by James Tooley
I climbed the narrow, dark staircase at the back of the building and met a watchman, who told me in broken English to come back tomorrow. As I exited, the young men at the bean-and-vegetable counter hailed me and said there was definitely someone at the Royal Grammar School just nearby, and that it was a very good private school and I should visit. They gave me directions, and I bade farewell. But I became muddled by the multiplicity of possible right turns down alleyways followed by sharp lefts, and so asked the way of a couple of fat old men sitting alongside a butcher shop.
Their shop was the dirtiest thing I had ever seen, with entrails and various bits and pieces of meat spread out on a mucky table over which literally thousands of flies swarmed. The stench was terrible. No one else seemed the least bit bothered by it. They immediately understood where I wanted to go and summoned a young boy who was headed in the opposite direction to take me there. He agreed without demur, and we walked quickly, not talking at all as he spoke no English. In the next street, young boys played cricket with stones as wickets and a plastic ball. One of them called me over, to shake my hand. Then we turned down another alleyway (with more boys playing cricket between makeshift houses outside of which men bathed and women did their laundry) and arrived at the Royal Grammar School, which proudly advertised, “English Medium, Recognised by the Gov’t of AP.” The owner, or “correspondent” as I soon came to realize he was called in Hyderabad, was in his tiny office. He enthusiastically welcomed me. Through that chance meeting, I was introduced to the warm, kind, and quietly charismatic Mr. Fazalur Rahman Khurrum and to a huge network of private schools in the slums and low-income areas of the Old City. The more time I spent with him, the more I realized that my expertise in private education might after all have something to say about my concern for the poor.
Khurrum was the president of an association specifically set up to cater to private schools serving the poor, the Federation of Private Schools’ Management, which boasted a membership of over 500 schools, all serving low-income families. Once word got around that a foreign visitor was interested in seeing private schools, Khurrum was inundated with requests for me to visit. I spent as much time as I could over the next 10 days or so with Khurrum traveling the length and breadth of the Old City, in between doing my work for the International Finance Corporation in the new city. We visited nearly 50 private schools in some of the poorest parts of town, driving endlessly down narrow streets to schools whose owners were apparently anxious to meet me. (Our rented car was a large white Ambassador—the Indian vehicle modeled on the old British Morris Minor, proudly used by government officials when an Indian flag on the hood signified the importance of its user—horn blaring constantly, as much to signify our own importance as to get children and animals out of the way.) There seemed to be a private school on almost every street corner, just as in the richer parts of the city. I visited so many, being greeted at narrow entrances by so many students, who marched me into tiny playgrounds, beating their drums, to a seat in front of the school, where I was welcomed in ceremonies officiated by senior students, while school managers garlanded me with flowers, heavy, prickly, and sticky around my neck in the hot sun, which I bore stoically as I did the rounds of the classrooms.
So many private schools, some had beautiful names, like Little Nightingale’s High School, named after Sarogini Naidu, a famous “freedom fighter” in the 1940s, known by Nehru as the “Little Nightingale” for her tender English songs. Or Firdaus Flowers Convent School, that is, “flowers of heaven.” The “convent” part of the name puzzled me at first, as did the many names such as St. Maria’s or St. John’s. It seemed odd, since these schools were clearly run by Muslims—indeed, for a while I fostered the illusion that these saints and nuns must be in the Islamic tradition too. But no, the names were chosen because of the connotations to parents—the old Catholic and Anglican schools were still viewed as great schools in the city, so their religious names were borrowed to signify quality to the parents. But did they really deliver a quality education? I needed to find out.
One of the first schools Khurrum took me to was Peace High School, run by 27-year-old Mohammed Wajid. Like many I was to visit, the school was in a converted family home, fronting on Edi Bazaar, the main but narrow, bustling thoroughfare that stretched out behind the Charminar. A bold sign proclaimed the school’s name. Through a narrow metal gate, I entered a small courtyard, where Wajid had provided some simple slides and swings for the children to play on. By the far wall were hutches of pet rabbits for the children to look after. Wajid’s office was to one side, the family’s rooms on the other. We climbed a narrow, dark, dirty staircase to enter the classrooms. They too were dark, with no doors, and noise from the streets easily penetrated the barred but unglazed windows. The children all seemed incredibly pleased to see their foreign visitor and stood to greet me warmly. The walls were painted white but were discolored by pollution, heat, and the general wear-and-tear of children. From the open top floor of his building, Wajid pointed out the locations of five other private schools, all anxious to serve the same students in his neighborhood.
Wajid was quietly unassuming, but clearly caring and devoted to his children. He told me that his mother founded Peace High School in 1973 to provide “a peaceful oasis in the slums” for the children. Wajid, her youngest son, began teaching in the school in 1988, when he was himself a 10th-grade student in another private school nearby. Having then received his bachelor’s in commerce at a local university college and begun training as an accountant, his mother asked him to take over the school in 1998, when she felt she must retire from active service. She asked him to consider the “less blessed” people in the slums, and that his highest ambition should be to help them, as befitting his Muslim faith. This seemed to have come as a blow to his ambitions: his elder brothers had all pursued careers, and several were now living overseas in Dubai, London, and Paris, working in the jewelry business. But Wajid felt obliged to follow his mother’s wishes and so began running the school. He was still a bachelor, he told me, because he wanted to build up his school. Only when his financial prospects were certain could he marry.
The school was called a high school, but like others bearing this name, it included kindergarten to 10th grade. Wajid had 285 children and 13 teachers when I first met him, and he also taught mathematics to the older children. His fees ranged from 60 rupees to 100 rupees per month ($1.33 to $2.22 at the exchange rates then), depending on the children’s grade, the lowest for kindergarten and rising as the children progressed through school. These fees were affordable to parents, he told me, who were largely day laborers and rickshaw pullers, market traders and mechanics—earning perhaps a dollar a day. Parents, I was told, valued education highly and would scrimp and save to ensure that their children got the best education they could afford.
On my second visit, I arrived at Wajid’s school in time for morning assembly at 8:50 a.m. The event was completely run by the children, especially the senior girls. Wajid told me that the experience was important to ensure that they learned responsibility, as well as organizational and communication skills, from a very early age. The assembly began with about 15 minutes of calisthenics to the rhythm of drums played by the senior boys. Then there were announcements and readings from newspapers—chosen by the senior students to reflect items of interest to their classmates. There were a prayer and some songs—some religious, some patriotic—sung by selected students or by the entire school. Then three children from each class were chosen at random to relate something they had learned during the week. They used the microphone up front to address the assembly. Most, however young, seemed accomplished at this form of public speaking. The assembly closed with a song and a prayer, then all the children filed out past selected senior boys and girls, who checked their uniform and appearance.
Wajid’s mother had apparently established the school to serve the community out of a devotion to the poor. And when I first started visiting the private schools, I assumed
that they all must be run on a charitable basis—for how else could schools that charged such low fees survive? This seemed fair enough and fit in well with my understanding then of how the poor could gain access to private education. But the reality turned out to be far more interesting. As I traveled from school to school, I jotted down details in my field notebook of the number of children, the fees charged, and the number of teachers and their salaries. Back in my hotel room, I did some quick calculations and it dawned on me that running these schools must actually be profitable—sometimes very profitable—whereas other times they just break even. I mentioned this to Khurrum. He said that profit wasn’t a great issue for them, but certainly they viewed themselves as businesspeople, as well as people who served the poor. This could of course explain why there were so many private schools—because it’s easier to attract business investment than philanthropy.
Typical of the schools that had clearly been started with a business motive in mind was St. Maaz High School, situated near the state prison. (As I passed the prison one day, the prison guard ushered me in and gave me a guided tour; I was accompanied by the large entourage of school owners who went with me everywhere during my visit. I’m sure the guards didn’t count us as we entered, so I don’t know how they were sure that we were the only ones to leave.) St. Maaz was run by Mr. Sajid, or “Sajid-Sir,” as everyone called him. Sajid-Sir was in his late 40s, and he clearly had a passion for teaching and for inspiring others. Teaching, he told me, kept him fresh, and it was his hobby as well as his livelihood; to him, he said, teaching was like acting. His aim was to instill a love for the subject he taught, mathematics. Mathematical allusions peppered many of his conversations. Interacting with his children and parents in Urdu, at a function organized for my visit, he had the assembly roaring with laughter, holding onto his every word. He told the gathered crowd: “There are three corners of the triangle, parents, teachers, and students, and this triangle must not be a scalene triangle; no, it must be an equilateral triangle. Am I right?” We all agreed. “Of course,” he said.
Sajid-Sir had begun teaching in his early 20s, inspired, he told me, by the way that he managed to teach his younger brother the basics of mechanics by demonstrating the principles on an old bicycle (his brother is now a mechanical engineer). At first, he began, in his own words, as a “door-to-door teacher-salesman,” traveling by bicycle to teach all six compulsory subjects to children in their homes, for a nominal sum. After three years at this enterprise, he founded a small school in 1982, with 15 students sitting on the floor of a tiny room in his rented house. From there he progressed over the next 19 years to an enrollment of nearly 1,000 students when I first met him, on three rented sites—one for the nursery and primary grades and one each for the boys’ and girls’ senior sections. The boys were housed in very cramped, dirty buildings on the periphery of a marriage function hall. (When it was not otherwise in use, the school could use the function hall for assemblies and other purposes.) The girls’ site was a more attractive, although still-cramped, three-story building, about half a mile away. But Sajid-Sir had just bought a new site nearby with his accumulated surpluses, he proudly told me, to develop into a unified school. And that is exactly what happened over the next few years; he upgraded his facilities.
Few of Sajid’s teachers had the state teacher-training certificate. The same was true of most private schools in the poor areas I visited. Indeed, it was a mystery at first why anyone would want to teach in the private schools, as their salaries were apparently lower than the public schools—perhaps only 20 or 25 percent of what the latter offered. So why would teachers choose to teach there when they could command much higher salaries elsewhere? The answer was simple: they couldn’t get jobs in the public schools. Sometimes, such jobs were meted out as a means of political patronage, I was told. Since ordinary people couldn’t get them, they taught in the private schools. But the lack of government teaching credentials was probably the chief reason. Many teachers in the private schools did have degrees; some even had higher qualifications, such as a master’s in mathematics or sciences. But these credentials would not make them eligible to teach in public schools. For that they would need a government teacher-training certificate. The private school owners were disparaging about this: “Government teacher training,” Khurrum told me, “is like learning to swim without ever going near a swimming pool; . . . our untrained teachers learn to teach in the well.”
Learning in the well for Sajid meant training his own teachers. He told me that he instructed his new teachers personally, in what, above the heavy noise of the traffic in his office, I thought he described as the “Beard” method. Later I realized it was the “BEd”—Bachelor of Education—method. A lesson must have five parts, he said: an introduction, where the topic to be explored is fit into the context of students’ existing knowledge; announcement of topic; presentation; recapitulation; and evaluation (usually through homework). Before he allowed a new teacher to teach in his school, he or she had to observe Sajid teaching. Then Sajid watched their first few lessons, made detailed notes, and challenged them on particular points.
I watched many lessons by teachers he had trained. One young woman with an MSc in inorganic chemistry, wearing a pale burka without a veil, taught about the derivation of salt and water from hydrochloric acid. I had never liked chemistry in school: if she had taught me, I think I would have loved the subject. She was very clear, lively, animated, and engaged her class throughout. There was nothing labored about her approach; the whole lesson moved forward smoothly. She taught without notes and seemed completely on top of her subject. At the end, she summarized the lesson, expertly managing the class so that all seemed to have understood, and set a three-part homework assignment. As she finished, Sajid stood and touched her bowed covered head. He had tears in his eyes as he said, “Thank you, wonderful.”
Not all the teachers were as young. The schools also had older, sometimes much older, teachers. One was Mr. George Anthony, who taught English at Khurrum’s Dawn High School. He was a marvelous, sprightly, civilized Indian gentleman of 91 years, with dyed jet-black hair and thinly dyed lines for eyebrows, moustache, and sideburns. He had retired from his government job years before, but was dedicated to learning, “to the passing on of the greatest that has been thought and said to young minds,” he told me, which is why he filled his retirement with teaching. He had this passion, and a passion for rationalism and improvement, along with a respect for tradition. (“Us old timers prefer the old names,” he said of the change of the city names from Bombay to Mumbai, and Madras to Chennai).
I first met George Anthony as I toured Dawn High School, where he was teaching the senior boys Bertrand Russell’s Knowledge and Wisdom. Then all the older children were called to a function to welcome me, and George gave a moving talk, which clearly inspired the children, about the value of discipline and self-improvement. He told them of the importance of punctuality, and of how, through pursuing their own self-fulfillment tempered with duty to others, they could make India great.
Back in Khurrum’s office, we sat down for tea just as the electricity in the Old City went off. In the dim light of evening, Khurrum showed George a Reader’s Digest manual, with a title something like Everything You Need to Know about Almost Everything. “They’ve brought this book out,” said Khurrum. “Oooh,” cooed George excitedly, flicking through the pages, “They bring out such excellent books.” My suspicions were raised by the condition of the cover; I looked inside and saw the 1986 publication date. It was a very sweet moment.
Another older teacher was Mr. Mushtaq, who ran Scholars Model School. Scholars was on a very narrow lane, right across from the Government Boys Primary and Boys High School. On the same lane, I could see three other private schools. So what’s the public school like? I asked innocently. Mr. Mushtaq laughed. “It’s a government school,” he said flatly, as if no other description or explanation was required. He was another refined, educated gentleman, of 66 years, who s
poke with a quiet passion about his love for English literature. He had taught in college for 36 years, he told me, and “to keep my mind active, and to continue giving back to my people, I teach in the upper classes now.” He told me of the authors he loves to teach, from Shakespeare and Milton to Charles Dickens, and his favorite poet Robert Frost. “Did you know that Robert Frost was poet laureate in the time of President J. F. Kennedy?” he asked me. I didn’t know that. He continued: “ ‘I am not a teacher, but an awakener,’ that’s how Robert Frost described himself. If I can awaken a love of literature in my children, then what more would I want to achieve?” Then he quoted his favorite poem in full, in hushed, reverent tones: “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”: Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.