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).

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.

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.

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.

Recognition Backlash

A group of students started helping staff to clean-up school area. No one told them to, they just got together and started voluntary service. It is not very often that you get to see such helpful attitude in schools but then the eight and nine year olds are innovative and nothing would stop them.

This was a great opportunity I couldn't let go. I wanted to use this chance to infect more kids with the same bug, I took photos and posted them around the school. Kids just love to see themselves in the photos. There was great excitement for two days.

Then something strange happened which I was not prepared for. After two days the spontaneous help stopped. Finished. No one came to help; kids said they prefer to play or chat. It puzzled me.

Many days later, I brought up the subject with them. The kids said there were too many others now wanting to share the work and no one got happy enough. Further, kids who started it didn't like the spot-light turned on them through the photos. My pro-activeness had effectively killed the social phenomena. The promotion had exactly opposite effect to what I naively expected.

Its been a months since then and some kids have returned to help again. This time around, I am keeping away from them. They know better.

Lot of things, but nothing to do.

Today there is much more focus on things. Children want things that they see on TV or are talked about by their friends. Parents are also eager to buy things for their kids - books, toys, cloths, shoes, video games (you get the point).

However, things such as these can't teach as much as various activities could teach us. So we, parents and teachers, need a plan to convert demand for things into suggestions for activities.

For example, if a child demands a plane or a car then, can he or she rather buy aero-modeling kit ? Instead of buying a foot-ball, can we put that money in football coaching ? Instead of buying computer games can that money be saved for a programing course ? Instead of buying cloths can that money be used to pay for summer camp ?

While things give you instant pleasure they don't usually build useful skills. On the other hand activities require a longer term involvement and commitment. While most things you can't carry around with you or won't last long, the skills you learn stay with you life-long.

Do we give such alternatives to children and teach them to choose activities over things ? We should be ready with a list of "to do" activities when the demand comes.

Which would you prefer - a kids saying "I know how to do this" or a kid saying "I have so many things" ?

The Cascade effect

A School is like any other legacy system. Over the time lethargy sets in and people tend to become fatalistic and disillusioned. I am not an expert on how to turn around such organizations but a couple of things I notice.

In such organizations, questioning fundamental premises or giving radical alternatives doesn't work. The system has lost any flexibility to respond to any such solutions. In fact, that is why it has became a legacy in first place.

What we need to do is to engineer small, successive and positive accidents. These may be trivial but they should work. This gives a feel that system is responding, which in-turn changes the mindset of stake-holders. The good news is that even though the grown-ups would have largely given-up, schools have large population of young crowd which is willing to try.

After many small positive accidents, one should try out bigger proposals that are also guarantied to succeed. And slowly people would get into good mood and are willing to try new things. At least that is the hope.

Schools, of all, need to be very responsive to changes happening in the society. Its only through such cascade effects that we may have of hope changing the schools.