Completing one year of Verbattle Club activities and getting set to start the next year, beginning 1st September, I had to ask a few questions to myself with a purpose to know and understand the Club and its activities better. It was also a great opportunity to recollect memories and summarize the deliberations. ,

The first year was momentous, for the precise reason of being the year of inception but in no way a tremendous success because expecting at least a thousand children to enroll and at least twenty schools to participate was just a dream.

We had about two hundred admissions and that itself was a good beginning if one were to not forget the fact  that the Club was just in its concept state. Things were fine in the beginning apart from a few irritations – a parent pulling out his child because the parent was not allowed to sit and watch the conduct of the class, another parent arguing about not seeing her child being given enough scope and stage presence, overall it was a beginning that happened with a lot of enthusiasm and interest.

In the first few classes some children just sat there watching the proceedings, and some even carried the eternal smirk on their face that is so common these days and offensive but one has no option and needs to get used to. Most were very enthusiastic and were trying their best to be active. Children respond better to activities of physical involvement than a lecture or even an intellectual interaction. It may be quite different when Dr. Abdul Kalam is interacting with children but that is a rare occasion and the special air to that kind of an  event makes it even more interesting to a child.

The first few classes had more of my talking and much more talking by some others. I could see a marked change in response from class to class and in some cases even from activity to activity. While children whether interested or not participated actively in a group task or a collective engagement, some were also seen yawning, chatting with neighbours and in some cases even dozing off during some talks.

The session for electing leaders in a group was the turning point. The groups were constituted as per the wish of its members that friends formed their own groups and identified themselves and even selected a leader. But, when on the stage the members were asked to talk about the leader of their group and were even given the opportunity to express dissatisfaction about the selection, the daggers were drawn and surprises started springing up.

After that session most groups fell apart and the leaders had to be changed and some students stopped coming to the classes there after. One day one particular child started crying after I made a remark about him. The remark was made in total good faith and in keeping with the values of Verbattle, that of honesty and truth, but it did not look like the bitter pill had worked, and I was not ready to sugar coat. There were some comforting him after that and some adding fuel to the fire. I am sure it lead to a lot of politics and some reminder of ‘The Lord of the Flies’ by William Golding.

Then, for a while the club sessions became a touring talkies with classes being held in different places till we settled down to holding it more regularly in a school auditorium, thanks to Dr. Panduranga Setty, a wellknown philanthropist and educationist. The classes would start at 2 pm and end a little after 5 pm. The most enthusiastic ones of the beginning had dropped out and the ones who were thought as the most difficult to handle because of their reticence, diffidence and impudence were the ones who started participating more actively. Though  the students came from five different schools only the ITI central school students sat in a group and other mixed more freely. Little Kunjal and her brother the only two independent members of the Club were in demand by any group all the time and the camaraderie slowly set in.

I attended some classes while most were handled by the mentor teachers and the representatives from Verbattle. The classes most often started in a context, either with me talking about a certain incident or a certain behaviour of the students or any other common or noticeable happening and would move on to a more profound discussion in relation to the incident and the discuss. This would ultimately touch upon a very important value, conduct or  thought and would invariably end in a thorough summarization of the whole interaction. I found these sessions very natural, evolving gradually and extremely easy and comfortable for children to learn from.

The class could start in any way, sometimes it may have started with taking suggestions about how to get the members to be more punctual and then the discussion would have moved onto a more important topic like discipline and may have ended up by understanding governance and the  rule of law. While the whole proposition itself may look very complex and over the head with reference to children, the whole process, conducted logically, step by step, by taking the whole class’s interest and confidence into account ends up as a great learning exercise where even the most unprepared child would gain something from.

The classes involved expressions from songs to drama to debate and from subjects ranging from understanding the self to international politics. Fantastic but true.
Never a class’s benefit was evaluated with a test or an exam but by drawing the knowledge gathered  to be related to another discussion in a different class. Students would recollect the knowledge sharing from a previous class of a different or related subject, which worked not only as an  act to recollect and re-establish the knowledge but also to help those children who missed the class to gain from other’s recollection. Since it became a process where once again the knowledge is recollected and related with reference to a real life situation and requirement, it would become easy for most children to understand the knowledge as a necessity than an item to be remembered as academic information.

Some of the activities were rendered ineffective and incomplete particularly because the follow up activity was not done because of the members’ absence in a subsequent class. Most activities were well planned and were expected to deliver results but the various factors affecting the students participation or non participation made us abandon many efforts with a heavy heart.

The summer camp was a unique experience for children in the club as most of the speakers were professionals and had not much experience in addressing school children before. But, all the consultant speakers came with freshness in their thought and a fine approach that children enjoyed the classes of these gentlemen who were extremely kind to them and explained their subjects in way that every child understood by frequently talking questions and clearing doubts. Every child who attended the summer camp got involved to such an extent that it became a great source from which they remembered not only the things that they learnt but also about how they learnt it and from whom they learnt it.

Over the year, the two hundred strong membership had thinned down to a regular  fifty to sixty attendance. While some were religiously regular, and reached before all and left after everyone was gone, there were others who really came in to become leaders, but like it should be, they were so good, popular and  wanted in other activities too, that they had to be in so many other places at the same time and missed the Club classes many times. It could do with the  hazards of capability.

I have gone beyond the point of blaming either the children, the school or the parents for the members poor attendance but have some thing to lament about those who left the Club because it was not interesting enough.

Recently a parent asked whether there was something in my approach that made a lot of children leave. I said, ‘ yes the approach was bad and it would become worse from the second year, because Verbattle Club was not for everyone.’ Only the ones with the staying power would stay. Everyone cannot be a leader and someone who wants to be a leader should know before anything else that all is not same, everyone is not the same and every class is not the same. Most importantly a leader of people must know that life itself in most parts is extremely boring and one needs to live it meaningfully.

Verbattle Club is not an entertainment club where children come to enjoy. For that matter like  psychologist Dr. Sujendra Prakash said ‘entertainment is a less intelligent activity because an intelligent person knows to enjoy even when there is no entertainment.’. Verbattle Club would not fool a child into making him or her believe that everything can be made entertaining. Childen of the club are more intelligent and more capable of making decisions, discerning and understanding that entertaining them for the sake of keeping them committed to a class would be like insulting their cerebral abilities. That is why I rudely told someone that children who need entertainment could go to a circus and not come to Verbattle Club.