In today's schools many things are over-designed. There are formats for all kind of written works - notes, tests, letters, comprehension etc. Children have to follow these formats else they may lose marks.
No doubt this makes it easy for teachers to detect outliers and non-conformists. And indeed it is easy to catch sloppy children by strictly adhering to various formats and rules. However, this has far-reaching, unintended consequence.
Its become harder for a child to develop a sense of neatness in his or her work. There is a difference between a 'format' and a 'form'. Children quickly learn to mimic the format without developing internal sense of form and proportion. An elegant written work has a form - spacing, margins, tabs for paragraphs and justifications.
Sometimes, when kids ask me how they should write some text or solve a maths sum, I tell them to do it in a way that looks neat - no rules. And hope that they will learn to differentiate between neat work and sloppy work.
While it is easy to learn the format, it takes time and an eye to learn the form. Children wouldn't learn elegance of written work if we don't give space and time to explore.
Tuesday, July 6, 2010
Monday, July 5, 2010
Addicted to Eraser
They hold pencil in one hand and eraser in other hand. This seems a common style of writing these days. No sooner they make a mistake they want to erase and correct it. It may be a factual error, or a compute error, or even a case of bad hand-writing. Erasing your mistakes may seem right thing to do - after all children are conscious of their own mistakes, but it has unwanted consequences.
Firstly, by erasing their mistakes they forget about it and make similar mistakes down the line. Leaving a mistake on the page - there to see - helps in identifying it next time you do it. Secondly, most children are not careful in erasing, as a result their writing only becomes more smudgy. Some times the paper is torn as well. Why can't you simpley draw a clean line across your mistake and leave it there for the future ?
Secondly, this habit seem to undermine their confidence. The line between a 'mistake' and 'not getting it exactly correct' is very thin. For example, ask children to draw freely and they hesitate - unless they can use an eraser now and then. By relying on eraser so much, we seem to have closed the feed-back loop that allows a child to learn from their 'not exactly correct' wanderings.
In our efforts to improve educational quality, somehow we have sent a clear signal of what is correct and acceptable. Children are reacting to it by relying more on erasure. Will they ever learn to get things correct in first place, or draw lines confidently ?
Firstly, by erasing their mistakes they forget about it and make similar mistakes down the line. Leaving a mistake on the page - there to see - helps in identifying it next time you do it. Secondly, most children are not careful in erasing, as a result their writing only becomes more smudgy. Some times the paper is torn as well. Why can't you simpley draw a clean line across your mistake and leave it there for the future ?
Secondly, this habit seem to undermine their confidence. The line between a 'mistake' and 'not getting it exactly correct' is very thin. For example, ask children to draw freely and they hesitate - unless they can use an eraser now and then. By relying on eraser so much, we seem to have closed the feed-back loop that allows a child to learn from their 'not exactly correct' wanderings.
In our efforts to improve educational quality, somehow we have sent a clear signal of what is correct and acceptable. Children are reacting to it by relying more on erasure. Will they ever learn to get things correct in first place, or draw lines confidently ?
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
Maths as a story
It has amazed me to see the extent to which children equate maths with numbers and formulae. They have strong conviction that maths is numbers and rules. They hardly think about maths as a story, drama or an event. As a result simple word-problems baffle them.
Well before we get down to actually doing the maths, we must understand what happened in this story. Say, Meena goes to market to get a dozen bananas, a dozen times. We need to play this drama in our mind, only then can we figure-out what to do. Is this a multiplication or a division sum. A fraction or a square-root sum. Unfortunately, well before children are hooked to stories of maths, they are made to learn the maths of the story.
One way out is to start teaching elementary maths only through stories. It doesn't matter if they don't know the generalized rules, as long as they know how to resolve the situation in the story. In Meena's case she could have made 12 trips and buy 12 bananas each time (hence 12 times 12, which is 144 bananas). Or, she could have made 12 trips to buy one banana each (hence 12 times, which is 12 bananas). These possibilities are there. The maths (as symbols and rules) hardly enters here.
It would be easy to teach children generic rules once they understand many maths-stories. However, if they know the many generic-rules, its not easy to figure-out which of these would apply to a specific story-sum. So treat maths more like a story than a formula.
Well before we get down to actually doing the maths, we must understand what happened in this story. Say, Meena goes to market to get a dozen bananas, a dozen times. We need to play this drama in our mind, only then can we figure-out what to do. Is this a multiplication or a division sum. A fraction or a square-root sum. Unfortunately, well before children are hooked to stories of maths, they are made to learn the maths of the story.
One way out is to start teaching elementary maths only through stories. It doesn't matter if they don't know the generalized rules, as long as they know how to resolve the situation in the story. In Meena's case she could have made 12 trips and buy 12 bananas each time (hence 12 times 12, which is 144 bananas). Or, she could have made 12 trips to buy one banana each (hence 12 times, which is 12 bananas). These possibilities are there. The maths (as symbols and rules) hardly enters here.
It would be easy to teach children generic rules once they understand many maths-stories. However, if they know the many generic-rules, its not easy to figure-out which of these would apply to a specific story-sum. So treat maths more like a story than a formula.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
One good teacher = how many educationists ?
Every year, like the dark monsoon clouds, new educational reforms arrive. Typically text-books change (new minister), languages come and go (Marathi is in as-off today), exams change (from no-exams to weekly exams), evaluation rules change (marks or percentiles or grades ?). Add to this the large annual churn of teachers and things can get very dizzy for children.
How does one draw any conclusions about education when nothing seems to be ever constant ? I guess words "new reforms" says it all - meaning we are dumping "old" reforms. We don't even know if those worked or not.
In last few decades many educational theories have done 180 degree turns. Here is one example. For years educationists promoted idea of different learning-styles (the literature is vast). Children have different learning -styles, so there have to be teaching-styles and evaluation-styles. This spawned an industry of text-books, tool-kits and experts. Now it seems, the evidence for 'learning-style' learning isn't quite there. A new study shows that teaching-styles have no effect on the actual amount of learning that happens amongst different children (Paschler et al). Give it another year and the new study will also spawn an industry with its own experts.
The problem is - we are theorizing faster than we are collecting evidence. And we are marketing faster than we are theorizing. There is too much focus on class-rooms. Class-rooms have become cutting-edge labs for all sorts of experiments. Educationists are quicker to take new results and create policy-advice out of it. Education, of all the fields, requires a very long baseline and control population (I would say half-a-generation at least). But no one has patience or time to verify anything here.
I think schools are suffering from too many Educationists and too few teachers. A good teacher is an intuitive educationists. A good teacher develops views and techniques over many years. He/she knows how to balance different approaches to teaching (if only we would leave him/her alone).
How does one draw any conclusions about education when nothing seems to be ever constant ? I guess words "new reforms" says it all - meaning we are dumping "old" reforms. We don't even know if those worked or not.
In last few decades many educational theories have done 180 degree turns. Here is one example. For years educationists promoted idea of different learning-styles (the literature is vast). Children have different learning -styles, so there have to be teaching-styles and evaluation-styles. This spawned an industry of text-books, tool-kits and experts. Now it seems, the evidence for 'learning-style' learning isn't quite there. A new study shows that teaching-styles have no effect on the actual amount of learning that happens amongst different children (Paschler et al). Give it another year and the new study will also spawn an industry with its own experts.
The problem is - we are theorizing faster than we are collecting evidence. And we are marketing faster than we are theorizing. There is too much focus on class-rooms. Class-rooms have become cutting-edge labs for all sorts of experiments. Educationists are quicker to take new results and create policy-advice out of it. Education, of all the fields, requires a very long baseline and control population (I would say half-a-generation at least). But no one has patience or time to verify anything here.
I think schools are suffering from too many Educationists and too few teachers. A good teacher is an intuitive educationists. A good teacher develops views and techniques over many years. He/she knows how to balance different approaches to teaching (if only we would leave him/her alone).
Saturday, February 13, 2010
No means no, means no, means no, means ....
There is this growing thing in children today, both at home and in school. When I say "no", meaning "you will not do or have a thing", kids consider it as an Invitation for Negotiation.
They are really really really sorry.., oh please, please, please..., can't we do this just for 10 minutes..., why can't we..., but you allowed yesterday... This can go on for minutes, hours or even days. They want to know what they can do to get around this 'no'.
The grown-ups, rationals, teacher-types think kids will understand if we explain why. Intentions are good here, but this only furthers kids' impression that this is open for negotiation. For every explanation of yours, kids have varied explanations of why not 'no'.
May be it is possible to reach end of the argument, with one or two kids at home. I found number of parents are also suffering from this epidemic. However, there are 30 or 40 kids to tackle - in class-room. There is no scope of ending the arguments and also teach what you decided to.
Its worth studying this phenomena. It's telling us something about their strategy or their changed perception of who they and we are.
They are really really really sorry.., oh please, please, please..., can't we do this just for 10 minutes..., why can't we..., but you allowed yesterday... This can go on for minutes, hours or even days. They want to know what they can do to get around this 'no'.
The grown-ups, rationals, teacher-types think kids will understand if we explain why. Intentions are good here, but this only furthers kids' impression that this is open for negotiation. For every explanation of yours, kids have varied explanations of why not 'no'.
May be it is possible to reach end of the argument, with one or two kids at home. I found number of parents are also suffering from this epidemic. However, there are 30 or 40 kids to tackle - in class-room. There is no scope of ending the arguments and also teach what you decided to.
Its worth studying this phenomena. It's telling us something about their strategy or their changed perception of who they and we are.
Saturday, January 30, 2010
The original song...
Some of you may not have seen the 'School Chale Hum' Ad that used to come on TV in India, about education to all. Here is the youtube link to this great short film.
Monday, January 25, 2010
When going gets tough...
I had to do a tight-rope walk in giving Maths sums in the class. Give simple problems and fast-learners get impatient. Give tough problems and slow-learners are lost. Soon the class would end in disarray. This went on for a while till I got the idea of - "Star" problem !
Start with simple problem that everyone can solve, and make it progressively difficult. At the end comes the Star-problem, which is challenging. Fast-learners look forward to the star-sum. Slow-learner don't need to do the Star-sum, instead get this additional time to catch-up with the back-log of sums. This made the class-room much quiet and organized.
A teacher-friend however suggested that I do the star-sum in the middle of the period. And give a problem that every one can solve at the end of the class. Why ? because it's important to leave children with positive feelings in the end. This seem to work even better.
On a recent open-day at school, I heard from parents that kids seem increasingly enjoying maths. Much thanks to my teacher-friend.
Start with simple problem that everyone can solve, and make it progressively difficult. At the end comes the Star-problem, which is challenging. Fast-learners look forward to the star-sum. Slow-learner don't need to do the Star-sum, instead get this additional time to catch-up with the back-log of sums. This made the class-room much quiet and organized.
A teacher-friend however suggested that I do the star-sum in the middle of the period. And give a problem that every one can solve at the end of the class. Why ? because it's important to leave children with positive feelings in the end. This seem to work even better.
On a recent open-day at school, I heard from parents that kids seem increasingly enjoying maths. Much thanks to my teacher-friend.
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