When school is an isolation cubicle with three toilet breaks a day

A Lose the Booth conference in Leeds later this month will bring to a head calls to stop using isolation to discipline pupils

Six days a week Brendan, 17, leaves at six in the morning for his job on a building site and doesn’t get home until tea time. It’s his first job and he is loving it. “I am very, very proud of him,” says his mother.

But it could have turned out very differently. Brendan left his academy trust school in Normanton, West Yorkshire, without any GCSEs, having spent much of his time in an isolation cubicle, banned from talking to other pupils or looking left or right, and with just three toilet breaks in a day to stretch his legs.

In his last term, in 2018, his mother finally managed to get him assessed by an educational psychologist. “She said he found it hard to process information unless it was written down and he couldn’t sit in an enclosed space for more than 45 minutes,” his mother says. “He would get up and walk around the school to ‘reset’ himself and that’s why he ended up in isolation. Once in isolation, he kept failing it because he would get up and walk around, so in he went the next day – he was in isolation for six weeks one term – and those in the booths had to stay an extra hour after school as a punishment as well.

“I struggled and struggled with the school for years to get him assessed for support because I didn’t want him to lose out on his education as I did. I went back into education and did what I had to at 40 and I hope he will too,” she adds.

Many UK schools isolate children from their peers for offences as trivial as wearing incorrect uniform. Photograph: Jeff Mitchell/Getty Images

The school, Freeston academy, has since been taken over by another trust, the Outwood Grange Academies Trust, which says children are put in “reflection classrooms” rather than isolation.

Widespread use of isolation has prompted a Lose the Booth conference later this month in Leeds, where teachers, psychologists, children’s rights activists and parents will call for the practice to be banned, or used only as a last resort. And last week a report by the Centre for Mental Health charity said that putting pupils in isolation for long periods could harm their mental health.

Behind the issue, however, is the bigger question of how schools should respond to pupils with challenging behaviour. The growing popularity of “zero tolerance”, especially across multi-academy trusts, has led to children with special educational or emotional needs being sent into isolation. In some schools, children are sent into isolation for turning up in the wrong colour shoes or socks.

The Ruth Gorse academy, for example, part of the GORSE Academies Trust, which manages 11 schools around Leeds, has a list of rules on its website and warns: “Students with inappropriate hairstyles will be placed in isolation.”

One primary headteacher was called by his 11-year-old daughter’s school to say she was in isolation for forgetting to bring in her planner “but if I brought it in she could come out”. He said it was an hour-and-a half round trip to go home to collect it, and he was in a meeting.

“The school said bring in £5 for a new planner and she can come out. It’s ridiculous, having to pay a ransom to get your daughter out of ‘prison’ just because she forgot her planner for the first time ever,” the headteacher says. Later, the issue was resolved and the school is now reviewing its isolation policy.

Paul Dix, a behaviour consultant, says every day children are being sent to isolation for trivial things – but it doesn’t have to be like that. “There are schools that have calm classrooms without recourse to these ridiculous Victorian punishments. They work with their children and get to know and understand them.”

Yet the zero-tolerance approach, more recently dubbed “warm strict”, is being promoted by schools praised by the government for their performance. Mark Lehain, founder and former headteacher of the Bedford free school, says he used isolation booths, but children were being isolated “from other pupils, not from mankind”.

“They were next to the room where the pastoral leaders are based so they could work with them and keep an eye on them,” he says. “Teachers are free to teach and children to learn and we can work with the smaller group of children to sort out their behaviour. The campaigners against the booths are largely driven by [Jean Jacques] Rousseau’s ideology that all children are fundamentally good and if they misbehave, then they have an unmet need. But that is not how children are,” he says.

“The ban the booth campaign is another front for the progressive approach to education, which feels it is losing ground. Not only are they wrong but their views are unpopular, because when you talk to parents, students and teachers, they want safe, orderly classrooms.”

Tom Bennett, the government-appointed behaviour tsar for England, says “removal rooms” are a common feature in schools so children can learn in safe, calm environments. “They aren’t isolation rooms – I’ve never seen a school leave a child unattended. They’re supervised, and more often than not, accompanied by other students. So claims that these are isolation spaces is nonsense. These are safe spaces, run by adults,” he says.

However, headteachers such as Simon Flowers, of Carr Manor Community school in Leeds, take an alternative approach, working with children to help them recognise and understand their feelings and make the right decisions. His school, for pupils aged 4-19, has a high proportion of children with additional needs and challenging behaviour but hasn’t permanently excluded a pupil for 15 years.

“We don’t take the quick way out. We don’t have a punitive system with isolation rooms, we resolve things and the children leave us rounded, engaged and self-regulated. If something happens we pull together. Adults model the behaviour that shapes children, they don’t try to control them with laminated sheets of rules and punishments,” he says.

Proponents of zero tolerance need to think beyond the school walls, Flowers says. “If I exclude the child who brings a knife into school, I have lost any impact on that child and they can be walking into a shop with the knife, down the street or on to a bus with it.”

Children’s names have been changed

(Source: The Guardian)

Pampers pledges to install 5,000 baby changing tables in men's restrooms across the US

From the trunk of a car to the lid of a piano, dads sometimes have to get creative when it's time to change their child's diaper without a changing station.

Pampers says it's time that men's restrooms catch up with the responsibilities of modern fathers.
The company announced an initiative to install 5,000 changing tables in men's restrooms across the U.S. and Canada. The announcement accompanies Pampers' new ad campaign, which encourages fathers to share moments they bonded with their child during a diaper change.

Along with changing table company Koala Kare, they'll start in "high-need locations" first, providing tables in cities including Cincinnati, Dallas and Detroit, specifically in public spots like parks and libraries. Some 500 locations are set to receive their new tables within the next few weeks, the company said.

In a video shared Monday, Pampers celebrity spokesperson and father of two John Legend joins everyday dads in sharing the makeshift changing stations they resort to when the real thing isn't available.

"Dads have to resort to all these maneuvers because there's no changing stations in our restrooms," Legend says.

The initiative went viral in October 2018, when Donte Palmer posted a picture of himself squatting against a wall in a Jacksonville, Florida restroom, using his legs as a makeshift changing table for his 1-year-old son. His post sparked a movement to install baby-changing stations in men's restrooms with the hashtag #SquatForChange.

Despite advancements, many men's restrooms are still changing table-free. In 2016, President Obama passed the Bathrooms Accessible in Every Situation, or BABIES, Act, which mandated changing tables in some, but not all, public bathrooms in a building. And rather than install them in every restroom, buildings must provide signage to the nearest station, often located in a women's stall. Restaurants and retailers are excluded from the measure, too.

(Source: CNN)

Meet the Pune duo turning old buses into clean toilets for women

“Each bus has western toilets, Indian toilets, washbasins, a diaper changing place and sanitary napkins for sale. It is powered by solar energy.”

It’s a cold morning in Pune. She quickens her pace looking around for a suitable refuge, knowing all too well that there isn’t any. She regrets not going to the toilet before she left the house and now her only option is to find one at her destination.

Ill-maintained public toilets are a menace, and more so for women. Even in urgent situations, many prefer to refrain from entering the stinking, filthy spaces which promise nothing but overflowing lavatories.

However, Ulka Sadalkar and Rajeev Kher, who are entrepreneurs in the sanitation sector, are changing this one public toilet at a time.

And unlike the usual four-walled public toilets, they are using scrapped public buses as sanitation centres!

Sources: (L) Shasvathi Siva 🌿/ Twitter. (R) Ulka Sadalkar.

“We read about this concept of using old buses as restrooms for homeless people. We wanted to replicate the idea in Pune for women. The city is densely populated. There isn’t space to construct toilets. Buses wouldn’t need much space and could be refurbished. Also, clean public toilets are integral to the Swachh Bharat movement and for Pune’s Smart City initiative,” says Sadalkar to the Civil Society Online.

Speaking to The Better India, Ulka says, “In a brainstorming session with the Pune Municipal Corporation in 2016, we decided to recycle the old, scrapped buses into toilets for women.” She adds that “The lack of public toilets for women is not alien to us. Women, especially, who menstruate once a month may face an emergency any time, and urgently need a toilet.

So we decided to install these sanitation centres in some of the busy areas in Pune where public toilets are scarce.”

Courtesy: Ulka Sadalkar.

Ulka and Rajeev’s company, Saraplast, provides mobile toilets for public events and they believe that “Ti” which translates to “she or her” in Marathi, is just one step ahead in utilising their expertise for the betterment of society. Ti also stands for “Toilet Integration.”

These are not just any toilets. Equipped with all the necessities, these “Toilets for her” are the perfect refuge you would want in case nature calls you when you’re on the road.

“Each bus has western toilets, Indian toilets, washbasins, a diaper changing place and sanitary napkins for sale. It is powered by solar energy. We want to ensure that the women who come here do not have to face any problems and since the launch, in 2016, we haven’t received any complaints or poor feedback. We have installed 11 such health centres—we call them those, so it takes the stigma away from public toilets—in the busy parts of Pune where the footfall is high, but there are no restrooms for the women to use. We are targeting the lower income class because those are the women who need these toilets the most,” Ulka tells TBI.

But that doesn’t mean that the quality is compromised in any way. In fact, as Ulka mentioned, one toilet receives an average of 150 ladies per day!

Courtesy: Ulka Sadalkar.

“On some days, the number rises up to 300. A couple of toilets that are located in quiet areas receive a lesser footfall, but even then, a good number of women use ‘Ti,’” she says.

TV screens with videos about female hygiene are installed in the buses that have been designed in such a way that you are led from the toilets to wash basins (to remind you to wash your hands).

“Women aren’t used to finding such restrooms. There is this wow factor. Their reaction is, ‘well, so the government finally cares for us!'” explains Usha to CSO.

The numbers speak for themselves. Hundreds, if not a thousand women use the washrooms every day, showing how urgently Pune needs hygienic, clean public toilets.

A female attendant, who greets you with a polite smile and a technician to regularly check that the solar panels and toilets are functioning fine are employed with ‘ti.’

Courtesy: Ulka Sadalkar.

Although the buses can be moved, Rajeev and Ulka don’t plan on making them into mobile toilets for the simple reason that women should know where they can find the toilet when they need it. A mobile toilet lacks the dependability that comes with these stationary washrooms.

Well-lit and equipped with all the necessities, users are charged only Rs 5 for the services. “When we started out, we did not charge anything. But gradually, we realised that if this model has to be sustainable, we needed to charge some amount. Even now, we are actually looking for financial alternatives that will make the toilets sustainable without having to charge the users. But that is work in progress,” explains Ulka.

The duo is also planning to expand these health centres and set up juice stalls, and WiFi spots etc., so that these areas become a sort of recreation space for people from the lower income groups.

Ulka and Rajeev’s innovation is undoubtedly the perfect solution for Pune. The well-lit, well-maintained and fully-equipped toilets promise to go beyond your typical idea of public toilets and help you answer the call of nature safely and without compromising on hygiene.

(Source: TBI)

Attention, ladies! This Rs 10 ‘pee’ device will help you use public toilets safely

Why should women suffer for unhygienic public toilets? Thanks to two IIT-Delhi students, a biodegradable and affordable solution may have been found!

The less said about the state of public toilets in cities or along highways, the better. Besides the pungent stench, these toilets are swarming with germs. For women, however, using these toilets is not less than a health hazard, and in times of emergency, many often prefer to relieve themselves in the safe confines of their home.

“71% of public washrooms are not cleaned on a regular basis, and women suffer from immense difficulty as they have to sit every time over the toilet seats while peeing and get infected by the germs and infections over the toilet seats. They don’t have other alternatives either they either have to hold the urine or wipe the toilet seats,” said the developers of Sanfe, a simple one-handed use and throw apparatus women can use to pee in public places.

Safe and clean public toilets are a serious civic problem, but two students from the Indian Institute of Technology-Delhi and their professors aren’t waiting around for officials to act. Instead, they decided to develop Sanfe, a short-term and environment-friendly fix for this issue.

Harry Sehrawat and Archit Agarwal— third-year students of textile engineering at IIT-D—understood first-hand how their female friends or classmates suffer as a consequence of dirty and unhygienic toilets. This problem is especially worse when they are travelling.

“We visited many public loos across the city, and almost all of them were unhygienic and unfit for use. Upon further research, we also found out that public toilets were also one of the prominent reasons that cause Urinary Tract Infection (UTI) in women,” Sehrawat told DNA.

Archit Aggarwal with the Sanfe product. (Source: Facebook/Sanfe)

Both Sehrawat and Agarwal began working on Sanfe six months ago, asking their female classmates about their experience with this problem. A major design challenge standing before the duo was how to develop an apparatus that fit women of all sizes. They later reached out to a professor in the ergonomics department, who assisted in the design process.

Once the product was ready, they distributed the apparatus to their female friends and asked them for feedback on its effectiveness and the necessary changes they could make.

“The main technique behind Sanfe is that it eliminates body contact with toilet seats. It is compact enough to be carried in a purse and can be disposed of easily after one use,” Sehrawat told the publication, explaining the various benefits of the equipment.

How to use the product. (Source: Facebook/Sanfe)

“Sanfe is unique in terms of its design, which is a menstrual friendly design, can [also] be used by women during her menstrual periods. Sanfe is designed keeping in mind the needs of its customers, it is a one-handed grip product, it can be used by a single hand, and the other hand can be used to hold the dress, which is ideal for the Indian Women wearing Sarees and Suits,” say the duo on their Facebook page, adding that the smooth curves of the apparatus helps women avoid paper cuts.

Made of biodegradable paper, the apparatus is priced at a cheap Rs 10 and currently available at pharmacies in and around AIIMS in Delhi. However, the Sanfe apparatus will be available in leading e-commerce platforms from next week, say the developers, and thus far has received pre-orders to the tune of 50,000 units from various organisations. For manufacturing the IIT-Delhi innovators have set up Redroom Technology, who have a unit in Noida.

(Source: Facebook/Sanfe)

“Sanfe is not only useful for the public washrooms, but also for pregnant women, women with knee pains and the back pains, as they suffer from the immense pain while sitting/squatting over toilet seats,” they say.

(Source: TBI)

South Africa's school pit latrine scandal: Why children are drowning

During his first week at school, five-year-old Michael Komape drowned in a pit latrine in northern South Africa.

That day in January 2014 will be one his father James Komape will never forget.

As he takes me back to the school in Chebeng village, where the tragedy struck, his pain is palpable.

"When I arrived at the opening of the toilet hole all I could see was a small hand," he says.

"Some people were standing looking into the hole, no-one had thought to take him out. It's the saddest thing I've ever seen.

"No-one should die like that."

He pauses for a moment before continuing.

"He must have been trying to call for help to maybe even climb out. It's hard to accept that my son died alone and probably afraid."

Michael Komape's parents plan to appeal against a recent ruling
which denied their claim for damages

Mr Komape struggles to make eye contact.

Instead he fixes his eyes on the neat row of brick toilet stalls, which were built after his son died in the toilet of rusty corrugated iron just metres away.

The iron sheet that had served as the seat collapsed when Michael sat on it. He fell in, along with the seat and its white plastic lid, the authorities said.

But this is not a one-off problem affecting one school.

While access to proper sanitation is a basic human right enshrined in South Africa's constitution, many pupils have no choice but to use pit toilets.

South Africa's school pit latrines

• More than 4,500 schools have pit latrine toilets
• Many are made from cheap metal, are shoddily built and left uncovered
• Eastern Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and Limpopo provinces are among the worst, says Education Minister Angie Motshekga
• Eastern Cape has 61 schools with no toilets at all, and 1,585 schools with pit latrines
• Neighbouring KwaZulu-Natal province has 1,379 pit latrines in use
• Limpopo province, where Michael Komape went to school, has at least 932 unsafe toilets.

How did things get so bad?
Analysts say it is partly a legacy of apartheid, since under white-minority rule virtually no resources were allocated to develop schools for poor, predominately black children.


Also to blame is the failure to maintain existing infrastructure, however basic.

Michal Komape died in this pit latrine at Mahlodumela Lower Primary School

Back at their home just outside Polokwane, the main city in Limpopo province, the Komapes tell me they want justice for Michael's death.

With the help of Section27, a human rights law firm, the family are set to appeal against a recent court ruling which rejected their claim for damages over the incident.

The suit is against Limpopo province's education department, which the family believes was negligent.

Section27 is helping the Komapes to take the case to court

"The Komape case is a tragic one but it is an illustration of the dire state of public school facilities in the country," Section27's Zukiswa Pikoli told the BBC.

"We were quite shocked when we heard about the tragedy. There was no way we were not going to help."

Ms Pikoli says Section27 is planning to take the case to the Constitutional Court, South Africa's highest court.

Pupils at a school close to where Michael Komape died must now accompany
each other to the toilet as a new safety measure

The Komapes are not the only family to lose a child in this manner.

Earlier this year in the rural province of the Eastern Cape, a five-year-old girl drowned in a pit latrine.

Lumka Mkhethwa went missing without a trace from Luna Primary School in March.

The village was notified and a manhunt was conducted overnight by the community, but she could not be found.

The following day the police returned to the school where she had last been seen.

A pack of sniffer dogs lead them to the grisly find. Her tiny body was at the bottom of a dark, faeces-filled toilet.

After her death, South Africa's new President Cyril Ramaphosa called for pit latrines to be eradicated by the end of 2018.

But this ambitious plan will need money.

'Years of neglect'
An interim government report suggests it will cost more than 11bn rand ($876m; £660m) - a sum it hopes to raise with help from the private sector.

"We are having to address many years of neglect and but change is coming, even if slowly," says Elijah Mhlanga, an official in the lower education ministry.

Michael Komape's death has galvanised the community where he lived

"These two incidents have been tragic but we are hoping that this shows everyone the seriousness of the crisis," he adds.

"We have received interest, with people offering to help with the funding.

"It is our intention to see that all the children in our schools are in safe facilities."

Teacher patrols
In another village in Limpopo province, word of Michael's death has changed the normal school routine.

Sebushi Primary School is modest, but clean and well-kept.

Behind a vegetable garden sits a row of pit latrines.

Many have a large opening at the back, where teachers now monitor pupils as they use them.

"Every morning from 06:00 a teacher patrols the toilets, monitoring who goes in and out," says Joseph Mashishi, chairman of this school's governing body.

These brick-housed toilets were built at Michael's former school after his death

"We don't want what happened to the Komape family to happen in our school. No child should have to die in faeces, it is inhumane."

Many in Michael's community have now been stirred into action.

They are fighting to have new toilets installed in all the region's schools, in memory of the young boy whose life ended too early.

(Source: BBC)

India splutters in anger after toilet water used for train tea

An Indian tea vendor caught on video taking water from a train toilet before selling his drinks to passengers has been fined amid heightened concern in India over food safety.

The vendor on the Chennai-Hyderabad Express was caught after footage of him and two others coming out of a toilet with large cans used to serve tea and coffee on Indian trains was widely shared.

Indian Railways said in a statement that the ‘incident has been inquired into in detail’ and that the tea seller had been fined the equivalent of $1,500.

The video was made on a train at Secunderabad in Telangana state. Out of the three vendors seen only one was licensed.

Screenshots from video that shows two railway tea vendors filling their cans with toilet

The vendor claimed the group were transferring milk from one can to another and did not want to do it in the open.

‘The very fact that tea/coffee cans were seen being brought out of the toilet, is in itself a wrong practice,’ the railway company said.

A series of recent incidents have put the spotlight on food safety in India.

In the eastern city of Kolkata, famed for its Bengal delicacies, police this week unearthed a racket in which tonnes of rotten meat from dumps was being sold to restaurants.

Sales of meat and poultry in the city have plummeted since authorities seized about 20 tonnes of rotten meat. Police suspect a lot more had been sent out to city restaurants.

‘The meat was sourced from dump yards where vultures, dogs fight over carcasses in the fringes of the city,’ Koteshwar Rao, a senior West Bengal police officer told AFP.

Eight people have been arrested so far. But Kolkata restaurants and cafes have been left reeling from the scandal.

‘The rumours have resulted in a 50 percent fall in demand (for meat) across restaurants and eateries,’ Taher Ali, a member of the Meat Merchants Association told AFP.

The Hotel and Restaurant Association of Eastern India has told its members to only purchase meat from registered suppliers.

According to government figures, food poisoning is one of the most common disease outbreaks in India, accounting for 242 of 1,469 reported serious outbreaks last year.

(Source: Gulf Times)

There's no toilet like home

Why coming back to a familiar environment triggers a sudden urge to go to the bathroom? What makes you more comfortable at home when you open the door and how does your body know you're there? Read what Julie Beck writes about this in the Atlantic: 

There’s a full-body sigh that happens when you cross the threshold of your home for the first time after a long trip. And I do mean full-body: No sooner have your limp arms discarded your luggage on the floor and your lungs filled themselves with that sweet familiar home air than your gut feels the sudden, emphatic need to poop.

For me, it happens within minutes, if not seconds. And I’m not alone.

“This is indeed a very familiar story,” says Nick Haslam, a professor of psychology at the University of Melbourne and author of Psychology in the Bathroom. “Most people feel more comfortable going to the bathroom in familiar—and private—surroundings.”

It’s sort of the inverse of another bowel-related vacation experience: traveler’s constipation. Many people find themselves clogged while they’re away from home, often because they’re uncomfortable pooping in unfamiliar bathrooms. It can also be because they are eating less poop-friendly foods on vacation, or because unfamiliar bacteria in a new environment are throwing off their gut microbiomes, as Mollie Bloudoff-Indelicato reported for The Atlantic in 2015. (Of course, if you eat the wrong meal, you could suffer traveler’s diarrhea instead.)

“In my view the experience of ‘unburdening’ upon returning from a trip is largely a Pavlovian response: The home is a safety signal, signifying that this is the right place to go,” Haslam told me over email. This is likely to be the case whether or not you were particularly constipated during your trip. “If there has been any inhibition or retention at all during the trip the relaxation response is likely to kick in when you come home,” he says.

This is largely the explanation I expected for this phenomenon, which I shall henceforth be calling the “returnee’s release.” And it makes total sense. But there’s a deeper explanation here—one that involves the mysterious ways our bodies respond to changes in environment. And if you embrace the reasoning of one scientist, it may lead you to question the existence of your very soul.

That scientist is Jack Gilbert, a professor of surgery at the University of Chicago, and the director of the university’s Microbiome Center. I spoke with him in an attempt to understand whether there is a physical call-and-response between my home and my body that might trigger the need to make a deposit in the porcelain bank. Or is it simply that I feel more comfortable at home?

“What is ‘more comfortable?’” Gilbert asks. “Why do you feel more comfortable at home?”

Because it’s familiar, I guess, I say. All my stuff is there.

“Right, but that’s not you thinking that, remember that,” he says, meaning there is no mystical entity that makes up my self. “Unless you’re highly spiritual, then the soul doesn’t really exist. There’s no ghost in the machine. You’re just a sensory programming device.”

He devotes a large portion of this interview to really hammering home the point that the brain does not “store” memories, like a computer. “All you’re doing, when you try to recall something, is triggering sensory simulacra of that experience,” he says.

So back to the returnee’s release. When you enter your home, you get certain sensory inputs—smells, sights, a familiar creak in the floor, perhaps. All aspects of the environment, from the temperature of the room to the feeling of the doorknob in your hand to the microbes all around you, contribute to the sensation of “being more comfortable at home.”

“‘More comfortable’ is an emotional state, but emotions are physiological responses,” Gilbert says.

“So ‘more comfortable’ is a physiological state. It’s a way in which your body responds to its environment.”

The complex sensory stew of the home environment may in some way be physically moving the mail along.
“When you get back into your home, your glucose tolerance will change,” he continues. “Your adrenaline pumping will change, and the energy sensors of your muscles will change, altering your actual respiration, how much energy your burn, and how much fat you deposit. When you get back into your home your sleep patterns will change, because the hormones that control sleep will be altered. All of these factors influence how quickly food moves through your gut.”

We don’t really know exactly how the body responds to certain sensory stimuli, he notes. Just that it does.

So it’s not only that people feel safer and more comfortable pooping at home, but that the complex sensory stew of the home environment may in some way be physically moving the mail along.

“We are essentially automata responding to environmental cues,” Gilbert says. “I’m pretty sure I can train you as a human being to pee when you smell peppermint. That’s an example of how much of an automaton you are. It would be technically possible to do that.”

And as Haslam noted, we’re already trained in a more mundane way. “You have a lot of experience defecating and urinating in your preferred toilet,” he writes, “which becomes strongly associated with those acts, so just being in its presence triggers the relaxation response that allows you to release the inhibitions that led you to ‘hold it in’ while in unfamiliar surroundings.” And it’s not just while traveling: As I’ve previously reported, some people find themselves inhibited in any public bathroom.

If nothing else, the returnee’s release is certainly a stark reminder of how much our bodies are held in thrall by their surroundings. “You came in saying your question is stupid,” Gilbert chastises me. “It’s not. Your question is paramount to the fact that we are not in control of our environment. There is no free will.”

Think about that the next time you drop the kids off at the pool.

'Every day was agony': Indian woman granted divorce over lack of toilet

Judge says forcing a woman to defecate in the open amounts to ‘mental torture’, in latest case underlining how far India still has to go on access to sanitation

The drive to build more toilets in India has been given an unusual twist with a Rajasthan judge granting a woman a divorce because her husband’s failure to provide her with one amounted to cruelty.

Sangeeta Mali, 23, told the court in Bhilwara district that her husband, Chotu Lal Mali, had agreed to build her a toilet when they married in 2011, but never did. Mali told the judge that she was ashamed of having to defecate in the fields around her home in Pur village with no privacy or comfort.

“He kept saying he would build it but it was just talk. In the end, he refused point blank. My in-laws also refused. Every day was agony – waiting for it to get dark so that there was no one around who could see me, forcing me to hold on even though my bladder was bursting. I couldn’t live with the stress any more,” she told the Guardian.

For the past two years, Mali has had to use the toilet at her mother’s home in another village. At the end of 2015, with no toilet in sight, she decided to file for divorce.

Mali’s story has made the front pages of Indian newspapers. The judgment given on Friday by Justice Rajendra Kumar Sharma has been widely quoted for its strongly worded views.

Sharma said the fact that women have to defecate in the open amounted to “mental torture” and was a disgrace in the 21st century. “Has it ever pained us that our mothers and sisters have to go to defecate in the open? Women in villages have to wait for dark to venture out in order to relieve [themselves] and as a result have to bear … physical pain,” he said.

“It is an irony that people who spend a lot of money on alcohol, tobacco and mobile phones don’t have toilets in their homes.”

A new toilet installed at Marora village, in Haryana, India. Narendra Modi’s government launched a campaign in 2014 to end open defecation by 2019. Photograph: Harish Tyagi/EPA

Mali’s lawyer, Rajesh Sharma, said he was pleased with the coverage of the case. “We are very backward compared with other countries. If we want our women to live with dignity, and if we want our country to be clean and great again, we have to build toilets not just for Mali but all Indian women, in villages or cities,” he said.

Mali is not the first woman to take action over sanitation concerns. In March, a bride in Telangana state, in southern India, refused to go ahead with her marriage until her fiance had built a toilet. And in April last year, a bride in Kanpur called off her wedding at the last minute for the same reason.

Of the estimated 2.3 billion people in the world who do not have access to toilets, more than one-third live in India. In 2014, the Narendra Modi government launched the Swachh Bharat or Clean India Mission to build more than 100m toilets and end open defecation by 2019.

Debates about sanitation have reached the big screen, with Mali’s case echoing the storyline of a just-released Bollywood film called Toilet: A Love Story. The film has a woman threatening to leave her husband unless he builds a toilet. To win back her love and respect, he embarks on a campaign to change his village’s lackadaisical policy on latrines.

“I just can’t fathom how we’ve been able to launch rockets to Mars and the moon but still not been able to build toilets to end open defecation across the country,” the star of the film, Akshay Kumar, told the Times of India this month.

Back living with her widowed mother, who manages by selling vegetables, Mali will not be seeing Kumar’s film. But she said: “I’m glad they have made it. We need to talk about this every day, everywhere, until we get toilets. The government must move faster. Women are desperate.”

(Source: The Guardian)

How caste prejudices promote open defecation in rural India

Diane Coffey and Dean Spears are visiting researchers at the Indian Statistical Institute in Delhi. In their book, Where India Goes: Abandoned Toilets, Stunted Development and the Costs of Caste, Coffey and Spears investigate why more than half the Indian population defecates in the open in India, and why, despite schemes such as the Swachh Bharat Mission­­—the central government’s flagship sanitation project—the use of latrines in rural India remains low. As part of the research for the book, the writers, along with a research team, traveled to various parts of rural Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Bihar and Tamil Nadu. They found that the primary reason for poor sanitation in rural areas is the persistence of caste prejudices—most Indians, especially upper-caste Hindus, continue to associate defecation with impurity or “dirty” practices, and are often unwilling to have latrines constructed in their otherwise “pure” homes. This prejudice is a by-product of caste hierarchies, which relegate any work involving proximity to human waste to those considered lower-caste, and perpetuate practices such as manual scavenging. “Open defecation in rural India is a globally special case that helps us understand how social inequality constrains human development,” Coffey and Spears write in their introduction to the book. “It may not be possible to accelerate India’s future without engaging with the illiberal forces of caste and untouchability that are still part of India’s present.”

How these prejudices further unsanitary practices is illustrated in the excerpt below: despite recommended World Health Organisation standards for small, affordable latrine pits, most homes in rural India desist from having these installed, or build extremely large pits in the ground—thereby increasing the cost of building toilets, among other issues. The reason behind these decisions, Coffey and Spears found, is that most people refuse to participate in the process of emptying of latrine pits. In the extract, the writers discuss their findings regarding this reluctance, and explain how it is rooted in caste.

Here's an excerpt from Where India Goes: Abandoned Toilets, Stunted Development and the Costs of Caste, by Diane Coffey and Dean Spears, published by Harper Collins India. The excerpt has been edited and condensed:

In other developing countries, where untouchability and manual scavenging never existed, emptying latrine pits is a job done by people who are poor and down on their luck. But they are not people whose parents were prevented from drawing water from a well. They are not people whose parents were forced to eat scraps after public functions. In other countries, emptying latrine pits is an unpleasant job rather than a symbol of generations of oppression and humiliation. India’s history of untouchability—and the way it is being renegotiated in villages today—is what makes the job of emptying latrine pits in Indian villages markedly different from other places in the developing world.

If higher-caste people cannot look beyond the supposedly polluting nature of sanitation work and learn to see the people who do such work as equals, it may help to accelerate social progress if more people like Neha [a young Dalit woman that the writers met] refuse to do the stigmatising work that others expect of them. This is a strategy that many Dalit activists have promoted, even as other Dalits advocate instead for better pay and working conditions—especially those like Neha’s father, who have found meagre economic security in performing untouchable work. It is against this backdrop that people in villages fret about what will happen if they were to use a simple pit latrine, and if that pit were to fill up.

By the time we had finished [the studies described in the book], our whole team had come to understand how important the lack of affordable pit latrines is to India’s open defecation crisis. But we did not yet fully understand just how difficult it would be to get a latrine pit emptied in a village. Could someone get a latrine pit emptied if he wanted to? Our colleagues returned to Sitapur [a district in Uttar Pradesh] in December 2014 to find out.

One of the first things that they learnt was that latrine pits are so rarely emptied manually in villages that it is difficult to estimate the price of this service. The few families they found who had ever had a honeycomb-style pit emptied reported paying a very high price compared to what they pay for other services in villages. A young Brahmin named Abhishek Sharma explained to our colleagues that his relatives had recently needed to get their pit emptied:

There is no one who will empty out a pit here. Near us, in 10, 20, 50 kilometres, there is no one who will empty out a pit. This is a problem. Our uncle’s latrine pit got filled up. It was a soak [honeycomb-style] pit. We had to bring someone from Lucknow to get it emptied out. They took five-and-a-half thousand rupees for a two-hour job. That’s why this is a big problem.

To put this price into perspective, an unskilled day labourer who works in Sitapur town could expect to earn about Rs 200 per day. He would earn even less if he were working in a village. An economist who is unaware of India’s history of untouchability would be shocked by the high cost of getting a latrine pit emptied. How could someone charge Rs 5,500 for two hours of manual labour when the wage for day labour in the same market is so much less? For this much money, one could buy two complete latrines in Bangladesh! The economist, drawing upon the familiar model of supply and demand, would expect more workers to enter the market for latrine pit emptying and compete against one another for work until the price of the job came down.

The key reason why people who empty latrine pits can charge much more than the prevailing wage for day labour is that very, very few people are willing to do this work, even for high wages. The model of supply and demand itself is not wrong, but something unique is holding back supply in this case. While visiting an NGO that works on sanitation in Bihar, Diane and Nikhil [a researcher who contributed to the fieldwork] met a field manager whose job was to convince people to adopt affordable latrines. Having talked to many villagers himself, the field manager understood that people did not want government latrines because they did not want to deal with having to empty latrine pits. He wondered if more people would adopt latrines if he were also able to offer a pit-emptying service. But he struggled to find people to provide those services. He explained, “For [people who empty latrine pits] it is like this: if you earn well, but you can’t go to a restaurant, and you can’t go to a temple, what is the use?”

Earlier, we mentioned that one important limit on the pace of social progress in rural India is that higher castes are unwilling to perform traditionally untouchable work, even as more and more Dalits reject these forms of employment. But you might still be wondering whether, faced with such high prices, at least some higher-caste latrine owners would learn to swallow their distaste and empty the latrine pit themselves? After all, as Abhishek Sharma explained, it is a job that takes only a couple of hours.

We did meet a handful of people who had emptied or claimed to be willing to empty their own latrine pits. Most were Muslim. More often than not, they whispered to us that they had emptied the pit under the cover of darkness rather than pay the exorbitant price that a scavenger would charge.

But the vast majority of people we talked with said that they could not even conceive of emptying a latrine pit themselves. Priya, a woman living in peri-urban Sitapur who belonged to a lower, but not a Dalit, caste, explained why:

We cannot empty [the latrine pit] ourselves. We call a Bhangi [a term used to refer to Dalits, often employed as a slur] even if something gets clogged in the latrine … How can we empty it ourselves? It is disgusting, so a Bhangi must come to clean it … We are Hindus, so how can we clean it? [If we do], how will we worship afterwards? If money were an issue we would take a loan for it; we would have to find some way to get it emptied. This work can only be done by people who inherit this occupation. They are Bhangis, they have been created [by God] for this work.

Dalits from other than manual scavenging castes also refuse to empty their own latrine pits. A 60-year-old Pasi (a traditionally pig-rearing Dalit caste) man who works as a nightwatchman explained:

We can’t empty it on our own. It’s their occupation, they are the ones who do it. We are not that. They are the Mehtars, so they clean, but we are Pasi, so we can’t clean … If we clean, we will [be ostracised] – nobody will smoke hookah with us – I mean that nobody will eat or drink with us if we clean [faeces] … People won’t eat with us, and they won’t drink water from our cups.

Sometimes, when we were interviewing people about latrines and pit emptying, we would explain how honeycomb-style latrine pits work. We did this because most people wrongly believe that if they are used daily, government latrine pits fill up very quickly, in a matter of two or three months. However, a 1.5-metre-cube latrine pit that is used daily will actually fill up in a matter of years, not months. This is because the water used for flushing and the water content of the faeces seeps into the ground.

Incorrect beliefs about how long it takes a pit to fill up lead people to considerably overestimate the cost of owning a latrine. They think that they would have to pay several hundreds or thousands of rupees every few months to have the pit emptied. It is no wonder, then, that the SQUAT survey documented that people think that a latrine pit should be reserved for daughters-in-law, for old people, or for “emergencies.” Pits are a depletable resource: the thinking goes that the more often they are used, the more money will have to be spent on emptying them. We suspect that correcting the false belief that pits fill up in a matter of months could be a good first step for a programme of behaviour change informed by the complaints rural Indians have about government latrines.

When Nikhil explained the use of twin pits [a system where two pits are constructed for use—when one fills up, it is covered for six months so that faeces can decompose and therefore, become safer to handle] to Abhishek Sharma, he did not challenge the ideas that the faeces would decompose, and that, biologically speaking, they would be less infectious. Nevertheless, he was firm that this new information did not change his thinking about pit emptying or his family members’ thinking. He said, “We will not be able to do it. I mean, this depends on your thinking and your himmat. People can do it, but we can’t do it.”

Several other people also referred to himmat when talking about pit emptying. We found this word choice revealing. “Himmat” typically translates to “courage,” but when our respondents used it to talk about pit emptying, they linked it to a person’s thinking or orientation towards caste and untouchability. People with himmat were those who were willing to challenge social norms and face the stigma and ostracisation that might accompany such an act.

(Source: The Caravan Magazine)

Using the restroom: A privilege, if you’re a teacher

It’s common knowledge that teachers today are stressed, that they feel underappreciated and disrespected, and disillusioned. It’s no wonder they’re ditching the classroom at such high rates—to the point where states from Indiana to Arizona to Kansas are dealing with teacher shortages. Meanwhile, the number of American students who go into teaching is steadily dropping.

A recent survey conducted jointly by the American Federation of Teachers and Badass Teachers Association asked educators about the quality of their worklife, and it got some pretty harrowing feedback. Just 15 percent of the 30,000 respondents, for example, strongly agreed that they’re enthusiastic about the profession. Compare that to the roughly 90 percent percent who strongly agreed that they were enthusiastic about it when they started their career, and it’s clear that something has changed about schools that’s pushing them away. Roughly three in four respondents said they “often” feel stressed by their jobs.

One in two teachers reported having inadequate bathroom breaks.
The survey’s results were largely what one would expect. Among the “everyday stressors” in the workplace and classroom, the most-cited were time pressure and mandated curricula, respectively, for example.

But perhaps the biggest takeaway is somewhat buried in the summary report: Of the various everyday workplace stressors educators could check off, one of the most popular was “Lack of opportunity to use restroom.” In fact, a fourth of the respondents—which amounts, presumably, to 7,500 educators—cited the bathroom issue as an everyday stressor, putting it in third place only after time pressure and disciplinary issues. What’s more, roughly one in two teachers reported having inadequate bathroom breaks, while about the same ratio said they’re unable to use the breaks they do get.


The survey results should certainly be taken with some skepticism. As the second-largest education union in the country, the AFT clearly has a vested interest in advocating for better work conditions for educators, as does the Badass Teachers Association, a group that “was created to give voice to every teacher who refuses to be blamed for the failure of our society to erase poverty and inequality through education.” The language used in the summary report wasn’t particularly neutral, suggesting that at least some of the 80 questions included in the survey, which was circulated via email and social media, may have been worded in a way that influenced certain responses. (For instance: “How often do you find your work stressful?”) And certain teachers—particularly women and those who had been treated for anxiety at some point in their careers—were more prone to reporting inadequate bathroom time.

Statistical nuance aside, however, what’s clear from the survey results is that when teachers do list the issues that stress them most, the bathroom issue comes up high on the list. That means one of the most pervasive strains on teachers’ lives at work has little to do (at least directly) with the problems that get the most attention in policy circles and the media—stuff like standardized testing, the onslaught of classroom tech, and pay. Maybe the bathroom issue is too primal to make it into policy discussions. Maybe teachers’ physical discomfort seems tangential when students are underperforming, schools are underfunded, and disadvantaged children are falling further and further behind. Or maybe those teachers are too selfless or too modest or too inured to put the issue on the public’s radar. A campaign to “Reclaim the Promise of Brown v. Board”? Now that’s noble. A campaign for more time to tinkle? Not so much.

But that doesn’t mean the bathroom-break problem isn’t one decision makers and education reformers should be overlooking (which they currently seem to be doing, given the apparent lack of research and dialogue on the issue). Randi Weingarten, the president of the AFT, mentioned the problem only in passing in her keynote speech at the union’s annual TEACH conference earlier this month: “We’ve fought for language in contracts that covers everything from class size to peer-assistance programs to making sure that when a teacher is sick, a substitute is called and those students aren’t just dumped into the class of the person who’s least likely to say ‘no’ to the principal,” she said. “We’ve even fought for time for bathroom breaks.”

Only some teachers contracts explicitly address bathroom breaks, and the policies are often pretty austere. Members of California’s ABC Federation of Teachers and Missouri’s AFT St. Louis, for example, can take one “physical relief break” every three hours or two 15-minute relief breaks during the day, respectively. There isn’t a straightforward federal law protecting workers’ restroom rights, and a number of lawsuits have been filed against companies, such as Nabisco, by employees alleging unjust bathroom policies.

“I waited [to use the restroom] another 45 minutes feeling nauseous and miserable and questioning whether teaching is really the profession for me.”
It’s hard to deny the misery that a day without having much, if any, time to relieve oneself might cause—especially when compounded with the other stressors associated with teaching. And inadequate bathroom time can be particularly strenuous for pregnant teachers. Given that roughly three-fourths of teachers are females, and that close to half are under age 40, a significant percentage of classroom educators have likely been subject to that extra strain.

Teachers can easily end up compromising their health by avoiding hydration—important, of course, for keeping energized, focused, and headache-free—to cope with the limited restroom time. It’s not uncommon for teachers to discuss strategies on resisting the urge to go; it’s even the subject of various threads on Reddit and other online forums. “Do not drink too much,” wrote the Reddit user schaud2013 about a year ago in the thread “How do teachers find time to use the bathroom in the school day?” The user continued: “I was lucky this year to have prep 2nd hour, then lunch 2 hours later and then 3 hours of classes until the end of the day. If I do have to go, I hold it by focusing on something else and walking around class. That seems to help me.”

Another Reddit user, lemonshrk, commented that he or she is like a “well-trained puppy” during the school year. “You get used to the schedule,” the user, who self-identified as a high-school teacher, said, theorizing that the situation is probably different for teachers at other levels. After all, elementary-school teachers responding to the AFT survey were 26 percent less likely than their high-school counterparts to report having an adequate number of bathroom breaks, which makes sense considering the constant attention younger children need.

In another bathroom-break thread, this one on the forum “A to Z Teacher Stuff,” a substitute teacher recalled asking a colleague about restroom policies and emphasized that the inadequate time can amount to much more than an inconvenience:

She told me to call the office because teachers are not allowed to step out of their classrooms, not even to go into the hallway. In this case, to "keep an eye on" a neighboring class. She said that teachers may loose [sic] their license if they are caught doing this …

Anyhow, I have IBS [irritable bowel syndrome], and I will spare everyone the nasty details. I called the office, and asked for coverage for a bathroom break and the receptionist said that she couldn't find and administrator to cover for me because certified office staff cannot cover for certificated employees. To top it off she said, “We don't have extra people floating around for those things.”

Needless to say I waited another 45 minutes feeling nauseous and miserable and questioning whether teaching is really the profession for me.

In a response, a first-grade substitute teacher also pointed to potentially serious health consequences: “Regardless of where I sub I typically can only use the restroom during lunch (and sometimes not even then because I have duty or lunch detention). It’s definitely not healthy, but I don't drink any liquids before or during work.”

Chances are these Internet users aren’t healthcare professionals. And it’s nearly impossible to make conclusions about the health implications of inadequate restroom time given the limited scope of medical research on the topic. (Moreover, some research, though also limited, suggests that educators’ health concerns are overblown. One study found that, despite “the preconceived notion that teachers suffer from an excessively high rate of mental health problems,” signs of psychological distress were not found to be higher among teachers versus other adults.)

Still, a handful of studies do suggest that the issue should, at the very least, be getting more attention from a public-health perspective. It’s well-known that urinary tract infections are a common side effect of limiting either bathroom usage or hydration (often both). A 1997 International Urogynecology Journal study, “Thirst at work—an occupational hazard?,” appears to contain some of the only existing research specifically focused on the prevalence of UTIs among teachers. The study—which was a response to the growing number of lawsuits and “anecdotal reports by patients,” as well as a concern that “proscriptions against using the toilet during the working day may be contributing” to the prevalence of UTIs—offered compelling, though mixed, conclusions. Of the roughly 800 teachers surveyed, about a fourth said they “voided” (the fancy word for peed or pooped) never or only once daily, while another fourth said they did so four or more times a day; half of the respondents, on the other hand, said they “made a conscious effort” to drink less water during work hours to avoid having to go to the bathroom.

Teachers who didn’t have enough to drink were at more than two times the risk of having a UTI.
Although the researchers, a urogynecologist and a law professor, didn’t find an association between the number of bathroom visits and UTIs, they did find that, compared to women who drank adequate amounts of water at work, those who didn’t have enough to drink were at more than two times the risk of having a UTI. “If this association holds,” they wrote, “public policy must be changed to allow workers more adequate access to toilet facilities.”

Most conversations about school bathrooms these days focus on policies for students: The Internet is peppered with teachers exchanging tips, analyses of how much kids’ bathroom use should be regulated, news reports on lawsuits filed over draconian restrictions or transgender kids’ rights. One well-known children’s advocate wrote an article in 2001 targeted at kids reminding them that they’re entitled to use the restroom. “Using the bathroom is not a privilege,” she wrote. “It’s your right. YOUR right!” But what about teachers?

Ultimately, this seems to be one of the rare education problems whose solution is simple, free of cost, and, apolitical. As long as safeguards are put in place—asking a colleague to watch over a classroom, for example—ensuring teachers get the few extra minutes they need to do their business shouldn’t do much, if anything, to kids’ learning experience. In fact, it could even enhance it. It’s clear that uncomfortably full bladders (or y’know) are among the key issues contributing to teachers’ day-to-day stress—and that can surely take a toll on the quality of their instruction.

Part of teaching is being able to adapt and make sacrifices. As the University of Chicago professor Philip W. Jackson wrote in his book Life in Classrooms, “School is school, no matter where it happens.” Sometimes, however, it should matter: when teachers have to do their business, at the very least.

(Source: The Atlantic)