to consider also because it brought up another issue, which is that it is not only important to become aware of one’s own prejudices but also then to think about the many different cues though which it is transmitted. An eye-roll or a shoulder shrug may seem like small things but can convey mountains worth of messages, more so to young and impressionable children than to peers.

I think there’s probably a lot more to say on the topic.. but the ball has been set a-rolling. And I hope if nothing else this exercise helps me be more mindful of my own conditioning in the future.