Perspectives: Dan Blacketor - Twenty Bucks a Month?

This week we had the chance to visit both privately funded schools as well as those funded by the Indian government. The cost to send a child to a private school varies but ranges between $20 and $25 per month. When you are making less than $5 per day this becomes a huge sacrifice for many parents and for those families earning less than $2 per day completely out of the question. Even at this huge sacrifice over 30% of students attend a private school – and the educational metrics are overwhelming.

In the private schools the children were well mannered, attentive, wearing a school uniform and learning at levels that were at if not exceeding American schools (a young girl in the 4th standard [4 to 5th grade] was showing me her homework where they were studying geometry, algebra and beginning to learn about mathematical signs and co-signs. Every student had a seat and they shared a 6 foot long table with 4 to 5 other class mates. Now understand this is a village that is at least 8 hours by train, then an additional 90 minutes by bus up and around windy dirt roads just to get to the village. Each class we taught was attended by 30 to 35 students and even the youngest students (2nd and 3rd graders) were able to have conversations after 45 minutes of instruction. Conversational English was practiced among 2 or 3 students.

The government operated schools were a completely different story. First, we did not have the opportunity to meet with the teachers in a separate sessions because the Head Mistress (oversees the school) shared that “the kids would run wild” if we took teachers out of the classroom. Not exactly sure how bad that might have gotten (see Jack’s post) but we took her word for it. The children also received a free lunch each day where the two women cooks were responsible for serving and supervising nearly 600 children (the teachers completely disappeared for nearly 1 ½ hours for their lunch break leaving us and the two cooks to watch over the children – pity the cooks on the days we were not there!)

So, our teaching environment was this – 150 to 175 students squeezed into a room that was 20 feet wide by 50 feet deep. Everyone sat on the floor and they carried their book bag with them. At best the children wore tattered and dirty clothes that had the colors of the school uniform. Kids in the back could not see or hear and children in the front were being squeezed by more and more students wanting to get a closer look at these Americans. Practicing their newly learned English was moved to the school court yard where each of us would take 45 to 50 students and attempt to have quality instructional time. I witnessed very, very little classroom instruction or learning

What was extremely interesting to learn was that the teachers in the private school were most times earning much less than the teachers in the government school. Even though the children from the private schools went home to the same environment as the kids attending the government school I would match the competency and competitiveness of the privately funded students with any student (private or public) in the world.

The question that I keep rolling around in my head is “what would happen if the church –both India and GCC) could figure out how to help Christian Indian families send their children to these private schools?” What would the India church look like in 10 years? What would India look like? All for less than $20 per month!