First of all kudos to Anthony Maras for making a film of an incident of which a movie, “The Attacks of 26/11” by Ram Gopal Varma and a documentary “Surviving Mumbai” were already made. The documentary was the inspiration for the making of this film. For many who do not know of what actually happened, this film is certainly an eye-opener.
Watching a movie as this one wonders if what the NRA is doing in America can also be good for us in that that one is actually tempted to go and buy a gun to fight these brainwashed cowards who attacked us and caused so much harm and suffering in 2008.
The movie may not be perfectly historically accurate and it also doesn’t mention or show the various Policemen (encounter specialists) and Commandos who sacrificed their lives in the event but it still does a good job of capturing the horror of what the victims would have gone through in an event as this. One reviewer on Wikipedia has written about Hotel Mumbai, the following, “Sitting through the harrowing events again nearly a decade later could hardly be described as entertainment, and the film plays to many of the same unseemly impulses that make disaster movies so compelling, exploiting the tragedy of the situation for spectacle’s sake” but then how else can one explain the horror of this incident. Watching this movie is certainly not like watching a fictional “Rambo” or “John Wick” movie. This is what took place and this is how many of the victims actually suffered.
The acting is top notch with Dev Patel, Anupem Kher and a good list of international stars delivering gripping and stunning performances. The movie actually is a year old and the theatrical release has been delayed in India.
Even now, I keep pulling my son Chaithanya’s leg saying, “You were just an hour or two away from Maradona when he was opening Chemmannur Jeweller’s showroom in Kannur and you missed him.” Chaithu was vacationing in Kerala and he knew all about the superstar footballer’s visit. Even Mammooty and Mohanlal fans wouldn’t gather this much to watch their favourite actor as did Maradona’s fans who came from all over Kerala. Two of them (not confirmed) even had a heart attack.
Back to the documentary film now playing in theatres in India. The presentation of the documentary is good, very similar to what Peter Jackson did with the “They Shall not grow old” documentary on the World War 1 veterans in that that there aren’t any personal interviews with people talking to the camera about Maradona. Whenever a voiceover occurs only a mention in titles is made on screen as to who is speaking. Considering the amount of free footage still available online it is surprising some very important footage was left out, particularly of a crying Maradona after the defeat in the 1990 World Cup Final to Germany. It was a heart wrenching moment for Maradona fans all over the world. Germany’s defeat in the 1986 World Cup Final was avenged but only with a controversial penalty kick in favour of them. It was really no big victory. Claudio Cannigia who alongwith Maradona won most of the games that year was out on yellow cards. Argentina entered the game with four players suspended and ended it with nine men on the field, overall losing over half their squad due to injury or suspension. They also should have been awarded a deserving penalty but that didn’t happen. But what was not mentioned in the documentary is the fact the Maradona was fouled over 50 times in the 1990 tournament, a world record. Every team including Germany (Guido Buchwald was the guy for the Germans) had at least one player to mark Maradona. Such was his stature in the tournament.
One annoying moment was at 1:45 of the film when there is a shot of Maradona at a Christmas party. For over a minute the camera just focussed on his face, Maradona seems to be intensely thinking and looking into some void. It is a painfully tiring scene and one that could have been replaced with the one (from the 1990 world cup) I mentioned earlier. Two lovely instrumentals end the documentary. They have been composed by Antionio Pinto. They are available on Jiosaavan. Overall, a must watch for Maradona and football fans. To quote the current Argetinian legend Messi, “Even if I played for a million years, I’d never come close to Maradona. Not that I’d want to anyway. He’s the greatest there’s ever been.”
Is God this benovelent? Oh Yes, He is! When U2-clone “Coldplay” performed in Mumbai in 2016 I had expressed my disgust of the U2-clone-band in this post and guess who comes to perform in Mumbai three years later, U2. Can it get any better?
Very sadly I will not be making it to the concert as I will not be able to postpone my trip to Sabarimala which falls on the very next day after the concert. During the 42 days of fasting leading upto the pilgrimage one is not supposed to indulge in such festivities either. Though initially I took the concert as a blessing from Lord Iyyappa, I have some other big reasons too for not going and maybe I’ll explain them later. As I write tickets can be purchased till the end of today via the Phone Pe app. From October 1 it can be purchased online from Bookmyshow (app or website). For those of you who don’t want to miss U2 in India, here’s your solid chance. Don’t let go!
Two Fridays ago I read in “The Hindu” that the Oscar Nominated film “Shoplifters” from Japan is going to be screened across several metros in India as a regular film. How this film went on to win the top prize at Cannes in 2018 and subsequently be nominated for the foreign language Oscar in 2019 and for the Golden Globes 2019 is a wonder to me. Even the eventual winner, “Roma” wasn’t my choice. In my opinion “Gems” were ignored at the Oscars and the Golden Globes in this category.
But back to our main topic, the “Shoplifters”. My advice, “Do not waste a second of your precious time on this film”. If the film is cleared by the censors, which I believe it may be, one is in for surprises. The film is filled with WTF! moments, that will hit you from nowhere. And do not watch this film (and “Roma” too, more on that film later on) as some family film. Shocking surprises are in store! I am not talking about some stray dialogues about “sideboob”, “was hostessing all night” etc., About 30 minutes into the film, without any warning you are transported to a scene inside a “hostess club”. By the way if you are guessing what a “hostess club” is, just read on. A guy there (maybe a manager) is talking and joking with the female employees, most of them young girls who are all getting ready (dressing) for their job shift. He chides one of the girls saying a customer was complaining that she was wearing double panties and tells the girls “no fingers inside panties”. The other girls accept all this with laughter. Most of the girls are getting into school uniforms, the ones with small skirts. I had a feeling of what I was going to get. Most of the girls seem to be positioning themselves before a full length mirror the ones where people on the other side can watch them though the girls can only see through a portion of the lower part of the glass through which their guests are communicating with them by writing out their requests on a whiteboard. The girls then act out the requests. All of a sudden, one the right of the screen, one of the girls in the skimpy school girl uniform is seen in a squated position bouncing herself with her hands on her genitals (her back turned towards the glass). I leave it to you to guess what she is doing. Several other girls are getting ready for their customers. Meanwhile one of the girls in a revealing sweater (back turned towards the cameral) and with her legs spread to her customer is seen doing the bouncing act again with her hand, obviously on her genitals. I leave it to you again to guess what she’s doing. She then stands up turns around and is seen rubbing her behind on the glass, up and down. Then our family girl is unbottoning her shirt talking to her customer about ‘boob” and “ass” and it is not very long when her customer’s request via the whiteboard is heeded to and she has spread her legs and starts bouncing with her hands you know where, by now. Honestly WTF! And this is just the beginning. The movie has enough lewd dialogues and gesticulations. Then there is an ugly lovemaking scene (actually they have sex and talk about it) between the two main characters of the film. More of that ugly behind of the older elderly male displayed later on. The father talking to the small boy about “boobs” and “erections”…. Holy Crap! and this goes on to win top prize at Cannes, get nominated for the Foreign Language Oscar and the similar award at the Golden Globes? And get released in India in 5 or 6 metros as a regular movie? As it is the movie is filled with endless “slurping the gooey stuff while eating” routines. I waited endlessly to see what is so moving in this film. Literally nothing but a waste of your precious time. Actually the acting in several places was also very unnatural.
And if you thought “Roma” the Oscar winner is the one to watch with family as they are calling it a family movie, watch out for full frontal and rear male nudity in one of the scenes where you’ll be running for the fast forward button. So much for Oscar winners and nominees. As I mentioned earlier, “Gems” were ignored for this category including the one that I considered the winner. More on that, hopefully soon.
Are you considering the Montessori method for your child? Are you aspiring to become a Montessori Teacher? Are you looking to enroll yourself in the AMI Montessori Training Course, Primary (3-6 yrs)? From August 16, 2017 till early February 2018, I was a trainee of the Navadisha Montessori Institute at Velachery (now renamed Supraja Montessori Study Centre, Kottivakkam) where I had enrolled for the AMI Montessori Certification Course. I had a horrendous experience doing this course (I was recommended to audit) and I have detailed all about it in this post. In the process (as part of the course) I had been to Montessori Schools where teachers (AMI Certified) were looking after and teaching children using this method. Here are my observations and this post reveals it all. This is a fairly long read but I assure you, it will be worth your time.
First of all I must confess that I joined the AMI Montessori Primary course with a RAGE of a PASSION. I thought Montessori was the holy grail of alternative education for children but IT IS NOT. Here is a list of the 17 best alternative schools in India and not even one is a Montessori school.
For an excellent compilation of alternative schools in India check out the link below where you can even search alternative schools by state in India. It came as a very big surprise that I just found 4 Montessori schools in the entire country of which only 3 were fully Montessori.
And then there are fantastic schools that the above lists don’t cover. Here are two of them.
Here’s one that is run by Kiran Sethi, wife of billiards fame Geet Sethi.
http://www.schoolriverside.com/ I know a special child (child who had acute ADD problems) who after graduating is pursuing a course in design in an institute of repute in Bangalore.
And here’s another, Puvidham. This novel school is just incredible! You’ll have to watch the video below to believe. In fact the documentary itself was made by the 8’th graders from this amazing school.
More and more innovative methods for teaching children are cropping up all over the country and so it will be in your best interest to explore the one best for your child.
So coming back to the topic in question. What’s wrong with Montessori? Actually I was shocked with what I have observed and so I’ll call them shockers one by one and discuss them.
Shocker 1 – In the Primary classes of a Montessori School (Ages 3 – 6) children aren’t allowed to play. Isn’t this shocking? Even if there are playgrounds there is no scheduled “games period” or “playing time” for the children for all of the 3 years in the primary classes. Now if the trainers are telling you that in the Montessori system every act is play then I can only say, “Sorry No”. Play is something different and the Montessori method CANNOT be play. In fact it isn’t. In the 5 weeks of Observation and Teaching practice (which is part of the AMI Primary Montessori Certification course) I found just one exceptional case when some child had soiled the floor of the classroom and while the floor was being cleaned the children were taken out to play. And I cannot tell you what a joy and a release it was for the kids! Now THAT is play.
Shocker 2 – Each child does his or her own activity. Well that is what the Montessori method is all about. In demonstrations and exhibitions held abroad children are put in a glass cage like classroom (one of our trainers even said that one class was without any barriers) and children can be seen going about their work, unhindered, unobstructed, each child calmly doing his or her activity. While this is not an impossibility it is not always the case. Ideally we would all want it that way but that isn’t the case simply because children are unpredictable. And if they are forced to do things they are disinterested in they will resist or cry. Also, let us not name the act of forcing a child to do some activity as “disciplining”. That is precisely what I saw in the classrooms. Children being cajoled, coaxed and eventually forced to engage in some activity (I’ll come to activity soon) and they resist and even cry. In a class of 30 children you can imagine the chaos. Many a time children would get distracted, disturbed and would abandon work half way through and join another child doing another activity. While there are teachers who are kind and soft to children there were others, AMI Teachers who were strict and even very angry. Several of the children would walk away from the classroom and loiter around for hours before they would pick up any activity. Some presentations would last over an hour as the child would either not co-operate or show interest. So where is the freedom of the child that Montessori emphasized so much in her work. The problem is not entirely with the Montessori method but in the way it is being implemented.
Imagine the task of the teacher. In the classes where I had been to, 30 children were being monitored by 2 teachers. To me 30 children, each doing his or her own task is “chaos” and monitoring each of these 30 children and simultaneously giving presentations is nothing short of “hell”. It was already taking a toll on the teachers. One of the most nauseating thing that you’ll hear in a Montessori class is the teacher repeatedly pleading with children “I am sorry (name of the child) you can’t be doing this/ you are not supposed to do this / is this the way…..”. Now this command can get very stern as in, ” I am verrrry Sorrrrry (name of the child)……..” emphasizing anger and thorough disapproval. It is as though she wants to give the child a spanking but sadly she can’t do that as the Montessori method says, “no punishments or rewards”. But the teachers have other ways of punishing the children and these are listed below.
The teacher’s task gets even more complicated than that. I mentioned about activity. On my last count, there are well over 100 activities a Montessori child is presented between the ages 3 and 6. These include activities under Practical Life, Math, Sensorial and Language. Now do the math. The teacher has to present each of these 30 children, all of these presentations in the 3 years of primary school. Each child has to be given the presentation on an individual one-on-one basis at the appropriate ages. The onus is therefore to give the presentation at the right age of the child, not earlier or later. Apart from these, group presentations are there too that involve groups of 3 and more children. So she has to keep a tag (an accurate log) of each child separately. Imagine the difficulty of the task! Wouldn’t it be just nice if she could give a class to 15 or more children at a time as they do in normal schools? In fact this is what they do in several alternate schools as well.
Shocker 3 – No fairy tales, tales with morals, fantasy stories are to be told to children in the age group 3 – 6! Can you actually believe this? The Montessori Method for the age group 3 – 6 years insists that only stories related to real-life and believable events are to be told to children. A typical story would go like this –
Rama went to the store to buy a shirt. He liked a blue shirt. His mother asked him to try a red shirt instead. Rama liked the red shirt. His mother buys the red shirt for him. They then leave the store.
However contrary to this I found books in the “book corner” of Montessori classrooms where birds are talking, animals are talking and what not. How is this possible?
Shocker 4 – No punishments or rewards in the Montessori system? – This one literally shocked the hell out of me! There is no “practice what you preach” here. Children were punished in a myriad of ways, being given “Timeout” where the child is segregated and kept away in a corner of the class or outside the class is the most common one. I watched one child made to sit in the “Book Corner” for an entire day. Can you believe that!
One teacher was extremely rude, scaring the little ones with angry looks, talking to them in rude tones and holding firmly the little hands of children (wonder how much it hurt them), dragging and forcing them to a sit in a corner while giving them a “Timeout”. If only the parents of these children came to know of what was actually going on. It gets even worse. Continuously crying and wailing children were tightly held to her chest from their behind in almost martial-arts kind of a choke. Children would wail and cry but the teacher would remain unmoved no matter what. I could only pray the child would stop crying in these situations. It was absolutely painful to watch!
I had almost tears in my eyes when one very meek child was held back and rudely told that she would be made to leave the school after every child has left the class. The teacher was so stupid that she wasn’t able to identify the child that was screaming and mistook the meek girl among the children who were making loud noises when they were leaving for the day. I didn’t want to intervene as the teacher was already very in a very bad mood having taken over the class as the regular teachers were both absent for several days.
Other harsh punishments include a barring of talking to a child i.e no one is allowed to talk to a particular child if he or she has been found at fault by the teacher.
The most harshest of them was this. I saw this being done in two schools where I had been to for Observation and Teaching Practice. Children who are considered “unruly” are taken to other environments, i.e totally removed from their classmates and placed in another class. One can imagine the pain the child would be going through. The child in the new environment feels lost and subdued. He or she is kept there for hours, most of the time the child just sits in a place and does nothing. Their spirits are completely crushed. You wonder if these ladies had anything to do with children let alone be Montessori teachers. It is heart-breaking to watch these helpless children in these situations, their sad faces and tear-filled eyes.
Shocker 5 – Ludicrous teaching methods. Honestly I wonder what fun is there in using several of the methods. It is boring and tedious for the teachers too. Wonder if the child finds them fun. Take for instance the 1000 beaded chain for learning to count from 1-1000, that is 30 ft long. It cannot be laid out in most classrooms (not with 30 students doing their activities) and so the child has to take it out of the classroom (whatever happened to the prepared environment here?). I saw one child lay it out in the open outside the classroom. Others spiral it like a snake inside the classroom making it very inconvenient for the other children to perform their activities. Several other teaching methods in math are similarly very tedious and cumbersome. Then there are the list of Triangles to be learnt which even high school kids may not know, capitals, flags and important cities of all the countries in the world, there are even material which the child is asked to get familiar that is supposed to sow the seeds for Binomial and Trinomial expansions. All at an age between 3 – 6yrs?
AMI’s Primary Montessori course is to be completed in a period of 9 months, an excruciatingly painful course. In such as short time trainees go through so much tension and stress that it shows at their work too after certification. Or is the idea of AMI to spread Montessori philosophy as there is so much competition from other types of alternative schooling methods (Waldorf, Charlotte Mason, Reggio Emila, Sudbury Democratic) and therefore proliferate the society with Montessori teachers? I have observed a teacher surf the net and even sleep in class.
Do you really love teaching children? Are you looking continuously for better and better methods to teach little children? All I can tell you is that such methods are available. All you need is to seek out for them and mix and match then, try them for their efficacy and best, trust your common sense and see what works and what doesn’t. Some schools are doing this too, i.e making a good mix of various teaching methods. Each child is different and one method doesn’t work for all but if you love kids you’ll love the challenge. Montessori needs careful implementation. While several methods do work I will not say the same for many of them. Worst of all if teachers cannot love and understand children then even the most excellent method will fail as I have seen with AMI Certified Montessori teachers in Montessori classrooms.
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