[Reader-list] Do not limit your child to your own education, for he was born in another time.

[Chintan Girish Modi]

>From http://www.deccanchronicle.com/business/bagful-wishes-422

*A bagful of wishes*

January 1st, 2011

By Ashish Rajpal

Do not limit your child to your own education, for he was born in another
time.

A Jewish proverb

The Right to Education Bill (affectionately RTE) was perhaps the defining
education event of 2010 mandating good quality learning, and not just access
to schooling, as a must-have for every child. This was a fitting end to
arguably the most eventful decade for school education in India where
several landmark policy prescriptions were given the stamp of approval.

CBSE made its Class 10 examinations optional and introduced a system of
continuous and comprehensive evaluation (CCE) with the intent to end the
tyranny of testing. The Sixth Pay Commission announced revised pay scales
for teachers, bringing then at par with other professional sectors. A
public-private-partnership (PPP) was announced to enable private
organisations to service and manage failing public schools.

It is easy to discern the liberal philosophical roots of these policies,
building on two centuries of thinking in India and across the world. Having
its roots in the Latin word liber, which means “free”; liberal education is
mostly centred around a vision of a rounded school education that is
relevant to real life and is centred around the needs of the child.
Globally, educators such as Dewey, Steiner and Montessori have shown the way
to child-centred schooling that emphasises genuine leaning and creative
expression.

At home, J. Krishnamurthy spoke of education without fear, Sri Aurobindo
advocated “free-progress”, and Mahatma Gandhi’s Nai-Talim emphasised
vocational skills and dignity of labour. More recently, the NCERT’s National
Curricular Framework 2005 made a substantial case around two common sense
principles: one, make the classroom content more useful to children in real
life; two, shift away from tiresome rote learning to methods that make
learning enjoyable.

I congratulate the vision and intent of the makers of these policies.
However, I am less sure if liberal policies, on their own, will actually
translate to meaningful learning for our children. In my decade-long
association with hundreds of schools across the country, I have learnt that
what needs to change are the practices at the last-mile of school education.
To that end, I want three wishes for critical practices that can make
liberal education a reality in every classroom.

I wish that hands-on exploration be part of our classroom curriculum. What
if children were treated as little scientists who conducted experiments with
their own hands, made observations, asked questions and came to their own
conclusions while guided by the teacher?

For me personally, a defining experience was a class I attended with Eleanor
Duckworth. She was our professor at Harvard University who would run classes
in a very hands-on and experiential way. She would make us do permutations
and combination exercises with clips, make us do area and volume exercises
with chocolate bars, keep us up late at night and make us watch the moon to
see what its shape was and the direction of the “rabbit”. It was an
astonishing experience in hands-on learning.

My second wish is to inculcate a reflective mindset and openness to feedback
as part of the programmes to educate our teachers. Theoretical knowledge of
psychology and subject matter understanding is certainly necessary but not
sufficient to create good teaching practice, which is often limited to
repeated transmission of textbook content. What if teachers observed each
other inside the classroom, reflected honestly on how they performed, gave
each other feedback and continuously improved on their practices?

After training over 10,000 teachers in this manner, I have seen the visible
difference a reflective teacher can make on her students. Instead of running
after marks and ranks, children in these classrooms think on their own,
thirst for objective feedback on their performance, are not afraid to fail
in new tasks and try repeatedly until they succeed.

My final wish is to get school leaders to be role-model teachers and
learners. When I visited Kiran Sethi’s acclaimed Riverside School in
Ahmedabad, Mary Roy’s painstakingly created Pallikodam in Kottayam, and the
vibrant Harishree Vidyalyam in Chennai, I found one thing in common. The
leaders of these schools spent their time and energy in the classroom;
immersed in learning, modelling good teaching and coaching their colleagues.

For my wishes to come true, the theoretical world of academics and policy
must meet the real world of teachers and students. Today they lie estranged
in different galaxies. Good education management means bringing them
together.

Once this happens, we can then look forward to a generation of curious,
creative and fearless learners who can solve the most pressing challenges of
our country. No problem will be too big for them. They will say: “Let’s
figure it out”, and not, “It’s out of syllabus”! That is when we will
deliver a truly liberal education.

Ashish Rajpal is the co-founder & managing director of iDiscoveri Education.