The Periodic table revolution — The Tom Sawyer effect

I stood in front of the yellow building. The paint was flaking off at many places. I had passed the building many times but had not given it much of a thought. It was a government run school.

The only memory of government schools in my childhood was the threat that my father used to hold out saying that he would put me in a government school if I did not score good marks. And in school, our teachers would shout at us saying, “ Don’t behave like government school kids.” This led me to often wonder if a unique species inhabited these institutions.

And here I was standing in front of one such building. My wife and I went and met the headmistress of the school and expressed a desire to volunteer. She welcomed us and told us that she had also joined the school the very same day. She had just got transferred from another school.

My wife started going to the school with our daughter in tow, every day in the morning. I would go on the weekends. Volunteering was all fine, but I had no clue on the local language and the medium of instruction was the regional language (Kannada). Many a time, I used to feel some of my conversations with the teachers and students seemed to be resemble scenes from a possible movie titled “Alien meets Earth-dwellers and is tongue-tied”. So with the help of my excellent dumb charade skills and my huge repertoire of smiles, I set about trying to teach English to the students.

In all this my daughter used to tag along and it was not long before she was talking to all in excellent Kannada. She knew pretty much every kid in the school.

The school was a very interesting place. I had students in different age groups. ranging from 1 year to 12 years. I initially suspected that this was a evolved system where students of different age groups got together according to their interests and carried on their studies. I had read about such schooling systems. But no… This was not the reason. The 1 year year old was the brother of a 10 year old girl and since there was no one at home to take care, it was decided that the “No child left behind” policy should be immediately implemented. It was that or the girl would have to stop school to take care of the little one at home. Coming to school with junior seemed to be the better option. And some of them took it upon themselves to equip themselves better before moving on to the next class. Hence the great variation in ages.

In order to make life a little interesting for the kids, I would ask my daughter to sing the Periodic table to liven up things. They would listen to it like a message received from the martians and then would excitedly clap to make her happy. For those who are wondering how a little girl learnt the periodic table, my earlier blog post might be of interest. (https://medium.com/@unnikrishnanmadathilkoliyat/the-beginning-of-the-periodic-table-revolution-b70332e76ed6#.csp5reqy1)

As things were progressing like this with no great progress to speak of, my wife told me of a conversation that she had eavesdropped between one of the bright sparks in the 7th grade and his teacher. My wife’s knowledge of Kannada had improved to the extent of being able to comprehend the language. It seems that the boy in question asked his teacher to teach him the periodic table that my daughter was reciting. The teacher was not too keen on this and told him that it was not there in his syllabus.

My wife wanted to teach him the periodic table and I agreed that was what we needed to do. And from the next day, we armed the boy with a periodic table chart and set about teaching him the Periodic table song.

Peer pressure is an interesting thing. A couple of other kids in his class who otherwise would have thought of having nothing to do with chemistry in general and the periodic table in particular came to the conclusion that they were missing something in life. The elixir of life was being secretly administered to only one individual and they were being cut out of it. This little group met us later in secret and asked if they could also be tutored on this exciting new thing called the Periodic table. Later at home I was having a hearty laugh since this seemed to be a modern version of Tom Sawyer painting the fence. So the little group also joined in.

And as the days passed, the Periodic table fever caught on. Every one needed a periodic table. I had kids ringing my door at 10 at night asking for a periodic table. The local stationery shop guy was pleasantly surprised at why this game was suddenly getting so much attention. He seemed to think that this was a game like monopoly since the elements were numbered. But I guess, he was puzzled as to why dice was not needed. And after his copies ran out, the local photocopy shop had a field day.

And so it went with even the kids in the Primary classes learning 10–20 elements like a rhyme. The elder students were teaching the younger ones. It was viral. Exciting days..

How to take this further? Hang on…