Children need to know what the water birds say

Kutwadi lake near Gaddige

Last Sunday we decided to visit some lakes as a pre-survey of migratory water birds. We drove towards Gaddige, a village situated about 45 km to the west of Mysore city and had mixed experiences. A number of irrigation tanks were dysfunctional; some were encroached upon by humans for cultivation or for residential sites. Some had simply dried up as the inlet area for runoff water was blocked due to various reasons. Some water bodies were stripped off their soil in their shoreline for making bricks or for land filling else where! Water bodies once alive had died an unnatural death.

Daitana Katte

It was almost very near to Gaddige, when we found a water body alive with flora and fauna flourishing in it. It is a small sized perennial lake called “Daitana Katte” right on the main road. We had a nice bird watching session there. Except for the coots and cotton teals there were no major representation of the winter visitors. Median Egret, Cattle Egret, Coot, Cormorant, Dab Chick (Little Grebe) Swallow, Red Wattled Lapwing, Pond Heron, Pheasant tailed Jaccana,  and Sand pipers were a few that we saw.

 

Reeds in the lake

As we walked around, our attention was caught by the hydrophytes – the water plants. Many plants that I had seen as a discoloured specimen in the biology lab were very much alive, green and luxuriant here! Marsilea, a pteridophyte, commonly called fern was in abundance on the shore. My class room instincts made me to look for the fruiting bodies but could not find them as it was not the right season to expect for them. Nymphaea lotus has bloomed into beautiful flowers. Chara, a green alga, different species of Ipomoea, different types of reeds, Barlaria on fringes, Polygonum, a number of green algae were found on the edge of the pond. The kids felt honored to be asked to pull out a specimen for examination.

Ipomea

Hygrophylla auriculata

Nymphaea lotus

After a while, we drove past Gaddige and pulled to the right towards Gurupura and found another lake at Kutwadi.  It was a beautiful morning and there were a lot of water birds. White and black and purple Ibis and Gray Heron, Median Egret, Little Egret, pond Heron and Jaccanas were seen. The bright morning with a little over cast made revealed Purple Moorhen in its splendor. It was a feast to watch. But many people do not know what their abundance signify in a pond. They inhabit dying water bodies! They live in ponds rich in reeds and rooted water plants which are indication of settling of more silt in the lake.

 

Marsilea

It was hard to believe what these birds, as indicators of the quality of the water body were telling?  The lake may entirely dry up like most of them we passed through in the morning. All the beautiful water plants may vanish and replaced by terrestrial weeds. And then how can we find the winged visitors as we used to do, all these years?

What is the future of this lake?

Exposing children to the strengths of Solitude

Sitting all alone in the jungle

My mind roams in darkness,

Even an ant looks like a Tiger

Amidst the stalks of wild sunflower.

So writes a teenager of TVS school, Hosur who was put through an activity called Lone in the Jungle. With a general instruction to stay alone by themselves without any communication with anyone was the task. Every boy and girl was given a specific location in the forest; -a shade under a bush, a rocky ledge, a ravine or a stream bed.  Every one chose to be where they felt convenient. Most boys selected a rock ledge as they probably wanted to be at a good vantage point. Girls found it convenient to sit in the shade of a bush and very few of them went up a rock. Some wanted to be out in the sun, visible to others. There were 37 students and were kept on guard for safety by five teachers. The idea was that teachers kept an eye on them but never showed up or communicated with any.

Even for the teachers the hour was long and lasted-for-ever. They could observe several new behaviors in their students. Simply sitting through for an hour was the greatest challenge for most students. They pelted stones at bushes; some never even settled down at one place but kept walking around to see what the others were up to. A boy ran back to the dorm with an excuse to use the wash room. While a couple of them huddled under a bush and kept talking most of the time a very few of them did what was said to be done. One of them slept in a shade and dozed off.

School educator and curriculum advisor Diana Senechal of New York Public School observes the behavioral inconsistencies and inability to focus on a subject is a consequence of too many distractions at a given time in the environment we have made for them.   In her book, “The Republic of Noise,” she reasons for such problem is the students’ loss of solitude: the ability to think and reflect independently on a given topic. Schools have become more concerned with the business of keeping students busy in a flawed attempt to ensure engagement of the student. Compelling to memorize phrases and passages and repeatedly writing to learn are activities which do not enhance the spirit of learning in the child. In some schools children at a very young age are subjected to imposition writing in the name of punishing, learning spellings or improving handwriting. Such students at a later date will lack the ability to express independently and look for others standpoint, feeling that it would be more acceptable.

 At the end of the hour all the students were made to share their experience of being alone in an unknown environment. Most students explained why they chose that place and how bravely they had managed to be isolated from their friends. Of course every single one of them who had not accomplished the task blamed upon a growling leopard or a grunting wild boar which probably they imagined for not accomplishing their task. One girl had engaged herself in making a stone tool by chiseling and polishing a piece of rock to resemble a caveman’s axe.

Many students across different age groups who I have subjected to this activity have involuntarily shed tears. Not because of some kind of grief but with joy which they could not put in words! It must probably be the joy of being free for first the time or experiencing their strength and courage to take on for themselves.

In most schools, students are not given the time and space to devote for themselves or to completely study and understand of one specific thing. It’s a need Senechal finds reflected in our culture as a whole: We are a generation glued to smart phones and computer screens checking email and twitter in our need to stay in some loop by reading and responding to rolling updates.

 This observation is not advocating that we give up our iPhones or unplug from social media, but rather that we think more slowly, give ourselves time for reflection — as such practice would only serve to enhance the very conversations new media and technology is making possible.

History lessons are not just about buried bones and broken stones

Field visit to the ruins of Hampi

After a day’s dousing in Archeology, the children were taken to the ruins of Hampi and the folklore museum at the University of Hampi. We looked for someone to interpret local history based on facts and Mr. Ramachandra Shetty came on hand. While most people make it feel a jumbled time line of events, he made a nice narrative and yet he gave several versions of the events of the medieval times on either side of the Tungabhadra River.  After the down fall of the Hoysala rule and repeated invasion of the Delhi Sultans, the Hindu rule saw difficult times.  The resurrection and rise of Hindu rule was accomplished by the rulers of Sangama dynasty that was founded by Harihara Raya I also known as Hakka, and his brother Bukka Raya. Based in the Deccan, in peninsular India, from 1336 onwards Viyayanagara kingdom grew into an empire that in its peak reached out till the present Orissa in the north and Kerala in the south.

It lasted from about 1336 to perhaps about 1660, though throughout its last century it was in a slow decline since 1565 due to a massive and catastrophic defeat at the hands of an alliance of the Deccan sultanates. Once the capital Viyayanagara was taken, it was brutally razed and looted. People never returned to the capital city for a long time. Temples and other structures deteriorated due to vandalism beyond one’s imagination. Their impressive ruins surround Hampi in Hospet taluk of Bellary district. Today it is declared a World Heritage site and a large scale restoration is in progress.

Students admiring the ruins of Ugranarasimha

Though its foundation, and even a great part of its history, is obscure its power and wealth are attested by several travelers, such as Domingo Paes and Nuniz of the Portuguese, and the Venetian Niccolò Da Conti. Trade of spice, cotton, jewelry and ivory to countries as far as Venice and China thrived through the ports of Mangalore, Honavara, Batkala and Barkur. The main imports on the east coast were non-ferrous metals, camphor, porcelain, and silk.

Exposing students to History is important in a democratic society. Knowledge of history is the precondition of political awareness. Without history, a society can share no common memory of where it has been or what it has gone through. Its interpretation reveals what the societies’ core values were and what decisions or acts of the past account for present circumstances. Without history, we cannot undertake any sensible inquiry into the political, social, or moral issues in society. And without historical knowledge and inquiry, we cannot achieve the informed, discriminating citizenship essential to effective participation in the democratic processes of governance and the fulfillment for all our citizens of the nation’s democratic ideals. 

Students during the field visit

French philosopher, Etienne Gilson, mentions the special significance of the perspectives history affords. “History,” he says, “is the only laboratory we have in which to test the consequences of thought.” History opens to students the great record of human experience, revealing the vast range of strategies individuals and societies have taken up to the issues confronting them. It also discloses the consequences that have followed the various choices that have been made by people of the past. By studying the choices and decisions of the past, students can face today’s problems and make conscious choices of the alternatives before them and the likely consequences of each. 

Current problems, of course, do not duplicate those of the past. Extrapolating knowledgeably from history to the issues of today dependent upon how one understands the past. Is it on the basis of relevant historical antecedents or those that are clearly irrelevant? Students must be sufficiently grounded in historical understanding in order to bring sound analysis to the service of informed decision making. 

Students window shopping at Hampi

What is required is “critical history”- the ability, after painful inquiry and sober judgment, to determine what part of history is relevant to one’s current problems and what is not. Whether one is assessing a situation, forming an opinion, or taking an active position on the issue in exploring these matters, students will soon discover that history is filled with the high costs of decisions. They become so because of false analogies from the past and the high costs of actions taken up with little or no understanding of lessons that the past imparts. 

Historical memory is also the key to self-identity, to seeing one’s place in the stream of time and one’s connectedness with all of humankind. We are part of an ancient chain and connect to our descendants for years to come. Denied knowledge of one’s roots and of one’s place in the great stream of human history, the individual is deprived of the fullest sense of self and of that sense of shared community on which one’s fullest personal development as well as responsible citizenship depends. For these purposes, history and the humanities must occupy an indispensable role in the school curriculum. 

Nature camp unveils Archaeology and History shrouded in Mythology

Children admiring the hominid skulls

Most people who visit Hampi are bombarded with reams of mythological accounts of the place that conveniently shroud the history and natural history of the region. For many years we used to hear about a detailed account of the Viyayanagara dynasty and the ‘Mohammedan’ invaders who destroyed it.  But today the stories go further back to the age of ‘Kishkinda’ and into Ramayana. Every rock crevice and gulley is used to narrate the incidences of epic whose age never settle down on a convincing time frame.

Even the professors of Archeology or History at the University of Hampi fail to help children draw a line between history and mythology. By not enabling children to develop a consciousness about the difference between History and Mythology we keep them out of the spirit of science and pickled in beliefs.  

A four day workshop on ‘Sloth Bear Ecology’ was held between 20^th and 23^rd Nov 2013 at the Nature Camp site of Daroji Sloth Bear Sanctuary, Kamalapura in Hospet Taluk of Bellary District. Thirty seven students and four teachers of TVS School, Hosur in Tamil Nadu took part in the fun filled camp. The camp had sessions on evolution and ecology of sloth bear and revolved around fact that among the eight species of bears over the world, sloth bear in spite of being a tropical animal is endowed with black shaggy coat. Why? The students went through a series of brainstorming sessions and games that stimulate the life style of a sloth bear. They sat through sessions on evolution and ecology of sloth bear, traces of earliest Man around Hampi based on the excavations at Sanganakallu in Bellary District and the conservation efforts in the recent times. Thanks to the fossil collector Mr. Santosh Martin who put on display the replicas of the skulls of various hominids. It was a thrilling experience for the children to touch and feel the skulls of the bygone ancestors. Starting from the skulls of Sahelantropus tchadensis whose brain case measured only about 350cc to the more recent Homo heidelbergansis with a cranium of 1400 cc were on hand for the children to inspect. The slides of different stages of development placed in order the long sojourn of our evolutionary path.

Along with the skulls were box loads of stone tools and artifacts which revealed the cultural history of various human settlements. They bridge the gaps in history with material evidence, and enable us to understand the changes that took place in human societies across cultures.  Children were astonished with how something as little as broken bits of pottery, or carvings, archaeological analyses can turn the pages of history upside down. They realized that Archaeology is a mysterious gateway to the human past. It is the discipline that complements history best with its hard evidences and methodological analysis.

Santhosh Martin with a prehistoric skull

On the second day the children had a series of hands on activities right from the crack of dawn. Observation of the day break was a fascinating experience in itself. ‘Lone in the jungle’, ‘finding food as a Sloth bear would’ were activities that took the students through the menu card of a bear. The A/V session in the evening was about biodiversity of Hampi area with special emphasis to Daroji.

In the following days the campers visited the ruins of Hampi and the museum at the University of Hampi. They had a guided tour for history and folk studies. To culminate the workshop, the team visited the Sloth bear sanctuary to watch the sloth bears first hand. The team which had felt a bit difficult in catching up with the routine of the camp had just started feeling home while the tents had to be pulled down.

Lone in the jungle....

Lone in the jungle...

As Kodai Kandhan a ninth grader recalls, “We learnt so much about sloth bears, many of us didn't even know sloth bears were in India. We got a lot from your games. It is not just winning or losing that mattered us. We learnt a lot about team spirit, coordination, staying calm and brave. The treks we had with you were tiring but nothing can beat that extraordinary one hour we spent in the forest all alone. It was scary but thinking of it now, we just want to be there once more.”

There are a lot of such responses by her batch mates. For us it is a pat on our back. Keep it up; keep involving the kids in Nature.