Three ways to learn...

This is something I do in class, but as yet don't know if it has had any impact. There are three ways to learn, I tell students. The poorest way to learn is when teacher talks and you listen. This is inefficient because it has least participation or intent on student's part. Talking is mostly done by the teacher and its not in your control or of liking.  Worst, you can't avoid it, teacher can go on like a drone.

The second, more efficient, way to learn is when two people are talking to each other and you are just listening. This is better because someone else is doing the thinking and you can see the arguments for free. Also, the listener needs to focus on what is being said and one naturally starts judging - is it correct or makes sense. This has greater intent on listeners part and hence one learns better by listening to conversations.

But the most efficient way to learn is to talk to yourself, the self-talk. Here the intent and the participation is maximum. If you can debate with yourself, the sense of learning and depth of understanding is greater. You get most fun when you figure out the argument yourself.

Very often I follow these three ways in my class. I start my class by talking about a topic or a question. Then I do a controlled discussion amongst children. At this point, I often remind children of the second method of learning. By the end of the class, I leave some time for them to think and write on their own. I hope that this starts self-talk.

Knowledge+Skills

'Being good at something' has many components. One of the obvious parts is that you know a lot. An expert knows a lot about a specific subject. Since this is obvious, it has got all the attention in our schooling. We learn more and become specialized. We value people who know a lot. Also, given a long list of complicated things to learn, its easy to set a exam and give marks for the knowledge in any subject. Naturally, much of the teaching and testing is focused on how much one knows.

Yet there is a second important component to 'Being good at something' and that is - skills. Competency requires not just knowledge but also skills. Only when one has a fair amount of knowledge and high degree of a skill, can he/she be competent. However, our education system has largely ignored development of (say, academic) skills. Skills are difficult to teach, they required longer persuasion and hard-work. Taking the easy-route, schools have ignored teaching and testing skills. While knowledge is specific to a domain, skills are often cross-disciplinary and broad-based.

As a result, we find youngsters, when they finish schools, know a lot but they have mastered very little. Competency = Knowledge + Skills. Unless we are teaching both knowledge and skills, we are unlikely to produce versatile competent students.

Challenging them to challenge me

Teaching well is only half the problem in education, the other half is 'learning well'. This is a bigger problem because it requires motivation from students. While one is finding ways to teach well, one should also find ways by which students learn well. This part is often overlooked or not given enough time and efforts. Here are couple of things I do in class which have started to pay-off lately.

I often ask, What naughty thing did you do today ? or, Tell me one mind-boggling thing, or else I tell some mind-boggling things. Of late, some students have started coming back to me, on their own and tell me something new. A few ask me to give them a challenge, say a science question, or a maths puzzle or a origami challenge. This is pushing me into a corner, as I have to rush around to find newer challenges. The next day, they come back with the solutions. So I have managed to start the 'good learning' cycling in some of the students. This means that their half of the work is happening on their own.

This also takes-off some my teaching stress. I often use their answers and questions to start-off my class and integrate with what I am teaching. It brings greater willingness to learn. Remind yourself that - 'Learning well' is students' responsibility. It's the other half of 'good education'.

What Galileo discovered

I never thought a simple pendulum could generate so much excitement. We are studying estimation and measurements. One of the things that I wanted children to understand is the concept of 'per second'. So we decided to look at simple pendulum. Each group made a simple pendulum of different lengths using thread and stone.

The story goes that, Galileo was attending the church one Sunday and he noticed the swinging chandeliers. Using his own pulse, Galileo measured the oscillations. He found that oscillations can be used to keep exact time (which was useful for making clocks) and oscillations don't depend on the weight (which may have led him to the famous Pisa experiment). Would you want to discover what Galileo found out ? I asked, and the students got in to a frenzy.

Each group counted the number of oscillations in 10-20 seconds to find out its period (the number of oscillations per second). We did 5 measurements to get average and accurate period. They now know that more number of observations when averaged give accurate measurement. Tomorrow we will be tabulating all the lengths and periods and find out what the data tells us. What surprised me was the amount of excitement this generated. 

This confirms my hunch that children like to step into the shoes of Galileo, Newton, Darwin or Faraday. We should teach science as it was done by these great people. The way they found things for the first time !

Express yourself

It can be safely said that if you can't express it you haven't understood it. This, rather obvious fact, is grossly overlooked in classes today. The flow of information from teachers mouth to students hands and then to teachers eyes and ears is tightly controlled. The subject is broken into concepts and concepts into bullet points. You read these points, students write them and in exams they give back those points to you. This has hardly any space for students' expression.

It is not surprising that students are high on marks and low on understanding. The fault is not theirs but ours - we have left no spacein class for them to express what they think. This is a great loss because the process of expressing (call it explaining) is a powerful tool to promote understanding. A good explanation can tell us what we know and what we don't know. When a child tries to explain things, he/she is having an internal argument. If the child is correct then you will find a new and original explanation. If the explanation is wrong then you have greater chance to find out where the confusion is, either way you learn.

If you want to promote original thinking and true understanding then it is crucial that we spare time in our classes for students to talk. We should let them explain what they think in their own words. Expressing your thoughts verbally is a powerful tool to drive understanding.

Rigged

Are exams suppose to evaluate how well you have learned ? Then, by this standard, almost all exams are rigged. Over time we have somehow come to deceive ourselves. There is a simple test to tell us if we are truly testing childrens abilities. I need to explain.

For any test you give find the distribution of the marks children have got. You can do this by counting the number of children who got marks between 0-20, 20-40, 40-60, 60-80 and 80-100. Now plot the number students against marks between 0-100. If the test is fare and balanced you should get a curve that looks like the following.

If you were to plot the distribution of height of students in your class, you will also get the same Bell-shaped curve. How is it that such widely different things give you same curve ? Well, many things in life follow this curve because there is a range of competencies (or heights). But they are not totally random, they stay close to average competency or the average height.

In this Bell-curve you will have majority of students getting close to 50%, some are getting less and some are getting more than 60%. The average marks should be close to 50%. In such exam it should be easy to get above 30% and difficult to get above 70%. It would test everyone in class - those who are slow to learn and those who are fast to learn.

When the distribution of any measurement doesn't follow the Bell-curve, it may have many reasons. But the two most likely reasons are - either our class (or sample) was not balanced with a range of students, or our test was not balanced with a range of questions.

I bet that for most of the exams the Bell-curve is not balanced and centred at 50%. Most children get above 60%, many are close to 80% and a only a few get bellow 30%. The Bell-curve is considerably distorted and shifted to far right. The shifted and distorted curve is telling us that we are making it far easy for under-performers and we are dumbing down high-achievers. We are moving most of the class into average performance zone. This means that we are not differentiating under-performers and high-achievers well.

This is not surprising given that none of us, parents, teachers or students, want to take any risk. We want students to do well and move onto the next grade. Marks are usually like a barrier to cross. Once you are over it, you go to the next grade. Our exams reflect these desires. Exams act like a filter to promote students and not to evaluate competencies. We aren't treating marks as indicators of performance, but only as licence to get to the next grade.

However, this is perpetuating a larger tragedy. When the distribution is not Bell-shaped and centred at 50%, we failing to identify under-achievers and their deficiencies. We are also failing to recognize the true high potential of high-performers.

So next time you look at marks, as a teacher or a parent, ask for the distribution plot, Does it look like a balanced Bell-curve ? and ponder !

Compared to what ?

Can someone tell me how bad a hand writing should be before it can be called illegible ? Typically, when a teacher corrects a note book or an answer sheet, a badly written answer sheet can take twice as long to correct. As the hand writing degrades, teachers struggle to understand what is written. After all, the marks are to be given for the content alone – who cares if teacher takes twice as long in grading that paper. Most teachers evolve strategy to deal with badly written papers – they either correct them up-front or keep them pending till the end. 

Many urban schools have taken their eyes off the art of writing. We teach writing alphabets, then words and then cursive writing. Thereafter we do not enforce writing – it’s not in the syllabus. For many children down-hill journey starts from here. They adopt bad postures and use jell-pens. As the pressure to write lot and fast builds their hand writing degrades.

By the time children reach secondary school their hand-writing ranges from good (for a few) to ok, readable, bad and unreadable (for many). Badly written notes, illegible answer-sheets, poorly drawn diagrams now result in poor academic performance. But it’s too late.

It's hard to say when a teacher should give-up. However its easy to get consensus on a good hand writing. This is why we need to establish writing standards in schools. These standards help us, students and teachers, realize that one needs to be close to the standards. In absence of any such guidelines, we are on a slippery slope leading to illegibility.

Adopt fairly broad standards for good writing, push students to conform to them though not strictly. Instead of not having standards, not promoting it and then suffering from a range of illegible writings.

The backlash

It was report-day today. Parents came to collect the term reports. As parents went over the answer-sheets of their child, it was interesting to see the their reaction - shaking of their head in disbelief. Irrespective of whether the child had done well or not, parents typically got upset about the mistakes and marks lost.

A few parents reprimanded child on the spot "See I was telling you". Discussing marks on the result-day makes no sense. In fact it is useless from the child's point of view. It doesn't help the child study better, on the contrary, they are repelled and shamed. It creates a backlash and they just shut the parents out.

When a child hasn't performed well, invariably it is due to lack of understanding or skills or habits. Low marks is only a side-effect of poor study skills. While poor study-skills lead to poor marks, shouting about poor marks doesn't lead to improving study skills. None of the success factors grow by hectoring children on the report-day. To master these skills one needs to make long-term efforts.

A few children had come to me before the report-day. They asked me to tell parents not to scold them about marks. They were down in spirit in anticipation of the report-day. And I agree with them. Parents (and teachers as well) should avoid talking about marks, defuse the anxiety on the report-day.

Did I have any suggestions and advice ? parents would ask me afterwards. Yes, I did. "Instead of discussing marks let us cheer them up and ask, what can we do for the long term".

What did I learn

I was going through my students' note-books. As every teacher knows - there are tonnes corrections to be done. Since I give notes of my own (and not from text book) it involved reading my own words through a mountain of note-books. In one note-book I ran into something different. This boy had scribbled something in the margins every few pages. He is an enthusiastic but disruptive boy, so I was irritated see this mess.

To my surprise, he had written "What did I learn" after every topic and in the narrow margins. He had summarized what he found important after we had finished a topic. That was so sensible, and why had this not occurred to me. What did I learn ? I decided to make this a formal practice for my lessons. After every major topic, I would quickly round-up 'what we learnt' from students and commit them to the notebook. This time, not in the margin but within the notes.

The next day, I celebrated this boy in the class and thanked him for giving me this great idea.

Failing the intent...

Over last two-three years, I have observed a curious thing during the school exams. Usually teacher hands-out the question paper a few minutes ahead of the answer sheets. The idea is, by reading the questions in advance, students can organize their thoughts and plan their answers.

However, as soon as the question paper is given the doubts and questions start coming up. Here is a collections of questions that keep coming up again and again, at every exam. Should we also write the questions ? Should we write entire sentences or only fill-in the blanks ? or can we write only the blanks (!) ? Can we solve questions in any order ? How much should I write for this question ? For match the pairs, do we have to write the pairs or only labels ?

These are questions just related to the format. Then there are questions related to the content, comprehension, spellings, grammar. How much time will I get  ? Can I write on only one side of supplement ? the questions continue almost till the end of the paper. If the subject teacher makes a mistake of visiting the class suddenly new questions appear. Now it become difficult to decide if we are clarifying the doubts or actually giving them clues and answer to the questions ? The boundary becomes blurred.

As a teacher, I find this most irritating and worrying. What is missing here is the ability of students to recognize the intent of the question, the question paper and the examination it self. They are unwilling to (or unable to) guess the intent of the question and answer it. Instead of becoming wise thinkers students act like drones and clerks.

Interestingly, this doesn't mean they have become stickler of rules. When the time comes to collect the answer sheets, despite of several reminders, you will find handful of papers without names, roll-numbers, wrongly stapled supplements, answers written on wrong side in wrong order, forgotten to write the question numbers.

Students are failing en-mass to see the intent of the question (what is the purpose of the question) and act judicially accordingly. It seems, as though they can take-in only a word at time and never see the larger picture.

For some reason, such behaviour comes out most during the exams. However, I suspect, this lack of ability to read deeper intent of questions or comprehension must be wide spread.

What are exams for...

In any subject or for any skill, the abilities of students vary. Some are naturally good, some learn to be good, some struggle to learn and some can never really acquire the skill. This is not abnormal. This is how people (even grown-ups) perform on any skill, craft or trade.

If an exam is given to test an ability and we were to plot how many students did how well, it would follow a Bell-shaped curve. A few students would do very well, majority of students would do ok and a few would have done not so well - making the graph look like a Bell. If you are testing a skill and your exam shows this curve then you should celebrate - because your test was fair to all and balanced.

A balanced test is telling you with confidence that those who are on a lower side of the Bell need your help, those in the middle of the Bell need to understand and work harder and those on the upper side of the Bell should work on advance skills. Everyone need to work towards better.

This is not how most exams look though. Most often teachers think that if majority of students get more than 60-70% marks then they have learnt well and teaching was a success. The trouble is, when everyone gets good marks, you are testing very little. And if you get less than 40% then you have failed. They automatically create two casts - those who pass easily and those who fail bitterly. Such exams say more about the exams themselves (was it easy or hard) than they say about the students (who are good and bad performers). They say very little about who is where on that skill. Exams should not to tools to fail students or even pass them.

A good balanced exam will be one in which students follow a Bell-shaped distribution of performance, with majority getting marks close to 50%. In such an exam, there is no pass or fail. Everyone has passed ! Some need to learn more, some need to work harder and some need a greater challenge.

As a teacher one needs to aware of what an exam is testing. Are we measuring students abilities ? Are the marks artefacts of the way we give exams ? Exams should be used to set a passing bar ? or Should exams evaluate abilities and take remedial actions.

When did you understand fractions...

This is a question I often ask parents and other teachers. Fractions are taught as a chapter in Grade 5. At the end of the year students are given tests on fractions. And they pass with good or bad marks. But this has nothing whatsoever to do with understanding of  fractions.

We really can't say when we understood fractions. Somewhere from age 9 onwards the sense of a "fraction" gradually builds. Some interesting twists in fractions may occur to us many years later. For example, its not easy to realize that 1/5 of something can be greater than 1/3 of something else. Then we see how fractions are also related to percentages and to decimals. This is how any true knowledge is built - gradually and through different experiences. Over time, different aspects of the concept are polished. We make mental and graphic links with related concepts and a deeper understanding is built.

If this is how we learn and learn well, then why are our Tests not designed for this. While learning is a continuous and interactive process, testing is not.The Exams expect that everyone in the class must learn fractions in Grade 5 to the given competence level and prove it by getting passing marks.  Our exams say, you better know this here and now, else you have failed.

This create two bad trends. Firstly, students just learn to operate numbers by given rules and get the correct answers. Getting marks makes them think that they now know fractions. But there is no real understanding happening. Secondly, students who can't grasp the rules fail, nearly fail or barely pass. They have no second chance. In Grade 6 we move onto other Math things, too bad for you.

Our Exams are designed to disrupt the learning process, to encourage learning rules and to disqualify those who can't do it here and now.

The gossip

I took a bunch of 10-11 year old kids on a two-day outdoor, nature camp. The group was a mix of girls and boys of same grade but different divisions. The kids worked out well with each other. Some did cooking and others explored the outdoors. We had discussion on changing climate and importance of learning skills. When things got wild, pillow-fights broke-out. As you can see the camp went-off well.

Throughout the camp, I listened to their gossips. And I was surprised to hear how much of their talk was about their teachers and how they taught in the class. Teachers weren't trashed or discussed with any bitterness. The talk was mostly giggling about their peculiar manners and happenings in the class. Who were the crazy teachers and mimicking those. Surprisingly bad teachers weren't discussed much but good and peculiar ones were.

I was made aware of the large role teachers have in children's lives today. The gossips and talk was rarely about their own parents or hobbies. It was rarely about the gadgets they buy or the money they spend. It wasn't even about what teachers teach. It was mostly about how the teachers teach and about teachers personal lives when they cross with children's own. Listen to what children are talking amongst themselves. Its seems teachers, especially the good-cranky ones, are the binding thread for these kids.

While the role of parents has become more and more of that of a provider, teachers roles has grown. They are the people around whom children's social interaction happens. I hope teachers realize the strong influence they have on children's social life and so do parents.

Hurrey ! No text-books

The teacher says we won't need a text-book this year, we will just learn what we can. No text-book means no reading, no mugging-up, no portion to complete and doing question-answers from end of the chapters. This is dream come true for children. They love it. Now they are ready to discuss and happy to plan what we should learn this year.

This is what is happening in my class. As a teacher, actually, I haven't given-up the text-book or the syllabus. I follow the topics and concepts from the curriculum. I just don't toe the text-book, line by line, and check the students on text-book questions. But the students don't know this since they don't open the text-book now.

As a teacher, I can now focus on the concepts and explain them using what the children themselves have to contribute in discussion. So we are making a good progress on understanding. But what about the written work and testing ?

I hadn't realized the true impact of this till now. Since there is no text-book to hold-on to, children have to write what-ever we discuss as notes. I give tests based on the class-notes. If they miss-out on notes it's their problem. As a result students have to stay focused in class and take down the notes. It has made them more responsible, not less. In fact, I told them that I will be using their note-books as Text-books for the next year's class, so please write well. This made them real proud.

What good is a text-book ? Your read from the text-book, children read from the same text-book. Questions are asked from the text-book and children write whatever is given in the text-book. As you can see, in this circular process one can get good marks without understanding an iota of a thing. For many children no knowledge is generated in this entire process, yet they get good marks.

Superficially, It may look like, to give-up text-books is a disaster. Will this drop the quality ?, what will children learn ? On the contrary, now children have to do lot more work. They don't realize this is a trick to get them to do more work, not less. Learning a subject through discussions, notes and reference work and writing these down in your own words  is much more work. They are ready to work harder for the same curriculum.

I have realized that learning with text-book has become mindless. That is one reason children don't want it. By giving-up text book, they are learning the same curriculum much better and happily. It's counter-intuitive.

Mind the gap

We had a very knowledgeable visitor today talking about ecology and conservation. We arranged close interaction of my students with the speaker. There was a lot to hear and learnt from the speaker. I played the role of observer, and what I saw disturbed me.

About five minutes into the interaction, groups of students had already got decoupled from the talk. Only when some fancy slide was shown or cool name was heard that they seemed to focus for a second. A wide gap opened between the speaker and children. And this was not because of the difference in their technical levels. There seems lack of listening with a purpose and intent. The attitude seems to be - If it ain't super exciting, it's not worth listening.

In todays world there is so much to learn and so many exciting people to meet. How much you know is no more limited by availability of knowledge or opportunities. It is mainly determined by how much you can take-in. Some children seem to have stopped listening. Only bright eye-candies can get them to focus. What fraction of the things we hear do we internalize ? very little for some children.

This was a stark example of how wide and damaging is the gap between speakers and todays young listeners. Really sad.

Hold two things in mind

I never realized that holding two operations in mind would be this difficult. It surprised me. The age group being 10-11 years. I had given kids a series of statements, some correct some false. They had to first correct the false sentences and then write them out in the natural order.

This threw many of them in chaos. Should we write the correct statements also ? What to do with the false statements that are in some order ? The kids weren't all comfortable with the question. To understand and execute these two together needed a child to hold bigger picture in mind, to do it in a single step. He/she had to see the corrections and correct order in mind together.

As grown-ups, we can do a sequence of operations with ease. Some talented people can  set priorities to operations to make computation easier. Some can readily see which operations are dependent on each other, and which other are independent and parallel. However, this is a very high-level competence.

In schools we typically put questions with specific operations. And often with a single specific way to arrive at the answer. The real life is full of multiple and inter-dependent operations. Are we doing enough to train children to manipulate operations, themselves ? Not quite.

We may need to do innovative exercises. Teach them to hold two operations in mind. And then to prioritise them intelligently. 

Sense of 'to have'

This week our class visited an archaeological museum. The museum has extensive collection of artefacts from as far back as the Stone age, displayed with detailed information about each collection. We had allowed students to carry cameras so that they can document what they saw for their study. As one would expect, the students enjoyed the excursion and collected photos.

Something interesting happened at the very end of our trip. One boy said that, he now has a lot of information about ancient things. He said, "Its all stored here in my camera". And one girl asked me how could she work, because she didn't carry her camera.

To us 'having information' means knowing the thing. I tried arguing this with him that he may have collected a lot of photos, however that is different from he having the information. Also, I told the girl to go ahead and write down or draw the things that she thinks are important. But to them that wasn't same as 'having' information of 'their own'.

To these children 'having information' is same has possessing that information in their hand. They think, if they own a print-out or a photo then they literally have the information.

This may suggest that today children aren't treating information as something to be understood, interpreted and integrated with their own knowledge. Information, to them, is a thing to own. And they would store it safely for many years, ofcourse on the net.

Creating role-models

Many people (including myself) feel that moral education can not be done by giving lectures in the class room. The only way to learn moral values is by being close to people who practice good behaviour. However where would you find such people within school premises.

A school has large population of children, some of whom show traits of good behaviour. These children are soft-spoken, honest and cooperative. They like to help, without being visible. You will find them taking humanitarian view in an argument. They are willing to give-up their entitlements for others when needed. The future role-models are there, right within the the school. Most often neither the schools notice them, nor the children are aware of it themselves.

This particular school doesn't want to wait for a chance to run into good-folks. They want to create role-models within the school. So the house-captains and elected students are frequently put on the spot for their good moral behaviour. Other students are encouraged to interact and follow them. The school is creating role-models for good moral behaviour within the school.

Consider the changes happening in society out-side the school. Each day we read people linked to commercialization, quick recognition, frauds and violence. The scene is bleak. Yes, we do read about a few who have great character. However, they aren't accessible to children everyday. 

Children of good moral values exist within every school. Schools should recognize them and high-light for what they do. This requires a deliberate effort from the school-side. And it is good to see, some schools doing so.

fullstop ?

I wonder if English as a spoken language is going to be extinct in schools. I don't mean to say that it is not spoken any more. But the way one speaks - a comma or a full-stop, an  exclamation or a question, is lost on todays children. When I dictate notes (and I dictate slowly with all the nuances) children often ask if there is a full-stop here or is it a question.

Children are not used to inferring the punctuation from the way English is spoken, and it is not entirely their fault. We are not making children aware of the nuances as we read to them. In the class we hardly read English as the rich prose it is suppose to be. As a result, children are failing to recognize the clues that come embedded in the speech.

A list is items separated by comma or quote-unquote means high-lighting something - all this can be understood when one speaks with a flair. The English we speak in classrooms today is mostly text-book English used to dictate notes. And much is lost in this kind of diction.

I hope we bring back a more sophisticated way of speaking English where punctuations become obvious from the way one speaks. Also, we should cultivate listening to English with all its nuances. Otherwise English will become a flat language, where children need to be told - yes, there is a full-stop here.

One way traffic...

This is how it typically plays out in a class. A teacher asks a question and one of the students answers back to the teacher. A teacher does sporadic one-to-one communication with a few of the students in the class. The rest of the class is hardly party to the such transactions. The lesson is done. For that matter, this may well be a one-on-one tuition.

When there are 30-50 students grouped together in a class, there are some advantages. A teacher can exploit this number to expand the communication. Some change in attitude and approach can make the communication multi-lateral.

To start with, let the student address the answer to the class, instead of talking to the teacher. Acceptance is greater when one of them is talking to them. Next, let others add on to the answer one by one. Let them re-phrase and re-interpret the answer. Often a teacher will be able to generate the required points solely from such student-to-student discussion.

Lastly, when a student asks a question, bounce it back to the class - does anyone know the answer ? give some clues so that the answer can be (almost) obtained through collective discussion. Finally, rephrase the answer the way you wanted it and make them commit it to the note-book.

Increasingly I find that students are trained to address the teacher, and the teacher alone. A one-way traffic of communication. Making communication multi-lateral increases class participation, builds consensus and grows vocabulary for many more children. And your work as a teacher is done, by the students themselves.

On moral grounds...

In a book that I recently read, there was a discussion about how children are more willing to listen to moral arguments than subjecting them to rules. This reminded me of occasions where such a persuasion indeed worked for children in my class.

When a child is talking loudly or interrupting the class, teacher's natural reaction is to say - keep quiet, or that such a behaviour is not allowed in class. Or, one may quote the rules like - you are not allowed to talk in the library. After multiple use of the rules, they become in-effective. But really, such a behaviour is unacceptable not just because it's outside the rules. It is also unacceptable as it is unjust towards others who are doing their work.

As it happened, I had made this very case on a few occasions. I stopped myself from pointing out that unruly behaviour is out-of-line. Instead I said that it is morally unfair to others. And I got better response from the children. Typically, they looked around, and for the first time looked at the impact of their doing and they calmed down.

I think children can distinguish between boundaries defined by the rules (which they often don't care about) and the self-discipline that gets imposed from such moral arguments as being unfair to others (which they can't refute).

Teachers don't use this approach to resolve a situation in the class often enough. Neither do we do so in life outside the school. But we should if we want to build sensitive citizens and a fair society for tomorrow. A child's mind seems open for such an appeal.

Group work menace.

Making children do group-work has one headache.  Of course, children like to work but making groups can be a long diplomatic process. They want to work with some and not with others. Then there is the girls-boys divide. Teachers have their own wishes. Teachers want well-balanced groups with mix of talents. There is no easy solution to this.

I braced for long-drawn negotiations as I announced the group-projects in the first class. I asked some kids to chose their group-members. It took some time for trading the members with each other. In the end we got grudging but well-balanced teams. Ready to work together.

In the next class however, I was in for a surprise. The entire class unanimously said that I should make groups as I wish ! They didn't want to wait to find out. They refused to go for lunch till we made the groups. This was unheard-of. I made the groups and they just accepted their partners. Naturally I asked. It seems, this class has been polarized for a while now - amongst girls-boys, and even amongst each other. So everyone in the class could see that there was no possible nice way to group themselves.  In one remarkable moment, everyone agreed that they all should accept the groups I make - and work together.

Sometimes intense differences can lead to cooperative behaviour in such surprising ways. In the face of intractable, children are able to see and accept the Greater Common Good.

Best Practices - an admission of Failure

Somewhere in my past life, in a technology corporation, I came across claim that - Best practices is admission of failure. The author said that when we start documenting best practices so that people can live and act by these, we are unwittingly admitting that the system has failed. The system has failed to foster environment where creative people deliver quality on their own, using their individual approaches. Now we don't trust them, so we refer them to the Best practice. It made some sense to me then.

But since I started working in schools, I have come to realize how true this is. Schools have perfected the art of documenting best practices. There are formats to be adhered, log-books to be filled, profiles to be discussed, reports to be made. There seems only one accepted way to do things correctly. On the surface, it looks like an effort to bring objectivity in teaching and evaluation process. However, its more like we don't trust people to do the job. We don't want to risk any other approach to teaching or evaluation. This is sad because, of all the professions, education requires diverse and creative teaching approaches and many ways of evaluation. Once best practices are defined, nothing less or different would do.

So, indeed Best Practices is an admission of failure to foster diverse and creative environment.

Power of networking

Recently I spent some time at a small residential school. The school has a few tens of students between 8-17 years age, all together. The kids are taught by dedicated teachers who live with the children. So far I had seen schools where, each class has 30-40 children of similar age - larger than the entire student population of this school. This was a very novel experience for me.

I felt something missing amongst the children as time went by. These students were missing out on the scale of interactions. With only handful of children, the number of possible interactions was also limited. Learning that naturally happens when many children chatter with many more children was not possible here.

Consider four children interacting with each other. There are unique 12 ways in which you can connect four children. Ajay interacting with Aparna is different from Aparna interacting with Ajay. For five children there are 5 x ( 5 - 1 ) = 20 ways. If there are n-children then there are n x ( n - 1 ) ways to connect them.

For large number of children the number of possible interactions become square of the number of children ! Because, now there is not much difference between n and n-1. There are 992 direct interactions possible in a class of 32 children. And we haven't even counted second-hand interactions. When two children are talking a third child is also gaining something.

There is this advantage of having a large class of students of similar age which I was not so much aware of before today. More number of interactions only help a group of children with mixed abilities. If a teacher can foster useful discussions in the class, then larger the number of children in class the better.

Compete with Magnanimity

We see mindless competition all around us. Struggling for extra marks,  endless tutorial classes, paying donation to get in better colleges. The competitive spirit is clear in an advertisement I saw recently. It said, 'Buy this Book - Give your child Unfair Advantage'. Do we even notice what we have come to be. So no doubt such competition is bad for children and everyone-else.

This has led to many progressive and experimental schools to shun the competition entirely. Competition, in any form, is suppressed. However, to compare and compete is very fundamental. Notice that people who are against competition in school also enjoy ICC and Wimbledon matches. Competition exists amongst children in worst form, whether schools sanction it or not. They fight for petty things and show-off their new goodies. Better shoes, more costly pen. On the other hand, where they should compete to excel, these children become complacent and sloppy. They don't know what it is to strive to deliver.

What we want is to promote good competition, where children push each other to excel - in their niche fields. And they know that they are not special outside the niche. Then they see their win in a larger perspective. And they are magnanimous about it. To be a winner is great, but to win and be magnanimous or humble about it is even greater.

Schools should promote - Competition with Magnanimity. I believe we should cultivate a philosophy where we compete to excel in both real and moral spheres.

Power of Ambiguity

I told the story of the Giving Tree at the assembly. In the story a tree keeps giving away its parts to a boy till only stump is left. Even then the tree is happy to offer the stump to the boy to rest. It's a famous and moving story.

Later in the day, I had a science class where I am doing 'life of plants' with kids age 10yrs. The topic of the morning Story was raised by some children. One boy said that it was a sad story. Many children agreed with him. Seeing that the story had made some impact on the kids, I decided to play on the ambiguity.

I asked, how-come the tree was happy then ? Shouldn't it be a happy story. Now some children agreed with me. So was it a sad story or a happy story ? Why did they think so ? One boy, who is otherwise difficult to deal with surprised me by saying that 'even though he is happy for the tree, the story is sad in many ways'. I could see the sophisticated ways in which kids were able to articulate.

The power of getting children to think lies in the ambiguity of the story. Depending on how deep you see the meaning (how much you empathise), you end up getting different views. It brings out the 'devil's advocate' in them for a good purpose. They are able to distinguish many levels at which the story can be read.

We should use ambiguous stories, such as this, more often in the class. Where, there is no clear answer. There are only interpretations depending on how you much you think about it.

Tight Transitions

Children are like insects. They like to follow a set pattern and schedule. In absence of a routine it takes long time for them to get-out of what they are doing. Children of age 9-11 yrs aren't good time-managers. They can't stop on a dead-line and they can't effectively use free time either.

At the beginning of my teaching my classes used to end and begin in a chaos. I expected children would plan and switch tasks on their own. But we lost focus and time at each transition.It seems that the event-horizon for children at this age is as short as 15-minutes. They can't really estimate and plan their work beyond that. Unless they foresee what is coming in due course, they tend to continue what they are doing or get scattered.

They needed visibility into the their future every 15 minutes, so that they can anticipate and plan the work. It took me some time to realize this.

I do a very controlled transition between the tasks, now a days. I say that - at the count of five we will start taking notes. I say - now you put the pencil down and listen. I say that - next 10 minutes I will talk. I say - I will take only 5 questions now. This creates the visibility into future for them. They wait for their turn and do their job. Even play-breaks between two periods are tightly transitioned like this.

I have found that it is not only important to divide the class-work in small tasks, but its also important to tell students in advance. It is one of the tools to keep the class under control. Tight transitions save time, increase focus and children enjoy more.

But why ?

A friend showed me a link to Edward DeBono's write-up on the 'why technique'. In this you simply keep asking a Why question till the person gives up.

Immediately, we decided to try this out out at my friend's start-up. We called couple of engineers one-by-one and raised a question about their work. Thereafter for every answer we asked another why question, taking us in different directions. We stopped after five trials.

To our questioning, we found two kind of responses. Those who had understood the purpose of what they were doing, gave articulated answers in couple of steps. Those who did the work simply because they were asked to, also ended in couple of why questions. But their answers became repetitive and trivial.

I think this is a good method to check the depth of understanding and ability to articulate your knowledge. But there is another use of this technique. It forces a person to think about the purpose of what he/she is doing. Most often we forget why we are doing the hard-work. And subjecting yourself to series of Why questions can bring back that focus.

I am going to try the Why-technique on my class 1. to probe the depth of understanding and 2. to show the purpose behind ones work. Let us see how far it takes us.

A Square peg in a..

At the beginning of the year we played a game of focus where kids (age 9-10) were to walk on a loopy track of hurdles with a bell in hand. Only a few kids could walk without making the bell sound. They did it with concentration and took long time. But one boy walked the entire track like a breeze in far less time. I decided to watch him over the year.

Later in the year, I had challenged the class to finish a woollen pouch, which required many hours of focused work. It took children a long time. However, this boy's pouch finished the earliest. And his pouch had a feel of like done by an expert - though this was the first time he had held the loom in hand. He went on to help others finish the pouch.

At the end of the year, I decided to test the class with the Bell-game one last time. Again this boy did it the fastest and with little efforts. He seem to have an exceptional and nearly inborn skill to manage manual and physical tasks. The boy stood head-and-shoulders above others.

I had nearly forgotten him, when the class-teacher mentioned that the boy has been detained (failed) for bad academic performance. What happens to him now ? During the normal proceedings of a class and the syllabus, activities such as above are rarely done. Had I not done these activities, I wouldn't have realized the exceptional skill this boy has. And this worries me.

Who are we to decide which qualities are worthy of graduating from a school ? Who are we to say, that 20 years from now, his physical skills are of no use but the academic skills are. Do we routinely fail exceptional children with our own view of academic standards ?

The D-day

I don't much recall my own result-days from my school years. Partly because I never did  badly enough to be concerned. But may be result-day wasn't such a great affair back-then.

It was result-day at my school. I saw the scare that result-day generates amongst children - both, those performing well and not. But the bigger tragedy is that result-day is all about the child and not about the school or teachers. Nowhere does the result say about institutional short-comings that lead to a child under-performing. On that day, there is little realization that child's result reflect the circumstances as well.

It was my result-day as well (after many decades). How did I do ? My teaching ended with a distinct feeling of dissatisfaction and failure for me. I could have done more for many under-performing children. And many bright children were not challenged enough. If I had worked extra one hour, I could have been more inspiring and of help to them. I felt being unfair and guilty. I can't say how much of their failure can be attributed to my short-comings.

If there is so much thought given to objective evaluation of a student, then shouldn't there be mention of the circumstances as well. Their results should be normalized with corresponding evaluation of school's ratings. If child's performance can vary from school to school then we must admit that school has a role in child's success and failures. And we should scientifically factor that in.

In fact, results say as much about how school is performing as about how child is performing. If used properly,  results can become a useful tool to improve the school and circumstances.

Giving results without assessing school's performance is like doing an experiment without specifying the boundary conditions.I don't know how it can be done, but there is need to define the boundary conditions in this case.

Who are you

I joke and talk in a light-hearted way when I meet kids. I do so to put-them at-ease and get down to their wavelength. It doesn't take long to be a friend then. Now they will tell you silly jokes, gossips and their concerns. They will tell you their frank opinions and about cool things. Such interaction happens almost all the times - in the class and other places. However I am amused (and puzzled) by the reception I get, when I meet the same child with her/his parents.

Now they appear very formal and indifferent. If I address them, they look at their parents. As if their parents are their spokes-person. They are apprehensive to laugh and participate in the same light-hearted banter that I continue with. Some parents look at their kids fondly to say how well-behaved and shy he/she is etc. But I see tension between where the child wants to be and the situation. They are not sure what is the right thing to say and what they really want to say.

A few kids though remain as normal as they always are even in presence of their parents. They will joke with me and talk about their concerns just as freely in front of their parents as behind them. That says a lot about their relation with parents. It is a pleasure to see such children. There is a comfortable overlap of their world with their parents expectation of their world.

When children have to grow-up in two different worlds, child's own and parent's, with  different expectations it becomes harder for them. More importantly the two worlds may grow apart leading to gap in perceptions. So its better to have large overlap between child's world and your own. One sign of this happening is when children remain as their natural self even in parents presence (that is not to say that they are, or should be, unruly).

What it means and not

If we are to ever have a meaningful and accurate evaluation of childrens performance, certain things must change. Amongst them is our concept of marks. When you answer a question to the expectation of a teacher you get full marks. But nowhere does a teacher says what those expectations are (other than, of course, asking for word-to-word copy of the text book).

If your answer is less than expected then you get less marks. But if your answer is better than the expectation then you don't get more marks for that question. Why is that ? This, standard marking scheme, is designed to filter-out better than expected performance of  children. We are almost saying - reproduce what is given in the text-book and get maximum marks.

The expectation is never quite defined, let alone expecting the excellence. Ask a child, parent, teacher or a school about what is expected as answer and you will get very vague, fuzzy talk. Often-times, children are left to guess how much to write based on how many marks are there for the question - as if number of words is the only way to judge the quality.

In absence of these guiding standards, students are left to judge for themselves, while teachers can always say that 'your work is not good enough'. But good enough for whom ? How much is enough ? What is good ?

What needs to be done is - for each ability that you are testing, you need to say what will give you marks as well as what will make you lose marks. What are you looking for and what are you discouraging. Both need to be told to students before-hand so that they can learn to work on these guidelines.

For example, if you are evaluating for neatness then - good handwriting, neatly cancelled mistakes, well-drawn margins, sense of proportion (add to this list) is what you are looking for. Tell this to the students. More importantly, also tell the students what is no-no - badly erased mistakes, sloppy handwriting, no margins (add to this list). Both do's and don'ts need to be spelled out.

If we follow this for every aspect that we are evaluating, then there is a scope that quality learning can happen. Else, the whole enterprise of marks is a gigantic but futile exercise.

What drives what

Checking the Math final paper. I see two trends - some good students have done poorly simply because they haven't been systematic. But a few students from whom I wasn't expecting good performance, have done well partly because they have done a systematic step-by step work.

This leads me to think that, just as clear thinking should reflect in clear writing (not always true though), clear writing often aids in clear thinking. For some children clear and neat writing is intrinsic. They write step-by-step, one equation bellow other, without missing a step. For majority of children this doesn't come naturally. However systematic writing of steps in Math is also a skill that can be learnt. If they do learn, then their thinking is guided by the step-by-step writing process. And, in some cases it leads to better performance in Math.

Compared to old time, there is far less emphasis on handwriting and neatness in the present schools. Its suppose to be some what progressive not to force children into a given form of handwriting. The lack of putting focus on neatness has this one side-effect. A few more children can be brought into the fold of Math if only we can teach them the skill of writing maths in a neat format. I do believe that clarity in writing drives clarity in thinking.   

What marks are for

Today a student came to me very happy and excited. He is a hyperactive child, academically not quite on-par with the class. He said he has got eight out of ten and, nine out of ten marks in recent exams. "My parents will be so happy today when I tell them that I got good marks", he said.

I should know, I am the one who gave those marks. But I was surprised to see his reaction to it. The real fallacy of the situation struck me a couple hours later. He didn't say he got good marks. The child was happy because his parents will be satisfied to see his good marks. It was the parents approval that the child was seeking. These marks are to his credit no more occurs to him.

Undue emphasis that parents have put on children's marks has this unseen and sad flip-side. Marks is what the children earn to keep their parents happy.

Shouldn't marks be something that gives a child a sense of his or her intrinsic worth ? Like, I am so good, or I have understood so much correctly ? We want marks to be objective evaluation of students competence. So many thesis have been written about standardized testing etc. Yet, in reality, marks have bizarre consequences and social implications.

I am happy for the child. These are rare occasions when he can get good marks on standardized tests. Yet in some sense I am sad for him.

VAM - Value added Marks

Somewhere, in another post, I claim that total marks is a poor indicator of the component skills that a student has. Marks is a poor tool to provide positive feedback to students. However, recently I discovered that we can use marks, not as a indicator of learning but, to motivate students. To do this, we should give-up idea of using marks as a means of evaluation. This is how it started...

I told my students (age 11-12) that they can even score more than 100 % marks in my Maths tests. This was unheard-of. In a society where people are obsessed by extra half and quarter marks, it was unbelievable that I was offering more than 100 % marks. My tests have bonus questions along with the standard exam questions. Children could get extra marks by finishing the normal paper and then also solving bonus questions. Many started pushing themselves to get bonus marks. Some even got 110-130 % marks.

I played another psychological trick in one exam. I said everyone gets 100 % marks to start with. Then for every mistake I removed some marks. The thought that, every one started with 100 % marks - alone made them more relaxed. Rather than earning marks for correct answers, they would lose marks for wrong answers. So make sure you don't lose what you have.  Isn't it great that at this age they are still so naive.

This got me thinking of more ambitious marking-schemes. I floated a linear scheme -  for every two questions that they will do correctly in a row, they will get 2 bonus marks. For three questions correct in a row 4 bonus marks. For all 10 questions correct in a row, they get 180 % marks ! I could see their eyes opening wide. Why not a non-linear reward scheme. Double the reward for every question they do correctly in a row (2**N). The students started calculating how much marks-profit they can make.

Someone asked me if there would be negative marks for getting a question wrong in a row. Well, I could give both reward and punishment - depending how motivated my class is or is-not. For a moment I felt like giving them a lecture on basics of game theory. But its clear to me that such Value Added Marks, can be used to motivate children to do more sums correctly. I am tempted to try my linear-bonus scheme for the final Maths test.

Of course, the marks still won't reflect component skills of a student, but they would definitely represent the motivation of students. If the aim of teaching Maths is to motivate them to do Maths, and do it correctly - then who cares about absolute marks.

What it takes ?

In the debate on schooling and education, talk is all about what a good education is,  pedagogy, how to inspire children, how to evaluate real understanding etc. etc. All this is absolutely required. And every item is a must. But who is going to deliver all this fancy stuff - the teachers of course, who else ?

Yet, shockingly there is no talk about teacher's life in any of these debates or reforms. We understand well that for the birth and growth of  a healthy child, the mother should be well-looked after. She should be well-nourished and relaxed. Yet, for a teacher - who acts like a mother of 30-50 children for 6 most active hours of a day for tens of years, there is no thought spared.

Typically, all teachers work 120% or more for their salary. They are hardly heard. There is no time to invest in their own enrichment. Yet, they are suppose to lead the revolution.
If good learning happens when children are happy in schools, isn't it obvious, that good teaching can happen only when teachers are relaxed and happy in schools ? Not a chance, there no debate today, anywhere, to make teachers relaxed and happy in their work-environment.

While having sky-high expectations from teachers, there is not a thought given to what it takes. Teaching profession must be unique in that, it demands most creative, inspiring, physically/mentally demanding work and yet the work environment is uninspiring, menial and exploitative for the meagre salaries that are paid. Just imagine, how much would an IT professional ask for doing - equally creative work, managing 30 people for equivalent time. I know no other profession where the contrast between expectations and reality is so stark.

Make teachers happy and relaxed in their environment, give them paid free time to enrich their knowledge. Educators, Administrators, policy makers and governments should stop selling dreams for a while and focus on teacher's life. That is what it takes.

Use and Share

This is not a post directly related to education, yet it is in some ways. We often say that Western Society has a 'Use and Throw' mentality. We say its criminal to waste so much. This is quite true, in developed countries you see quick use of many things after which they are discarded adding to the garbage. There is a real fear that as our country develops we will adopt this use-and-throw culture as well. It would be much worse then as we are so large in number, that the wastage will be colossal.

But we, the developing nation, is guilty of equally criminal habit. It should be called 'Don't use and don't throw'. We as a country just collect things, rarely or never use them and neither do we give them to anyone. Think of cloths, furniture, utensils, books, crockery, kids toys. This is an invisible but colossal waste as well. I see many in my generation guilty of it and certainly the older generation was. We won't share it, neither would we use it. The don't-use and-don't-throw society also needs to be high-lighted.

However, tomorrows generation stands at this turning point in-between. This is why, I think this point is relevant to schools today. We should not go from a don't-use-and-don't-share society to a use-and-throw. We need children to grow in to a 'Use and Share' society. I have noticed that if, we buy something and don't use it for three years, then there is little chance that we will ever use it. Remember the set of spoons you bought,  still in wraps. May be someone else is just going to buy one. So why not give-it away or share it ?

This is easily said than done. The trend in school seems every one buys one copy of everything. There aren't enough activities in the class-room in place to encourage a use-and-share attitude. We need to build the exchange mechanisms and also the attitude to make this kind of behaviour natural. Schools is one place where we can actively promote sharing or giving-up what you don't need.

Culture Vs Rules

How to get children to behave the way you want them to. Many schools (and indeed many organizations) take the road of rules. They have many rules - do this, don't do this, and the consequences. With time, the rules and counter-rules grow. But there is always new behaviour or an incident which requires new rule.

Despite this escalating cycle of rules and super-rules, children don't seem to come under control. This leads to standard conclusions that - good-old days were different, now things have gone to dogs. Still more rules.

However, I think we are barking up the wrong tree. There are things which don't respond to rules, for example, Culture. Children behave according to the culture in which they find themselves. As that culture is lost, typical reaction of a school is to set-up rules to bring back the culture. This doesn't work, so there are more rules made, more control sought. That is why we find, most legacy systems, which are not working, are over-designed with rules. Too many rules, is a signature of barking-up the wrong tree.

I believe that one can never regain a culture by making rules. To develop a culture, we need to have campaigns, promote activities, praise heroes, have debates, invite volunteers. A lot of these activities slowly change the atmosphere and establish a culture. Note that, there is no rule-making here.

Think of it, all of us behave in a particular descent way in a restaurant or a temple - not because there are rules but because we know the culture. On the contrary, despite many rules, we don't hesitate to jump the signal or take a short-cut on scooter on the wrong side of the road. What culture can deliver, rules can not.

Of course, making rules is easy and gives a sense of short-term control over the situation. So most organizations take this short-cut. But bad-behaviour comes back in one form or other. On the other hand, promoting cultural activities is hard and has to be sustained over a long period to establish. But once a culture is established, children are embedded in it, they behave.

I often ask children (in a disguise) what would they like, rules or culture ? Invariably, no one likes rules, they all prefer to operate in appropriate culture. The catch is, one individual can't promote culture, organization has to step in.

So systems such as schools, should pay close attention to if they want to promote rules or promote culture. The two things take different roads.

Pink is for Girls ?

In the two divisions of Grade 4 (age 9-10) I did some weaving activity. Kids were to work for couple of weeks to make a small colourful woollen pouch. The exercise was to push them to concentrate and also to develop their motor skills. They were to take the pouch home as a surprise present for their parents.

Children from the first division finished their pouches with woollen threads of many different colours. The second division has started making pouches with a new set of woollen colours - which had a baby pink colour in it ! I had little idea of the trouble brewing. The girls from second division desperately wanted the pink thread. The girls from the first division strictly told me that other division can't have pink, since they didn't get to use it.

Finally, I have played safe and removed the pink thread from the activity. However, I was  surprised at the depth of this pink-mania. We have branded girls with pink (and boys with blue).  So much so that these biases are now affecting their sense of design. Rather than thinking about what colours look good, girls have made-up their mind that pink is good. We have manipulated their choice and judgement (its a bit like child abuse).

We are all party to this brain-washing - parents, friends, birthday-gifts, marketeers and advertisers. In a world where we are looking for men-women equality, why are we branding girls and boys with completely arbitrary claims. Shouldn't we fill child's world with many different colours each having a sense and a story.

PS : Are boys as fanatic about colour-blue, as the girls are fanatic about colour-pink ? I don't think so. Why ?

That's not fair.

'That's not fair', often I hear this from my students. I am sure this must sound familiar to parents. Children have a clear sense fairness these days. And they are very vocal about it when they find themselves at a disadvantage. If you are friendly with them then even across the age-difference they will make the claim to fairness. A generation back it wouldn't have occurred to us to apply same rules elders, but now they do.

Actually, I don't find much wrong about this sense of fairness. Grown-ups should set example by doing what they ask children to do - by-and-large. If we are to have a more egalitarian society tomorrow then we should encourage a clear sense of fairness and being vocal about it amongst the children.

I am however worried about the fact that children don't have as much sense of being unfair to others. I ask, 'Isn't it unfair to others if you talk while they are keeping quiet ?' and they don't get it. They don't see the urgency or symmetry in this logic. Compared to how passionate they are when they are treated unfairly, they are not troubled when their action is shown to be unfair to others. If you are dishonest then you are unfair to those around you who are honest. If you go out-of-turn then its unfair to those who are waiting for their turn.

We are some how teaching children when they are treated unfairly, but we largely ignore when their behaviour is unfair to others. Consequence of this, and the resulting crisis, can be seen daily in our life. People push each other to get into bus, they don't mind jumping red-signal. When we park we rarely think if our car would block someone else. When we honk it doesn't occur that we are encroaching on someones peace. We don't see it that way. We are becoming a society of 'don't care, won't care'.

If we fail to teach children the sense of being unfair to others, then that is the kind of society we will have tomorrow. I don't think there is enough debate, awareness and action happening about this either in schools or at home.

The Neuroscience Conference - Grade 5

I have stumbled upon one interesting way to teach lesson. Hold a conference on the subject, where children are the delegates. This is how it came about.

While teaching brain to Class 5, I went on to explain how scientists share their discoveries and research. I told them about conferences, how each person presents a talk, there are posters sessions, question-answers and discussion. There is Name-tag so you know who's who. Everyone listens to everyone. Kids said, they also want to have a conference of their own. So we announced a 'One Day Conference on Human Nervous System'. I assigned  somewhat challenging questions for each child to present. Here is the list of questions. Each question had some experiment or reading to be done.

Children made the posters and invitation cards for teachers. I made the badge for each child - that was my selling point. Finally, the day of the conference arrived. I had blocked four school periods for the conference. Each child had done some experiment and gathered some information. They explained their question, described their work and what they found. The audience was allowed to ask only two questions. There were many comments from others. Further discussion shifted to the lunch break. By evening, we wrapped the 'One Day Conference on Human Nervous System'.

Children naturally did everything that scientists do at a conference. They presented their work and exchanged ideas. Some questions remained unanswered. The event was such a success that we will be displaying their presentations on the board as a - poster session for parents.

This confirms my belief that children should be taught science, by teaching them how science actually works, rather than read about scientific work through books. This is one of the interesting ways in which a topic can be covered.

Self-organization and kids

It is known for a long time that when people self-organize to achieve something, the results are much better. Also they are more satisfied on their way to the goal. How far is this true for a group of children and should it be explored in schools ?

Recently I got opportunity to try the idea of Self-organization - the school concert. I decided to put-up a short song-dance for the annual concert. This is how it went. Thirty kids singed-up. I asked them to hear the song for a while and tell me who wants to be a singer, dancer or a musician. I gave three copies of the song to the three groups. Over the next one month - musicians adapted the the song, setting both the vocals and the instrumentals. Singers were the first to learn and sing in-tune. Dancers were lost for a while, till our dance-teacher showed a few steps to them, and they developed the moves. A week before the concert, I elected a child to be the conductor of the group. He was proud to hold the baton in his hand.

As we came together for the rehearsals, I could see how well they had adapted the song, dance and the music score. Effectively, children had learned to conduct themselves. The performance went-off well on the Concert day.

Now here is the thing. I had really not monitored what the kids were doing. They made copies of the song to give it to all. They decided who is good in what and selected their roles and instruments. They would gather for the rehearsal and plug-in their keyboards. I tried to provide them space for practice. They selected their costumes - as long as it was traditional. In the final performance, I was not even present anywhere near the hall. I got them dressed and sent-them off.

However there is one draw-back to such self-organized activities. It takes time. And time is one thing that schools don't have. You are asking for free time in which children can work-out their organization on-their-own ! I could  squirrel away small time for my class-kids in the name of concert practice. But this is near anathema to most schools.

This was a small experiment to see if self-organization would work with kids. If we can adopt such techniques we can achieve happy learning of higher quality.

Art of Negotiations II

Here is another example of how letting children negotiate is sometimes a wise decision. Occasionally boys get into bitter fighting. They are down to slapping and blows. Such fights are difficult to resolve as they have a long history,  you can never figure out who started it. So the next step is to call parents of both kids and talk to them about the incident. I call for diaries of both kids. This is something neither of the kids want. So I offer them a way out. They should step out-side the class for five minutes to discuss their fight and negotiate if possible. If they can't settle their differences then the note goes to their parents..

Five minutes later the boys knock on the door and stand in front of the class sheepishly. They have to explain to rest of the class their settlement. To my surprise, one of the boys has readily conceded his fault. The other boy graciously accepts it. We get on with the lesson.

When grown-ups resolve the issues, I have noticed, other children in the class often come back with their doubts about the incident for days. The issue seems to have not being quite settled. But when the two parties resolve the issue in front of the class, this has positive effect. All the class seems to be much more satisfied with the resolution. They get back to work with a clear closure.

We have had such five-minutes negotiations a handful of times so far and it's worked every time. The violence has gone down in last couple of months. It makes me believe that if children are gently guided into negotiations and are allowed to have space, they negotiate their differences much better than when adults try to bring order.

There are no bad kids

I have said this somewhere in the blog, but it won't hurt to make the point in bold. A teacher must verbally and explicitly explain the difference between being a "Bad boy or a girl" and "Bad behaviour". These two things mean very different things when seen from the point of view of a child.

 I have often seen teachers calling kids 'bad boy' or 'bad girl'. In most cases, what the teacher means, a common grown-up language, is that the behaviour of the kid is not acceptable. We all understand it, but do kids hear it that way ? Kid's language is not evolved enough to interpret it like adults do. They often fail to realize that "bad" refers to his/her behaviour and not to him/her. With repeated misfortune this could turn into "I am a bad girl or a boy".

When I want to severely scold someone, I explain that 'the behaviour is totally unacceptable'. Its the behaviour that I talk about and its the behaviour that I punish, never the boy or girl. Sporadically, I talk with kids about this difference . I say, while I won't distance them, neither will I tolerate their bad behaviour.

I think the cost of kids growing up with the "bad kid" label is too high. The solution is simple, start differentiating the two things. There are no bad kids, there is only bad behaviour.

A Window of opportunity...

I have noticed Grade 4-5 children some times ask profound questions. There is a narrow window of opportunity as children grow-up. It is between 9-11 years. This is the age where children are exposed to a lot of things in real world. They are old enough to understand the technical things around them. For example,  how elections and voting happens, what is open heart surgery, how does one get selected for national cricket team or which aircraft can go super-sonic etc.

They know these things but not necessarily do they understand them. In fact, at age 9-11 they are not old enough to understand how really complicated some of these things can get. They are blissfully unaware of the complexities of real world. It creates a sort of over-confidence in their mind that they know it and can tackle things.

This leads to a very fortunate situation - they are not afraid to raise some fundamental questions or take a shot at explanations or suggest outrageous ideas. One boy said, why can't we inject chlorophyll so that we can make our own food ? Other girl asked, why do we see the world up-right, if convex lens in our eye produces inverted image ? Another one asked about why there isn't a special symbol for units of area rather than, square meter ? What is zero divided by zero ? They couldn't believe that Euler proved its impossible to cross seven bridges of Konigsberg, they tried for many hours to solve it. They appreciate the beauty of Russell's paradox. There are more questions and suggestions in my class, I run out of time to complete my agenda.

What goes wrong then when they grow older ? Children tend to get a ready-made view of the complex world. The complexity of the reality sets-in. This directly diminishes their ability to ask un-adulterated questions and generate naive ideas. Sadly, the more learned you become, the less likely you are to take a fundamental approach.

I get some of the most profound ideas, most fundamental questions and most daring suggestions from the kids of age group 9-11 years. If excited properly and left loose to think freely, these kids often get to very core of the concepts and questions. May be we should hold back teaching them complex technical things for a while and let them be naive for a year or two more. Its a challenge to teach kids more yet keep them naive in spirit - so that they can keep thinking bold concepts and ask deeper questions.

How does science work ?

There is so much focus on teaching of science and maths in schools. The syllabus for Science is especially large as it has to cover the huge amount of knowledge we have gathered so far. The gap between the cutting-edge science and level at which kids start learning science is vast. Children have a long way to go.

To cover this divide, science is split into subjects such as physics, chemistry and biology. Going even deeper into optics, mechanics, electricity etc. The focus in on the contents of science. Rarely do we teach children how science really works. The real initiation of children in science lies in teaching them the scientific process, not piles and piles of already derived science.

I had an unexpected opportunity to take this diversion in my class. One day I said that doing meditation every day should help in exam. Naturally children asked me, how do I know that ? I had to admit that I didn't really know if that was true. So we decided to find out. This is how science starts - almost always with a question - even a silly one. Would daily meditation improve exam performance ? that was the question.

The only way to find out was to do an experiment. What should we do to find out ? I asked children. Unbelievably I got some very good suggestions. Ideas that go to the very core of Science. One girl asked, how will we ever know if it worked unless we compared ? - that is what the controlled experiments are all about. A boy said that the two exams (with and without meditation) should be comparable. That's the idea of removing systematic errors. Another girl said, its easy to measure the exam performance, but how do we measure meditation ? That was profound. We needed a quantitative measure of meditation. We decided on a 5-point scale for mediation ( 1 is bad, 5 is excellent). A boy asked how many measurements should be done ? that leads to concept of independent measurements, variance and confidence in the data.

Every one agreed that we should measure mediation for next 20 days, at least twice a day. At the end of it there would be an exam. We will compare that performance to the one in the past. Frankly, this is a tougher experiment than normal science. Here, children have to be honestly rating their own meditation - objectively !

Its been four days now, my class is measuring their own meditation on the scale of 1-5. They are meticulously writing their observations in a table - with date and time. We will then roughly correlate these with their exam grades.

It may be that the results will show us nothing. And that is ok. There are three possible out-comes of any experiment, a Yes or a No or the results could be Inconclusive. In fact, rarely does a single experiment prove or disprove anything. Children will discuss what other parameters needed to be controlled.

We may not find link between meditation and performance with this experiment. But I hope children would learnt something about how science works,

1. Start with a question
2. Do a clean experiment
3. Prove, Disprove or declare to be Inconclusive.

PS: So here is the result. Of course, kids who did poor meditation did poorly in the exam. This however proves nothing. Just because two things get correlated doesn't mean there is a cause and effect between them. Both these behaviours could be resulting from a much deeper cause.

The Cutting Edge in Class

Talking about human nervous system in my science class and specifically about the brain, children are asking a lot of questions (age 10-11). Many of the questions I can't answer, I honestly told them. In fact, for many of their questions there are no answers as yet.

Then I came across this talk on What is creativity and can we study it. The talk is by a leading scientist on this open question. He does experiments using cutting edge technologies. But what struck me most was that some of the questions he asks are the very questions that my class was asking me. This was a fortunate situation. It gave me chance to show children that, when they grow-up, they have as much chance to take a shot at these mysteries as anyone else.

So I showed this video talk in my science class. I was bit apprehensive as parts of the talk are rather technical. But the experiment has Jazz musicians and Rap artists, whose brains were monitored. Children loved it and wanted to be played again. I realized that if you can show that their questions (i.e. children's questions) have relevance in the real world, children are very interested in learning and understanding. More so than in the past, children need to know that their thoughts mean something in real world - then they are willing to learn.

Art of negotiations...

During a recent outdoors camp two girls fought bitterly - hitting each other. One was considerably younger than other (8 yrs and 12 yrs). So to resolve the fight I separated them and tried to distract the younger one into some paper-folding activity. I made it clear that I want - no more discussion about the fight and get on with the camp activities.

After a while a couple of girls, who were not even involved with the tussle, came to me. They requested that I let the younger one go across and talk to elder one because - she is good at resolving the issues. They said that if its not sorted out then the fight will continue into the night so better to talk-it-over. Ok, I said, give it a try. And the two warring-factions did come to an understanding. I don't know what that was but they were back in the group.

This was something I had dreamed about and had faith in, but till now had not seen in action. I think, children are naturally good at negotiations. Left to themselves, they find a way to compromise which benefit everyone. As children grow old they loose this ability. It may be because their sense of self becomes stronger or peer pressure prohibits them from sitting down at the negotiating table with open mind or simply they form set opinions about others.

Whatever may be the reason, if younger children have this ability to negotiate then we can systemically cultivate it through deliberate exercises. When these children grow-up they would bring about consensus on apparently contentious issues.

We are seeing growing number of factions in every possible form - religious, socio-economic, regional, linguistics, political. Every one has strong views now a days. This is not a good sign. But there is a hope. If we can encourage children in the art of negotiations then we can reach that dream of global village.