Tidbits about Arvind Gupta and other great teachers.

Arvind’s father was an illiterate in a small town in UP. He ensured that his four children received a good education. He sent all of them to the best convent school in his town. Arvind was a bright student – but given his family background, he could not speak English. Mrs. Frey, his math teacher, realized that. She took it upon herself to teach him English – and sat down individually with him everyday – and made him read and speak. Arvind went on to IIT Kanpur. His elder brother and sister went on to become daughters. A great achievement – by his illiterate parents!

Arvind has translated 220 books into Hindi so far. His policy on uploading books – is not to ask for permissions – but to straight away put it up. He does get a lot of notices from people asking him to remove their books from the site – he replies to them – saying that the books are free downloads – and meant for reading by poor students, who cannot afford to buy them. Most of the times, his request is accepted. When it is not, he transfers these books to Google Drive. His  Google Drive link is viral – you can Google very easily for it! Subversion at its best.

One of the reasons Montessori schools are quite popular in India is that Maria Montessori actually spent 7 years of her life in India. She was based in Kala Kshetra, Chennai during the period of the second world war – to escape the Fascist government in Italy. The Sarabhai family started India’s first Montessori school in Ahmedabad. Gijubhai Badheka, of Divaswapna fame, was a contemporary of Montessori – who had to face a lot of flak from  her – as he borrowed her ideas and twisted them to suit Indian culture. Btw, Gijubhai was also in correspondence with Niall Fergusson of Summerhill fame – in order to exchange ideas about schooling. Recommended viewing – ‘The Temple on the Hill’, which features Badheka’s daughter – and she reminiscing about her father.

When Gijubhai Badheka was offered a grant to buy text books, he made a counter-offer. He said that I will buy one different book for each student. Later on he asked each parent to contribute one book each to the school library.

Arvind’s Recommended Books

Arvind rues the fact that there is no Public Library worth its name in Pune. (Idea: Why don’t we have monthly book reading or discussion clubs. We can organize one at Peepal Tree.) His recommended books:

• Totto Chan
• Diwaswapna
• The Hill of Harmony
• The Story of Ferdinand
• The Giving Tree
• The Parrot – Rabindranath Tagore
• Sudbury Valley School
• Free at Last – Rahul Alvarez (His dad runs the Other India Book store in Panjim)
• Muktangan – Anil Awchhad (Deepak is translating this into Punjabi. I need to visit with him – and invite him over to Ambala for a talk at the school.)
• Mahagiri – Kerala. Author PL Biswas?
• Preparation for Understanding – VSO Science Teacher’s Handbook.
• Math through Activities Talk by Arvind Gupta at Pt Ravi shankar University (1.5 lakh views)
• Passage to Freedom – Sugiyana – About how he issued 300 visas a day to Lithuanian Jews – and allowed them to escape the Nazis. This was in spite of his Bosses in Japan instructing him not to do it. He saved ten thousand Jews. Was sacked from the Foreign Service – and removed from his titular posts. Was honored later on for his great humanitarian work. Do not do what the boss tells you, do what your heart tells you to do.

Quotes from Arvind Gupta

• Not the word, but the world
• People are the soul of an organization.
• Trust your gut feel, not the expert.
• How does a teacher manage pressure in schools? Prioritize: The kids are always more important than the management. Always side with the kids in any battle. This is the way you become a better human being.
• Every school makes students say some prayers. Aur usme Bhagwan hi great hota hain, our humare saare students hote hain mitti ke putle. Are our kids really that worthless?
• A school is like a temple – full of rituals and educracies (educational bureaucracies). Q. How many of these rituals actually help learning?
• The paradox of a school – you want students to learn to communicate – with fingers on their lips.. Are we running schools or armies?
• All schools are ‘kaccha jails’. Koi Swabheemani bachchi school nahin jayegi.
• In PESA rankings, India comes at number 78 – out of a total of 79 countries. We only have Kazakhstan to look down upon!
• What is the purpose of a school? To help kids discover their passions. To recruit a teacher, ask her to discuss her passion.
• ‘I would rather be a happy taxi driver than a neurotic professor.’ – Niall Fergusson
• Either you can work for life or for death – Buddha
• People die at the age of 30, they are only cremated at 70!
• We are here to do God’s work on earth.
• Ideas are like seeds. They never die. They can be dormant – but can also germinate after 5,000 years.
• It takes 1 minute for children to evaluate a teacher.
• The question every teacher needs to find an answer to: ‘Bachchon ki Atma ko kaise chhuen?’
• Schools that don’t organize exams, are the ones that trust their teachers. A teacher can see from a child’s eye if she has understood.
• How does a teacher inculcate curiosity – ‘I will learn with you.’ A good teacher says to her students: ‘To hell with text books. I don’t know anything. Let’s discover it together.’
• Teachers should not get into the way of students, unless the students ask for it.
• A way to a child’s heart is through stories. A teacher needs to tell a child at least 2/3 stories a day. If you understand the story, then you can invent the dialogue.
• When you tell a story, your audience should not take notes. They can always reflect later.
• Children should choose their own teachers. (Surprising insight – they don’t choose teachers who are affectionate – they choose those who can skill them up in something.)
• The best books in India are by NCERT. Interesting reference article – NYT – ‘How India’s text books are getting reformed – the silent revolution.’ Btw, Arvind and Madhav Gadgil were parts of the textbook committee at NCERT.
• English is the language of opportunity.
• In Punjab the only culture is agriculture.
• Munshi Premchand was a school teacher – and later on an inspector of schools.
• Science is like swimming – unless you put your hands into it – you can’t get it.
• Every school should have a pond – and fish in it.
• Every school is a kachcha jail
• Wahi teacher ko zinda kahte hain, jo student se seekhta hain, nahin to mara huan hain, dafnaya baad main jaata hain.
• Not the word, but the world.
• Keep aids in every class – rubber bands, safety pins, rubber marbles, Colored paper.
• Get parents to teach one hour a week.
• Allan de Bottom – Religion for Atheists – TED talk
• Good physics teacher – Milind Marlankar
• Chemistry – Anirban Hazra – AISSER – IITB, Princeton
• NCERT textbooks are better.
• Gidden’s sociology
• Graphic novels – sociology
• School for Life – Film club
• Old refills are good replacements for matchstick experiments
• M Prakash joined IITK Mech program – his love for math made him shift to M.Sc (Math)
• Madhav Gadgil is a Ph.D. in Math and Ecology from Harvard. He was faculty at IISc for 30 years
• Anil Sadgopal is founder of the Hoshangabad Experiment.
• He approached BD Sharma, IAS batch of 1956 – who was then the education secretary of MP. Anil was allowed to do a 5 year experiment, where trainers came in from TIFR to work with 14 rural schools.
• DD Kosambi was a polyglot who knew 17 languages
• In his ‘Makers of Modern India’, Ramchandra Guha mentions 21 people, 6 of them are from Pune!
• In North India, the only culture is agriculture
• Should India pass the ‘Right to Fail’ Act?
• Science is always outside the classroom.
• Always invite those people first, who oppose you.
• Bring in the magicians, the dancers
• Suzy Tharu – was Arvind’s English teacher.
• In those days at IIT, in the 5 year course, there was one social science course every semester.
• They used to have a film club – and he ended up seeing some great films there.
• IITK also invited the best people to come talk on the campus
• Today’s education is a house of cards – no foundation.
• Chakmak – is a good Hindi magazine published from Bhopal
• You meet the most interesting people on the roads, and they are not the ones who give you their visiting cards!
• At the age of 50, I got a job thanks to Prof Yashpal, that I had not applied for. It was Idiot’s work – but the house was part of the deal. So I took it up. Saptahik Sakal covered me in 2003. Dr Vidula Mhaiskar and Ashok saw that article – and joined the team. The budget was Rs. 20 lakh – provided by the Tata Trusts. Today 22,000 downloads have happened from arvindguptatoys.com The youtube channel has had 44 m viewers. It is the second largest education channel in India.
• The greatest children’s literature in India is from Bengal.
• X Labs in Germany – is a bridge between High School and University.
• Always recruit faculty who is better than you.
• In the youtube videos the time is typically 2 minutes. Hands and activities are important – and faces are never shown. At the end of the video, a child is shown playing.
• NCERT books are good – thanks to the efforts of Krishna Kumar.
• For the EVS books, Madhav Gadgil was the editor. Narlikar for Science. These people chose their own teams.
• The Child’s language and teacher – by Krishna Kumar is worth reading.
• Arvind’s daughter, Dulari, had 3,000 books by the time she was in 6^th Standard.
• He has compiled all Newsberry awarded books (from 1922 onwards) in a CD.
• If people read good, they will write good.
• Caldycott Medal is given for the best illustrated children’s books.
• PK Srinivasan – Geometrical exercises of paper folding
• P Sundar Row – rectangle is given, using folding make me an angle of 60 degree.
• Creating rhombus, pentagon, tetrahedron – using folds.
• Unless a teacher makes it herself, her kids will never do it.
• We sell ideas.
• Gandhi would have loved the internet.
• We are not threatened by Gree
• First Principle in Math teaching – From Concrete to Abstract
• Second Principle – From Near to Far
• Tangrams – 7 Tukde, Kitne Mukhde
• There were some soaked up tiles – they were broken up – and walls were covered with them.
• Best book on education – ‘Teacher’ by Sylvia Ashton Warner. She worked with the Maoris in NZ. All objects in class were labeled with English words.
• Every child has a volcano inside, all it needs is a soft touch.
• The best learners are the best teachers.
• What is the word you want to learn today?
• For example – Drink.
• Conventional teachers will immediately start with making a sentence using drink. The better thing is to make pictures on drinking.
• Children should create books.
• Dangerous School by Paul Frere
• School is a war against the poor – written by 7 poor students guided by Don Gillani, a priest.

Chat with Arvind Gupta, Aug 2016

Had dinner with Arvind ji at the lovely Jain Hostel mess in Model colony. As we devoured the rotis laden with desi ghee, had a very stimulating chat, which I am putting down for my reference.

When Arvind Gupta first came to Pune in the late seventies, his first fascination was gliding. He would work third shifts at Telco, so that he could go for training in the mornings to the gliding club at Hadapsar. In fact he would take the bus from the company directly for Hadapsar. In 2 months he had already completed 33 flights. His instructor, Mr Tambe, was impressed by the diligence of this student, and gave him the opportunity to go solo on his 34^th flight. Arvind went on to do another 40 more! Having started his career with an automobile company, one would expect that Arvind would have worked on his car driving skills before he took to air. But our left-leaning friend had decided to be be-kaar, preferring walking and public transport. At the age of 62, he decided that he needed to pick up one more skill – so he started learning car driving.

Arvind has been influenced by Anil Sadgopal and Professor Yashpal to take the jump into education. Most people did not fall in love with science because it was more theory and little practice. Any experiments that got done in school, were done mostly as demonstrations by teachers. When he went to rural India to work, he started looking around in village markets to find out low cost stuff for his science toys. The real inspiration was putting together the cycle valve tube and matchstick, which was the genesis of www.ArvindGuptaToys.com .In the beginning, Arvind got a contract from Doordarshan where he was paid a royal sum of Rupees 49 per day to make films based on these toys. The program was called Tarang. Even today he meets people in their 40s. who remember him because of Tarang.

Arvind ji believes that the best toy raw material is what comes from waste. He has a tie-up with the Amul parlor in Model Colony. He collects used tetrapaks from them, washes them and uses them for his projects. A decade ago, he had written a scathing article on tetrapaks – and how they were one of the causes in the Mumbai floods. One of the managers at Tetrapak read his article and came down to meet with him. He discussed the recycling projects that Tetrapak was involved in. There are times when the ink registrations on the packing don’t come on well – and hundreds of kilo of waste is generated as a result. This waste goes to a guy in Panvel, who makes partition board out of it. Tetrapak also donated 150 kg of this waste to Arvind ji. During our meet, Arvind ji demonstrated how one can cut upon a tetrapak and use it as a folding drinking glass. It can also be used as a measuring jar. Get our students to measure the length, breadth and height – and confirm that lbh is 200 ml. Cutting this tetrapak in half will give you another measuring jar – this time of volume 100 ml! Another favorite discard for him nowadays is the plastic mineral water bottle. Here again he has found a benefactor in the form of a hotel which hosts conferences. Most guests are given 100 ml bottles – and the empty bottles are delivered to Arvind ji’s place!

Yet sometimes you have to buy material for toy building. On such occasions he prefers that the material be cheap. One such material is magnets. He sells magnets to kids at 2 Rs. Having bought a few hundred of them for Rs. 5 each, I was curious as to how he sells at such rates. Gupta ji confessed that his Baniya genes help. He has found a wholesaler in Delhi – who imports it in bulk from China. He remembers the shop being so small – that there is no space for a customer to enter the shop even. Yet the guy does a turnover of 20 lakhs a day! Arvind ji has been buying magnets from this guy – and even at 2 Rs., he is not indulging in charity. He has a booty of 5000 magnets lying in IUCAA. I have offered to purchase them at his charity rate!

I shared with Arvind ji our Lucknow experiment, where instead of using matchsticks for the 3d models, we used the Kharata (broom) sticks. Arvind ji is an old hand at these things – and he immediately agreed on the material superiority. The other advantage being that you can have many lengths available. I had assumed that these brooms are made from bamboo. But was informed that they are actually made from fronds of the coconut tree! Idea – we usually throw such things into waste – we can get students to make these sticks ourselves.

Was happy to note that Arvind ji is as much a Darya Ganj fan as I am. It is just his volume of purchases that puts me to shame. His daughter, Dulari, who is now doing her DM from Madras Medical College, had 3000 books in her collection – and would read at an awesome rate of 250 pages a day. Arvind ji himself has more than 10,000 books. I have a long way to catch up! His recommendation for my watching – is a TED talk by Psi Sahlberg. Psi is the brains behind the Finland education experiments. He has written an interesting book on those experiments – which is not so easily available in India. Arvind ji has promised to share this book sometime with me. He has also promised to share 80+ books on education through Google Drive.

I asked him the history of his website, which is loaded with an awesome number of books. He shifted to Pune in 2003 at the invitation of IUCAA. He was featured in a 23 page article that year in the Diwali issue of Sakal – which has a readership of more than 500,000. 2 people came to meet him the next day – Ashok and Vidula – who said simply that they wanted to work with him. After chatting with them, he realized that they were as passionate about children and toys as he was, so he wanted to hire them for his team. (Salaries were an abysmal 7,000 per month – and Vidula was a Ph.D. Incidentally, she is now director of Garware Bal Bhawan at Saras Baug.) IUCAA, being a sarkaari organization would have nothing of it. They insisted that these two be interviewed by their ‘expert’ panel. They did – and found both of them the best candidates for the jobs – and fortunately for Arvind ji – they were hired. IUCAA was also the place where he found people who could help him develop his uploading skills. He still remembers one benefactor in 2003 – who helped create an account for him with Balasai.net – and get 100 MB of free storage space. Using IUCAA’s super high speed internet connection – the uploads started at a book a day. And they have continued at that pace ever since!

The thumb rules that he uses while making these films. His face or anyone’s face, for that matter is never shown. He believes ideas are more important than people. The films are always short, because short films make for more views. And at the end of the film, there will always be the face of a different child enjoying the toy. The policy is to ensure that everything is free. Today on his website, apart from the thousands of films, there are also 10,000 books which are available for free downloads. Nowadays Arvind spends a lot of his energy in translating books. He himself does English to Hindi translation. And he has volunteers from across the world to help translate books from English to local languages. He is always on the lookout for volunteers, and will be more than happy to accept volunteers from the readers of this post.

Arvind ji is a big fan of paid one-week internships before finalizing hiring. Arvind ji believes that the ratio of interns to offers should be about 8 : 1. Asking the person to work for a week tells you a lot about the person. He remembers an occasion where there was a dalit girl who did not do too well in an interview for a position at IUCAA. There were a total of 15 applicants. All were called the next day. They were shown a video about making a flexagon – and then were asked to make one. This girl was a head and shoulder above everybody else – when it came to working with her hands. If it were an interview alone, she would have been rejected – but she was selected because the additional time gave her opportunities to show her talents.

As a corollary, it would also give the candidates opportunities to reveal their true colors. For example, are they really team-players? How good are they at learning new things? How honest are they in their dealings with others? I remember asking my colleague this question when we were debating about a prospective business partner: ‘When we are visiting Lucknow next year for our partner’s meet, would it be Ok, if this guy was your room-partner?’ His answer was in the negative – and we decided not to work with this guy!

Another perspective of interviewing teachers comes from Krishna Kumar, the chairman of NCERT. He believes that teachers have to have interests. The task of the interviewer is to probe to find out if the interest is a genuine one. He believes that this interest would get transferred to her students – and it is important that it should happen. A teacher without any interests is not worth recruiting! My daughter asked Arvind ji that what is your interest – apart from toys. He mentioned trees. He would take his daughter around Pune university for hours and tell her what is interesting about trees. There are two baobab trees at Pune university – one is an ancient one opposite the main building. The second has been planted in the IUCAA campus by Arvind ji!

We ended with a discussion on how to enthuse teachers to switch to activity based learning. Arvind ji believes in the law of averages. In the barrenness of the fields of education, he thinks it his job is to spread fist fulls of mulch – through his books, toys and videos. There will always be some teachers who will lap it up – they could be in Botswana, Vietnam or Khed Shivapur. His recommendation for Peepal Tree was that we should get our teachers to first make toys themselves. Only then could we expect them to make their students work on the same. One insight into creativity that I got from him. Always start the day with good music. That’s what they used to do it during the IUCAA days. He believes he is not a good scientist, but a great documentor. Here’s wishing him a good long life, which can serve as an exemplary documentary for the rest of us.

You can access Arvind Gupta’s treasure trove of books and videos on www.arvindguptatoys.com