A couple of weeks ago, we were visiting the village of Gundelbah where my sister Nicky met her husband Suja (Surya) about 11 years ago. Suja was working at the time for my Uncle Robert. He is actually from the city of Bhubaneswar about an hour or so away.
On our walk through the village, we stopped in at the school. It was one room about the same size as the schoolhouse at Upper Canada Village. The students ranged in age over what in Canada would be the primary grades (K-3). There was one teacher who looked to be about 18 and 40-50 students. There were no chairs, the desks were on the floor and only about a foot high. They did not seem to have a whole lot in the way of texbooks and virtually nothing in the way of teaching aids except pencils and paper.
Two days ago, I was commenting to Nicky about how similar the schooling situation in rural India was to that of Upper Canada a hundred and fifty years ago. She said it was funny I should mention that because on one of their trips to Gundelbah, they had taken a hard cover book about Upper Canada Village to show to the villagers. When they were shown a picure of the sawmill, they were in awe and remarked to Suja on how modern and advanced Canada was. He and Nicky didn't have the heart to tell them what Upper Canada Village really was....
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