The simplest things in life can evoke wonder and the joy of exploration. That’s if you are a child, or an adult like me, who allows herself to be led on by a group of 5-8 year olds. This time around our wonderings began with the daily glass of milk.
The children, who come from affluent, urban backgrounds, live and study in a private, residential school located in a rural community, about 20 km from the nearest town. I periodically engage with this group as part of their Environmental Studies (EVS) class. During one such session I asked them, “Where does the milk that we drink come from?” We know that milk comes from cows, but how exactly does the milk from the cow get to our homes? Our school community buys milk from a nearby village co-operative run by a group of small and marginal farmers. Clearly, that was the place to find out!
We reached the cooperative in the early morning as planned, when farmers from the surrounding villages came to deposit milk from their cows. The milk collection point is in the centre of the village. Here, three members of the cooperative check the water content in the milk using a lactometer, weigh the milk, and record the information in a logbook. This information is used to make payments to the farmers. The curious children walked around and between the farmers, peering into milk containers that they were holding. Their excitement was palpable with shouts of, “Fresh milk is so white and frothy! I feel like drinking it straight from the bucket!” “Can we drink it straight from the bucket?” “Why does milk look different when we drink it at home?”
Some of the children had dashed down the street and were shouting, “Look everybody on this road is milking cows at the same time!” “Wow, look at the speed with which the milk is coming out of this cow. The milk from the other cow is slower. Why is that?” “There are many different coloured cows. Some are brown, black and white, grey, white. Why are they coloured differently?” “Why do some cows have horns and others don't?” “This cow is eating something while the lady is milking it. What is it eating?”
The farmers and I tried answering each question. Through our disorderly dialogue the story of milk unfolded slowly, in a seemingly fragmented fashion. The narrative did not stick to the predictable steps from the cow to our table: starting from the cow, the milking activity, to the cooperative collection centre and from there to the central kitchen of the school where the children and I lived. The children’s questions steered us away in unexpected directions - into the colour of cows, speed of milking, what they eat. I struggled to explain how different colours mean different breeds, what are breeds, some breeds have horns, others do not, and why do different breeds look so different? The challenge was to simplify these ideas for 5-8 years old without deflecting their questions.
We then settled down on a large Gongadi (traditional blanket woven from wool of the Deccani Black Sheep) spread on the ground outside the milk cooperative’s office in the heart of the village. Over several glasses of warm, sweet milk, we tried to piece together the story of the milk, based on what they had seen and understood. What emerged was a rich and textured account. We tackled new concepts like breeds (there are different types of cows just as there are different types of dogs and cats), difference between indigenous and exotic (imported mainly from the Netherlands and Denmark) breeds of cattle, why conserving local breeds is important, raw milk vs pasteurised milk, the art of milking a cow, and the diet of cows.
At this time of the morning some of the older children in the village, particularly the girls, were busy helping their mothers clean the cowsheds, and carrying the dung mixed with straw from the cowshed to the manure pile placed nearby. They would then help with the cooking and get ready to go to school. Some boys (around 12-13 year old) had accompanied their parents to the cooperative carrying containers of milk. Some of the children studied in the nearby Zilla Parishad High School while others took a bus to a private English Medium School in the nearby town. Many of these children knew me well so they came up to say hello and were curious about why I had brought the little children to the village. Amused at the excitement of the children, they wanted to know if these children had never seen cows before! For the urban children it was a glimpse of a different life, of children working alongside their parents and contributing to livelihoods, even while studying in school.
An interesting pedagogical experience took shape: it was learning through immersion in a real-life situation, with an open-ended exploration led by the young children and not the teacher. The children's sense of wonder, keen observation and uninhibited way of asking questions allowed them to learn in a way that would have been difficult to achieve in any classroom or audio-visual aided environment. Initially while planning this activity I held a preconceived notion of what 5-8 year olds could comprehend, which resulted in the struggle I experienced when the children began to ask seemingly diverse questions. Had we explored this question sitting in a classroom or in a structured manner as I had planned, we would have probably traced the journey of milk from the cow to the table by drawing a classic milk supply chain diagram. How lifeless that would have been! Simply by allowing children to lead the way, we together discovered a joy of learning, a sense of wonder and curiosity, which adults alone find so elusive.