Role of the Professoriate in the 21st Century

Like everything, the role of professoriate has been evolving in the 21^st century and it will further keep on changing. Gone are the days when professors lectured large classes and students carefully listened to them while taking notes in their notebooks. Technology has brought about a major shift in how we learn. At the same time, there has been a lot of push from education researchers to implement learner-centered pedagogy in classrooms. And finally, academia has started to realize the inherent discrimination and exclusion that is propagated by the current education system and there is a need to impart education that is not only inclusive but also geared toward raising critical consciousness in students. The following paragraphs elaborate these points in details.

Use of technology: Students in the current times live in a digital world. They are connected to the Internet most of their day, are avid gamers, have shorter attention-span, and are experts in multi-tasking. They can get the same information being conveyed to them by the instructor in a classroom on the internet using their phones and hence do not necessarily need to pay attention to a lecture being delivered to them. The educators of the 21^st century need to make use of the Internet and other technological advancements to engage students in the learning process and help them learn better.

Learner-centric pedagogy: Education research suggests that students learn and retain the content better if they are actively engaged in the learning process. At the same time, student-centric approaches increase student motivation to learn, build on students’ prior knowledge, help improve the transfer of learning from classroom to the real-life situations, and increase student metacognition. Hence, educators should move away from the lecture-based model of teaching to project-based and problem-based approach to learning which are student-centric.

Inclusive and critical education: Critical education aims to raise social and political awareness among students, help them recognize authoritarian tendencies in the classroom and the society, and empower them to raise voices against injustice and discrimination. Such an educational approach departs from the "baking system" of education which teats students as passive receivers of knowledge. Instead, critical education treats students as active agents in the process of knowledge construction. The teachers, instead of acting as "dispensers of knowledge" act as "transformative agents" who help students transform reality by constantly interacting with it. The present day education should aim at promoting critical consciousness in students. Also, education should be inclusive in that it provides opportunity to all the students irrespective of their class, race, gender, nationality, sexuality, and other identities to learn and thrive without discrimination and prejudice of any kind.

As the future educators, it becomes our responsibility to keep up with the changes in the nature of teaching and learning. We need to devise teaching strategies that effectively use the technology around us to foster students’ learning, use approaches that are centered on the students instead of being focused on the teachers, and, most importantly, get rid of the banking model of education. We need to create a learning environment that empowers students from all backgrounds and identities, and raises critical awareness in them.

Education in Ancient Kemet

Last Monday, when Mr. Tim Wise was giving a talk at Virginia Tech, one of the members of the audience noted that her friend thought education in Africa is about learning how to throw spears. She thought that this viewpoint of her friend stemmed from ignorance and wanted Mr. Wise to suggest strategies to engage with people who are living with the “luxury of ignorance.” While Mr. Wise suggested suitable strategies to engage with people who are ignorant, he handled this topic in a much nuanced way noting that the African education system was appropriate for the local contexts and was aimed at preserving the nature instead of destroying it for personal benefit. He further added Africans had a very advanced education system long before most of the world. In this blog post, I will discuss the education system in ancient Kemet (ancient Egypt) that was prevalent almost 3000 years before Christ.

The goal of education system in ancient Kemet was not seen primarily as the acquisition of knowledge. Rather, it was seen as progress through the successive stages of rebirth to become one with God. This unity with God could be achieved through studying the nature and understanding various natural phenomena. Other goals of education included achieving unity with oneself, unity of the tribe, and unity with the nature; development of character and social responsibility in a person; and development of spiritual power. The degree to which a person could become godlike was determined by the degree to which one could overcome certain natural flaws or impediments of the body.

Education was carried out through the process of initiation. Each initiate (or student) was separated from the everyday environment and was placed in a setting that enabled them to become closer to nature. Each initiate carried out a disciplined study of the natural phenomena under the guidance of masters (or teachers). The masters modeled the behavior that the initiate were expected to learn. Also, the masters nurtured the experiences of the initiates so that they could learn higher level lessons.

During the initiation process, each initiate was deeply immersed in an interactive and comprehensive process that had much time devoted to examination of signs and symbols, and learning of stories, proverbs, songs and dance. While learning was done by individuals, the method adopted was seen as a collective effort than an individual effort. There was a lot of emphasis on interaction with the masters and other initiates during the learning process. During the education process, one was challenged with the problems of conscience. This developed critical thinking and a sense of responsibility in individuals. Besides developing critical thinking and social responsibility in students, ancient Kamites maintained an education system appropriate to the environment.

Education was carried out at temples. Each temple had a library and teachers of various disciplines. The various disciplines taught included astronomy and astrology, geography, geology, philosophy and theology, and law and communication. It is estimated that at one time, there were 80000 students studying at a university called Ipet Isut University in ancient Kemet.

Scholars believe that the Kemetic education system is the parent of the western education system and one can see many aspects of the Kemetic education system in present-day education system in the West. I think we can learn a lot from the education system in ancient Kemet. The current education system, especially in the West, focuses on individual gains over social responsibility. This is why we see people engaging in rampant destruction of the environment for personal gains. We are developing technology to harness the natural resources instead of better understanding the nature as was done in ancient Kemet. We need to bring the educational goals of social responsibility and preservation of nature to our current education system.

P.S. The information presented about the education system in ancient Kemet in this post has been taken from the essays written by Asa G. Hilliard in the book The Maroon Within Us. More details about the ancient Kemetic education system can be found in this book.

Inclusive Classroom Lessons from the Movie Freedom Writers

(A still from the movie Freedom Writers. Image Source: http://images.amazon.com/images/G/01/dvd/aplus/freedomwriters/freedomwriters6-hi.jpg)

In my Education and Anthropology class last Thursday, we watched the movie Freedom Writers. I am a movie buff (In fact, based on my innumerous references to movies in class while teaching, last week one of my students, Nicholas, asked me, “Ashish, are you the movie guy?”) but very few movies make me think as deeply as this one did. Based on a real-life story, the movie tells the tale of a high school in Long Beach, California. Erin Gruwell joins the school as the new English teacher. She is given the responsibility to teach English to “at risk” students who come from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds and most of them have a long history of racial and gang violence. They do not see a future for themselves and do not see how school is helping them in any way. Gruwell, a first time teacher, works her way through the administrative struggles to ignite her students’ passion for learning and helps them envision a future for themselves. How does she do it? Through inclusive pedagogy! She teaches us the following four important lessons about creating inclusive classrooms:

Validate students’ capacity to learn: The first and foremost requirement of making a classroom inclusive of students’ needs is to have enough trust in the students that they can learn and succeed. We fail the students a lot before they encounter actual failure if we do not lay our trust in their abilities. When the entire school treated her students as a burden, Erin believed in her students’ abilities and kept putting in efforts to provide new learning experiences to her students. She even took up two part-time jobs after her regular job so that she could buy books for her students and take them to museum trips.

Listen and understand: To make the teaching inclusive, the teacher needs to listen to students’ needs and understand their needs by being cognizant of the sociocultural backgrounds they come from. For assignments, Erin Gruwell asked students to tell their own stories through an anonymous journal. These stories not only helped Erin to know her students better but also increased her students’ confidence as they started believing that their own stories are as important as any other story and others need to know their stories.

Have instructional materials relevant to one’s background: Students, in any classroom, come from diverse backgrounds and the same educational material might not cater to the needs of all the students. Erin Gwen soon realized that her students did not see value in learning about Homer and his works. Hence, she changed the texts to the ones about the lives of teenagers in times of violence and war so that her students could relate their own experiences with the texts they were reading.

Bring in your own personal identity to relate to students: While a teacher needs to have deep sympathy with their students’ oppressed histories, they also need to empathize with the students to relate with them on a higher level. And this empathy can only be evoked by the teacher if they bring their own personal identity and history to classrooms and relate others’ intense experiences with their own culture and identity. Erin Gruwell does that almost perfectly when she brings her own Jewish identity and the history of Jewish oppression to relate it with her students’ identities and histories of oppression and violence.

In Erin’s case, most of her students had a history of oppression and violence and all of there were identified as “at risk” students. Students in our classroom might not fall into those categories. However, we can still make the classroom more inclusive of students by understating their identities and aspirations. As, educators we need to understand the classroom context and devise our instruction accordingly. And that way, we can move toward "inclusive classrooms" in true sense of the terms.

Mindless Learning Through Standardization

Standardization is the buzz word in the current education system. The curriculum which is taught to the students is standardized, the way that curriculum is taught to them is standardized, the tests given to the students are standardized, and the remedial actions taken when the students do not do well on the standardized tests are standardized. While this standardization is clearly visible in K-12 where students are required to take a standardized test at the end of each grade level, the higher education is also not untouched by standardization. College courses are designed around learning outcomes which the students are expected to achieve by end of the semester. These learning outcomes are then measured through tests and assignments through the semester. These tests and assignments are standardized in that they are the same for all the students in the class.

Any kind of standardization ignores the fact that each student in a classroom is unique and different from another student. Each of the students has different aspirations and comes from a different social and cultural background. Each student has a different way of leaning and a unique way of demonstrating their learning. A standardized way of teaching and evaluating students’ learning might not be relevant to each student. As a result, some students might not find what they are learning in class to be useful. This, in turn, kills their curiosity to learn by engaging with the course material. They instead become passive receivers of knowledge and find the process of learning boring and disengaging.

As a result of this, the only motivating factor which students see in a course is the grade which they get at the end of the semester. Hence, they turn all their attention to getting a better grade instead of critically engaging with the learning material. This is where they start mindlessly engaging in the process of learning. Mindless learning is characterized by low attention to the context of learning, lack of alertness to distinctions, and ignorance of multiple perspectives. Paying low attention to learning contexts might lead to a non-understanding of the context, which in turn hinders the process of transfer of learning from classroom to the real world. A lack of alertness to nuances might lead to misconceptions in the minds of the learner. Misconceptions further hinder students’ learning. Ignorance of multiple perspective prevents a well-rounded development of a student.

To realize the full potential of education, standardized learning environments should be replaced with customized ones which cater to the needs of each student and help them engage in mindful learning.

A Better Teacher!

I had read somewhere that there are no difficult subjects, just bad teachers. For some reasons I believed in this and tried to see any student failure as the inability of the teacher or the system as a whole to transfer knowledge to the student. This was a year back and I had recently joined Virginia Tech as a graduate student and teaching assistant. The past one year in both the roles has taught me a lot about teaching and learning. And I hope working in both the roles during the next academic year will add to my learning.

Learning something is not like drinking a magic potion which a student can just gulp down the throat and be equipped with the desired knowledge.  It is like a bridge which can only be crossed with joint efforts of the teacher and the student. While a teacher has to understand the needs and attitude of the student and teach them accordingly, the later has to put an equal amount of effort in learning what is being taught. Even the smartest teacher cannot teach a student who is not willing to learn and even the smartest kid cannot learn from a teacher who is unable to understand the needs of the student and accordingly modify his/her style of imparting knowledge.

As a child I was told that learning is a difficult endeavor. Not that it is painful but it requires hard work and dedication. For some reasons I feel that is true. Working as a teaching assistant, I came across many students who would just be interested in getting the right answer instead of learning the subject. Needless to say they did not learn much from the class and during the time they spent with me. These are the kind of students who graduate from universities without much idea about what they learned in four years while they were attending college. I have heard my fellow teaching assistants complaining how students in their senior year at times are unaware of what they should know by the end of their senior year. On the other hand, there would be students who would try to understand the subject matter while trying to get their homework done. And the later were the ones who actually were able to appreciate the course material.

While I was in my undergrad, I had the same attitude towards education. I just wanted to score well in tests without trying to learn the course content. I managed to do fairly well when it came to getting a good GPA, but failed to learn what I should have during those days. On the contrary, in grad school, when I started putting serious efforts in learning, I feel that I am learning a lot. Not that the quality of teaching has drastically changed but it’s the step required to be taken by me which has lead to the difference. I had good teachers in my undergrad days and I have great teachers now, but the extra step taken by me has made me a better student.

While it is important to understand the role of student effort in learning, blaming just the kids for not putting in the required efforts can be overstretch. Students these days are forced to go on the traditional educational paths which can secure jobs for them while their interest lies somewhere else. For example, I know so many students who are studying engineering because it is a secure way of getting a job after graduating. Moreover, when the capability of a person is measured in terms of the degree he or she has or the grades obtained in tests, the quality of learning is bound to deteriorate. This system of education puts in little value in a child’s interest. If a potential musician is forced to become a doctor, he will surely end up becoming a bad one.

As Sir Ken Robinson says that the present education system was modeled to cater to the need of industrial revolution. We are now way past the industrial revolution time, and hence the system of imparting knowledge needs to change. And then we will have not only better teachers but also better students.

Where is my Teacher? --- Part 2

Shalini studies in Grade 5 but is not able to do a simple addition problem. Mukesh is a Class 3 student unable to read a sentence in Hindi (his mother tongue) without mistakes. This is the story of more than half of the rural kids in the country who lag behind their prescribed standards of learning. According to the latest Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) survey conducted in more than hundreds of rural districts across the country, the number of such kids is increasing every year. This raises a question whether we are investing the right amount of money for educating our future generation.

The answer is ‘Yes’! The education budget has doubled in the last six years. There are incentives like ‘Mid-day meal’ to bring students to the school. The Right to Education (RTE) makes it compulsory for every student till the age of fourteen to go to school. In spite of all the planning and resource allocation, the kids are not learning in schools. The recent PISA survey which focused on Math, Science and reading performances of the child placed Indian kids at the second last place out of 72 countries. This shows that there is something which is missing from our primary school system.

The recent article in The Times of India about the shortage of primary and upper primary teachers in Varanasi district answers this question partially. However, the wider gap lies in the absence of good quality teachers. No matter how good the school infrastructure becomes or how much money is spent in making the classroom more lively and vibrant, a student cannot learn without a good teacher. The teacher has to be capable of teaching in the class, creating interest in the class and motivating the students to learn.

The quality of teaching which we have in our government schools is questionable. On one hand, most of the schools have a shortage of faculty and on the other, the teachers present are not capable of teaching. In most of the cases, their knowledge of the subject is limited. The recent ASER report shows that in many schools, a teacher in Class 6 is not able to explain the meaning of ‘addition symbol’ to the class. It may be argued that every teacher in the country has a degree in Education and has qualified the Teachers’ Education Training (TET) exam for being appointed as a teacher. Then why is the teacher not capable of teaching?

As someone who has worked with government school teachers, I would question the credibility of the TET exam. There are books and coaching institutes which just prepare teachers for such exams. So, a person can easily cram the subject, get through the TET exam and become a teacher. Moreover, a teacher trained in math teaches languages and a teacher trained in history teaches science. It is quite obvious that the quality of teaching is going to suffer in this scenario.

Gone are the days when the bright students chose teaching as their profession. I still remember the inspiration which I got when I came to know that my physics teacher was the state topper of his times in School Board Exams. We don’t have such teachers in schools anymore. Today, people get into teaching because of the easy money it offers.

Apart from the easy money which one can make through teaching in government schools, teaching attracts many as there is no accountability on the part of teachers. The lack of accountability is also one of the reasons of poor quality of teaching. Once recruited, there is no evaluation of the teacher. There is no check on the quality of teaching in the class. There is lack of honesty on the part of teachers. At times, the teacher asks a student to read a poem or a table in the class. The rest of the class repeats the poem or the table while the teacher engages himself in some other work.

Absenteeism is something which hampers teaching and learning a lot in the schools. Studies conducted to compare absenteeism in India and other countries shows that India ranks second worst in teachers’ absenteeism in the world, the rate of absenteeism being in the order of 25-26%. The system of proxy attendance is also widely prevalent. The teacher is marked present on the register while he or she is not in the school. I myself have come across many such instances while conducting the ASER survey in schools. Teachers are appointed for special duties like census, election services etc. This adds to the absenteeism in the class room. No one is bothered about the loss of studies in class.

            Private and convent schools, on the other hand, do not suffer much from the problems of absenteeism or poor quality of teaching. But these schools are not affordable for a larger fraction of rural students.

The best way to improve the learning levels is to recruit the best faculty which can work effectively with the students in the class room. But in our country, where there is no craze among the best students to get into academia, this seems a distant dream. The focus should be on effective training of the teachers so that they are able to teach efficiently in class. There are teachers’ training programs running in the country but those are not able to solve the problem. The teachers should be trained in innovative and interesting ways of teaching to encourage students to come to the school. The teachers should not be engaged in duties other than teaching. A check should be put on the absenteeism. The policy makers should focus more on the quality of teaching in classrooms rather than focusing only on building the infrastructure. What the children of this country need is the Right to Learning and effective measures need to be taken to attain that.

Kal, Aaj aur Kal

Today is International Literacy Day! Since 1966, it is celebrated throughout the world to highlight the importance of literacy. No doubt, the world is getting more literate day by day due to continuous efforts of organisations like UNESCO, the governments of different countries and various other non government organisations. And this significant improvement in world literacy has impacted the literacy rate in our country also. As of today, almost three fourth of Indian population is literate, and thus is friendly with 'letters'.

But numbers is not what excite me as far as literacy and education is concerned. The knowledge of 'letters' and the ability to read and write should add some value to the people. Education should not merely reduce to the transfer of information in classrooms, rather it should serve its purpose of imparting knowledge to the people, making them understand the difference between good and bad and imparting them the wisdom to go for the 'right' way leaving behind the wrong one.

Having said that,  I feel writing about two conversations which happened during the last week. The first one was with my flat mate Manish who teaches Physics at Oasis Institute. He was talking about how these days students have stopped putting in efforts into studies. "Aaj kal k bachchhe fight hi nahi maarna chahte questions solve karne k liye. Nahi bana to bhi thik hai, chhod do." However, he attributed this attitude of students towards removal of examination system from the education system due to which students don't feel the need to perform. and hence, they become lazy towards studies.

When I took up this discussion with Khandu, he said that this train was clearly visible in his classes as well. But unlike Manish, he doesn't attribute it to removal of exams. Khandu, on the other hand, contributes this attitude of students towards studies to the ease with which they get everything they ask for from their parents. Because of this relatively easy life they live, as compared to the students fifteen or twenty years back, they don't feel the importance of giving in proper efforts to get things.

I still remember the speech, on the importance of education in shaping my life and providing me freedom to do whatever I want in life, given to me by my teachers, and sometimes parents, whenever I showed slackness in studies. And yes, I didn't get everything I wanted as a kid. And sometimes I had to wait for my demands being fulfilled by parents. It was not like instantaneous fulfillment of demands which parents do today. And probably because getting everything I wanted as a kid was not easy, I learnt to put up a good fight.

We need strong social engineering in this regard to make sure that today's kids, when they grow up tomorrow, are also fighters and are capable and confident enough of achieving everything they want from life.

Education: Something has to be Done

It was Sunday night and after two days of loss of appetite and skipping the lunch before in the day and with a maddening headache, I felt a few rats in my tummy getting up from a hibernation and starting to yawn. Feeling happy at this regain of little appetite after a long period of around 51 hours 45 minutes and 27 seconds, I asked Sanket to go out and eat something. And hence we moved to the mess near his apartment to eat some 'light home-made kind of' food. As we sat on the bench of the mess, I saw Sanket waving to a guy sitting on the nearby bench. And all of a sudden this guy asked me whether I was an IITian. I was startled a bit but then realized that he might have known about Sanket eating there regularly and hence would have guessed that I too was from an IIT.

After that, this guy started asking me about which place I worked, how much I earned, why was I not working in MNCs like Google, MS and others or Indian biggies like TATA or Reliance, which coaching institute did I go to. Now, with a mind boggling headache torturing me, I was on on the least of ease to answer any of his questions. And then, he started telling me about what he was doing (medical aspirant) and why he was doing that (because he feels that now-a-days its tougher to get into an engineering college than a medical college). And after that, he again started repeating the same questions about my job which I had left unanswered. This was the time I realized that there was something wrong with this guy. And then I started ignoring his questions and whatever he was speaking. Later when I inquired about him to Sanket, I was told that the guy is preparing for medican entrance examinations and is disturbed mentally. Though the level of disturbance was only at the psychological level now, as it seemed, it is certain to reach a more dangerous state. In addition to that this guy lives in Delhi all alone, with no one to talk to him, console him, guide him, bring him back to normalcy.

And then we talked about so many medical and other aspirants who, after starting the preparation, take that as a larger than life aim. And how failing there repeatedly disturbs the mental make up of any person so badly. I hope our school system could do something to address this problem of 'taking things too seriously' or 'not accepting failure with ease'.

Another incident happened yesterday in office when I saw the SOPs of two MBA graduates of a reputed university in the country, which they had sent as a part of job application. To my utter dismay, in the name of SOPs, they had sent their resumes in a different file format. So when the MBA grads of such a big university don't know the meaning of SOP and didn't bother to or couldn't think of googling the word before sending it for a job application, I am left wondering what would be the condition of graduates in the shops mushrooming around us which sell MBA degrees!

And what makes me wonder is how we can upgrade the condition of education in our universities! What does it take to make a better university? And how does one get better teachers teaching at our colleges?

And the wondering goes on...................

Have You been to A Village?

India is shining! Of course it is but only for those living in the multi storied apartments in Mumbai or who shop in the biggest of malls of Gurgaon. Yes, we are moving towards faster means of communication, latest mobile and web technologies, imported cars, watches and everything but coming out of the metro circle and one would find a very big contrast. And a similar contrast striked me when I visited a sleepy village called Mahe Singhia and the palces around in my own district a few of days ago.

Getting to Mahe itself was a big achievement as the buses from the nearest town Rosera take almost 70-80 minutes to cover a distance of about 17-18 kilometres on a highly bumpy road. I had the real feel of true India in the bus itself which was overcrowded with almost two and half times its actual capacity. And one could see a large number of people occupying seats on the roof of the bus too. And the conductor jumped through the window to collect the money. And all I could remember was the opening scene from the movie Peepli [Live] where the character Natha vomits out of suffocation in an overcrowded auto.

However, after sitting in such a condition for about an hour, I reached a place called Dudhwara from where I was picked up on a motorcycle to tour the villages. And it was when an interesting journey into the village life started.

One of the villages I visited was Dengrahi in Singhia village panchayat area. Located on the banks of Baghmati, the village gets flooded every year during the monsoons. Away from the nearest railway station Nayanagar by at least 10 km and inhabited by the people comprising of both forward and backward castes, the village still holds on to a rigid caste structure as far as education is concerned. The students of the village are ill treated not only by the forward caste students who come to the school but also by the teachers who are teaching. The Dalit students are beaten up by the Brahmin boys if they attend the school.

Here, the help and support from Asha comes as a real boon for the poor backward children. Managed by the Asha volunteer Mr Manoj Sahu along with three other teaches, the organization is trying its level best to bring lower caste children to the schools. They also run a center in the village where they impart education to these children and have taken several steps to bring them to school including counselling for parents and coordinating with the local Aanganbadi Kendra.

Despite these continuous efforts, the problems are never ending. The parents are unwilling to send the children to school after the age of 10-12 as they don’t see a benefit in formal studies. Even after studying up to a certain standard, there is no guarantee of a decent work other than what they are doing and hence, children are then sent to work in farms, brick factories and even to other states so that they can support the family income.

“But I guess, their fathers must be getting good enough amount for working as labours in farms or any other places. So, why do they send the children to work?” I asked Manoj ji. And what he replied showed one of the saddest scenes of rural life in the state and the country as a whole. “They do earn good amount, in fact very good amount which is complemented if the mother is earning too but generally half of the money is gone in liquors which leads to financial problems.” And at times, the local country-made liquors even kill a person in thirties and the child has to go to work in order to support the family.

Moreover, this habit of tobacco and liquor is again infused in the children as well. I met some children in Gonwara (another village where Asha is working) who used to collect cigarette butts and used to smoke them. Some even stole money here and there for buying bidis or ganja. Despite all this, many children knew how to use mobile phones and navigate around the mobile softwares. Strange, ain’t it?

In Gonwara, I met the mothers of some children who could understood the importance of education for children (Thanks to the efforts put in by the Asha volunteers ) but were helpless because there is only one government run school in the radius of 2-3 kms and that too is dominated by the forward caste teachers and children. The only hope for them lies in their Manoj Sir (the Asha volunteer) to open up an Asha center soon for them.

On one hand, we get tired of browsing through the designer shirts, t shirts, sweat shirts, jeans and other clothes to get one of our choice, the children in these villages put on whatever they get, and at times are happy wearing the dirtiest of clothes. One would think them to be rustic and uncultured (as I thought while sitting in the bus in the morning and frowning at the villagers), but would come to know their real conditions only after spending some time with them.

However, a lot is being done by Asha Parivaar and its volunteers so that these children learn to remain clean and look good but a lot still remains to be done. Hope Asha Parivaar continues to burn the light of hope!!

The Difference

Once while talking to Anjali Desai (Co Founder, Seva Cafe, Ahmedabad http://www.sevacafe.org/ahmedabad.html ) about education in our country, I came across a surprising but worrying reality about education in our country. Anjali is a journalism graduate from University of Texas, Austin and has seen the education patterns in both the countries. Talking about the difference in Indian and American kids, Anjali said:

“The kids in India are smarter and more intelligent than their American equivalents till they put their first step into schools. But once they cross the age to be at home and start going to school, the American kids start outsmarting those in our country.”

The reason for this, as she told, is the family environment provided to the little ones in Indian homes. While a kid in India has mother and grandparents in most houses (a long line of aunts, uncles and cousins is also there in joint families) to interact with and learn from, a kid in America is left to the care of maids or crèches where he/she doesn’t have anyone to talk to or play with. And hence, Indian kids are a lot smarter owing to the healthy family environment.

But the real trouble starts when the child starts going to school. While a school in America gives all the freedom to the child to explore himself/herself, a school in our country is aimed at teaching, or rather feeding a fixed amount of information into the child’s brain without actually teaching the real value or meaning of what is being taught. And needless to say, the freedom given to children in schools in no more than that which was given to African Slaves in America. A good student is one who wins the rat race by get a high score in examinations. But nobody is bothered about the heavy loss of free thinking which the child has to undergo in order to get adjusted to that rat race. On the other side, the freedom given to kids in America makes them think about things themselves and then they are allowed to choose, based on their interest, what they want to do or study. And, of course, the stress area in not only getting grades in exams rather it includes a lot of things like sports, extracurricular activities, community service and what not. And it’s obvious that in these situations, a child will be smarter, free thinker and able to take real life decisions without much trouble.

And it’s not only what or how is being taught at schools, the problem lies in the mindset of Indian parents or society which values success in monetary terms and hence, the only option left for a child to run for what seems to be most profitable in terms of money. No matter whether a child is interested in studying a particular subject, he/she is forced to study that because that subject is important for a ‘secured future’. Forcing the child on a pre determined path might provide a so called ‘secure future’ but is it not like grooming the child into an assembly line product? And as Anjali told, the Indian kids in America are also forced by the parents to take particular courses which might be ‘beneficial for future’.

And hence, here lies the difference in growth pattern of Indian students and American ones: While American students are treated as human beings with desires and inclinations to learn, the Indian ones are treated as raw materials which go to schools to be processed into finished products!!

Where is My Teacher?

According to an HRD audit report, there are 7.72 lakh untrained teachers and there is a vacancy for 12.06 lakh across the country (published in a TOI article on December 27, 2009). This is a major setback government in the way of implementation of the ‘Right to Education’ successfully. No wonder that many government schools in the country are actually running without any teacher.

We hear every day that millions of educated young Indians are unemployed. So, what prevents these unemployed young people to head towards the education sector and take teaching as a career? What makes one of the most respectful professions so repelling for the young population?

For a while let us forget about schools, the college education in the country also suffers from the lack of professors and even the reputed IITs are no exception.

The major reason for the lack of interest of Indian youth in the education sector is the lack of money. The salaries and perks given to teachers in most of the Indian schools and colleges, government or private, are far less than what teachers can get in any other profession. I still remember how this belief was prevalent among the students in my school that the worst of graduates take teaching as profession. And it is very evident in what one of my classmates quoted about the teachers in our school:

“All the teachers here are failures. They came to teach us as they couldn’t do anything.”

Of course, I didn’t completely agree with him but is this statement 100% false? Teaching, being a low-paying job is seen as a rescue profession. And there is a lot of frustration built up in teachers because of this (low salaries) leading to low self-esteem and decreased love for students and concern about their future. As a result, instead of inspiring and stimulating the young mind with love and affection and understanding them, they decide to show them “Who is the BOSS?”. And this leads to very serious consequences as far as the future of students is concerned. The creativity is lost and studies merely become a routine affair with a lot of rote learning.

Some days ago, I read that the schooling system in Norway is among the best in the world. And what was surprising to know was that teaching is the most attractive profession for the young people in the country. And when an industry draws the best of the minds, it has to become the best in the world. But as I think, no industry can lure the best of mind until it provides with the best to those best minds.

Hope those sitting at the top of our education system understand this soon!!

 

The Right to ‘Right’ Education

Much has been said about the Right to Education over past few weeks. And I completely agree with the fact that every child in the country should be sent to school up to a certain age. But at the same time is it not necessary that we also take care about what is being taught to our younger generation? Should not education be aimed at teaching values and skills which can help a child to tackle the real life problems in a better way later? Should not education be aimed at creating energetic, lively, curious, and inquisitive individuals rather than producing trained manpower who are limited to their cubicles or cabins?

If the answer to the above questions is yes, then the country is certainly going in the wrong direction and may have to face dire consequences in the time to come. Education, meant to broaden the outlook and perspective of an individual, has reduced to a tool for securing a better job. Forget about those who don’t have access to education, most of those who are pursuing higher education are doing so only in the hope of getting a good job with the degree which they will receive after passing out. The love for the quest of knowledge has been lost somewhere between the glitterati of high paying jobs. The stream in which one wants to pursue one’s higher education is decided by the pay package which one is supposed to receive at the end. And that is why most of the students are running after a degree in engineering or management now-a-days, without having the right aptitude.

There is nothing wrong in choosing a particular degree program because it provides better job opportunities in the market. But the real problem arises when the so called ‘better job opportunities’ don’t cater to the interest of the person. And with the gradual passage of time, the life becomes monotonous and the lucrative looking job previously now seems to be a dull boring activity. Some of the daring people then return to what they actually wanted to do from the very beginning. But in this process, they loose some of the very precious years of their lives, running after the mirage of a rich and happy life.

So, who is at fault in all this? I would say the society as a whole is responsible. And here, by society, I mean everyone right from the family to school to the neighbourhood. Everyone around a high scoring kid sees him/her as a future engineer or MBA. And subjects like social sciences, literature and languages are supposed to be passed only. And when the child sees such hopes and aspirations from everyone around him/her, he/she has no option left other than killing his dreams and ambitions and doing what is expected of him/her.

This trend is not only bad for the younger generation of the country but also very dangerous for the country in the global competitive scenario. As Jerry Rao, the cofounder of MphasiS, the big Indian outsourcing firm puts it (taken from the book ‘The World is Flat’ by Thomas L Friedman): “We have no one going into liberal arts and everyone going into engineering and MBAs.” He adds, “If we don’t have enough people with the humanities, we will loose the next generation of V S Naipauls and Amartya Sen. That is sad and dangerous”

In this scenario, it becomes very important for the parents and the teachers to help the child recognise his interest and encourage him or her to move forward in that field instead of pushing the child in the so called ‘high paying’ fields which don’t interest the child. And then only can the Right to ‘Right’ Education be secured in the true meaning of the words.