I visited one of the primary schools in our pilot program last week, in Mariyappan Palya. All of the schools we're working with are government schools operated by the B'lore municipal government. I attended a meeting with a few parents of children at the school and wandered around the school grounds, peeking in classrooms and talking with a few of the students.

(A little background: Unlike in the U.S., here all middle class children and many working class children attend private schools -- which vary widely in quality and cost. Urban parents with any money at all refuse to send their kids to government schools because they are infamously, uniformly awful. Rural government schools are supposed to be somewhat better, but still nowhere near adequate.)

Here's a shot of one of the nicer classrooms. Most of the school's classrooms had no desks, so the kids sit on the floor during their lessons, but this cramped room at least has benches. Another depressing fact: for 250 children at the primary school, and another 250 children at the adjoining high school, there was only one toilet.

But the kids were really lively and adorable, and I had fun meeting them. Several classrooms were unattended (absent teachers?) and when I poked my head in, the children all shouted "Miss! Miss!" to get my attention and shake my hand. When I pulled out my camera, they went totally nuts. I couldn't really even take any good photos because they were jumping up and down and shoving each other to get closer to the camera.