Language and Inequality

My CI, Active English was lately joined together with another CI, Pre - Akshara English.
Both CI's used to teach basic English to 5th, 6th and 7th graders in the Azde village government school twice a week. Due to changing attitudes towards our activities in the Azde School we have contacted the Paud School and are now shifting our activities there.
Last Thursday was the first time I went down with the CI down to the Paud School, and it has really made me think. This is my second year in India, and I have been travelling in both south and north. I've been living here in "rural Maharashtra" (?) for the last year and visited some of the biggest cities in India - Delhi, Bombay, Pune, Cochin and Calcutta, yet the inequalities in India had never appeared so brutal and real to me as when I visited this Paud school.

3 kids on one (little) table, 60 kids in class room, the English teacher that does not speak English... No syllabus, just a text book (which is in a much higher level than the kids are), the closed mindedness that I can not explain.

Some of my co-years and I started a new CI that helps 12th graders from the Paud high school in preparing for their final English exams. They are all in my age, and all very eager to succeed. All of them have been writing essays on how important education is and how they want to have a job and be successful during our last in class assignment. And this keeps striking me – we are exactly at the same age, and I know they are not lazy and success is important for them – yet they have been prevented from the education I have been complaining about back home. How big is the gap between me and them, and more striking, between an Indian who studies in muwci and an Indian that studies in a government school in the village.

And this also relates so much to our last Global Affairs session in which some people in my discussion mentioned how English has so much to do with the elite English speaking class that exists today in India.
I don’t know how a country can keep on functioning like that. It seems not much is done about the circle of education, of English…
After talking so much in class about hypothetical equality and socialism, I'm trying to think – what could be done? What is being done in India? How can such inequality prevail?
It also makes me think of our role as a CI. Are we really helping these kids? What does this hour a week do, especially since we seem not to get completely through or completely understood, especially with the language barrier?
Wouldn't it be great if we could change these kids' life? If we could walk in to the classroom and communicate, and explain and be understood? Sometimes I feel we could have done so much more if we all spoke Hindi or Marathi, that this is what these kids need, real communication.

I'm not sure what this post is about. It is about language, practical inequality, and our role, a little bit, I guess. Hope it's not too messy.

Ilan Ramon was a fighter pilot in the Israeli Air Force, and later the first Israeli astronaut. His mission ended abruptly when Space Shuttle Columbia was destroyed and its crew perished during re-entry, 16 minutes before scheduled landing.
His son Assaf was killed one week ago, aged 21, during a routine training flight while piloting his F-16, 3 months after graduating from the IAF flight school with the Sword of Honor as the top cadet in his graduating class.

This incident raised other than a great deal of sorrow in Israeli society also a very difficult moral question. According to law, if you come from a bereaved family - serving in a combat unit can only be pursued with the parents' signature and permission.
And just imagine - that decision the mother is facing, in that moment her son stands in front of her. Will she let him pursue his childhood dream of becoming a pilot, fulfilling his abilities, following his father, or not? Is she going to let her "selfish" feelings (are they really?) stop him? her worry?
Rona Ramon did not - and that makes you thing - what does she feel today?

I think more than a moral question, of what kind of responsibility does the parent get and what a place this leaves the parent in - this issue also brings up some questions about liberty and coercion. (which I can definitely raise but perhaps not answer...)

Should the state interfere in such a situation? wouldn't it be more "fair" or just if bereaved sons and brothers were not allowed to risk their lives in combat units? for the sake of their families?
On the one hand this would probably benefit the "well being" of the family and would not put a parent in such a difficult emotional place if the state makes that decision, but on the other hand it would very clearly limit the liberty of this one individual who is truly interested in serving in a combat unit. Who can make such a decision? a mother? the state? should every individual be allowed to make it for himself without any coercion (interference..) ?


One last thing -I know I talk\write a lot about Israel and the army, that's because these things are a part of my life.
So... yeah, not gonna apologize for that.

Limits

I'm not sure if I can express these thoughts in English, or even in words (that's a different issue)
... but I'm gonna give it a try.

I've been thinking lately on different mind sets different people from different places have.
How back home at school you had the cool kids, and the "freaks" and the geeks and the party people and scouts people and so on - I suppose like in any school where people group up - but also, everyone had some sort of a similar socio-economic mind set, national - Israeli - Jewish mind set.
When you meet new people, with different life styles than yours, you somehow (I feel) expand the possibilities (and limits) of your own mind set.
If you live in a society that has set groups of people you will most probably fall somewhere around these groups, between them, in that range... and when you meet people who value completely different things, who come from completely different backgrounds, with which you develop a completely different relationship under extreme circumstances - suddenly you look back at your life and you think - there are so many more perspectives from which I could look at things!
The limits on what you do and how you behave are mostly in your mind. Who said you have to live your life in a certain way? Just because people tend to do so? go to university or build a family or earn a lot of money or have a nice house or eat healthy...?

When you meet people who do not care about the pre-conditionig or limits that you have, I think - suddenly you realize these existed only in your mind. That there are always -more- options in life.. and you keep discovering them.

I hope this came across... properly.
Dunno what more to say.