the teacher and the taught, together create the teaching’ print story

June 20, 2012

Educational Support Tibet, India

LET ME EXPLAIN – KEN TOWNSEND E.S. TIBET VOLUNTEER
It’s approaching the end of 2011 and I’m sitting at my desk in Kunpan Cultural School of E.S.Tibet Cultural School reflecting on how this year had begun and how it is ending; my companion throughout the year, as throughout my teaching career, has been vindicated. Let me explain!

I have been a teacher in England for 32 years and I’ve taught in many contexts: from High School to Higher Education. The words of the Chinese sage, Lao Tse, have always been of the utmost importance to me and have been my guiding principle throughout my teaching career. It is somewhat ironic that a Chinese philosopher could have been instrumental in bringing an English teacher to work for a Tibetan cause based in North India, but I delight in that irony!
‘The teacher and the taught, together create the teaching.’

Those words had inspired me to enter teaching many years ago and at the beginning of 2011 had led me to seek a way of leaving teaching in England and to find inspiration elsewhere. I had promised myself that if ever the teaching experience ceased to be a mutual affair between my students and myself then it would be time to move on. I believe that a good teacher must always be learning from his or her students: he has a wealth of experience to pass on but it is the enthusiasm and the commitment of his students and their desire to learn that stimulates the teacher to give his best. This joint activity between student and teacher is what has always made teaching such a rewarding career to me and has made it my life’s purpose.
Quite simply the enthusiasm and commitment of my students in England had been replaced by apathy and lack of purpose. I was working hard to enable hundreds of students to gain their places at University but they were getting there without any real love of learning and without any sense of responsibility for their own futures. Education in the West, it seems to me, has become like a huge conveyor belt that operates without human values. So, I decided that 2011 would be my last year in the English educational system and that I would look to teach elsewhere.

When I came across the E.S. Tibet website in January 2011 I was inspired! I read accounts by young people who had decided to risk everything in order to gain an educational opportunity in exile in India. These young Tibetans had been prepared to leave their loved ones and to trek across the Himalayas in the most hazardous conditions so that they could learn, improve their English and gain a qualification that might give them an opportunity to gain employment back in their native Tibet. I was reading about an opportunity to serve young people again with my skills and I could feel Lao Tse breathing over my shoulder and saying – his English had become very good! – ‘Go for it!’

I contacted an organisation called Working Abroad, this works in partnership with E.S. Tibet, and my application was accepted. The rest of 2011 was spent planning my departure from teaching and England and preparing for my journey to India. My children are in their 20s and 30s and knew that I wanted to travel further afield but they were rather 2 surprised when I told them I was going to India to work with Tibetans – when they read the website of E.S. Tibet they understood: ‘This is just what you are looking for, it’ll keep you young!’

I’ve been in Kunpan Cultural School of E.S.Tibet for two months now and all that I’d read about the school and the students is proving to be wonderfully true. I had been in touch with previous volunteers before coming to India and all that they had said has been shown to be exactly the case. I have been welcomed into a family and not into an institution. Kunpan Cultural School of E.S.Tibet is a community that has love and generosity at its centre and is inspired by the most wonderful of educational ideals: to enrich our lives with learning so that we may enrich the world.
Every day at Kunpan Cultural School of E.S.Tibet is a gift. It begins at breakfast when a student reads an article from a newspaper while we eat our breakfast together; that student may have visited you earlier to prepare the reading, to get it right! As the dishes are being cleared away and washed there is singing and laughter – if something has been said in Tibetan a student will eagerly seek to put the Teacher in the picture about what is going on. Students have been up and preparing for class since 6 a.m. but the preparation continues until classes begin at 9.00 a.m. As I prepare for the day I can hear students reading in the garden or sitting on the steps – they have a routine and the commitment to learning is at the heart of it. And the learning continues well into the evening when classes have long finished. Students visit you to check things out, students are found all over the building completing homework, composing emails to family or to sponsors, or putting their own stories into print. Their industry and commitment is impressive!
But I should like to give you a taste of the richness and the depth of this educational project by referring to just two events that have taken place in the last few weeks.

The first is the Student Presentation that takes place on a Saturday morning before we finish for the weekend. I’d had a visit from Kalden on Friday evening and he was seeking some help in completing his script for the following morning’s Presentation. Every Saturday morning one group organises a Presentation on a theme of their choosing. This Saturday it was to be Nyima’s turn (the word means ‘stars’ in Tibetan, as in the sky) – and I’d already had Gonpo approach me to sound me out on electromagnetism and the relationship between Michael Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell in the invention of the first motor – I kid you not!!! So a very earnest Kalden opened with the words: ‘Ken – he’s one of the few who feels comfortable with using my name instead of my title! – I wish to be a tree tomorrow and to address the students – how shall I do this?’ I had the most delightful time planning and directing Kalden through his project and Nyima’s theme became wonderfully clear the next morning: our human responsibility for this beautiful planet of ours and how we must respond urgently to the needs of Mother Earth.

Kalden – who had been in the monastery for 17 years, having been presented to the Dalai Lama by his mother at the age of 4! - is from a province in Tibet where acres of forest is being destroyed by the Chinese in order to build roads and to mine for minerals to drive the monster economy that has now superseded the US in terms of global exports. As a 3 modern day Chief Seattle Kalden wanted to address the madness that puts greed above responsibility to our brothers and sisters – brother air and sister sky, sister water and brother fire, sister lark and brother polar bear, the whole family that inhabits the blue planet - as a tree. He promised to continue to take seriously his responsibility to feed the oxygen into the air and to keep that air pure but he begged us (all human beings) to wake up to our responsibilities too! He brought the house down, as they say.

Gonpo’s take on Wind power as one solution to the crisis we’re in had him take us through the physics of energy conversion and it was superbly done. Many of these Tibetan students have just had a few years of formal education and yet their ability to communicate complex ideas in a very accomplished way and in a foreign language is humbling. And the wonderful thing is that there is a celebration in their performance; they love performing because they so want to communicate! These young people have so much to teach people in the West about the nature of true education!

The second event was one that I had long looked forward to because I had read previous volunteers’ accounts of them.

The Momo Party
The Momo party was perfectly timed given how tired students and staff are as they approach the end of term: everyone has got present and past progressive tenses; gerunds, infinitives with –ing, infinitives with –ed, irregular verbs and the subjunctive coming out of their ears. When Cheophel announced that period 4 on the afternoon was cut to begin preparation for the evening you could feel the tension start to leak away. Tibetans then did what Tibetans so easily do: they combine industry, humour, song and sheer exuberance to get the job done. By 5 p.m. 30 of us where organised into teams to assemble these wonderful little pasties – a table for kneading the dough, one for preparing the dough to be rolled, one for the rolling, one for the filling with meat, one for the filling with vegetarian, and a group to collect and ship the finished Momos to the kitchen. All this to music and laughter – the party had begun!

The attempted consumption of about 300-400 of these tasty mini pasties – the artistry in the construction of these crescent moons, little bags of gold and Cornish Pasty shapes defeated this person; I can still hear: ‘No teacher this way’!! – began at 7 p.m. Well, what a special evening!

There’s no place for inhibitions amongst Tibetans and there are no hiding places. Everyone is family and as family you’re in there! The Momos were delicious and are eaten with a chilli paste that is also homemade – they can be steamed or fried, ours were steamed but were still crispy, somehow. Having consumed a reasonable number the fun now started for the singing of songs started only to be halted periodically, at which point anyone not able to freeze completely, suffered the forfeit of having to consume another Momo. So this was how the 400 were to be polished off! Momos are very filling and the humour now generated by having to avoid movement when the singing stopped, having to avoid certain student faces who were guaranteed to make you laugh, having to cope with the anxiety 4 involved in the consumption of yet another pasty – well it was simply wonderful. I guess Kalden – the Tree – consumed about 25-30 and though Choekyi tried her best to make me crack up, I survived!
Then the singing became solo and everyone was expected to participate and contribute something from memory and all 30 of us sang a song of our choosing. Cheophel as MC was in his element and he kept turning to me and saying: ‘You see Ken now what we do in Tibetan families; this is what we do: we enjoy life together!’ It made the Western slogan of ‘Work hard, play hard’ look sadly anaemic! I heard young people sing the most beautiful Tibetan folk songs delivered in the most accomplished manner. Tiny Sonam Tso brought me to tears: a voice came out of this little lady that might have filled the Albert Hall! Rinchen played his Tibetan mandolin and the evening raced along at a pace. There was fun, teasing, love and warmth in this converted school room that had become a Tibetan dwelling on the high plateau – I thought at one point about the partying in The Lord of the Rings and this seemed apposite, given the external threat of the Dark Lord! – and there was not a drop of alcohol around! No artificial stimulants are required when human beings are engaged in life and celebrating that life together. Another gift!
And that word ‘gift’ sums up my experience of being here at this wonderful school. I am experiencing the joy once more of being able to teach students who appreciate what you are sharing with them but the sharing is mutual. Lao Tse would be proud of this project and his words come alive here in Kunpan Cultural School of E.S.Tibet where ‘the teacher and the taught, together create the teaching’!
 

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