Testing the Yodigo computer-base literacy system in India near Madurai — 2009
Oliver Zielke's Journal
Oliver Zielke with two students
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There’s a strong wind as I ride my moped out to the country school where I'm testing Yodigo, 30 km from Madurai, but it’s a hot wind, like what hits you when you open the oven door and peer in, only constant. I see a man riding his bicycle, a live goat tied on to his back carrier, the usually cute goat face showing terror, its head moving in slow circles. Maybe its prolonged pain will be balanced by a joyful feast of mutton biryani at a wedding later. I notice a small boy walking on the dusty roadside, holding his mother’s hand. I watch him stumble on a rock, and pick himself up. His mother gives him a hard whack on the head, and yells at him, is still yelling at him after I pass them, looking back. In my computer class, I scold a girl who has slapped another girl on the head. But then the teacher comes into the room, and starts whacking kids, hard, as a form of greeting...
The rural “Government School”, as they are known—no family with even a little money would send their child here, these are mostly Dalits (“untouchables”) and other “castes”—is like an army compound, concrete bunkers spread across a huge area the size of two football fields. A trio of goats lie under a tree, one nonchalantly crossing its legs in front of itself. The classrooms are jammed, sixty, seventy kids in stark concrete rooms, three to a desk and cross-legged on the floor, while a teacher writes on the chalk board. The twenty kids selected to “play with” Yodigo are looked at with envy by groups of other kids looking in from the doorway. Sad that I have to keep kicking out ones trying to sneak in. There will never be enough laptops.
Three girls at CCD working with the Yodigo system of learning.
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From home I get reports of my kids ennui and my friend’s kids hedonistic pursuits and tragedies. Here, these twenty teens are burning hard with eagerness and desire to learn and participate in the small vestige of affluence I’ve brought into their life. Yet there is a lightness too, they are not frantic, but rather full of smiles and patience and respect. One boy, Pandian, seems to really “get” the Yodigo lessons, and I sit with him for awhile, and witness that extraordinary process of a child actually learning, in real-time, here, in front of me—mouthing out words, whole sentences, intently finding spelling errors and missing prepositions, moving through multiple stories. And another amazing thing to witness—his laughing and obvious enjoyment at fixing the errors, because after all, Yodigo is a game, this is play, and play is fun and entertaining. He would never stop, just sit and learn all day, every day, if he had the opportunity. I’m convinced.
I thank and say good bye to the Headmaster, who keeps staring into my eyes, and then averting his gaze, like he wants to catch a glimpse of some jewel that he thinks I’m hiding from him. He should know my fears and doubts! Pandian is shadowing me every step as I make my way to leave. I am surrounded by dozens of kids from my class and from the village nearby who know my from the Saturday drop-in I ran in their village. There is a loud clamour of “thank-you sir” and “good-bye sir”. Pandian reaches for my hand, looks at me with a smile and those watery Tamil eyes, and says, “My name is Pandian, sir”. Yes, I will remember you Pandian. Now it’s a mob scene befitting Brad Pitt, and I just want to escape the density of humanity. I wave back as I zoom away.
