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.