Column

Sitting here in the foothills of the Himalayas, the mind does tend to get full of clichés about man, nature, beauty and so on. As always, reality checks are never far away. So my mother, a retired teacher, asks me to help paraphrase a poem to help a 12-year-old boy she’s helping with his school work.

The “poem”, grandly taught under ‘literature’ is not a poem at all, as it turns out. It is a song from the Hollywood musical, The Sound of Music. As a student of Eng Lit., I am at first appalled, then amused. One look at the song, ‘The hills are alive’, and I’m back to being appalled. This ‘poem’ has been presumably been carefully selected for students across India by some well-meaning educationists. Since the chapters in this ‘literature’ text include excerpts from Isaac Asimov and Arthur Conan Doyle, the lives of APJ Abdul Kalam and Subrahmanyan Chandrashekhar it might also be assumed that the thinkers involved felt that ‘traditional literature’ that is, stories, were too obscure or difficult or culturally removed from the children of India, whereas all this stuff was mind-expanding and knowledge-creating.

I would argue that story-telling and therefore listening is one of the oldest human arts and plays a vital role in our lives — it fires our imagination, it gives us ideas on how to live through the practicalities of our lives, it stirs and thrills us and also provides entertainment. Literature is not an obstacle to be overcome, but a wonderful journey to be cherished.

But then I go back to the hills are alive. I am in Uttarakhand, and undoubtedly, the hills are alive. But in this small mountainous state, English is not yet a major language spoken and understood widely outside a small elite group. Cultural contexts are important here and the village children, even if they study in English medium CBSE schools, need help when it comes to the intricacies of language.

Does the dumbing down in choosing ‘The hills are alive’ over, say, William Wordsworth’s ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud’ make life easier, in terms of literary content, use of language, thought distillation and cultural context? Wordsworth’s poem is about, as he says, “emotions recollected in tranquillity”. The song from sound of music uses phrases about larks singing and brooks tripping, but is about a novice nun trying to cope with living in a nunnery. If you know that she leaves it, becomes governess to the Von Trapp family, falls in love with the father and then escapes the Nazis, then you might — arguably — enjoy the song.

Without all that, it is gobbledygook and lazy writing. It’s not a classic by any stretch of the imagination. And even for children who live in the hills, larks, brooks and church chimes make little sense.

Our HRD minister, Kapil Sibal, seems on a welcome mission to reform our education system. He has talked of common boards, common syllabi and now wants to take on rural education. Distance education through the internet is one way, he seems to feel. But taking a cursory look at our textbooks and the response from students, one cannot help feeling that the malaise runs deeper.

To use this literature text as an example — why not look for good translations of Indian stories if you think that English texts are too obscure? By what argument do the lives of Kalam and Chandrashekhar count as literature. Or for that matter, the works of Conan Doyle and Asimov, great admirers of them as one must be? If you do not introduce children to great writing, how will they gain an appreciation for the arts? One understands that it’s a tough call but it seems that in an attempt to make life easier, we have taken the easy way out.

This is only an example. But hopefully it illustrates that if Sibal wants to improve education in rural India, he needs to work at it with teachers and with schools, rather than just with politicians and PhDs who live in cities. The hills, as far as I can tell, are alive with the sound of confusion.