How dreams are squashed

The past week has been a period of highs and lows that immediately followed the highs, that eventually ended in a harrowing climax.

This is to do with my dear FLL team of five. This super team was selected to compete in the Taiwan International Championship.

The issue of travel expenses was very altruistically taken care of by my company. The CR team was extremely generous and agile to negotiate and get funds for us. This was just fantastic, as our company usually sponsored the team that came first.

When we broke the kids, the kids were super excited. The school - the headmaster and the teachers, also appeared excited, but with some reservation. Why?

They also wanted to check if one of them can also travel to Taiwan (of course, the headmaster gets the priority).

The reason is that they wanted to ensure the safety of the kids. This is extremely essential, as this is the kids' first international travel - You know, how parents became extremely anxious even for a short trip out of school.

This seemed fine, though there was no real need for the teachers to travel, as we three mentors would be accompanying the kids anyway.

'Oh great!', said the headmaster, 'so your company will pay for the teacher as well, right?'

Oh yeah, so that’s how it was?! But that’s not possible – the teachers have, technically, no role in the FLL competition. And these teachers, absolutely had no role, except that they allowed the kids to participate in the competition. We told the teachers that this would not be difficult. They weren’t pleased:

Hmm, well in that case, things will be difficult.

You see, these parents are extremely anxious about their kids. And this is an international trip, travel by air (to note: None of the teachers have travelled in flights), so they might not really agree.

("Teacher, you remember the trip to Mysore and the 150 odd phone calls that came to us from parents, when something wrong happened to some kid?" Well, that just indicates that you aren't the right person to take care of kids isn't it?! Wrong example, perhaps?!)

And in fact, we already have 'tried convincing' the parents. The first question that they asked was in fact, 'Sir, are you also travelling? Or is Madam travelling? If not, we don’t want to send our kids.'

(The madam is always with a long, rounded stick with which she knocks on students’ heads. Parents want her to be the kids’ guardian? Oh perhaps, she uses the stick to rattle students' brains and put it good work?!)

We told them - see, we are not travelling. But that’s not something to worry about, as the company guys are going. But don't hold us responsible for all the (bad) things that might happen in Taiwan. We can't also ask the company people as we're completely out of the picture (That's some great convincing!).

So its not us, you see. We're all happy for our kids. But the parents will not let the kids travel without us ("Teacher, you remember the trip to....")

The teachers’ intention was clearly very clear. They were asking us what’s in there for them.

We tried speaking to the parents. They turned out to be people in the landscape that the teachers had painted. But I wouldn’t blame them, as it was apparent that the teachers have very clearly impressed on them their motivations(One of the teachers who tried convincing the parents was promptly asked if he didn’t have a class to attend to (instead of spoiling the fortune for the great teachers).)

There, that was how an opportunity that has all the potential to change the lives of five kids forever, was grounded down, because of a group of teachers wanted to have a free take-off.

So, what became of those people in that noble profession of teaching? Don’t I consider some of my teachers, if not all, as not just subject experts, but teachers of life-lessons? Didn't I want to emulate them? Is it not true that I still remember them with admiration and respect and as persons of great personal integrity?!

What happened to all of them? What happened to the idea of ‘Maatha, Pitha, Guru, Deivam’?

Somehow, it’s very difficult to accept the teachers’ wish as that of people who have never had the opportunity to travel abroad and let this go. Especially, when these teachers had never made any effort to understand this competition; even when the India finals happened in our own office campus, just a few minutes away from the school. If they had earlier thought that their responsibility stopped with allowing the kids to participate, I guess they should stick to that responsibility now as well.

It was so heart-breaking to see the excitement in the kids’ face fade into a sad helplessness.

I might get pas this experience , but I do pray that they break out of this shroud and the path, of following their parents, of becoming daily wage labourers.

PS: I have skipped the episodes where we tried taking up the case of the teachers with our benefactors in our company. They didn’t see any reason (very rightly so) why the company should sponsor. I have skipped the number of iterations we had with the school. Today, the CR department advised us to stop– they felt that the teachers might trouble the kids in the future, even if we coerce them to let them go now.

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen..

Sometime ago, I had the opportunity of training 5 kids for the FLL robotics competition, along with two other colleagues (What's FLL?).

Since it’s a robotics competition, competing kids/ teams need a flair for computer programming, concepts of motors, gears, sensors etc. And it needs loads of creativity to evolve approaches and design a robot to accomplish the mission.

Given this skill set, teams are typically formed with kids in their 6^th, 7^th or 8^th standards, and who have exposure to computers (usually have computers at home and probably play a Nintendo or an Xbox). The competition also requires them to be fluent and confident articulators. Therefore, it’s not unexpected that the contest is usually between kids from schools of the upper echelon.

However, we decided that we will not go the road oft travelled – we wanted to give this exposure to young students who wouldn't otherwise have access to such things as computers, robotics and programming. So we formed our team with five young students from class 6 and 7, from a Government school, located in a small village-like locality behind our office campus.

The school caters to the nearby community of, mostly, daily wage labourers working in the huge and multitude constructions happening around. Some of them work as cleaners and other such jobs in my office.

The school was not badly maintained. The teachers intended well. But yes, they had limitations to what they could wish and aspire for their children.

The kids chosen for our team did not have exposure to computers or programming. This, we had somehow expected. Since the school was a Kannada-medium school, they couldn’t speak much English as well. This was a problem, as two of us, including me cannot go beyond ‘Kannada gothuilla’. Nevertheless, we decided to give this a try.

We devised a three-fold curriculum to train the kids on basics of computers, basic English and presentation skills and of course, the robotics programming.

Amid several disruptions to our coaching (due to personal and official reasons), we ploughed ahead, slowly, but definitely not steadily.

The kids became quite familiar with computers (we used to watch other FLL videos in Youtube. And that became their favourite website!). They became adept in making ‘speeches’ – very often surprising us with little snippets that added that extra zing and acumen to their presentations. They had also lots of presence of mind to include changes that we suggested, very naturally in their presentations.

By the time it was time for the India finals, we were confident that we will put up a very decent performance.

But the competition day turned out to be even greater an experience. The kids sizzled with their performance. They zipped through the team work evaluation, technical presentation, as well as the project presentation. In each of these rounds, they were well received by the judges, who were impressed by the kids’ brilliance. Our robot too, in spite of some initial hiccups with the light sensor, ultimately accomplished all the tasks for which it had been designed.

We realized that our team was on par with many other contesting teams. Our team also became a favourite with the crowd.

We were informed that we are one of the top contenders for the top four awards. Despite strong competition from other teams, the sentiment was so loud and positive that we were very hopeful that we will walk away with at least one of the awards.

But we didn’t win any. We felt disappointed, especially for the kids, who were very hopeful that they would win. They were hoping to travel by flights and see more of the World.

But I was happy and content for several reasons.

The kids now understood computers, programming and robotics. They could understand simple English conversations and reply back. They had broken several boundaries and set a higher aspiration for their school.

Recently, we had been to their school and the reception we got made us feel very humble. We were treated like celebrities – the entire school was assembled, we were felicitated and every child in the school wanted to shake hands with us.

More than that, we three coaches had matured by a huge measure.

Several times during our coaching, we were limited by our own ‘admission to reality’ that we had been extremely idealistic in selecting kids from such a background. Often we had to fight off our own disbelief that we will not get anywhere.

And what helped us in fighting this attitude, was the kids’ intelligence, energy and enthusiasm. They were as bright and enthusiastic as we wanted them to be, grasping new knowledge, as they say in Tamil, as camphor catches fire. (During the India finals, they were quite impressed with another team singing Queen’s ‘We will rock you’. They wanted to learn that song and sing like them. So they did!)

And they were never apologetic or coy about their economic conditions. They were aware of their background but never carried it with them. They had higher aspirations and wanted much from life. This, I’m sure, will take them higher.

I hope and pray that they stay and grow like this, and get all the right opportunities and never have to ‘blush unseen and waste their sweetness on the desert air’.

The twist: I just got to know last week that my team has been selected for the FLL event in Taiwan in April (It looks like we stood 4^th in the overall India ranking. Not bad at all!)