The idea to practice mandala met with a hot debate. However we thought to go with the flow to see how they take to it. Our reservations were that kids will not be able to manage their high levels of energy, the instructions, they will not be able to focus for a long time. So we decided to gauge what the experience might we like.
We started the class differently, we asked all the kids to say gratitude followed by a short prayer which we sang as a group. This calmed them to some extent. We divided the class in three groups and gave each group individual instructions about the activity.
The group did talk amongst each other, they kept correcting one another, they tried to impose their idea, this needed a lot of correction and constant intervention which defeated the purpose of Mandala.
But we did scratch the surface and leave a thought.
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Doodling it, drawing it, googling at pictures manifest our thoughts. Most adults are intimidated to draw, but I am yet to meet a child whose eyes do not sparkle when shown colors and papers. I have tried visualization in two scenarios; one my Design thinking group and the other kids at Atisa. The results are not unexpected; children score higher on all parameters; enthusiasm, clarity, presenting their work, receiving and giving feedback, storytelling.
So knowing that the kids are enthusiastic about drawing sheets, I divided the class into dyads sitting opposite each other. The exercise for the day was to ask their partner three questions: Their dreams, what they like and what would they like to receive as a gift. Now, I asked them to draw it out.
The children I work with have restrictions when given control of their work.The start was languid but chaotic (children throw unexpected questions at you). After battling with questions, they settled down only to stare if their image was being presented in the best manner by their partner. After many timeline suggestions, they finally started to draw.
Once they finished, I asked them to come with their partner and present it to the class. They cheered, clapped, laughed while learning about each other. There were no inhibitions to share with the class. Moreover, of course, everyone wanted their drawings to be displayed.
When I did this exercise with adults, it was kept to a minimum of 5 mins. With kids, I spent about 45 minutes, and of course, all wanted to stand up and share their work.
Story telling doesn't need any introduction, it is a straightforward yet powerful tool to create an engaged learning environment. How one uses this tool has various outcomes. Most of the storytelling is about enacting the chapters from a book, the purpose could be to highlight important texts or memorising the essential facts.
Inspired from our session at Jumpstart- Drama in Education by Amrita Lalljee, at Atisa, we tried to adapt this tool into a thinking process. We enacted a different version of Goldilocks, an old fairy tale most children are familiar with. In this session we wanted the children to empathise with the parents of Goldilocks and how the parents feel when one of them gets into trouble, how they feel when they hear complaints about their own children.
Though a little intense the children were quick to respond to the behavioural ramifications. Most felt severe punishing was the solution while some defended her. However, the core idea here was to make them think and empathise as a different person. It could have been any character from the story but the core idea is to allow the child to see a dimension of the story that is untold. In the process they make assumptions and build imagination of the environment Goldilocks must have been.
“No pedagogy which is truly liberating can remain distant from the oppressed by treating them as unfortunates and by presenting for their emulation models from among the oppressors. The oppressed must be their own example in the struggle for their redemption.” Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed
The village children speak colloquial Punjabi, a language I am not familiar with, but they have immense respect for teachers, they greet you with a smile, bow down to touch your feet because you have your time to offer them. I feel the barrier of language fading away in their love and humility.
They are a bunch of energetic, inquisitive, playful, technologically savvy children who detest authority. They are aspirational to learn foreign language and have dreams larger than the periphery of the village with limited resources at hand and no mentors/ guides. Caste system is ingrained in them since birth, gender discrimination is out in the open, personal hygiene takes a back seat, drugs is much easy to get hands on than clean drinking water or funds for the school. You walk out of their company feeling embarrassed of the entitled life you have back at the city.
In the picture above I have posted a glimpse of the village school which is the only affordable educational establishment for realising their dreams. We use their compound to meet with the kids in the evenings.
How did Piratenpartei Deutschland overtake Piratpartiet as the most successful Pirate Party?
Please note that this blogpost is written from a subjective point of view. I try to lay out my thoughts on the topics at hand, and do not claim to be objective, or even factually a 100% right. If you disagree, please let me know, as you can submit blogposts on your own in the menu to your right, or contact me via Twitter.
Back in 2009 it looked like Piratpartiet was the frontrunner of the international pirate movement. While Piratenpartei did have a good result in the European election, getting .9%, the Swedes gained a whooping 7.1%, and sent one MEP into the European Parliament (2 after the Lisbon treaty came into effect).
Fast forward 3 years, and the roles of the two biggest Pirate Parties are reserved. Ever since 2009, Piratpartiet did not get more than 1% in any election it took place, while Piratenpartei, gaining 2% of the votes for the Bundestag election, also in 2009, was usually in this range until the 2011 Berlin state parliament election, where they turned politic reality upside down in Germany, winning 8.9% of the vote.
Even though most of the media as well as most of the politicians from other parties claimed that this was most likely due to Berlin being a special case (Urban, lots of people who 'do stuff with media' for a living, lots of hipsters, the Greens having a particularly plain and boring election campaign) Piratenpartei was able to get 7.4% in the subsequent Saarland state parliament election, and is now poised to also make it into the North-Rhine-Westfalian and Schleswig-Holsteinian state parliaments, if poll numbers are to be believed. Saarland is a totally different place than Berlin, often seen as rural and boring (even though, as Berlin, it usually votes more for left-wing parties than the rest of the Western German states).
How come Piratenpartei is now in the limelight of political attention in Germany, while Piratpartier slipped back into invisibility (at least if you go by polls)? I think this is down to a discussion within Piratenpartei in 2010: Should the party stick with what they know well, concentrating on IT topics like privacy on the Internet or copyright reform? Or should it try to get a broader footing. Since there is a 5% threshold to enter parliaments in Germany on the state (Bundesland) and national (Bundestag) levels, it was decided that a political needed to try to find answers to other pressing topics if it was to scare the other parties into changing their political programme more to our liking.
I think that, for now, this is the most striking difference between PPSE and PPDE. The German pirates subsequently tried to develop a new approach to politics based on which positions to a much broader array of topics could be developed. This mainly started on the local levels, and in municipal elections between 2009 and 1011 PPDE did remarkably well in some urban places, which resulted in know-how in political campaigning as well as a bigger number of citizens becoming aware of the party, its aims, and, most importantly, the individuals that stand behind the party.
In contrast, the Swedes tried to focus on student towns and national elections, and chose not to engage citizens on every level of their live, be they connected to the Internet or not. In light of the German succes Piratpartiet now is in the process of slowly expanding their programme, the fact that PPSE president Anna Troberg does not have a technical background, but one rooted in humanities is telling, and one could argue that education will become more and more rooted in and engaged with technology, anyways so it is a natural fit for any Pirate Party programme. Whether this will result in PPSE expanding their programme as far as PPDE will have to be seen, but whether to expand the programme further than topics rooted in IT is a problem most Pirate Parties will have to face, especially if Piratenpartei continues to be so succesfull and the other Pirate Parties will be compared to PPDE. There certainly is the danger that people agree with most topics on such an extended programme but the one topics the movement was founded on, such as in this article.
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