In the school where my mom is a teacher, Bala Vidya Mandir, a teacher exchange program is being conducted in which a teacher has arrived from US to chennai to this school and a teacher has left for the US in turn. This guy Mr Jeffrey Peterson is from a school in Indianapolis and teaches biology in high school. He has come along with a group of 10 teachers under this program who are at present in different city schools in India. He is in my mom's department so I heard there was this ice breaking session where he got to know all his would be colleagues for the next 6 months. My brother went to see him earlier as my mother had heard he was interested in animals and my brother was also studying to be a veterinarian and while they discussed Jeff happened to ask if he would take him to the beach just for some sight seeing. My brother later asked if I would tag along so we hit the beach couple of weekends back with this teacher from the US. It was cool to hear this guy who finished his bachelors degree at ohio state univ went on to do research in the university about African elephants and has been to Africa to observe the species in the wild. It's cool to observe the exposure of school teacher in the US and of how much he can contribute to a science class experience wise. He says the schooling system there is very relaxed and that there was no strict syllabus. The teachers can teach whatever the class as a whole find an interest in. This way it is not hard a child to take school seriously because he doesn't have to force himself to learn.However he said the competition is higher as every student is learning something that interests him/her so he says he sees good grades in the tests. Jeff claimed the teaching system in India is very methodical, having chapters to be finished with a period of 3months at a time. The students have an idea what portions they are up against as the syllabus is well defined. He says students can study in advance and be prepared for class. (I don't think I've heard of any 'Indian' in a school do that though) We then probed into whether he finds any particular purpose in this exchange program or is it for mere international exposure. He replied saying most kids in the US tend to prefer going into the business field rather than take up science. Only a smaller fraction of students actually take up science or engineering for undergraduate studies. He wanted to study what teachers do to inspire more students to pursue science over commerce by making them take more interest into studying subjects like physics and biology. He asked for my opinion and I just joked talking about how there is this great "ambition" among students to pursue engineering especially in south india and that the actual reason is that job prospects are better with an engineering degree since the IT industry grows healthily in the country. It was a good chat we had regarding all this while we had a walk around in Besant nagar beach and over to broken bridge. He took some snaps of the fishermen children. I was happy a man stopped throwing stones at a dog when he saw this foreigner walk past his home clicking photos. Anyway that was a day spent fine. Jeff like Dosa a lot apparently, one of the only things he's had as indian food as of now, my mom had asked us to take him to murugan idly shop nearby but we ruled it out as in our conversation with him he told us that he found indian food too spicy and has his dosa with jam at times since the chutney was too hot for his tongue. Had a decent insight into how an average american was like from this guy. Was not too curious about India though, maybe because he wasn't here on a vacation. However, He said he liked New Delhi a lot, this group of ten had stopped over at Delhi just to have a look around on their first visit to India.
Hope he has a good time here.
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