Discipline

I've never been great with children, so the decision to volunteer in a primary school for 5 months was a bit of a snap one to say the least. My only prior experience was during a brief spell as a babysitter 5 or 6 years ago but even that wasn't a huge success after the daughter of a next-door neighbour came down complaining of a monster under her bed and I just said "no, there's not", packed her off to bed and continued eating snacks. I never got called again.

So, on my first day at the school back in October, I walked through the gates wearing my biggest beaming smile and the kids mobbed me. That was my first mistake. Kids can smell weakness a mile off (or in India, probably a kilometre off) and i've been playing catch-up in the discipline stakes ever since.

The laws on physical punishment are more relaxed in this country, so technically if I wanted to engage in a bit of mild hitting, then I probably could. But i'm fairly confident that volunteers are only expected to bring a cheery disposition and a different perspective to the school with them so any brutality may be slightly outside of my job description.

Anyway, there is a long list of problems which are preventing me from stumbling across anything even approaching authority. I think 90% of appearing scary to children is in the eyes and mine are just too damn squinty for the role of authoritarian taskmaster. They also have a considerable upper hand because they can organise their mischief or just trade insults about me, in Tamil. Other contributing factors are that I'm unbelievably inconsistent with my punishments, that I believe in playing favourites with the children and that, fundamentally, I just don't care that much.

The job is, however, made considerably easier by the willingness of Indian children to shop fellow pupils to the teachers in order to, wait for it, CURRY favour with them. There are even assemblies in which children are rewarded and given prizes for telling on their best friends and sometimes siblings. It is amazing how many times a day children come up to me pointing at another child and saying something like 'this boy is hitting me', which instinctively just makes me think they deserve it. Nobody likes a grass.