A Cynic's Take on Education : Methodology

Suppose I tell you that if you cook an egg under direct sunlight, the yolk will turn violet, or suppose I tell you that when you type Turn Off in a text file and save it, the computer turns off. Or that some trees actually walk at night between 2 and 3. What would be your reaction? Somewhere between laughing and walking away with contempt, I guess.

Now tell me, what would be a reaction of a 5 year old to this, or 6, or even 7 let's say. Chances are that the kid would believe at least two out of these three, if I act serious enough and tell him/her that it's a fact. And chances are that (s)he will go and tell these amazing facts to his/her friends too.

There you have it, flesh and bone of Indian education system. I say Indian because the topic itself is so enormous even by assumption of talking about only the Indian education methodologies that it is almost impossible to cover the rest of them here and in so limited time.

In India, and I am sure in many other places, education is approached always through just one door, which reads mug-and-pass/top-the-exam. Learning by heart without any need to understand is the formula which has been followed for decades and which is still actively promoted in almost every part of the country. And it is not limited to social sciences and english, I've seen students mugging full physics numericals and math sums for the exam, not understanding even one bit of them. And if you ask me, having exams which rank students on it's results is perhaps the most lethal weapon to attack the real purpose of education with, knowledge. Moreover, promoting competition among children for something as inherently useless and unfair as the end-of-term exam rankings is putting the last nail in the coffin of interest.

Let me give you an example of the most common teaching techniques. You remember that teacher, who came in class, made the class read one paragraph per student from the book in the clockwise direction, got the answers marked after the reading was done, checked those answers the next day, carried the same exercise the whole session and ultimately gave marks in the exam based on how exact you wrote the answer and how good was your handwriting. Most kids would get a 10/10 score. Student happy, teacher happy, win win for everybody, right? Wrong! This is not teaching, this is called bullshitting.

Teaching, which by nature is supposed to be one of the most dynamic and productive jobs, has become the most static and boring one. You might have heard the quote, With knowledge comes responsibility. Well, I've seen teachers/lecturers who don't have to, who don't need to feel responsible at all. They are completely free, and so would be the students who are taught by them. Completely free of knowledge.

But let's not jump the gun and blame it all on the teacher. The teacher follows a predetermined non-negotiable curriculum which can be flexible enough to change with the interests of changing governments but not enough to change for the interest of it's citizens. There is not much for the teacher to do than complete the syllabus on time, or so goes the excuse. Students can and do go to private tuitions to understand concepts.

To top the whole closed curriculum thing, the process of putting each student through ten years of compulsory classes in all the subjects, whether they are interested in them or not is just fundamentally wrong. Because why should I study hindi for ten continuous years when all I am ever going to do is read a hindi newspaper once a year or write an application once in a decade.

And after those ten years of association, suddenly walls are drawn and this closed room of choices gets even more choked with small spaces drawn out of them and called the three streams. Streams which stay unintuitively and unnaturally disconnected with each other. And which even turn into reasons for classification of students and their parents by the society.

There is lot more I'd like to write but this post has already gone too long, so to put things into perspective, I'd just quote one statistic. In the last PISA test in 2009, which evaluates skills and knowledge of 15 year olds from across the world in reading, maths and science, India came on 73th. Out of 74 countries. China came on 1st. It is believed that the tests are designed to weed out parrots. And instead of improving, India might just miss to take part in the test this year altogether. The test will next happen in 2015.

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So, what do I think can be done about it.

- I think the first thing we need is a lot of knowledgeable, willing and enthusiastic teachers. They are the most crucial and formative part of any education system. And it is even more critical for primary government schools, specially in villages and small towns. No one can change teacher-student ratio overnight but attitudes towards teaching and steps to ensure better education can be taken.

- Second is to adopt a curriculum which can be amended based on outcome of exercised techniques and which not just promotes but requires a student to understand and apply the concepts (s)he learns in school. A curriculum which puts as much emphasis on sports and extra curricular activities, no matter where the school is or from which section of the society the student comes from.  Infrastructure will need to be built for it and we'll talk about it in the next part.

- Third is to move the evaluation process away from year-end-exams and rankings towards continuous assessment throughout the session while carrying regular analysis of interest and natural talent through different exercises and use that assessment to derive a process which is adaptive, efficient and automatic, for better future pursuance of subjects.

One way to do that is to move the compulsory study of each subject in the curriculum down from 10th grade to 8th. A student's preference of subjects can be measured based on his previous assessment, specially from 5th to 8th so that (s)he can choose a subject of his/her interest and with more confidence when (s)he clears 8th standard. This assessment can go on till (s)he finally decides a subject to do majors in.  

- Fourth and which makes the third point truly useful is to break/destroy the wall between the three streams. It will also create opportunity to introduce new subjects after 8th. So that a student for instance can choose to study maths, economics and psychology with an added music or art as elective. Significantly increasing the permutation and combination of subjects based on credits.
This will eventually produce diverse individual profiles which will be a lot more than just degrees. 

There is a lot more that could be done in many different and better ways I am sure, but the main aim I think is to move from mugging and parrot-learning to an approach that relies more on doing practicals and learning by doing, and to move away from making education just about passing exams and acquiring degrees.

P.S : Please let me know how you feel about what I wrote above. Or if you have some of your own ideas to make the standard of education in India better. Or if you think India is already doing good and I am just freaking out. Do share your thoughts.