'Kids in villages don't need your sympathy'

How former Dubai expat Sabbah Haji is empowering young children in a village in kashmir through education

Surviving - and if you're lucky, thriving - in big cities can often make you believe in the finiteness of possibilities. Often, we don't care to turn our gaze towards contexts that are vastly different from ours simply because those realities are not compatible with our idea of the world. Born and raised in Dubai, Sabbah Haji could have chosen one of the many possibilities that a typical urban life offers - and, for a while, she even did, having worked in Bangalore, India, for several years as a content writer and editor before she returned to her roots in Breswana, a village in Doda in Jammu and Kashmir. Today, Sabbah, 37, is the director of Haji Public School, a local school that her family started nearly a decade ago. In recent years, Haji Public School has been in the news for several reasons. Occasional videos of kids dancing to Shakira's Waka Waka or J.K. Rowling sending a handwritten note to one of the students is stuff that makes for great talking points on social media. But to the children who study there, the school is a promise of a future where they stand heads and shoulders with the rest of the world.
Setting up the school
A shift from the fast-paced city life to a remote village in Jammu and Kashmir often demands a romanticised narrative. Sabbah cuts through the layer of fat and talk about the shift as an obvious choice. At no point in her formative years in Dubai, she says, was she disconnected with her roots, even when the family lived in a villa on Al Wasl, the upbringing was firmly grounded. "We'd also go to Kashmir for our summer vacations for two months when I was studying in Indian High School," she adds.
The educational landscape in Doda, prior to Haji Public School, was quite different. Sabbah explains the context by comparing it with the education she received in Dubai. "There were, of course, multiple private and government schools. But it did not match up to the standard of education we received here. We never needed tuitions because we were taught well. There, in government schools, we do have well-qualified teachers but they are never around. Their treatment of students is very different, there's condescension, perhaps because these children are from villages. In fact, a lot of children from government schools often come to us for extra classes, which we would be happy to provide if only they don't come to us right before their final exams," she says, adding that some of the students do not possess basic addition and subtraction skills at a time when they're expected to study trigonometry.
It was this gap that Sabbah's family sought to fill when they announced they would be setting up Haji Public School. At that time, the villagers themselves played an important role in the building of the school. Sabbah explains it saying that her village functions like one big family. "My great grandfather had set up the village, and then called his relatives from other villages and gave them land here. So, we have interpersonal relationship with the community. There have been at least two generations here that missed out on any kind of education. So, when they heard that the family was planning to open a school, they were glad. They were hungry for their kids to receive education, and were happy to help . Also, in villages, everyone knows masonry and carpentry. If there is a problem, they don't wait for government officials to come and sort out things," she says.
The teachers
The backbone of any centre of learning are its teachers. While Sabbah and her mother, who taught in Dubai, have helmed that responsibility, the challenge for them has been to find teachers who could not only teach, but also understand the social and cultural background the children at the school come from. It didn't help that in the village itself, there weren't many families who had gone through a proper schooling system. Sabbah began picking students who had barely, on paper, passed twelfth grade, and training them to teach. "I looked for people who were young, eager and excited to work. We, in turn, taught them diction, trained them on audio visuals for teaching. We have also had to teach toilet training to the kids."
It was then that Sabbah started a three-month volunteering system for teachers. "My first volunteer stayed back for four years because he liked it so much," she adds. For the teachers themselves, says Sabbah, it's important to maintain a balance between teaching and personally connecting with students outside the classroom. "Teaching in classes is easier. You know something better and you're teaching it to those who don't know about it. What you have to understand is where these kids are coming from. Kids in the villages don't need your sympathy, because these kids are happy in their world. Everyone has full meals, they drink tap water, religion is important part of family. This is the world they come from. You cannot teach them the way I was taught in Dubai. For instance, if you're talking about a zebra crossing, how does a kid who has never seen one going to understand it? There are no proper roads where they live. So, a teacher has to bring the world to them through audio visuals." Now that the school has classes up to tenth standard, Sabbah has started an employment drive to hire professional teachers. "Luckily, I have discovered a demographic in Kashmir that is well-educated, but unemployed, and that is what I am currently tapping into. I use social media to spread the word, and, recently, even received an application from Dubai."
An ideal teacher at Haji Public School ought to be "strict" and a "feminist". The principles of feminism are inculcated fairly early in classrooms, and primarily start with making young students unlearn many things they observe at home. "They would hear something like, 'Oh, boys play cricket and girls don't' or 'nurses are always women'. All these stereotypes are also present in textbooks. In this part of the world, a lot of employees have traditionally been men, though I would say that, in villages, domestic chores are more evenly divided between men and women." Small exercises also make a difference. For instance, while teaching English to second grade last year, Sabbah gave her classroom a small task. There were images of different outfits - shirts, shorts, trousers, lehengas (traditional skirts) - and she asked her students to choose which outfit was meant for boys and which ones for girls. "Obviously, they chose shorts for boys, and I asked them why can't girls also wear them? Anyone can wear anything. While initially, they were laughing, but soon they accepted." That's not all, says Sabbah, the young students are also being taught to call out mansplaining.
Popular culture
Last year, a pleasant surprise also came when a student at Haji Public School, Kulsum, received Harry Potter memorabilia and a handwritten note from J.K. Rowling, after Sabbah tweeted a picture of Kulsum's essay to the author. The gesture made headlines, leading to a media frenzy. "Because of our volunteers, our children have been tuned into popular culture. But still, you have to understand they have no idea how big J.K. Rowling is because they don't know how big the world is. Later, I got irritated with the media attention because people expected me to take videos of Kulsum and send it to them. They wanted multiple interviews, but wouldn't want to come up here."
In a world that loves its stereotypes, Sabbah routinely struggles to protect her students from simplistic notions the world has of them. She admits that outsiders typecasting her students is what disturbs her the most. "For instance, people would ask Kulsum, 'Why are you in a hijab?'. It's mostly social media trolling that lasts 48 hours, and partly due to my own views on various subjects. They mostly expose their own ignorance, but that enrages me."
Ten years and several challenges later, Sabbah admits to being cynical about the world, but it is the presence of the children that makes all the difference. "When you live in the back of beyond, you have to deal with everything. You fight for paperwork and permissions. I would say I have become more patient. Earlier, I would lose my cool easily, but that won't help if you want to get things done in a remote village. So, I have become more diplomatic. I am still cynical, but with these kids being around, I feel hope is still alive." It sure is!
anamika@khaleejtimes.com