PVK Blog ‘The English Audio Club: A Final Report and an Assessment’

Introductory Note. From almost the earliest years of my teaching career I used to plan, prepare and conduct what I used to think were useful extra-curricular activities. It included the most rewarding chairmanship of ‘The Arts College English Rhetoric Society’ at the Government Arts College from September 1983 to the final term of the academic year 1987, when I was transferred to the Government College for Women.

Some of my best friends are students I befriended and from whom I have learned so much over the years. There are many of them. In some later post or posts I will name them and talk about them. For this blog I will mention just two names – Sankar Krishnan and Sridhar Radhakrishnan.

I began running a different kind of extra-mural activity in 2000 at the Government Victoria College, Palghat in 2000.

Later, I resumed holding these sessions at the Government College for Women in Trivandrum. I ran it from July 2002 to February 2011.

It gave me more pleasure than most of the other activities I used to organize and supervise – holding quizzes, debates, elocution competitions and so on.

This blog post is the full report and assessment of ‘The English Audio Club’ that I prepared around the time I retired. Sadly, no one at the Government College for Women was willing to take up this or any similar activity. So while it died a natural death, I still carry with me heart-warming experiences of running it. The warmth and enthusiasm of the students who attended and the genuine feeling of joy that permeated all of the meetings is something I still carry with me.

Here is the final report and assessment. I must admit that it is rather bloodless and neutral sounding. One of my best friends Sankar Krishnan commented on reading it that it was like some bureaucrat’s report.

Well, that was the way I wrote it and I will reproduce it in full. It includes statistics about the meetings and appendixes that had copies of the scripts I distributed before the meetings started.

There is also a report that a former mentee of mine, Ms Shradha Sreejaya, wrote about the meetings in an online journal then published from Trivandrum called ‘Yenta’.

Please take a look. It sounded better than it reads. J

The English Audio Club

Government College for Women

Thiruvananthapuram

The English Audio Club: An Experiment in Teaching English and Ideas

Final Report and Assessment

The English Audio Club (EAC), a forum for student support that first met on 27 October 2000, had these broad aims:

to help students improve their competence in English
to introduce movements of thought and culture and
to inculcate in students the values of intellectual curiosity, tolerance, healthy scepticism and broad-mindedness.

The EAC was active in the Government Victoria College, Palakkad from 27 October 2000 to 7 September 2001. It resumed its activities in the Government College for Women, Thiruvananthapuram on 5 July 2002 and was wound up on 4 February 2011. The Club was thought of, organised and conducted by P. Vijaya Kumar, who worked as a teacher of English in these two colleges during these periods.

Background.

This teaching extension programme was conceived and put in place based on a realisation that there was a marked fall in standards of English and in creative education in the arts and science colleges of the State. An indifference to prescribed English text books and a perceptible decline in the ability of students to engage with ideas, including those of vital importance to society like questions of environmental degradation or social change, strengthened this realisation. The English Audio Club, it was thought, would address these problems and stimulate the interest of at least some students both in improving their English and in learning how to handle ideas. The non-formal nature of the programme and the nature of the materials chosen, it was hoped, would attract students to it. Though designed for undergraduates it was believed that all students could benefit from participation in its activities. The EAC was meant to supplement and not replace conventional class room teaching.

The following is a summary and assessment of the activities of The English Audio Club. It is divided into four sections; I) Aims and methods II) Conduct and activities III) Assessment and conclusions and IV) Appendix.

I. Aims and Methods

The specific aims of the English Audio Club were:

to expose students to the rich and diverse world of audio recordings
to enhance their linguistic ability
to introduce them to important cultural and historical movements
to supplement their reading of important texts by providing students exposure to complementary audio material
to enhance their appreciation of literature
to generate interest and curiosity and broaden their view of society
to encourage students to read good books and
to demonstrate that it was possible to conduct meaningful extra-curricular activities with the minimum of expense and fuss

The EAC was open to all the students and teachers of the college and met on selected Friday afternoons between 1 p.m. and 2 p.m. at a convenient place in the campus. The timing ensured that no classes were lost or any academic programme disrupted by its activities. Notices were distributed in advance, giving details of meetings, so that all who were interested could attend.

The EAC’s motto “Listen and Learn” emphasises both the importance given to content and the chosen technique of learning by listening to material that was recorded, read or spoken.

Each session focussed on a central idea. The presentation, by the teacher, was based on the lecture method. This usually involved presenting an argument or describing a situation. Material appropriate to the selected theme was presented in a planned sequence. Recordings of poems, songs, speeches, interviews or excerpts from other kinds of literary works were played for the listeners. Where recordings were not available the selected pieces were read out, either by student volunteers or by the Convenor himself. Virtually all the material was from outside the University syllabus.

Printed scripts, with the texts of all the material to be used, were distributed to all attendees. The scripts often contained a list of recommendations. These were mostly books relevant to the theme. Sometimes other sources, like web sites or films, were also listed. An important, but unstated, purpose of the programme was to attract students to books and reading. On some occasions the texts were projected using an OHP.

During the class tips on vocabulary, pronunciation, usage, grammar and other aspects of language were given.

II. Conduct and activities.

The Club held 106 meetings on 73 different themes. Each meeting lasted one hour. (Of these 87 were held at the Government College for Women, Thiruvananthapuram.) Notices announcing each meeting were displayed, several days in advance, on ten notice boards in the campus. Apart from details like the theme, date, time, venue and the selected pieces the programme notice contained a short introduction to the topic of the meeting. Every one was invited but participation was voluntary.

Each meeting began with an introduction to the theme. This would be followed by an introduction to the first selected recording. The piece would sometimes be played a second time after explanations of difficult usages or allusions were given. The narrative would be resumed after one piece was played and before the next one. The argument or description would continue till a conclusion summed up the main ideas explored during the meeting. Comments were also offered on the list of recommendations. Where recordings were not available the Convenor or a volunteer student read out the piece. Students were encouraged to ask questions after a meeting. Indeed they often returned with comments or with questions seeking some piece of information.

In the last two years of its activities a feature called “Speak Out” was introduced. During this segment students were given time to comment on any aspect of a meeting they wanted to speak about. Only a small number of students availed the chance to speak out, but the feature was appreciated by all.

Students were encouraged to suggest themes or select poems or songs to be played. Though several students came up with suggestions only one student actually made a presentation. (Ms Nazia R Hassan made this presentation – on teachers and teaching – on 29/01/2010.) During 2004-05 students were asked to prepare book reports to be read at the start of meetings. Ms Sruthi J. S. read a report on Abdul Kalam’s Wings of Fire.

Certain special meetings were held. They were meant to cater to specific batches of students. For instance, II BA English Main students of 2008-09 listened to a recording of Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” followed by a lecture on it. In 2008 a session titled “The Great War” was repeated for the students of III BA History at their request.

During 2005-06 some meetings were redone a second time. During the repeat the focus was on English language teaching. All the material used in the previous meeting would be used, with an emphasis on learning grammar and usage and on developing vocabulary. On all other occasions language teaching was integrated into the meeting.

Records of all the meetings with, in almost all cases, copies of the scripts distributed, are maintained in the Department of English. Attendance sheets with the signatures of the students have also been preserved. Consolidated details are given as appendixes.

III. Assessment and conclusions.

The impact of the club was measured through informal feedback and attendance figures. The feedback from student attendees was very positive. Since attendance was voluntary the figures given in the appendix are clearly indicative of the interest generated in students for this form of learning. Attendance figures were generally encouraging. Some patterns have emerged. Every year, attendance drops in the third term. The number of student attendees doing subjects other than English literature declined in 2010-’11. The reason for this decline in interest is not known.

The content oriented, lecture mode of the English Audio Club has, it is felt, made the club obsolete. Attendance figures clearly indicate that students doing FDP in 2010-2011 are not enthused by either. This has to be seen in the context of the practical outlawing of lecture based teaching by both the UGC and the University of Kerala.

In conclusion it must be stated that the English Audio Club has played a modest role in the education of the students who attended it. But such methods of teaching will have almost no importance in the future since newer modes of teaching are being adopted in which case it might be best to stop this form of activity. Teachers of English will probably find it more rewarding to direct their energies to newer modes of teaching if indeed teaching has to be carried on in colleges.

It is felt strongly that the abandonment of content and the adoption of a test-oriented and stress filled pedagogy – both of which hurt language teaching – could be extremely damaging to the interests of the students of Kerala in the long run especially since English is not their mother tongue and it takes time to acquire English language skills. The damage will be particularly severe in the humanities and in the teaching of social sciences and of some consequence in the teaching of basic sciences too. Unless educational planners are alert to the damage being done there is little hope of redeeming the situation.

IV. Appendix (a) Tables and charts

Figures cannot capture the quality or atmosphere of the activities of the EAC. However these tables and charts, it is hoped, will give an indication of the nature of the meetings. The appendix section is divided into five. ‘A’ statistical tables, ‘b’ list of meetings, ‘c’ a sample notice, ‘d’ a sample script and ‘e’ a report on the EAC written by a student attendee that appeared on the website Yenta.com. (The notice and script are of the final meeting of the Club.)

Details of only the meetings held at the Government College for Women, Thiruvananthapuram are indicated.

1. Table showing details of attendance in numbers

Academic Year	No of meets	Total Attend- ees	Details of students who attended								Tea- chers	Guests
			Total students	UG					PG
			Total students	Details of UG students					Details
				Total UG	BA	B Com	B Sc	Eng Lit	Tot- al	Eng Lit
2002-03	6	251	239	223	197	0	26	162	16	16	12	0
2003-04	1	33	32	27	23	0	4	23	5	5	1	0
2004-05	14	379	358	336	194	0	142	136	22	13	18	3
2005-06	11	247	236	183	91	0	92	36	53	53	11	0
2006-07	7	278	261	253	213	0	40	171	8	8	17	0
2007-08	12	287	270	207	138	13	56	95	63	63	16	1
2008-09	15	451	430	322	217	8	97	193	108	105	17	4
2009-10	11	474	434	395	292	0	103	269	39	27	32	8
2010-11	10	291	234	139	124	0	15	113	95	89	40	17
All years	87	2691	2494	2085	1489	21	575	1198	409	379	164	33

2. Table showing details of attendance in percentages

Academic Year	No of meets	Total Attend-ees	Details of students who attended (in percentages)								Tea- chers	Gu- es- ts	Total Eng Lit Stu:s
			All students	UG					PG		% of total	% of total
			All students	Details of UG students – in %					Details		% of total	% of total
	Total No:s	Total No:s	% of total	Total UG (% of students)	BA (% of UG students)	B Com (% of UG)	B Sc (% of UG)	Eng Lit (% of UG)	Total PG. (% of all Stu:s)	Eng Lit (% of PG)			% of students
2002-03	6	251	95.2	93.3	88.3	0	11.7	72.6	6.7	100	4.8	0	74.5
2003-04	1	33	97	84.4	85.2	0	14.8	100	15.6	100	3	0	87.5
2004-05	14	379	94.4	93.9	57.7	0	42.3	40.5	6.1	59	4.7	.8	41.6
2005-06	11	247	95.5	77.5	49.7	0	50.3	19.7	22.4	100	4.5	0	37.7
2006-07	7	278	93.9	96.9	84.2	0	15.8	67.6	3.1	100	6.1	0	68.6
2007-08	12	287	94.1	76.7	66.7	6.3	27	35.2	23.3	100	5.6	.3	58.5
2008-09	15	451	95.3	74.9	67.4	2.5	30.1	59.9	25.1	97.2	3.8	.9	69.3
2009-10	11	474	91.5	91.2	73.9	0	26.1	68.1	8.98	69.2	6.8	1.7	68.2
2010-11	10	291	80.4	59.4	89.2	0	10.8	81.3	40.6	93.7	13.7	5.8	86.3
All years	87	2691	92.7	83.6	71.4	1	27.6	57.5	16.4	92.6	6.1	1.2	63.2

3. Table and chart showing year-wise attendance figures of UG students.

Year	I DC	II DC	III DC	Total
2002-‘03	14	150	59	223
2003-‘04	4	3	20	27
2004-‘05	68	179	89	336
2005-‘06	56	92	35	183
2006-‘07	81	56	116	253
2007-‘08	33	115	59	207
2008-‘09	139	135	48	322
2009-‘10	122	151	122	395
2010-‘11	15	30	94	139
All years	532	911	642	2085

Year-wise attendance figures of UG students

(Chart courtesy Dr Rajoo Krishnan)

Some note-worthy features

In two of the nine years the non-English literature students outnumbered the students of English literature.
In seven of the nine years students of English literature were below 75% of the total students.
Most of the science students came from the departments of Chemistry, Botany and Mathematics.
Students from the departments of Hindi, Malayalam, Zoology, Philosophy and History rarely attended the meetings.
Commerce students attended meetings only during two years.
In 2010 – ‘11 there were only 11 first year degree students who attended. Eight of them attended only one meeting. Only one student attended three. In 2002-‘03 too there was a low proportion of first degree students. However, unlike in 2010-‘11, in that year several meetings were held before first year students were admitted. This is a clear indication that first year degree students of 2010-‘11find the EAC irrelevant.

4. Table showing details of scripts and reading lists distributed and of materials used.

Academic year	‘02- ‘03	‘03- ‘04	‘04- ‘05	‘05- ‘06	‘06- ‘07	‘07- ‘08	‘08- ‘09	‘09- ‘10	‘10- ‘11	Total
Number of meetings	6	1	14	11	7	12	15	11	10	87
List of materials distributed
Scripts given/OHP used	6	1	9	11/9	7	10/2	16	13	17/2	90/13
List of recommendations	–	–	6	6	6	10	10	10	10	58
Type of material played/read
Classical Compositions	5	1	6	1	3	8	4	1	4	33
Historical recordings	–	–	–	1	–	–	–	1	–	2
Interviews, excerpts from	–	–	–	–	–	–	–	–	2	2
Plays/ excerpts	–	–	1	–	–	1	1	–	1/2	4/2
Poems	13	1	25	7	12	17	18	32	14	139
Prose extracts	–	–	–	–	1	–	–	2	6	9
Short story	–	–	–	–	–	–	1	–	1	2
Songs	6	1	15	19	9	21	23	21	28	143
Speeches, excerpts from	–	–	1	2	–	2	–	–	–	5

Note: Visual material was sometimes used. A chart of the universe was displayed once and at four meetings sets of paintings were displayed.

Introductions, a linking narrative and information on the list of recommendations were given at all meetings.

Appendix (b) List of meetings held

Sl no	Date	Theme
		At the Government Victoria College, Palakkad
1	27/10/2000	The Waste Land
2	03/11/2000	Music from the Age of Shakespeare
3	10/11/2000	Hamlet 1
4	17/11/2000	Hamlet 2
5	24/11/2000	Hamlet 3
6	08/12/2000	Hamlet 4
7	15/12/2000	Hamlet 5
8	06/01/2000	Remembering Geoffrey Chaucer
9	12/01/2001	Satire 1
10	02/02/2001	Satire 2
11	09/02/2001	Loneliness and Alienation
12	23/02/2001	Andrew Motion on John Keats
13	2/03/2001	Protest and Rebellion: The 1960s
14	16/03/2001	A Taste of Scotland
15	23/03/2001	Historical Echoes
16	07/09/2001	Children
		At the Government College for Women, Thiruvananthapuram
17	05/07/2002	Music from the Age of Shakespeare
18	19/07/2002	A Sense of Place
19	09/08/2002	The Elegiac
20	13/09/2002	Romantic Love
21	11/10/2002	Unusual Love Songs and the Death of Romantic Love
23	03/01/2003	The Seasons: Spring
24	21/11/2003	Celebrating Life
25	25/06/2004	The Cold War
26	09/07/2004	Children
27	23/07/2004	Physics and Poetry
28	06/08/2004	Spring
29	13/08/2004	Macbeth 1
30	20/08/2004	Macbeth 2
31	10/09//2004	Macbeth 3
32	24/09//2004	Macbeth 4
33	01/10//2004	Macbeth 5
34	29/10//2004	Old Age and Dying
35	05/11//2004	The Fish and the Bicycle
36	19/11//2004	Loneliness and Alienation
38	03/12/2004	Apollo and Dionysus: A Musical Introduction
39	14/01/2005	The Religious and the Secular: A Musical Introduction
40	01/07/2005	Only Sleeping
41	15/07/2005	Only Sleeping: The Language Lesson
42	29/07/2005	Still Life
43	05/08/2005	The Mushroom Cloud
44	19/08/2005	Still Life: The Language Lesson
45	02/09/2005	Money
46	07/09/2005	Money: More of It
47	28/10/2005	Hybridity: A Musical Introduction
48	25/11/2005	Money and Hybridity: The Language Lesson
49	02/12/2005	Mother
50	03/02/2006	Mallu English
51	15/09/2006	Eat, Drink and Be Merry
52	22/09/2006	A Friend Indeed
53	06/10/2006	Sunshine and Darkness
54	13/10/2006	Days
55	27/10/2006	Myths Retold
56	03/11/2006	The Sublime and the Ridiculous
57	17/11/2006	Animals
58	13/07/2007	Colonialism
59	27/07/2007	Cars
60	03/08/2007	Cars: A Rerun
61	14/09/2007	The Religious and the Secular: A Musical Exploration
62	05/10/2007	Trees
63	23/11/2007	Slowness
64	12/01/2008	William Shakespeare’s Tempest 1
65	18/01/2008	William Shakespeare’s Tempest 2
66	25/01/2008	William Shakespeare’s Tempest 3
67	01/02/2008	The Achingly Beautiful
68	15/02/2008	Still Aching
69	29/02/2008	The Beautiful and A Lesson in Practical Criticism
70	02/07/2008	A Modest Proposal
71	25/07/2008	Rain, Rain
72	29/08/2008	The Evolution of the Ballad – I: From the Folk Ballad to the Literary Ballad
73	10/10/2008	The Outstation by Somerset Maugham
74	17/10/2008	The Evolution of the Ballad – II: From the Literary Ballad to the Rock and the Radio Ballad
75	24/10/2008	Irony
76	07/11/2008	The Open Road
77	19/11/2008	Henry IV: Part I (1)
78	17/12/2008	Henry IV: Part I (2)
79	21/11/2008	The Great War
80	12/12/2008	The Great War: 1914 -1918
81	16/01/2009	Cats and Dogs
82	23/01/2009	Hating Men
83	30/01/2009	The Joy of Living
84	06/02/2009	Taking It Easy
85	21/08/2009	Updated
86	18/09/2009	The Beatles and India
87	25/09/2009	London
88	09/10/2009	Through Other Eyes
89	16/10/2009	Pen Portraits
90	23/10/2009	Longing
91	20/11//2009	Poor Wordsworth
92	04/12/2009	Silly Love Songs – I (The Truth About Love)
93	08/01/2010	Silly Love Songs – II (Love in the Age of the Great Shopping Festival)
94	15/01/2010	A World Less Sacred
95	29/01/2010	Hey, Teachers
96	05/02/2010	Hey, Beautiful
97	13/08/2010	The Aboriginals or Gandhi With Guns
98	17/09/2010	Domesticity
99	24/09/2010	The Meaning of Money
100	08/10/2010	The Green Eyed Monster
101	29/10/2010	Meow, Meow
102	26/11/2010	Minimalism
103	07/01/2011	The Kerala Book of Quotations
104	14/01/2011	Anomie
105	21/01/2011	No Stronger Than A Flower
106	04/02/2011	The Industrial and the Ecological

Appendix (c) A sample notice

THE ENGLISH AUDIO CLUB

Government College for Women

THE INDUSTRIAL AND THE ECOLOGICAL

(Or this year’s Padma Awards)

There are broadly two ways of looking at the earth. One is to see it as an infinite resource that we exploit for our benefit. The second is to see it as a delicate and fragile being whose health is vital to our future and which we have to preserve. The first is the industrial and the second the ecological attitude. Are they incompatible? Can the earth be mined, burned, stripped, grazed, fished, dammed, bombed, poisoned and altered for man’s sake? Or must we nurture and nurse her, in a sustainable way? Is there a sensible compromise we can reach?

At this week’s meeting of the English Audio Club we examine this vital question. To understand the issue we will listen to:

Tracy Chapman (“The Rape of the World”)
Dire Straits (“Industrial Disease”)
James Lovelock (On the revenge of Gaia)
D. H. Lawrence (“The Triumph of the Machine”)
Adrian Mitchell (“William Blake Says Everything that Lives Is Holy”)
Jean Binta Breeze (“Earth Cries”)
Karine Polwart (“Take Its Own Time”)
Jethro Tull (“Acres Wild”) and
E. O. Wilson (excerpts from The Future of Life)

Date: 4/Feb/2011

Time: 1 pm

Venue: The English Department (The II MA classroom)

All are welcome

A note from theConvenor

Look at this year’s Padma award winners. Did you spot any ecologists?

Where will the quest for a turbo-charged growth rate take us? Paradise or hell?

Attend our meeting. Understand the issue.

Join the debate.

P. Vijaya Kumar

(Convenor)

Listen and Learn at The English Audio Club

Appendix (d) A sample script (in 3 pages)

The Industrial and the Ecological

The Rape of the World

Mother of us all
Place of our birth
How can we stand aside
And watch the rape of the world

This the beginning of the end
This the most heinous of crimes
This the deadliest of sins
The greatest violation of all time

Mother of us all / Place of our birth
We all are witness / To the rape of the world

You’ve seen her stripped mined
You’ve heard of bombs exploded underground
You know the sun shines
Hotter than ever before

Mother of us all (Repeat 3^rd stanza)

Some claim to have crowned her / A queen
With cities of concrete and steel / But there is no glory no honor
In what results / From the rape of the world

Mother of us all (Repeat)

She has been clear-cut / She has been dumped on
She has been poisoned and beaten up
And we have been witness / To the rape of the world

Mother of us all / Place of our birth / How can we stand aside
And watch the rape of the world

If you look you’ll see it with your own eyes
If you listen you will hear her cries
If you care you will stand and testify
And stop the rape of the world

Stop the rape of the world
Mother of us all (Repeat)
Tracy Chapman (1995)

Industrial Disease

Warning lights are flashing down at quality control
Somebody threw a spanner and they threw him in the hole
There’s rumors in the loading bay and anger in the town
Somebody blew the whistle and the walls came down
There’s a meeting in the boardroom they’re trying to trace the smell
There’s leaking in the washroom there’s a sneak in personnel
Somewhere in the corridors someone was heard to sneeze
’goodness me could this be industrial disease?

The caretaker was crucified for sleeping at his post
They’re refusing to be pacified it’s him they blame the most
The watchdog’s got rabies the foreman’s got fleas
And everyone’s concerned about industrial disease
There’s panic on the switchboard tongues are ties in knots
Some come out in sympathy some come out in spots
Some blame the management some the employees
And everybody knows it’s the industrial disease

The work force is disgusted downs tools and walks
Innocence is injured experience just talks
Everyone seeks damages and everyone agrees
That these are ’classic symptoms of a monetary squeeze’
On ITV and BBC they talk about the curse
Philosophy is useless theology is worse
History boils over there’s an economics freeze
Sociologists invent words that mean ’industrial disease’

Doctor Parkinson declared ’I’m not surprised to see you here
You’ve got smokers cough from smoking, brewer’s droop from drinking beer
I don’t know how you came to get the Betty Davis knees
But worst of all young man you’ve got industrial disease’
He wrote me a prescription he said ’you are depressed
But I’m glad you came to see me to get this off your chest
Come back and see me later – next patient please
Send in another victim of industrial disease.’

I go down to speaker’s corner I’m thunderstruck
They got free speech, tourists, police in trucks
Two men say they’re Jesus one of them must be wrong
There’s a protest singer, he’s singing a protest song – he says
They wanna have a war to keep their factories

’they wanna have a war to keep us on our knees
They wanna have a war to stop us buying Japanese
They wanna have a war to stop industrial disease
They’re pointing out the enemy to keep you deaf and blind
They wanna sap your energy incarcerate your mind
They give you rule Brittania, gassy beer, page three
Two weeks in Espana and Sunday striptease’
Meanwhile the first Jesus says ’I’d cure it soon
Abolish Monday mornings and Friday afternoons’
The other one’s on a hunger strike he’s dying by degrees
How come Jesus gets industrial disease?

Dire Straits (1993)

The Triumph of the Machine

They talk of the triumph of the machine,
But the machine will never triumph.

Out of the thousands and thousands of centuries of man
The unrolling of ferns, white tongues of the acanthus lapping at
the sun,
for one sad century
machines have triumphed, rolled us hither or thither,
shaking the lark’s nest till the eggs have broken.
Shaken the marshes till the geese have gone
and the wild swans flown away singing the swan-song of us.

Hard, hard on the earth the machines are rolling,
but through some hearts they will never roll.
The lark nests in his heart
and the white swan swims in the marshes of his loins,
and through the wide prairies of his breast a young bull herds
his cows,
lambs frisk among the daisies of his brain.

And at last
all these creatures that cannot die, driven back
into the uttermost corners of the soul,
will send up the wild cry of despair.

The trilling lark in a wild despair will trill down arrows from
    the sky,
the swan will beat the waters in rage, white rage of an enraged
    swan,
even the lambs will stretch forth their necks like serpents,
like snakes of hate, against the man in the machine:
even the shaking white polar will dazzle like splinters of glass
     against him.

And against this inward revolt of the native creatures of the
     soul
mechanical man, in triumph seated upon the seat of his
    machine
will be powerless, for no engine can reach into the marshes
   and depths of a man

So mechanical man in triumph seated upon the seat of his
machine
will be driven mad from within himself, and sightless, and on
that day
the machines will turn to run into one another
traffic will tangle up in a long-drawn-out crash of collision
and engines will rush at the solid houses, the edifice of our life
will rock in the shock of the mad machine, and the house will
come down.

Then far beyond the ruin, in the far, in the ultimate, remote
     places
the swan will lift up again his flattened, smitten head
and look round, and rise, and on the great vaults of his wings
will sweep round and up to greet the sun with a silky glitter of
     a new day
and the lark will follow trilling, angerless again,

and the lambs will bite off the heads of the daisies for very
     friskiness.
But over the middle of the earth will be the smoky ruin of iron
the triumph of the machine.

D. H. Lawrence (1930)

earth cries

she doesn’t cry for water

she runs rivers deep

she doesn’t cry for food

she has suckled trees

she doesn’t cry for shelter

she grows thatch everywhere

she doesn’t cry for children

she’s got more than she can bear

she doesn’t cry for heaven

she knows it’s always there

you don’t know why she’s crying

when she’s got everything

how could you know she’s crying

for just one humane being

Jean ‘Binta’ Breeze (2000)

William Blake says: Everything that Lives is Holy

Long live the Child

Long live the Mother and Father

Long live the People

Long live this wounded Planet

Long live the good milk of the Air

Long live the spawning Rivers and the

mothering Oceans

Long live the juice of the Grass

and all the determined greenery of the Globe

Long live the Elephants and the Sea Horses,

the Humming-Birds and the Gorrillas,

the Dogs and Cats and Field-Mice-

all the surviving Animals

our innocent Sisters and Brothers

Long live the Earth, deeper than all our thinking

we have done enough killing

Long live the Man

Long live the Woman

Who use both courage and compassion

Long live their Children.

Adrian Mitchell (2004)

Take Its Own Time

You ceased to mow the lawn ten years ago
You just wanted to see how your garden would grow
You abandoned the pruning shears and welcomed each weed
You permitted the soil to select its own seed

But it would be unfair to assume you don’t care
For you pay great attention to all that goes there
But you simply abstain from a plan or design

You just let it all hang out and take its own time (Repeat)

Then you follow a thread in a book that you’ve read
Or in something that someone you heard somewhere said
You say “It’s all connected, it’s all intertwined

If you let it all hang out and take its own time
If you let it all hang out and take its own time”

Now you don’t move too fast, you make it all last
You encounter each moment before it is past
And you say “Walking slow in this world is no crime”

You just let it all hang out and take its own time. (Repeat)

Karine Polwart (2006)

Acres Wild

I’ll make love to you
in all good places
under black mountains
in open spaces.
By deep brown rivers
that slither darkly
through far marches
where the blue hare races.

Come with me to the Winged Isle —
northern father’s western child.
Where the dance of ages is playing still
through far marches of acres wild.

I’ll make love to you / in narrow side streets
with shuttered windows, / and crumbling chimneys.

Come with me to the weary town —
discos silent under tiles
that slide from roof-tops, scatter softly
on concrete marches of acres wild.

By red bricks pointed
with cement fingers
Flaking damply from sagging shoulders.

Come with me to the Winged Isle (Repeat)

Jethro Tull (1978)

Recommendations

Henry David Thoreau: Walden; or, Life in the Woods (1854)

Rachel Carson: Silent Spring (1962)

Garret Hardin: “The Tragedy of the Commons” (1968)

E F Schumacher: Small Is Beautiful (1973)

James Lovelock: Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth (1979)

Bill McKibben: The End of Nature (1990)

Duane Elgin: Voluntary Simplicity (1993)

Madhav Gadgil and Ram Guha: This Fissured Land (2001)

E. O. Wilson: The Future of Life (2002)

Jared M. Diamond: Collapse (2005)

Ramachandra Guha: How Much Should a Person Consume? (2006)

James Lovelock: The Revenge of Gaia (2006)

http://www.storyofstuff.com/ (2007)

George Monbiot: Bring On the Apocalypse: 6 Arguments for Global Justice (2008)

Bill McKibben: Eaarth (2010)

Annie Leonard: The Story of Stuff (2011)

The ongoing life and work of Sunderlal Bahuguna (1927- )

Thank you

The English Audio Club

Government College for Women

Thiruvanathapuram

Appendix (d) Sample script

The Industrial and the Ecological

“We either forget or never knew how different the climate was in the last Ice Age. Most of the United Kingdom and northern-western Europe including Scandinavia was buried beneath 3000 meters of ice, a glacier as thick as that on Greenland now. The sea level was 120 metres lower than now and land equal in area to the continent of Africa which is now below water was then above it. Much of this extra land was in south-east Asia which may explain why Australia was reached by humans during the Ice Age. The distance was short enough to be made on rafts or simple boats. Imagine there was a civilization 12000 years ago with cities on the coast of that extended southern Asian continent. Who among them would have believed an early climate forecaster who claimed that soon they would be 120 metres beneath an ocean? The changes likely in the world to come will, in their different ways, be as great as, or greater than, this”.

James Lovelock on the revenge of Gaia

—— —— —– —— —— —— —– —– —— —– —– —– —– —– ——

“The human species is like the mythical giant Antaeus, who drew strength from contact with his mother Gaea, the goddess Earth, and used it to challenge and defeat all comers. Hercules, learning the secret, lifted and held Antaeus above the ground until the giant weakened – then crushed him. Mortal humans are also handicapped by our separation from Earth, but our impairment is self-administered, and it has this added twist: our exertions also weaken Earth.

What humanity is inflicting on itself and Earth is, to use a modern metaphor, the result of a mistake in capital investment. Having appropriated the planet’s natural resources, we chose to annuitize them with a short-term maturity reached by progressively increasingly payouts. At the time it seemed a wise decision. To many it still does. The result is a rising per-capita production and consumption, markets awash in consumer goods and grain, and a surplus of optimistic economists. But there is a problem: the key elements of natural capital, Earth’s arable land, ground water, forests, marine fisheries, and petroleum, are ultimately finite, and not subject to proportionate capital growth. Moreover, they are being decaptitalized by overharvesting and environmental destruction. With population and consumption continuing to grow, the per-capita resources left to be harvested are shrinking. The long term prospects are not promising.

Meanwhile, two collateral results of the annuitization* of nature, as opposed to its stewardship, are settling in to beg our attention. The first is economic disparity: in relative terms the rich grow richer and the poor poorer.

The second collateral result, and the principal concern of the present work, is the accelerating extinction of natural ecosystems and species.

What is the solution to biological impoverishment? The answer I will now pose is guardedly optimistic. In essence, it is that the problem is now well understood, we have a grip on its dimensions and magnitude, and a workable strategy has begun to take shape.

The new strategy to save the world’s fauna and flora begins, as in all human affairs, with ethics.

The first step is to turn away from claims of inherent moral superiority based on political ideology and religious dogma. The problems of the environment have become too complicated to be solved by piety and an unyielding clash of good intentions.

The next step is to disarm.

The truth is that everyone wants a highly productive economy and lots of well paying jobs.

The ethical solution is to diagnose and disconnect extraneous political ideology, then shed it in order to move toward the common ground where economic progress and conservation are treated as one and the same goal.

The guiding principles of a united environmental movement must be, and eventually will be, chiefly long-term. If two hundred years of history of environmentalism have taught us anything, it is that a change of heart occurs when people look beyond themselves to others, and then to the rest of life. It is strengthened when they also expand their view of landscape, from parish to nation and beyond, and their sweep of time from their own life spans to multiple generations and finally to the extended future history of humankind”.

Excerpts from The Future of Life by Edward O. Wilson

—— —— —– —— —— —— —– —– —— —– —– —– —– —– ——

*annuitization: The reception of monthly payments from an auuity after an accumulation period. Depending on the type of annuity, one may annuitize payments for a period of time or for the reminder of one’s life.

Annuitization means that you convert part or all of the money in a qualified retirement plan or nonqualified annuity contract into a stream of regular income payments, either for your lifetime or the lifetimes of you and your joint annuitant.

(Stewardship is careful management.)

Appendix (e)

Report on the English Audio Club in Yentha.com, written by a student attendee Ms Shradha S.

Features

An Enriching Noon At The Audio Club

The Audio Club held in the Department of English, Govt. College for Women, is a treat to novelty seekers, writes Shradha S

On Sep 18, 2010

While most of the girls prefer lazing away the two hour lunch break they get on Fridays at the Govt. College for Women, a few of them are seen rushing to the II MA Literature class for an interesting weekly ritual – the Audio Club – a one hour meeting held by P Vijayakumar (HOD of the English Department).

Each meeting has a particular theme; the earlier ones being ‘Spring’, ‘Cold War’, ‘Physics and Poetry’, ‘Beatles in India’, ‘Silly love songs’ , ‘Domesticity’ and so on, shared with the audience through audio and reading materials in the form of poetry, prose and songs. The themes are chosen based on their relevance, popular interest, and often student recommendations.

Functioning since 2002, the main aim of this program is to generate an interest in the young minds towards reading, and giving them an awareness about the world we live in.

A typical Audio Club session starts with Vijayakumar (affectionately known as PVK) greeting each one of the teachers and students who’ve come there and giving out the supplements to them. He briefly describes the theme of the session, plays out the various pieces included, and shares a cheeky quote here and there, much to the delight of the listeners. There is never a pause or a faltering word; just laughs and a feel-good banter between the teacher and his students, in the rustic classroom.

After a tiresome week of study schedules, the Audio Club is an enriching getaway of fun-knowledge sharing for most of the students. Anisha, a second year student, and an Audio Club regular, says: “It is a novel concept, broadening the perspective of the listener to the wide possibilities one could attain through literature and arts, in general.”

Shwetha, another of the regulars and a second year student, finds it a “totally unique brainchild of PVK and would be non-existent without him.”

Towards the end of the meeting, students are encouraged to speak out on the previous sessions, voicing their opinions and disagreements. In spite of attendance being voluntary, the Club does have a good number of gathering every week, including teachers and students from the other departments in the college.

Vijayakumar gives as much thought and efforts for these meetings as he would for any other class he takes.

P Vijayakumar conducts one of the Audio Club sessions What inspired him? When he was still a student, Vijayakumar was fond of listening to radio programs; his generation had not much options for recreation other than radios and reading. While doing his graduation in English Literature at the University College, Trivandrum, he was taught by KK Neelakantan, a terrific teacher known for his ‘acidic tongue and cynical remarks’. Neelakantan was also a brilliant teacher, who used to give them sessions with those old LP records along with his commentaries, after classes.

“I still remember the session featuring a play ‘Murder in the Cathedral’. The commentary and the class was so crisp and fine that I understood the play well. It was something that inspired me later on,” says he.

Many of his former students who know about the Audio Club often gift him with audio tapes. One such student, Sandhya Mahadevan, once presented him with two tapes from popular archives of the BBC London, which he had some difficulty obtaining otherwise. Vijayakumar, who has always loved conducting extra curricular activities in colleges, like quizzes, debates etc., finds the Audio Club as a means to share such materials with his students.

He hopes that through these discussions, students will get an insight into complex issues and create an interest in them to know more.

A truly dedicated and very much loved figure of the college, PVK and his Audio Club makes Friday afternoons a thing to remember for all who are a part of it. shradha.s@yentha.com

Comments

well-written, and brings out the quaint old world charm of the audio club 🙂

Elviranna, on Sep 18, 2010 03:05:08 PM

Audio club is an exhilarating and valuable experience and PVK sir is great. The audio club meeting held by him on ‘Roads’ still reverberates in my mind.

Resmi, on Sep 18, 2010 06:01:44 PM

Nice piece. PVK was always admired for thinking out of the box. Still remember his quizzes.

Aravind, on Sep 18, 2010 09:48:46 PM

thank you 🙂

Shradha, on Sep 18, 2010 11:17:45 PM

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