Bollywood, Middle School Philosophy, and the Chapter 6 Writing Assessment

There is a new Bollywood film slated for release the same week the writing assessments on Chapter 6 are to be submitted. While I don’t think this was conceived by design, there are some parallels. The film is the Aamir Khan work “Taare Zameen Par” and literally translated it means “Stars on Earth.” Contrary to most topics of Bollywood films, this film centers on teaching and learning. It is almost a certainty that the film will continue the current discourse about education in India. This is a vibrant conversation in a culture that places a primacy on education, yet struggles to understand its multi faceted nature in the modern setting. I was struck by the title’s implication of how human beings find themselves inexplicable trapped by a consciousness that is eternally earth bound, but a psyche that strives to achieve other worldly status. Perhaps, placing education in this philosophical conundrum makes what we do as teachers and learners even more provocative a topic for discussion as it seeks to provide a respite from a restless condition.
When I tried to conceptualize how to discuss the writing tasks on chapter 6 in this week’s blog, the great Aamir Khan’s film helped to clarify my focus and that of 7-1 students. The exam on chapter 6 has been written and will be taken this week (Tuesday.) Students designed it, wrote it, and taught its content to their colleagues. The second phase of the assessment on chapter 6, the American Revolution, commences. This phase will be centered on writing, but will also force students to address several issues. With the writing assessment valued at 500 points, this moment of reckoning will have strong repercussions. Students will have to select one of five tasks to account for such a major component of their grade. Moreover, they will have to select from a field of tasks that will comprise some of the hardest yet faced by our scholars, now a trimester old in this schematic. Some of the tasks offered are new to students (Point of View Guides and A-B-C Summaries), while others are familiar but feature a wider scope of focus (Traditional Essays and Identifications and Pictures), and some are plain bizarre and could only come from the mind of an equally odd Social Studies teacher (Sam Adams’ Letter.) The tasks are demanding in both quality and quantity, as they will take two weeks to complete. Students of all levels will be pushed to their maximum level. Then, they will rest for two weeks, only to repeat the process of challenge again as they commence with the study of the formation of the Constitution, the document itself, and its implications in the modern setting.
I have always given a writing task to complement the study of the Revolution, yet I felt this one was different. I wanted to create a task that would match the value of the content, develop the conditions of a difficult choice within students, and also mirror the drive of what it means to be a middle school student. I feel confident that the tasks represent a solid conclusion note to our study of the Revolution. I believe that the meaning that will emerge will be the meaning that our students place to this formative event in American History. They will take ownership of the content and apply meaning to it, a component of the definition of the independent learner. In a larger sense, I believe that the tasks represent the essence of a middle school experience. Over the last few weeks, we, as professionals of Percy Julian Middle School, have had to do a great deal of soul searching about what it means to be middle level educator and how do we best carry such a powerful burden on our already broad shoulders. I believe that writing assessment on chapter 6 can serve as my answer to these questions. An examination of the writing tasks reveals how they can reach the elusive domain of “the middle school child.” These prompts are designed with different learning styles in mind, to the extent that the dominant learning style is declared at the start of each task. I have always believed that the middle school experience is akin to drawing a square and a smaller square within that one and repeating the process until one cannot do so any longer. A series of squares emerges as well as the presence of a corridor that seems to progress infinitely. I feel that the first square is what our children are like when they enter Julian for the first time in the main spine, desperately seeking their advisory teachers in their initial start to both the school year and their Middle School experience. Then, as they grow within this experience and reveal more of their persona, as more depth is added to their characters and psyches, the corridor gains in length and complexity. In the same way, I believe that the writing tasks on chapter 6 reflect the progression and process of walking through the corridor and adding more dimensions to it. Students will have to make choices as to who they are, in both learner and person, and then have to undergo the process of becoming what they hope to be. I cannot find a better description of the middle school experience. When one understands that this sensation as an experience that all of our 7-1 students will undergo together as a community of emerging scholars, yet on an insightfully meaningful level as individuals, one can only marvel at what will emerge on December 20, the deadline for all submissions.
Philosophers have struggled to articulate the aspect of duality within the human consciousness. This conception understands human existence as something that transpires on this earth, as beings of a planet bound by the needs of oxygen and the reality of gravity. Yet, it seems than an inevitable part of our identities is to split this consciousness with a desire for something more, something outside of the setting in which we are inevitably chained. Whether we are Plato’s children in the cave wondering about the light outside, or whether we are Sartrean offspring who sit in one train and see another one pass on an opposite track, seemingly moving much faster than we move, or whether we are Kunderian creatures trapped between the weight of existence and the unbearable lightness of being, human beings seem to be poised between equally desirable, yet ultimately incompatible courses of action. We understand that this is a part of our state of life, what Cervantes would undoubtedly call “La Mancha,” or “the stain.”
As dour as this might be, have no fear because Bollywood is here!
While this condition is a part of our “La Mancha,” Khan’s film of “Stars on Earth,” reminded me that embracing an education process where teaching and learning for all reign supreme could serve as a temporary respite from this pain of consciousness. We achieve our hopes in our reality. Students are the stars on earth, and our potential salvation to the pain of division inherent in consciousness. We see in our students the chance for them to become stars on earth, to bridge the gap between where we are and where we wish to be, to bring harmony to the dissonant tunes of Quixote and Sancho. When we design learning as contingent on education for all and all for education, we find some reprieve from the pain of our being, the pain of “La Mancha.” In their last writing assessment, many students suggested that we “are both Quixote and Sancho.” Indeed, the triad consisting of Khan’s film title “Taare Zameen Par,” or “Stars on Earth,” his notion of how education can be a liberating answer to the pain of consciousness, and the presence of a middle school environment predicated on the promises and possibilities for all are linked to one another and can provide a sense of hope within a seemingly hopeless condition. This triad, which emerges through the writing tasks of chapter 6, reminds us of how all songs sung in the garden of scholarship hold beauty, harmony, and melody.
We await to see what songs will be sung by our 7-1 nightingales.
Yours in song, wishing you all the best and happy hunting.
Mr. Kannan