An interview with British educator Claire Horsburgh

Imagine a class full of children in rural Punjab singing their own version of ‘Kolaveri Di’ in classical Punjabi. “It is possible because they learnt the original Tamil song and its meaning without stress, and understood the song’s essence and its elongated drags to be able to produce their own version,” says British educator Claire Horsburgh. Horsburgh’s mission is to effectively cultivate multi-lingual students and teachers because she believes English proficiency not only has social and cognitive benefits but is also linked to educational level and social class. “For a better and early exposure to English, schools have to rethink the approach of teaching because the younger students in particular are not inspired by learning rigid techniques, solely by a textbook,” said Horsburgh, who visited Kanchipuram, Hyderabad, Kochi, Bengaluru, Kolkata, Chandigarh, Delhi, Mumbai and Nagpur over the course of two months. “There have been big changes in the Indian education sector with a move towards experiential learning, activity-based tasks and cross-curricular integration,” she says, “and we are trying to make English completely culturally relevant.” Beyond the textbook It is easy for teachers to slip into patterns and just focus on grades, but Horsburgh’s point is to teach in an interesting way.