How a Reggio-inspired approach matches the 4-6 year old child

Four year olds are sometimes described as being in their “first adolescence”.  Unlike 3 year olds, who are quite content in their newly gained status as independent beings, able to leave home, talk expressively, run, climb, and use the potty, four year olds have become aware that they are on their way to being “big kids” but are not quite “big kids” yet.  Like young adolescents, they have mixed feelings about their new status. 

It is typical for four year olds, who were compliant at age 3, to resist authority like a 2 year old.  They feel ambiguous about growing up, because they are aware that it brings more expectations and that it takes them farther from mom and dad.  Four year olds may at times act very grown up, then appear to regress to their 2 year old behavior, clinging to their parents when they leave or refusing to do simple routines.  If a new baby is in the home, there is even more temptation to regress.  

On the other hand, four year olds have reached wonderful heights in their fantasy play.  Magic and reality are still highly related, yet there is a new awareness of which is which.

            Teacher Jess: (talking to child in sandbox)  What are you making?

            Child: Chicken noodle soup.  (stirring leaves and sand into water)

            Jess: That’s my favorite!

Child: (looking a little concerned that Jess will really eat it) I eat the real kind, but this is not the real kind.

In the four year old, we can see the many things which children have watched their parents and teachers do get acted out, yet become sprinkled with fantasy.  The world is still truly magic.  One aspect of the Reggio-inspired classroom is that teachers celebrate this sense of magic, as a celebration of imagination and possibility. 

Fantasies are celebrated and encouraged.

Child: (while driving a pretend jet made of junk with a friend)

My jet grows basil.  It’s magic.

Teacher Jess: A magic basil jet!

How is it to be 5?  Five year olds are very competent, at least within the preschool arena.  They are moving from the sensori-motor stage into the stage of concrete operations (Piaget).  This means that their interest in learning symbols- numbers and letter, or musical notes- is beginning to heighten.  In conventional kindergartens, they would be pushed in this direction quickly, moving away from experiences and toward paper and pencil tasks.  At Peregrine School, we give priority to the open mindedness, imagination, and increased ability to explore the world that a five year old displays.  Yet symbols are introduced in many ways, by graphing the size of plants in the garden, drawing numbers in sand and clay, talking about the sounds in people’s names, and more.  Short lessons in phonics and math happen daily, as do thematic lessons and experiences in the arts, but much of the time, learning is drawn from real experiences that occur at the art or block table or in the garden.

Increased small motor control.  A student works with
Teacher Ann on a mobile made by stringing acorns and
wood.  Activity time allows for individual and group mentoring
in applied tasks.

An interest in symbols.  Children begin to be interested
in numbers and letters, and need practice to represent
them.

A Time of Transition:  The 4-6 year-old child is transitioning from the sensori-motor world to concrete operations.  S/he begins to draw representationally and to experiment with symbols, but benefits from multiple media and whole body experiences. 

The five year old begins to have skill in drawing, modeling, and painting representationally, and is articulate enough to construct stories about what s/he is making.  This begins the process of writing, which starts with children telling stories that adults write down, and gradually evolves into the child writing more and more independently. 

Generally, the five year old is more at peace than s/he was at four.  This is partly because baby-hood is moving further away, and becoming a “big kid” of six is looking more accessible.  It is also because social skills are improving, and there is less frustration in negotiating day to day life.  Developing an active imagination increases options in life. This is one reason why we want children of kindergarten age to have lots of time for problem solving through fantasy play. 

A group of 5 year old boys are playing “monsters”. 

A girl wants to play with them but doesn’t want to be a monster.

Boy: I know what!  You can be a princess monster!

What are 4-6 year olds like socially?  The 4-6 year old children in primaria were recently two and three year olds, who by definition believed themselves to be the center of the universe, and generally related to others in a parallel play manner.  Later, they developed close friendships with another child, one child at a time.  Their group skills were emergent at best, and their world revolved around themselves, a few cherished peers and teachers, and their families.

Four to six year olds enter the social world big-time.  They become very aware of other people and of groups, of gender, and of their position with peers.   Yet they still have much of the preschooler in them.  In many ways, they still believe that they are the center of the universe, and imagine that others see the world through their eyes. By six, they will be more able to cooperate in games with rules, to take turns, and to imagine the position of other people.  But the process of getting there is not easy.

Collaboration between friends.  4-6 year-olds are extremely social.  Friendships are essential to their transition from an at-home baby to a social being in the world.  They can also be exclusive.

Just as we expect children to make mistakes when trying to read or do math, we should expect a lot of mistakes in behavior.  Some of these mistakes related to impulse control.  It is clear from research that children develop ideas about behavior well before they develop impulse control.  Adults are often mystified by why it can be so hard to behave correctly.  In the heat of the moment, the more primitive two year old brain takes over, and kids do unproductive things, like collapsing into a screaming ball or hitting someone next to them, rather than “using their words” to explain how they feel.  The same children who do these things can tell us  how to behave when asked in a calm moment.  It is not really that they did not “get the message”, or that they will grow up to be people who think that collapsing or hitting are ways to solve problems.  But impulse control takes time, for some children more than others. 

Imagine this scenario. A child wants to build an elaborate block bridge with peers, and thinks about it all the way to school.  When s/he gets there, s/he may lack 1) the social understanding that his/her peers may not want to do the same thing, and may in fact have another clear plan in their minds, 2) the persuasive skills to exercise leadership and get others to do what s/he wants to do, or even 3) the coordination to do the project s/he can imagine.   What happens then?  The child begins to build the bridge, and to order other children around so that they will play the correct roles.  Other kids often start building the bridge their way, which triggers anger and frustration in the initiator of the project.  You can see how grabbing, knocking down other people’s blocks, and hitting and/or running away to cry might easily follow.  Parents are sometimes shocked, in that the same child who can build blocks peacefully for hours at home is behaving like a maniac in the block corner at school.  It is easy to say: “this school must be teaching my child to behave this way”, because “s/he never did this before” or “perhaps other children are showing him these bad behaviors.”  In fact, this child was never playing blocks in a group as a four, five, or six year old before, and that is the new element that is challenging him/her.  Learning to control impulses in the face of frustration takes time.

Children feel proud of their work.  Products take on more importance,
although process is still paramount.

Inclusion and exclusion: Another issue which is at the heart of four-six year old development is inclusion and exclusion.  Being a part of a best-friendship or a group of friends is central to the transition from home to the outside world which kids are experiencing at this age.  As in all things, kids can be awkward in negotiating the boundaries involved in and maintaining a secure friendship group while at the same time being decent to all the kids in a larger classroom.  Very little is more important to children’s self esteem than creating good friendships at this age.  Yet the possibility of conflicts over inclusion and exclusion are also paramount.

We spend a lot of time trying to encourage shy and new kids to make friends, and helping children to be inclusive.  One of the most powerful ways of encouraging new friendships is through play dates outside of school.   In primaria, kids are starting to become friends in new and deeper ways than they did before.  When kids feel anxious or insecure about their own position, they are most likely to do mean things to others.  Our school policy of including everyone as friends is a challenge which many adults would struggle with, but it ultimately makes school a safer place for all children. 

Character development as part of the curriculum- In some schools, the curriculum is seen as one thing and play time as another.  In a Reggio-inspired school, we consider children’s work to be play, so the time they spend in the sandbox, block corner, playhouse, or jungle gym is as important to us in terms of what they are learning as anything we might teach.  We do not want to structure our day or our classroom so much that kids do not have time and space to explore their own fantasies and to solve their own problems.  When kids play, we often shadow them, listening to their dialogues, noting the inventive ways in which they think, and intervening only when problems are serious.

Fantasy and reality: It is wonderful to see how fantasy and reality interweave in the play of the 4-6 year old child.  Of particular interest is how the curriculum we have taught and the things children have learned at home emerge in their fantasy play, sometimes accurately, sometimes combined with new or fantastic possibilities. 

            

Child 1: I’m a dinosaur with a hole on the back of my head.

            

Child 2: Then you’re a duckbill.

Observer: What are you doing? (Child 1 is picking up balls)

            

Child 1: We’re stealing eggs.

            

Child 2: To eat them for dinner.

            

Observer (to child 2): Who are you?

            

Child 2: I’m a T-Rex. 

Fantasies are elaborate and collaborative.

Boy 1: (pouring water with a funnel into a bucket which is part of a shared “jet” which several children have made of junk)  It’s gas.

Boy 2: Let’s put sand in it! (adds sand to the bucket of water)

Boy 1: Now we made oil!

Children are only willing to accept adult suggestions up to a point.  In the following dialogue, Child 1 did not want to make a birthday cake, and also did not want to accept adult logic about eating.  Her final response, “but I’m playing dinosaurs NOW”, states clearly that this is not time for a science lesson.  Magical logic rules during fantasy time. 

Teacher Ann: Have you noticed what Child 3 is wearing on her head? (the birthday crown)  Are you making a birthday cake? (in the sandbox)

Child 1: No, I’m making something that dinosaurs eat.  Making plants for triceratops and whoever eats them, then I’ll make meat for the others.  I’m making it yummy-er.  No sunflower seeds, because it’s for dinosaurs.  Because they’re not sunflowers. 

Teacher Ann: Well, I eat sunflower seeds and I’m not a dinosaur. 

Child 1: But I’m playing dinosaurs now. 

On the other hand, children in the 4-6 year old group often enjoy mulling over adult rules, and showing that they understand them.  It is a new kind of status for them: the status of the “big kid”.

Four little girls are by one swing.  One is pushing another.  The other two are just standing there to chat.

Child 1: Just one person pushes the swing, right?

Everyone nods their head in agreement.  They are enjoying knowing “how things work.” 

Likewise, children can move in and out of fantasy.  In this case, a boy makes an aside to me, an observer, to explain who his friends are.

            Three boys are sitting in a junk pile fashioned into a “jet”. 

            Boy 1: We’re driving a jet.  James is playing too.

Boy 2: (explaining to me) There are two James’, but one is sick today. 

Through play, children fashion their own laboratory in which they experiment with the possibilities and boundaries of being human.  Some people wonder what children learn through play.    Hopefully the above examples give a tiny taste of the richness and complexity of the social relationships which children develop as they fashion their fantasies with each other.  This is the creative work of the 4-6 year old.   Through their work/play, children learn social skills that they will need as elementary students and beyond.  An infinite number of challenges and possibilities exist in the play-yard or at the art table. Children learn to make their own decisions about what they will play , paint, build, or dance today.  They then face the possibilities and limitations of the material- their own body, their friends, or art materials- through which they can actualize their plans.  When they negotiate these matters with others, they learn complex social skills they will need all their lives. 

Teachers collaborate with children.  Activity time allows both for children's
fantasy play and for small group or individual collaborations between children
and teacher experts.

At the ECC, we intentionally give the longest period of time in the day to self-chosen activities in both preschool classrooms, because we feel that the decision making and social interactions which occur during activity times are the most important and complex learning which happens during the day.    A Reggio-inspired preschool which gives children the agency to choose activities matches the developmental needs and maximizes the potential of the social, autonomy seeking 4-6 year old child.

Visit to V-Excel special needs school, Chennai (Lorie in India, Blog #6)

Through a former Masters student, Katherine Lehman, who has been volunteering and consulting in Indian schools, we made contact with a very unusual school- the V-Excel school in Chennai, the capital of Tamil Nadu state.  The day before the tour started, Crystal and I visited this school for the day.  We were very interested in how this school is organized, since 1) it deals with special needs students, many severely autistic but  with other conditions as well, which not many Indian schools are prepared to serve, and 2) it applies Waldorf principles, in conjunction with Hindu ideas, as a source of curriculum and strategies.  Students with high functioning autism and learning disabilities are mainstreamed in regular schools, although some come to this center after school for tutoring or various therapies. 

This school was started 11 years ago by a remarkable woman, Dr. Vasudha Prakash, who got her doctorate at Rutgers University in the USA in special education, and is acting out her dream of bringing special needs services to Tamil Nadu in Southern India, where they generally don’t exist.  She hopes to start many schools in small towns, modeled after what they are learning in Chennai, because the government gives little or nothing to these children.  Parents pay for the services, but they also find private foundation support for those who can’t pay.  We met their remarkable development officer, Agita, and the principal, Gita.  All are inspired women.  Luckily, South India now is a center for computers (a big source of IT for the world, among other things), so it is possible to get some business support for this work.  Vasudha and Agita both have husbands who are high up in the computer industry, so that helps.  However, in the style of Tamil Nadu, all these women are devout Hindus and  traditional in many ways. 

We learned something very interesting—that Rudolf Steiner, the founder of Waldorf Schools, came to India and was influenced by it.  Seeing this school made the Waldorf schools in the USA make more sense—it seems to us that he was very influenced by Hinduism.  All of the ceremonial work, lighting candles and arranging flowers, tables with nature worship, incorporating music, dance, and massage, and a generally spiritualist attitude, are common to Waldorf schools and to Hinduism.  The most impressive thing about this tradition is its acceptance and embracing of the students, regardless of their challenges, because in Hinduism people believe that the things that happen are all gifts from the gods which are intentional and are given to bring us wisdom.  Hence the teachers are not so much trying to “fix” these kids in relation to a norm, but feel it is a privilege to be with these children as they are, while gently helping them to use their senses and minds better.  They believe that children with challenges are particularly soulful, and that working with them helps us to stay in touch with our souls.  The poster below expresses this sentiment.

Likewise, the curriculum of this schools follows the Waldorf curriculum of regular schools, and is based on a balance of “heart, mind, and hands”.  

Note the topics: Kindergarten: A magical world; Grade 1, Becoming a whole; Grade 2, Heaven and Earth; Grade 3, The World and I, etc.  These kind of themes, when incorporating Waldorf and Hindu holistic techniques, such as the use of clapping and feet stomping dancing, foot massage (each child gets one each day), various art activities, music, clay, and more, help children who lack language and/or have problems with their bodies in space to relate better to their world.  The school has places where children who “lose it” can go, but there are many fewer eruptions over time as children experience this holistic curriculum.  Interestingly, diet plays a big part in calming the children.  Children are asked to bring a lunch each day according to a certain menu which parents have to follow, but the lunch is always rice, dal, and a vegetable.  The kind of vegetable and dal are proscribed on the menu, and parents send in the right foods each day!  But everyone eats a diet which has no gluten, no milk products, and is vegan (the latter is common in South India).  No sugars or processed foods are allowed.  Children do some cooking at school, for their class to eat as snacks.  Below are the children at music and dance.

Typically, in South India, three languages are taught in school.  Academic subjects are generally taught in English, especially science and math, since this is the common and world language.  Hindu is also taught as the national language, and the local dialect (Tamil here) is what people speak day to day.  All these languages are challenging for these kids, some of whom don’t speak, but are taught through song.

Here are students experiencing dance through hand and foot clapping.  They are studying “hens” today, so are dancing like hens.  Tamil people do very symbolic dancing in which everyone recognizes the symbols, so one can see how Steiner got the eurythmy concept.  

This was a very impressive school.  I can see how the Waldorf approach, which is multi-sensory, helps even extremely challenged children to develop and integrate their senses, language, and minds.  As in the case of Peregrine School, and also in India, this holistic approach is at variance from the typical “special ed” approach in which each skill is identified (generally as at deficit) and taught specifically.  Of course the South Indians carry their holistic practices farther than we do, as in massaging everyone’s feet daily after lunch with almond oil (sounds good, doesn’t it?), but the principle is the same.  When children who are challenged in one area (and who is not included in that?) are exposed to the same material through a variety of sensory and intellectual experiences, more points of contact are made with the material and integrated learning can occur. 

I am also made aware of how and perhaps why Waldorf education is different from Peregrine School.  The root of the Waldorf approach is spiritual, seemingly in strong affinity with Hinduism.  The V-Excel school is remarkable, however, in that Vasudha, its director, is a researcher and is willing to draw from various traditions to make things work.  It was amazing to me and Crystal how much we felt akin to her and to Gita and Agita, despite being across the world.  We were all more in alignment with each other than any of us are with the narrowly focused public schools and Special Education services in our areas.    

A Tamil Nadu Wedding (Lorie in India, Blog #5)

Traditionally, Indian couples have arranged marriages.  Tamil Nadu is a traditional place in Southern India, where many ancient customs are still observed.  Our tour guide, Nacuma, had an arranged marriage even though she has a Ph D in tourism and her husband is a high school physics teacher with a Masters degree.

Lacuma tells us that now there are both arranged and “love” marriages, but that the love marriages are resulting in many more divorces.  This is because the arranged marriages acknowledge that a good marriage is two families uniting, not just two people.  So everyone negotiates the marriage and also helps the couple to solve problems once the marriage has occurred.   

In her case, she was 22 and went to a family party with her sister and father.  She talked to many people there.  After the party, her father got a call from her future mother in law, saying she wanted to arrange a marriage with the older daughter, Lacuma.  Both families found out more about the other party.  The potential mother in law asked about a dowry, but Lacuma’s father said he did not believe in dowries, but was willing to pay for the whole wedding (which takes up to 10 days and costs a lot).  She said OK if she can still do her Ph D and work.  They agreed to these terms, after a few weeks of deliberating between parties.

   

In Hindu communities, some times of year are auspicious for marriage, and some are not.  This is the end of the monsoon season and an auspicious time, so there are marriages day and night in the town halls.  We are invited to meet her at 6:30 AM for an “exotic experience”, and walk a few blocks from the hotel to a town hall where a wedding ceremony is in process.  Lacuma knew about it because there is a big billboard on the street in front, announcing the weddings of the day as if they are movies.

If one is active in a political party, the party candidate is pictured on this poster along with the family.   It is considered auspicious to have a well known person, like a politician, attend.  As elders and visitors, we are also considered good luck, so we are invited!

The room below is full of cooking.  People rolling out chapattis and cooking them on a griddle, coconut juice being prepared.  The “stage” where the wedding will take place has been being prepared all night with fresh flower decorations.  The hall is full of folding chairs, and we join a crowd there.  Musicians are at the back. 

The crowd is beautifully dressed, with amazing sarees on all women and little girls. 

Women wear flower chains in their hair, and bride and groom have elaborate flower chains and leis around their necks and down the bride’s back.

The musicians begin and play throughout the ceremony.  I am particularly excited about this, since Tamil music is very famous, and I have wanted to hear it.  It is like jazz- very wonderful.  A plaintif horn, with double reeds, makes a special sound, and drumming is highly rhythmic and complex.  Wonderful.

The ceremony begins with the bride and groom on stage with a priest, and continues with both sets of parents up on stage along with various representatives of cousins, aunts and uncles.  The bride washes the mother’s and mother in law’s feet, and various rituals involving fire, breaking coconuts, and more are performed.  The music is loud and punctuates the ceremony at all points.  There seems to be little talk.  This is a culture in which everything is symbolic and there is a universally shared set of symbols, so meanings are clear to all (except us!).

What an experience!  Apparently the wedding ceremony is on the last day of up to 10 days of parties.  Now the couple is married, and will go off on honeymoon.

The Taj Mahal and Red Fort: Tourism in an emergent capitalist society (Lorie in India, Blog #4)

Everyone knows that India is disturbing because of the extremes of poverty and wealth, with an emphasis on the former.  Street children, dirty and clothed in rags, walk between cars, barely avoiding being hit. Cripples sit on the ground and beg.  Some city people live and sleep in falling down buildings, their facades open to the street.  Dogs and goats eat piles of garbage on the sidewalk.  In the countryside, people live in huts, although rural poverty always seems to me to have a softer face.  We expected and see all these forms of poverty, which is shocking but expected.

At the same time, there is a clearly growing middle class.  We see it in the hundreds of students in school uniforms visiting the museums, the thousands of families in the monuments.  There seems to be increasing hope for the future. 

But there is another side to a madly capitalist society attempting to “develop” as fast as possible which is disconcerting to me and Crystal.  I think it has to do with some kind of convergence of capitalism itself and of culture.  This convergence reaches a kind of extreme in India, and provides a constant distraction when one is a tourist. 

Rewind to the Raj- the time of British colonialism in India.  To a colonial power, a country being colonized is just a commodity.  Its people, resources, animals, are all potential commodities to bring wealth to the mother country.  It takes many years and many liberation movements to recover from being treated as a commodity in one’s own country, and India, like so many countries, struggles with this. 

But now we are in a new historical phase.  We, as white people, look like a commodity to Indians and other world peoples who are struggling to reach the middle class.  This group of people includes those in the service industries, such as car drivers, tour guides, and more.   These people see us as an opportunity which they want to push as hard as they can to gain some advantage.  It is not enough that we pay them to drive us to a monument, they want to take us to their brother’s rug shop, or to a handicraft store where they get a commission.  We expected hawkers  to sell things on the street, or people to beg.  This is disturbing but to be expected.  But more middle class agents, such as drivers and guides, are “on the take” to a degree which distorts the relationships with us upon which our trip depends.

For example, our Taj Mahal guide took us to a marble carving “factory” where we were told that the family had been making marble inlaid with semi-precious stones for nine generations, and were in fact descendents of the Aryan (Persian) people who settled in this area many centuries ago and built the Taj Mahal.  We knew they were trying to sell us marble tables.  We visited the family shop and watched them at work.  I did not think that the hand grinders and small pieces of marble they were using would account for the big pieces they were selling in their shop.  And, in fact,  we were later told by another driver that these shops in Agra are put-up jobs, that the marble is made in another town and the workers are acting as if they make the products here, because this is where the tourists are.  To me this is disturbing because it also implicates our guide, a nice young man with whom we spent the day and whom we enjoyed getting to know.  Since he lied to us about the marble, to get a commission if we had bought some, we cannot help but wonder what is true and not true about all the things he told us about Indian life.  After two days of being guided or driven by a series of people who all had a hidden agenda, and contradicted each others’ information about India, we began to avoid contact with people.  But this is sad, since that contact is what generally makes travel so interesting. 

In contradiction to this experience with drivers and guides is the other side of India- the fact that in these two days we saw incredible things.  The Taj Mahal is more majestic than one can imagine from the pictures we have all seen.  Most impressive are the detailed inlaid stones and carvings which cover it and can only be seen up close, and the extraordinary 4-way symmetry of this building/sculpture from every angle, inside and out.  Also amazing is how it changes color from brilliant white to rose, and more, depending on the sun.  Equally amazing are the beautiful Indian families who experience this with us, and want authentically to be photographed together and to talk a bit, without making any demands.

the Taj Mahal at 3:00 PM. As shiny white as a giant sugar cube

Two hours later, at 5:00 p.m. sunset

Crystal with three Indian girls and women next to the Taj

The road to Agra and Fatehpur Sikri (Lorie in India, Blog #3)

On Day 2 in Delhi, we took a long car trip with a hired driver to Agra, where the Taj Mahal is.  We also wanted to see another site from the Moghul period, Fatehpur Sikri, a short term capital of India during the reign of Emperor Akbar.  While we started at 6 AM, our driver got lost finding Fatehpur Sikri, so we drove through the countryside for 5 hours before we got there.  This was a blessing in disguise, although somewhat annoying (he was trying to avoid paying tolls on toll roads), because it was great to see small villages with goats, water buffalos, huts, markets, and the agricultural fields.  This is a well farmed area- a great flat plain near Delhi.

We stopped on the way for breakfast, and I ate my new favorie traditional northern breakfast consisting of a potato chapatti (forgot its name) which is dipped in a semi-liquid yogurt called curds.  The yogurt is tart and delicious.  This is served with massala tea, or chai, cooked with milk and generally drunk sweetened.  It is also sometimes serve with dal, a lentil mash or stew.  Yum.

The old and the new- always side by side

Fatepur Sikri is a red sandstone palace of great dimensions, a city really, which was built by Emperor Akbar after a Sufi Saint there prophesied that he would have three sons, and he did.  He built it in gratitude, and made the capital there for a time.  Akbur is famous for trying to heal the rift between religions.  He had three wives, the story goes, one Christian, one Hindu, one Moslem.  The castle has sections built for each wife, according the architecture of each group.  This makes the city good architectural history, especially since it was deserted so things are intact.  This pillar is decorated in three parts, to also represent these different religions of India.

Jump to the 20th century: Gandhi and Jamini Roy (Lorie in India, Blog #2)

People might think I am crazy, but for me travel is actually Project Based Learning in the most active and true sense.  I have also realized that this is why I am so addicted to it.  At our elementary school, we begin with “building background knowledge”.  The combination of going to museums, looking at daily life today, seeing the architecture, eating and looking at markets/agriculture, and interacting with people, give the traveler an extraordinarily fast learning curve for background knowledge, especially when the place is one which I initially know little about.  The little studying I have done prior to the experience comes to life in a new way when it is embodied in its place. 

In our studies at school, we next do what is called “sensemaking”- discussing and mulling over what we have learned, and trying to make sense of it.  Crystal and I dialogue about what we see constantly, and question everyone we talk to- guides, people we meet on the street, and more.  Finally, we express it in some way ourselves (at school this would be the project or study).  For me, always, it is attempting to share it—this blog.  Please realize that this blog is an attempt at sensemaking by a true novice to India.  I realize there may be many inaccuracies, many of my own personal biases, and certainly a naïve point of view.  I welcome dialogue from anyone who reads this. I am also excited to imagine the innumerable ways in which I can share a trip like this at our school. 

We ended our first day with two more museums: Gandhi Smriti and the National Gallery of Modern Art.  We also learned that New Delhi is reminiscent of the mall in Washington, DC, in that the government is at one end and museums at the other end of a several mile long linear park, ending at the famous Gate of India, which looks like the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.  This makes it easy to visit several museums, and creates a lovely environment of tree lined parks on a large boulevard. 

Gandhi Smriti is a memorial in the place where Gandhi worked as a peacemaker, meeting with various factions, during the last 144 days of his life, and was shot walking to his meditation garden.  It is a very moving place.  The path which he took from his bedroom to the garden gazebo where was shot is reproduced in cement footprints, so we are encouraged to meditate upon his final journey. (see below)

The museum is interactive and high tech, yet celebrates Indian independence and self reliance through the spinning wheel and the salt march.  There is a small store on the property where one can buy local, hand spun cotton garments.  Making one’s own garments rather than relying on the British trade industry was a hallmark of Gandhi’s nationalist movement.

As one walks through the galleries, one at first sees Gandhi’s bedroom and sitting room/meditation table, with his few worldly possessions preserved.

One then goes upstairs to a series of exhibits in which an object, often some sort of spinning wheel, when spun, triggers a video to appear on the screen and explain the movement involved with this object.  In the case of the salt marches, which are like our “tea party” (the real one), in which a British tax on salt is being protested, one sifts through a pile of mock salt (tiny white beads) and when throwing them back in a bowl, triggers a video on the salt marches.

One moving video features various retreat centers which Gandhi built and participated in with others at different times of his life.  Its purpose is to show how his life philosophy evolved.  One center was in Phoenix, Arizona, and focused on the civil rights movement.  Another was a retreat center in India which focused on nationalism, but was built from exotic woods and was very comfortable.  His final one emphasized only local materials and simplicity.  His statement: “My message is my life,” was made very clear. 

Several monuments to peace and inter-group understanding are placed around the park at Gandhi Smriti (memorial).  One is a giant peace gong.  

Jamini Roy:  We also visited the National Gallery of Modern Art, where we saw a special exhibit on Jamini Roy, an Indian painter who lived from 1997-1972, hence experiencing the emergence of modernism and the independence movement in India.  Seeing Roy on the same day as Gandhi and the history museum was profound in several ways.

Roy began by studying in an art school influenced by European masters and the new impressionists, cubists, etc. in Europe.  Cubism is especially noticeable as an influence in all his work.  His early work is in oils and is part of these movements.

Later, Roy returned to his Bengal village and began to explore art as a form of national pride.  He was a supporter of and was inspired by Gandhi.  He began to express daily life in his village, yet to bring in other influences in ways he believed would be understandable to villagers.  For example, he did many paintings using Christian images interpreted through Indian images, in an attempt to “explain” the Christian symbols to his own people. 

He rejected European materials and began to make his own paints as tempra pigments ground from local rocks and extracted from local plants.  He also began to paint on cheap and local materials, such as cardboard or bamboo screens. In many ways, his art reminded me of the work of Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo in Mexico, who also tried to work through popular culture icons and themes.

Over his lifetime, Roy’s paintings began to simplify in a manner reminiscent of Gandhi’s journey.  He tried to express his ideas using simple lines and few colors.  His paintings also began to look more universal, for example, a simple line connoting a mother holding a child. 

An inspiring day!

At risk of oversimplifying highly nuanced subjects, Crystal and I felt that our day had fit together in a remarkable way.  The early history of India which included endless conquering by outsiders, ending with two hundred years of British colonialism, made the importance of the independence and nationalist movements of the 19^th and 20^th centuries profoundly meaningful.  One could see how the celebration of what is Indian  through self reliance on that which is local, natural, and simple- cotton, salt, natural tempera paint- took on great meaning.  Yet for Gandhi and Roy, and even earlier figures such as Ashoka, universal understanding, rather than national or religious factionalism, emerged as most important in the end.   All of these figures- Ashoka, Gandi, and Roy- had lives in which their ideas evolved and changed, sometimes abruptly, in response to their experience.  Gandhi’s social conscience was born when he was a British trained lawyer working in South Africa and was thrown off a train for having brown skin, regardless of his credentials.  Ashoka waged war, then peace.  Roy admired European art, then chose to celebrate the local images and pigments of his own country.  India is often seen as a country involved in spiritual journey and growth.  The figures it celebrates in its national museums exemplify for this message.

India: Exploring its heroes (from Delhi)

We have now spent three days in Delhi, quite intensely busy while still staving off jet lag.  The first day started with a visit to the National Museum, to get an overview of Indian history which seemed necessary for understanding the things we will later see.  It was a good call, and an impressive museum.  We learned about how ancient this culture is: many thousand years of civilization and recorded history, a lot from the point of view of a Californian, where 200 years is a long time.  We also learned how many layers of people came in from other places, mostly the Middle East and the North, and conquered the farmers living in the Indus River Valley, where Delhi is and the main center of power has generally remained.  There were Turks and Aryans, who turn out to be Persians/Iranians, creating great Muslim empires on top of the existing Hindu culture. 

The greatest early leader was Ashoka, in about 300 BC, who was at first a warlord, conquering and gathering territories, and later became converted to Buddhism by his Buddhist wife (Buddhism had begun with Siddhartha’s life in about 700 BC), and became a peace lover and a great philanthropist, caring for people and animals alike and spreading Buddhism in his kingdom and beyond.  He wrote his edicts about how to live by carving them on giant stones all over his empire (nearly all of India today).  We saw one such stone at the museum.  Apparently historians only learned to read his language recently, so Ashoka is only recently fully appreciated, and is now a national hero.  His edicts are quite impressive, including the right of people to a good life and medical care, a prohibition of sacrifices and commitment to be nice to animals, tolerance between groups, and no war.  We could learn from him today!  I really like the idea of this “early billboard” in the shape of a carved stone.  Labor intensive but obviously durable.

Obviously I am quite taken by Ashoka, because his ideas are so ahead of his time and in contrast to things that came after (more conquerers), but he ruled peacefully for another 40 years, acting these things out.  After he died, his kingdom was overtaken by Alexander the Great and became part of the Greek Empire briefly, then was later conquered by Aryans from Persia and other Islamic groups, eventually evolving into the great Moghul Empires of the 13-15 century, which built the Taj Mahal and other of the great historical works (the Red Forts in both Agra and Delhi, many great mosques, etc.)  Many of these are the monuments for which India is most famous.

Early civilizations of India went on to be very early and very great, something we learn nothing about in our West oriented American educations, and which I intend to do something about at Peregrine School!  There are too many fascinating stories to tell, but people were making bronze statues, like the dancing girl below, using the lost wax technique, many centuries BC, and numerous developed and well organized cities, with elaborate street grids and irrigation systems, existed in the Indus River Valley well before Christ as well.  (See below)  As usual, a key drawing point was rich river valleys which supported agriculture, the main grains being wheat and barley.  As always, these formed the basis of civilization, creating enough people with leisure time from producing food to make cities, art, and all the rest.  Some of these valley civilizations later became drier, as climates changed (something to think about), and these cities remain only as ruins, some only recently re-discovered.  Others became consistently great power centers, such as Delhi. 

I was there!  Lorie in front of Ashoka’s stone, imported to the museum. 

Something I didn’t know until this trip is that wheat remains the key grain, along with lentils and beans (dal) as legumes, in India’s north, resulting in various chapattis, naan breads, samosas, and more.  Whereas in the south we will encounter more rice.  We were initially surprised not to be given rice with meals.  It is typical to eat the saucy dishes with dipped chapattis, as Mexicans do with beans and tortillas.  This is like China, with noodles and dumplings in the north and rice in the south.  To me, everything always comes down to climate and agriculture- to the ecology of place, and what it makes possible.

Dancing girl made of bronze using sophisticated lost wax technique.

Indus River Valley Civilization.  Irrigation runs from rivers through whole cities.