13 July 2009
Fifteen-year-old Tanu Garg thought she knew all about the British. She had read in her history books how the British came to India hundreds of years ago to trade and made off with the best of the country’s resources.
If you’d asked Tanu last year what images sprang to mind at the word 'UK', she would also have said good roads, funny dress sense, double decker buses and the royal family. But her school’s partnership with a secondary school in leafy West Sussex has changed all that.
Thanks to an exchange programme with a Sussex school through DFID's Global Schools Partnership scheme, Tanu and her friends have had plenty of access to the real, modern Great Britain. Her teachers have visited the UK and brought back substantial changes to their teaching methods.
British teachers have come to Chennai too, and she has been sharing her learning on global issues with students in the UK through the web.
Life at Little Flower
Tanu has been profoundly deaf since birth, so her parents were pleased to be able to send her to Little Flower Convent school, which is set up specifically for the deaf and hard of hearing. There they teach a 'total communication' method which means the children do not use sign language exclusively, but are taught how to lip-read and speak too.
The teachers say it’s highly important for them to fit in with mainstream culture as much as possible. Total communication teaching is seen as the way to achieve this in India. The disability does not hinder communication with the English students however. They use all kinds of technology to reach each other.
Cultural interaction
The news is a passion for Tanu. As part of its citizenship class, Little Flower students at her age have a daily 10 minute catch up with the newspapers to keep abreast of developments, such as the recent Indian election and swine flu pandemic. In her spare time she can be found reading more papers, using the web, reading books and doing language practice.
Her favourite joint projects with Warden Park include one called “Rights and Responsibilities” which investigates human rights and one on maths. “I love the logic of maths and being able to use the web to prove things,” she says. When she’s older, she’d like to be a computer engineer.
“Since the partnership began, I know so much more about England. I want to know even more now,” she says.
Tanu lives with her parents, brother and sister in a big apartment block in the Kilpauk district of central Chennai.
Looking out over the city from the roof of her building, her father BK reflects on the changes he has seen. “I am originally from the northern state of Haryana, and I came to Chennai in the 1980s to run contracts to the railway transportation industry. Ten years ago, these very big buildings were not there. But now we are seeing progress as a nation.”
In a changing India, he and Tanu’s mother Renu are happy that she is getting contact with another country. “Naturally it is good for children to interact culturally with another school.
It’s good to find out about each other and find out what the lifestyle is like: what we have and what the differences are,” explains BK. “It’s very positive. If they talk or do or see something about the UK, it’s better understood. It’s better to have contact than just to read about it.”
No doubt there are some interesting conversations still to be had about the UK and India’s shared past, but Tanu is better equipped than ever.