Teaching and Learning

- by Deepa Krishnan

These days we're doing a training / sensitization series at my office. It is a summer program for young people who work in the tourism industry in Mumbai.

We're discussing a wide range of topics - caste, gender, education, legal system, history, architecture, and so on. The idea is to help these students speak with some level of depth about these issues. They meet and interact with many tourists each month - so it is very useful for them.

I have myself also been enjoying these discussions on social, economic and political issues. And I'm looking forward to more of them. We have three interns this year, students from St Xavier's College (including my daughter Aishwarya!). They're helping to research topics and they're conducting the sessions. I'm the moderator, sort of.

There is lots of participation. I love the dynamics, and especially I love way learning works when there's discussion and fun, and most importantly, when everyone is sharing their own life experiences. I was glad to see the sort of questions that came up in the discussions on caste and gender. I'm learning lots of new stuff myself.