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.