January 5th, 2012

SEMBLANCE OF SCIENTIFIC SUPERIORITY

I have always struggled with the supremacy of sciences in the hierarchy of subjects in school curriculum, particularly the obeisance we accord them in Indian education setup. This struggle was brought to the forefront, this past month, by two triggers: the 2011 Lenovo Global Student Science & Technology Outlook that was forwarded by an acquaintance, who is an Albert Einstein Distinguished Educator Fellow, advising the federal government on Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) programs in the US. The other was a chance interaction with an Indian parent of a young college lad at a parent interaction session in a school near Delhi.  I am currently advising this reputed school, known for its rigorous academic orientation, on its adoption of an international curriculum. The objective of the session was to answer parents’ queries on benefits and rigors of the international program.

At the session, many parents proclaimed racial/national superiority of science programs offered by Indian boards; articulating doubts about the ‘rigors’ of the science programs offered by the international framework. One parent, who had been quiet for most part, also shared the story of his academically brilliant son who had passed out of grade 10 from the very same school. Based on the outstanding scores of his son in grade 10 external examinations, the father decided that his son would benefit from intensive and focused coaching to crack the maniacal entrance examination to premier engineering institutes. The sixteen year old was packed off to the city of Kota in Rajasthan, a city with pathway to the engineering dream as its sole raison d’être. Statistically speaking, the cram schools in Kota have an impressive success rate. Like all cram schools, they are inhumane and depressing. A lesson learnt by this father the very hard way, as his teenage son became a nervous wreck and was clinically diagnosed with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). That explained his presence at the session- he had been converted to a more holistic framework of education for his younger, equally brilliant son.

Skimming through the findings of 2011 Lenovo Global Student Science & Technology Outlook, excerpted here, left me connecting the dots:

  1. Is Science more valuable to society than the Arts? Yes, it is, except in Russia. Kids in India and Mexico especially believe so.
  2. What is the current state of Science in each country? Kids in Japan and Russia especially feel the number of students pursuing Science is declining. Kids in India feel the number is increasing.
  3. How many kids are interested in pursuing a career in STEM? The least are in Japan. The highest interest is in India and Mexico.
  4. Will STEM make them rich or change the world or both? Kids in India have the highest expectations of getting rich if they pursue a career in STEM. Kids in Russia have the least. Mexican and Japanese kids feel more strongly that they could change the world.

My two cents

In India, as in most other places, we misunderstand science and art and confine them to watertight subject boundaries. Science is not a set of subjects with a fixed body of knowledge; Science is a way of thinking, an attitude of curiosity, imagination and rationality.  The mental processes of an artist and scientist are the same.  It was one of greatest scientists of our times who said, “If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music” ~ Albert Einstein, highlighting the synergy symbiotic relationship between the two disciplines!

In most schools in India, we use the term science and science subjects interchangeably. In our science lessons, we discourage inquiry, reflection, and observation to make room for rote. Science subjects are taught (not learnt) as a dull drab mass of disjointed facts sans much science, the drudgery of which students tolerate due to parental pressure or some hope for gratification/ ROI in the future as the Lenovo survey amply demonstrates. Living in a poor nation like ours where majority of people are still deprived of basic necessities, I do not see even one science student with the zeal and passion of Severin Suzuki. The aim for studying science (or anything, actually) is simply to amass personal/individual riches.

With our tunnel vision of sciences and fundamentally in-the-box view of careers, the vast Indian middle-class parents still cannot think beyond medicine, engineering and IT for their children.  If you talk to them about the knowledge economy and that the career landscape in five years will be very different from today, with the emergence of new sciences, new art forms, new trends and paradigms of needs/wants; they are convinced that this implies that the quantum of information multiplied manifold so more rote and drudgery is required on part of their children to be successful in the uncertain future. Knowledge is pursued with such passion that understanding and application are frowned upon as infringements on precious, scarce time. The disconnect between knowledge and application is so pervasive that we have engineers graduating from of prestigious institutes who cannot even change a fuse.

Another salvo that parents are fond of shooting to defend the ‘Indian way of teaching sciences’ is that most doctors, scientists and engineers in US are Indians. Statistically incorrect, but this is a widespread perception when it comes to our scientific arrogance. I would not defend or dispute that claim but suffice to reflect that Indian organisations are lamenting the quality of new engineers and doctors in India, in some cases, only 25% of engineering graduates are found to be employable. Also, producing workers (doctors or engineers) with an edge in foreign lands- is that what we are so boastful about when there is rampant deprivation related to food, housing and livelihood?

Finding comfort in nostalgia, we harp on the laurels achieved by our scientists of yore like Aryabhatta and Shushruta. Fast forward to today, how many innovators and creators like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates have we produced lately? In a country where malnourishment and hunger is rampant, why have we been able to produce only one M S Swaminathan; in a country where public transport is non-existent, why have we been able to produce only one E Sreedharan? Well into the 21st century, Indian educational set up churns out millions of engineers annually, but we are yet to figure out how to construct roads that can last one monsoon; we are a unique nation where 80% of road accidents are caused by faulty road engineering.

Our fixation with science subjects has not taken us too far as a nation, as majority of our people continue to live in deplorable conditions. It’s time to put some science back into the science subjects!

So how does one put more science into the science curriculum so as to instil scientific temper? Here are some of my thoughts, more from perspective of foundational years necessitating attitudinal shift:

  1. Children are born with a scientific temper; pre-schools must design learning experiences in a way that sustains this spirit of inquiry and exploration.
  2. Taking the baton from the pre-schools, the elementary schools must encourage questioning, observation, listening and problem solving among young learners. Culturally, our tolerance threshold for children’s probing and queries is very low.
  3. As adults, we should take away the focus from one-right answer and keep the door of possibilities and probabilities open when it comes to interactions with children.
  4. Subject boundaries should creep in only when children grasp the rationality of doing so, somewhere around mid-teens; till then all/most learning experiences should be structured to be transdisciplinary/interdisciplinary.
  5. As adults we need to come down from the pedestal of ‘know-it-all’ where we have placed ourselves in our dealings with children. The desire to respond with ‘the right answer’ to every inquiry of children should be curbed and slowly eliminated. This will bode well for us as well as our children, so that they do not feel they need us as crutches in their information gathering to construct an understanding.
  6. Most science lessons till middle school should be experiential with strong conceptual and theoretical underpinnings.
  7. Encourage children to experiment and evaluate things that fascinate them. Help them inculcate a habit of research, analysis and reflection. Done effectively, it deepens understanding and creates linkages.
  8. Young children are intelligent beings and make deductions based on observation and valid reasoning. We should refrain from mocking and laughing at their theories, which in most cases is a reflection of his world and how he sees things. For instance, if a four year old observes that the “sky is moving”; avoid a patronising tone (the ‘How cute!’ kind); avoid the urge to tear through his deduction. Being told that it is earth that moves and not the sky will only make him repeat/regurgitate without actually understanding. A scientific thought deserves a scientific answer.

The possibilities are endless and we as a community, as educationalists and as parents need to find our own answers!

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October 19th, 2011

The Interrupted Child

Many years ago Lev Vygotsky, a Russian psychologist and avid observer of children’s play, wrote that at play a child “behaves above his daily behavior … as though he were a head taller than himself.” Lev Vygotsky’s observations on play juxtaposed with Hungarian psychology professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s (founder and co-director of the Quality of Life Research Center, USA) research on flow makes for a heady synthesis of what is and can be when children play.

Angelique Felix, mother of 5-year old Chanel, a practitioner & proponent of play with whom I have spent many hours discussing and learning about play explains, “At play, children experiment with that what they encounter in their daily lives: fears, pleasurable moments, routines etc. While the children play, they do it in their way. They put their truth in play. And we adults can understand in these moments the unspoken words of our children, by just observing them, without judgment. In free play, when there is no adult agenda, children follow their inner creativity, their source of inspiration.” A ‘play fairy’ weaving magic of play into the lives of children and adults, believes, “I call play the best possibility for children to be themselves.”

Children absorbed in self-directed play exemplify flow of liberating energies. The engagement with the act and objects of play is so complete and consuming that the world and clocks cease to exist. That perhaps explains why adults pack up instantly when it is time, but kids want to prolong their activity with complete disregard to time.

Over-involved adult can disrupt this flow during a child’s play. The well-intentioned adult could interrupt flow during play by “helping” with the difficult or “dangerous” parts; with unsolicited advice; by rushing him along so that he moves along the routine in a timely manner or praise his work in ways that would shift his attention away from the process and toward the product.

What follow are pictures of what I call, The Battle for the Bowl where two and a half years old, Raju (name changed) in a daycare setting spent his half an hour defending his way of painting:

*Raju is representative of most young children and the teacher/didi is representative of most adults around young children.

I wonder what…

  • if Raju has been allowed to keep the bowl where he wanted and move on to paint what he wanted to paint.
  • if the adult would have perceived the irrelevance where the paint is kept to the painting task at hand.
  • if Raju had been given the opportunity to maximize the experience- smell and feel paint, strengthen hand muscles as he gripped the brush and made deliberate, repeated strokes, the interplay between wet pink paint and dry white paper.

Would he have created a Picasso or a Rembrandt- certainly not; would he have transitioned into flow- probably; would he have expressed his mental processes and physical dexterity on the large canvas of his learning and development?  I leave that to your wisdom and imagination.

For more information on Angelique Felix’s work on play see (http://www.angeliquefelix.com/)

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September 12th, 2011

Play for the sake of play

I have been meaning to write for some time. But my excuse for procrastination is a trespassing mind seeking clarity.

In my first webinar I went on a learning trail with Marc, Shannon, Gaurav and what they brought to the table got me thinking real hard. Since it was my first experience of a webinar and that too facilitating the discussion with very learned panelists, I had an unconscious script in my head. The discussion around some of the views expressed by the panelists left me reconsidering that script. Introspection and reflection kicked in and that explains my much-delayed blog.

One view that stayed with me and made me closely reexamine and re-explore was,play for the sake of play alone. Children (and adults) need play because it is a sign of life, any benefits that accrue, in terms of development or otherwise, should be incidental and not glorified to being its raison d’être. Play for the sake of learning/development, reduced play as means to achieve those developmental ends and not an end in itself. So play is considered valuable because of the associated benefits and if one is not seeking those benefits or if one is not making developmental gains in the desired developmental domains while playing, then play is not serving its purpose and should be chucked! This view makes play, hardcore functional; almost like work.

Still on the whirlwind tour of deconstructing and reconstructing my understanding of play as a child’s work, I revisited Mihily Csikszentmihaly’s concept of flow that re-emerged as a state within optimal experiences that are an end in themselves. Children have these optimal experiences when they are playing. The natural conclusion was, play should not be children’s work; it should be their play. During this reflective phase, the picture of play was crystal clear and consolidated in the recesses of my grey cells.

Having better understood the picture that emerged, I decided to look at the lens through which this picture emerged, more analytically. This picture stayed when I wore the lenses of an academician/theoretic/researcher/playworker and as a child as they dwell in the present. But the lens was not very comfortable. Seeking comfort, I decided to change the lens to that of regulations-bound caregiver/outcomes-driven teacher/multitasking, time-deficit parents who are more future-centric when it comes to their children. Viewing through this lens, the perception of play changed completely. Now the picture of play for the sake of play alone was like a very expensive, abstract painting, that we know is probably valuable but cannot fathom its meaning or the rationale for its value. This lens fitted me well.

The forces of push and pull in the lives of adult caregiver/teacher/parent, who are largely responsible for the experiences in the lives of young children, inhibits our appreciation of play for the sake of play. These inhibitors can be curriculum overload or enrichment programs; or over-competitive ‘knowledge-based’ world of work. Parents/caregivers/educators have taken a detour from the path of play for the sake of play and now we find ourselves a little lost. For us to acknowledge that the road of play we deviated from was the correct one, we need to see that play works; that it indeed is the right path.

Play for the sake of play will continue to be a fine-sounding abstract concept for such ‘gone-astray’ adults who function like a flesh and blood version of a hard drive. However, if they can be made to see that play is developmental and in natural rhythm with the environment and who we are as living beings, then ‘play for the sake of play’ becomes more tangible concept to understand and aspire for.

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August 27th, 2011

Expatriate teachers and parents in India

With about 30,000 foreign workers, India is beginning to grow into an expat hub. Although it cannot yet compete with Hong Kong or Singapore, India’s foreign population is rapidly growing. Because of their profession or their family situation, many expats in India are sooner or later confronted with the critical decision of selecting a school for their child that meets with their preferences and preserves their ability to school their child without much adjustment, should they relocate to another country.

Teaching jobs are a very popular vocation for spouses of expatriates and travelers from across the world. International schools offer employment opportunities for expats in India especially those who  are English native speakers  and those with prior experience in international schools. In addition, there are many teaching opportunities for native speakers of foreign languages like French, German, Chinese, etc English is widely spoken in India’s academic and business environments. Thus, qualified teachers with a high proficiency of English are always welcome at international and public Indian schools.

Teaching experience alone is not enough. As an expat teacher at an international school in India, you will be confronted with many cultural differences and as you acculturate yourself, you will be expected to acknowledge and celebrate the cultural diversity that your students and colleagues bring to school. However with increased opportunities for immigration and professional mobility, this is a challenge that many schools all across the world are grappling with.

Public schools and language institutions offer teaching jobs as well. Foreign students, recent graduates, expat spouses or expats who travel a lot, often choose this option. It gives them the freedom to travel and explore India, while gaining first hand teaching experience in the classroom.

While you are looking for jobs like these, you may find that many teaching opportunities are on a volunteer basis. They are often offered in public schools which lack good teachers. Other options include teaching English at a private language institution or provide tutoring service from home. If you would rather work as a freelancer, there are companies that sometimes like to hire language teachers to help their employees learn or improve their English.

When it comes to finding the right school for your child, if you live in one of the expat hot spots like Mumbai, it may be quite easy to find ‘the right school’. Cities like New Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai, Gurgaon and Pune have international schooling options that cater to the preferences of the big expat community living there.

In India, it is important to consider the school’s location and proximity to your residence, especially if you reside in one of the bigger cities. Mumbai or New Delhi are huge urban areas and choosing a school at the other end of the city would most certainly make for a very long and tiring commute for your child.

Other than that, international schools come in different sizes, with different academic focus and different programs. At the end of the day, it is up to the parent to decide which school will be the best choice for his child.

This article has been contributed by InterNations. InterNations GmbH is the international social networking service for expats and global minds worldwide. The members are diplomats, managers and employees of multinational companies, IGOs and NGOs, foreign correspondents as well as their families. InterNations is a place where they can interact with other internationally-minded individuals sharing the same situation abroad, similar interests, and needs and also meet up in over 270 communities on a regular basis.

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June 7th, 2011

Webinar: Play is Work

Play is the most fundamental natural act that humans and animals indulge in, yet it is most neglected and misconstrued in school, at work and in life in general.

Late last year, we put together some of my learnings around play in the form of an eBook titled “Play is Work”. To consolidate our understanding of the role of play in shaping lives – in children and adults – we connected with proponents and practitioners of play from across the globe. This webinar is, hopefully, the first of a series to discuss and share with the wider audience the benefits and nuances of play.

This webinar brings together experts/practitioners from North America, Europe and India to share their beliefs and experiences so that we learn to play on!

Our panelists:

Juyal Gaurav: A creative visualiser from National Institute of Design, Gaurav hosts a series of creative programmes for children and adults on Disney Channel.

Marc Armitage: Is a playworker, an independent consultant, researcher and writer in children’s play and the wider social world of children and young people from 0-19 years.

Shannon Tex Holden: Based in USA, Shannon is currently an administrator at a Middle School in Missouri, and also an adjunct instructor for Lindenwood University and Missouri State University.

Nancy Villasis: A university professor and a school teacher/administrator working for International Baccalaureate schools and other highly demanding educational institutions in several countries in South and North America.

Kirti Pankaj: An ECE educator from a private school in Canada, who nurtures happy, creative and well-informed young minds through her daily interactions.

Event Timing and Registration

Date: Tuesday, June 7th, 2011

Time: 8:30 pm IST (+5:30 hrs)

Topic: Play is Work

Registration URL:  https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/52610411

Webinar Coverage:

  1. Where are we today? Perspectives on play in the life of children and adults today.
  2. Play in the life of children – what’s the deal? What’s the BIG deal? Play in the early childhood programs. How can more play be injected into the existing early childhood program?
  3. Play in the life of adults – When do we stop playing? What are some consequences of this? What are some interesting and encouraging trends to bring back play in the lives of adults?
  4. Q & A

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