Cover Story – Page 19

Bag to the Future?

Nandini Nayar Sometime in June, when most schools reopen for the new academic year, you will spot at least a couple of photographs in the newspaper of small children bowed down under the weight of their enormous school bags. Accompanied by a thought provoking caption, these photographs hold our attention for some time and then we go back to packing our child’s school bag. Occasionally a politician or activist says something about the number of books children need to carry. Shock and outrage is expressed in indignant “Letters to the Editor”. The indignation is picked up by enthusiastic reporters and results in a couple of eye-opening articles on what the school-going child has to suffer in the name of education. But soon all this passes, and little attention is spared for the literal burden the child is forced to carry to school everyday. There is a collective amnesia on the part of parents and educators. A few months into the academic year, even the practical aspects and worries of going to school with heavy bags are submerged under more immediate concerns about exams, handwriting and fears that the child may require tuitions. Earnest meetings with school teachers and note-sharing sessions with other parents invariably concentrate on issues of this sort. The problem of the school bag pales in significance. Bent under the weight of these items, each absolutely “essential” for surviving a day at school, the child wends his way to class. The mind boggles at an education system that demands this kind of slave labour in the name of acquiring knowledge. What’s sad is that invariably it is the younger children who end up carrying huge loads to school. Try reasoning with a child of the primary class, explaining that he doesn’t need all the books at school everyday and that they can be safely left at home. All the books, this tiny child will announce firmly, are needed everyday at school. If you actually remove those that you think are not necessary, you can be sure that these will be sneaked back into the bag. Suggest that some of the books or notebooks be left at home till they are actually needed at school, and the teacher reacts with horror. And woe betides any child who actually leaves a notebook at home. Disgrace and almost certain punishment await him. This brings one to the question – is the acquisition of knowledge linked to the number of books carried to school everyday or even

School’s Out, for Summer!

Pavitra Rao
“In the summer time…,” a song blasts from the radio, while you start your day leisurely, sitting down with a hot cup of coffee in your hand, reading the newspaper to catch up on your daily dose of the news.

Lend Me Your Ears

Zeba Raziunnisa
For years we have been grappling with issues of poor performers, bullied kids, distressed students and teen suicides, but the recent spate of school violence has catapulted a pressing concern into the limelight – Where are we heading?

Multiple intelligences: seven ways to approach curriculum

Thomas Armstrong
I don’t remember how I learned to tell time. So, when I was asked by a Wisconsin school district to develop a multiple intelligences way of teaching time to a group of first graders, I was initially stymied.

Discipline or Punish?

Nandini Nayar
What is the role of punishment in inculcating discipline in children today?

One for All, All for One

Manju Gupta
Many of us bemoan the fact that education has become too fiercely competitive, that the process of learning receives less attention than the product that we are contributing to a cut-throat culture where achievement means everything and understanding almost nothing.

An Uncommon Cause

Pawan Singh In the global village, the local is slowly being forgotten as privatisation increasingly informs development agendas. The Indian education system is an example of how this process is taking place, as government schools languish for want of better infrastructure and quality education, while private schools deliver at a premium. The commoditisation of education has gone on for decades given the tenet, ‘the more you pay, the more/better you can get’. This is more so at present, as going to school is being packaged as an experience of air-conditioned buses and classrooms, technologically sophisticated learning environments and snazzy ad campaigns screaming the difference between a school and a brand name. Quality, of course, remains a lost cause. While the elite minority in India is easily able to pay for this experience, the middle-classes cut corners to afford their children the ‘best’ there is in the name of education. Clearly, everybody wants to run in the race. But where does this leave those sections of society that are still struggling with government schools running on grossly inadequate facilities, irregular teaching staff, and economic pressures to send their children to work instead of school? Education then ends up becoming a paid-for experience, much like a holiday package, with different slabs for different strata of society. The constitutional rhetoric of equitable education for all thus stands reduced to lip-service as reforms do not resonate with changing governments. A case for common schools Borrowed primarily from Western models of education, such as those in the USA, UK and Europe, a common school system in India was first recommended in 1964 with a view to promote equitable access to education. The Education Commission (1964-66) had recommended a Common School of Public Education as the basis of building the National System of Education with a view to “bring the different social classes and groups together and thus promote the emergence of an egalitarian and integrated society.”1 The Kothari Commission on Education appointed by the Central Government headed by Dr. D.S. Kothari, then chairman of the University Grants Commission, critiqued the Indian education system for promoting social segregation and widening the class divide. The Commission’s report identified the disparities that existed at the primary and the secondary level of education by distinguishing between private and minority schools that catered to upper and middle class sections, and the publicly maintained government schools where quality of infrastructure and learning was inadequate. Recognising the higher quality of education provided by private institutions, the report

Inside the Mind of a Child

Kamala Mukunda Day in and day out, teachers engage with children’s minds. Surely the topics of child development and cognitive psychology must excite the curiosity of any dedicated teacher. More than any other group of professionals, we need to know about how children’s minds develop and learn. And a teacher could benefit even more from a deeper understanding of the roles of emotion and motivation in learning. Are there any ‘must-knows’? This is an assumption, and it would be good to question it. After all, most of us know there are important dimensions to teaching that lie in the ‘present moment’, or in the learning space between student and teacher – empathy, affection and respect, sensitivity to the cues of understanding or boredom – all of which can make or break the teacher’s effectiveness. I do not think that knowledge of psychological theory can contribute much to this ability to be ‘present’ with the student, to create the learning space. One cannot acquire this sense simply through extensive reading or knowledge in any area. If we’re agreed on that point, then, are there any ‘must knows’ for a teacher, apart, of course, from the content of her subject area? Does a teacher have to know anything about child development, child cognition, learning, the human brain and so on in order to be effective? The answer is yes, in the following sense. A good teacher is imaginative, innovative, inspired (and therefore, effective). She is someone who can reflect on the act of teaching, and is interested in education as a discipline. For her, teaching is a vocation. She has an investigative, curiosity-driven approach to education. Many teachers I know frequently ask questions like – why do my students find this difficult? Why can’t they remember simple facts? Is there another way to approach this topic? Why is this student unable to perform to her potential? Why is that child so distracted? Should I wait or teach this now? They wonder about things like this and talk about them with other teachers outside the learning space – my fellow-teachers and I do this sort of thing all the time. Our questions usually fall into the broad area of child and cognitive psychology. Now psychologists publish large quantities of research every month on these same topics. They are asking the same questions that teachers ask, but when they write up their results, their intended audience is other psychologists. However, their findings would be (more?!) fruitful if conveyed to

Reclaiming Shiksha

Manish Jain “Real democracy is not about being able to choose one’s rulers. Real democracy starts with being able to choose one’s teachers.” – Dayal Chand Soni (adapted from Mewari language) My family and I have made a decision not to send our daughter to school, either in India or abroad. Instead, Kanku (age 5) and we are learning together. As teachers working within the education system, you may be wondering why we took such a decision and how we are supporting our daughter’s learning. In this short essay, I will try to share some of the reasons behind our decision and the very practical actions we are taking to support Kanku in choosing her own gurus and weaving her own learning web. What’s wrong with schooling? We made our decision before Kanku was even born. For years, I had been working in the field of international education, and I had come to understand some very disturbing things about schooling. Of course, there are the oft-heard complaints: irrelevance, too much pressure on children, heavy bags, overloaded curriculum, corporal punishment, too many tuitions, etc. But, I had been looking deeper than these usual official suspects into the hidden curriculum of schooling. I saw that what school fundamentally does is disconnect us – from nature, from physical work, from our hands, from our families and communities, from our local languages, from our wisdom, and from real world issues. In sucking away children’s time, forcing them to regurgitate decontextualised information, and keeping them trapped in a box all day, schools kill their sensitivity, innate propensity for cooperation, multiple intelligences, spontaneous curiosity and imagination. They create fragmented and hypocritical minds – people who are unable to see beyond black and white disciplinary categories and roles; people who cannot relate their selfproclaimed beliefs and values with their actions; people who fear experimenting with the unknown.1 In other words, the perfect modern babus. Schooling – with its precise system of sorting, ranking and labelling children has created a modern social hierarchy that is far worse than the caste system. So much to the point, that people who do not know how to read or write or who have not gone to school are treated with contempt and made to feel invisible. Their children who attend school for the first time are obnoxiously labeled ‘first generation learners’; thus, negating all the learning that they and their ancestors have been engaged in for thousands of years. Such is the arrogance of today’s educationists.

School as an Organic Unit

Anandhi Kumar The whole is greater than the sum of its parts – The Bhagavad Gita I was once the class teacher of a group of students who will, for all time, remain the best of my teachers. The class consisted of a group of individuals who could respond to the learning process as one social organism. Here are a couple of incidents involving this class. Incidents that never cease to teach me. Megna* was a brilliant student. By all parameters she belonged to a different league as far as academics went. She was also very artistic. Nevertheless, she was a rather inward and reticent person. Never eager to stand in front of a crowd, she was rather uncomfortable drawing attention to herself – an endearing trait by itself since most people with half her qualities would make a song and dance of it. As a child she entered school with a lot of mistrust; an earlier experience of a teacher being rude to her classmate had made a deep impression on her. As years rolled by she blossomed into an amazingly insightful person. When we were in class seven, we worked with a humorous play about Archimedes. The class was busy discussing roles and planning parts. To everyone’s surprise Megna volunteered to play the part of Archimedes. Very unlike the girl we’d known all those years. As if on cue, the other students, even those who were highly gifted in theatrical skills, stepped back and encouraged her to take it up. They were truly delighted that she was pushing herself beyond her comfort zone. Needless to say the play was a hit and will remain etched in my memory for more than one reason. Akshay* was a very scared and meek child. In class two we went to a park nearby. It seemed a busy day with a group of children from another school too visiting the park. The class wanted to play on the slide and quickly lined up. The children from the other school too joined us but some of them lacked the patience needed to wait for their turn. They soon found the easy way out. Some children sensed that it would be easy to push Akshay around and move past him – which simply left him stuck in the line – till one of his classmates noticed. Quick meaningful glances exchanged with other classmates seemed to create greater awareness of the situation. Without any explicit strategising one student from the

Category: Cover Story

Bag to the Future?

School’s Out, for Summer!

Lend Me Your Ears

Multiple intelligences: seven ways to approach curriculum

Discipline or Punish?

One for All, All for One

An Uncommon Cause

Inside the Mind of a Child

Reclaiming Shiksha

School as an Organic Unit

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