Today, I visited a government school to see what the story was.

Absolute chaos.

There were 800 students and five teachers. The teachers were very smart and nice. The school claimed to teach English, but the teachers themselves barely spoke English. I luckily visited with a wonderful man named Raj Allipuram, a former CapGemini consultant in the US who grew up in a poor government school, made it big in the States, and is now back in Hyderabad working for CapGemini. On the weekends, though, he works with schools. There are millions of dollars in charity aid going to “schools in India,” Raj says. But no one knows where/how to funnel the money. So Raj’s foundation works with schools to see their needs and then tells well-intentioned donors where to direct their resources. Schools’ number one request, says Raj: Chalk. Most classrooms have chalkboards, but chalk is expensive, hard to find, and runs out quickly. Raj and I visited most of the classrooms, and he translated for me.

Government schools are notoriously bad. Many of the poorest families in India send their kids, as we’ve discussed, to private schools. All middle-class families and upper-class families send their kids to private schools. All of the kids at government schools have parents who are rickshaw drivers, day laborers, and more. Many of them are orphans. So at this school, the classrooms were packed with 50 kids in a room the size of two Suburbans.
One teacher stands at the front, with a chalkboard if he is lucky. A few observations:

1. (Consider this a Tom Friedman moment: I am trying to restrain myself)
Even in this school, which has some of the poorest young Indians, 80% of students wanted to be software engineers. A few of them asked me what software was/what it did–the students had never been on the internet. (The school had a Computer Lab, with two shiny HP computers donated by the government; students occasionally used it, but it was not connected to the internet.) Even so, all of their favorite subjects were “Maths.”

2. India is a heavily federal state. Local government really matters. About 85% of the kids knew the name of the Chief Minister (governor) of Andhara Pradesh (the state we are in). 70% of them could name the President of the US (but were otherwise indifferent regarding their opinion of him). Only about 20% could name Manmohan Singh, India’s PM.

3. The kids were great. So talkative, inquisitive, and bold. Didn’t hold back with their questions. (Big change from the private school kids, who have been more quiet.)

4. One of the kids sang for me a “regional song”, involving clapping and chanting. Then they asked me to sing them a regional song. I froze, so I sang “Rocky Top” with them, saying it was a regional song from the American South. I taught them the “yee-has” and whoops and everything.

5. The teachers are not paid well–but teaching in a government school is a highly desired job, more for security than vocation. It’s a very secure job and a living that provides a nice retirement–more than most Indians can hope for otherwise. I met two teachers in training who cited their reason for going into the profession as just that.

More about affordable private school visits tomorrow!

Ross