Text in context
For a few years now, our columnist Neerja Singh has been writing about how adults can stay “a step ahead” of the children we interact with, particularly in relation to digital tools and their use. Her column acknowledges the challenges of keeping up with accelerating changes in our environment, and the confusions that can arise when we see children occupying a world that is so different, in so many ways. While there’s no doubt that it is hard to find the right balance in parenting in these times, the teacher’s task poses particular difficulties. The teacher must not only keep up with modifications to curricula and shifts in pedagogic practice, but also be attuned to the way culture morphs from one generation to the next. And as one grows older, there is the feeling that you’re never quite going to be able to stay abreast, let alone get ahead of the changes. Yet, one must find a way to build bridges with the young, to find channels of communication that allow us to exchange our ideas, trading learning gathered by the adults from experience over years for that learning gathered by the young in the moment.
I recently asked my students to build a lexicon of their times, to list and explain new words that described their interactions with each other and the world, as well as actions they performed with their digital devices. In the space of half an hour, I acquired a vocabulary of several new words, from a new way of understanding “aura” to learning that one can “yank” text from one source and place it somewhere else. And of course that word that made it to this year’s Oxford English Dictionary Word of the Year – brain rot. This exercise reminded me of a piece of advice I had come across early in my teaching career, that one must always begin in the world of the child. What does the child know and how does the child interact with her immediate environment? This advice forces us also to acknowledge the child’s context of learning, and living, and attempt to make connections between the text (curricular material) and the context (the child’s life and surroundings). Starting my lesson by asking the students to draw on their own insights, developed through their own observations, led not only to engagement, but also to a sharper attention to their immediate environment – and to learn from this reflection.
Our cover theme for this issue pushes this idea further, taking it in two different directions: Nidhi Solanki talks about how we can bring the world into our classrooms, at different levels. And Subha Das Mollick offers a potted history on a very special set of readers that attempt to open up a child’s mind. There are many ways to help contextualize learning for the child, and we’d love to hear how our readers might approach this question, But whatever the approach, for the teacher, it can help not only go a step ahead, but more importantly, to stay in step with the child and her learning journey.
