October 1st, 2009
India is a land of many, many contradictions. Since ancient times foreigners have been fascinated by India who have come here to find themselves, or religion, or something equally important.
Continuing with this tradition, writer & journalist Elizabeth Gilbert travelled to India during a difficult period in her personal life in an attempt to find herself, spirituality and love. Her memoires are published in her highly successful & acclaimed 2006 spiritual travelogue named “Eat, Pray, Love” (the book was on the New York Times Best Seller list for 110 weeks).
A few days ago, Hollywood star Julia Roberts arrived in India to shoot Ryan Murphy’s screenplay adaptation of the book. The filming of the movie is taking place at “Ashram Harimandir” in Pataudi, Haryana – 40 Km from Gurgaon. The Ashram is a picturesque 25-acre campus, which houses a temple, an educational institution for higher learning, residences for students & an old persons’ home.
Despite the fascination India holds for foreigners and its reputation for being a destination where one can find piece of mind, spirit and body; Indians seem to find their own country as a place where they lose themselves in the daily humdrum of life and living. We are so busy with our daily lives that we don’t question contradictions and idiosyncrasies in our systems and behaviours.
Included in this contradiction is the decision of the Ashram authorities to shut the educational institution for a period of 2-3 weeks for the filming of the movie. The authorities of the educational institution seem to have forgotten that their primary job is to teach the students and to prepare them with life skills relevant to their chosen fields of specialization. In turn students also devote significant time and effort mastering the syllabi and sharpening their skills. The closing of the institution for something as trivial as a filming of a movie seems to be an extreme injustice to the students. This is specially so when the primary argument given by almost all educational institutions in India – for not changing/ improving existing teaching learning practices and/or adopting best practice – is work overload and paucity of time.
How is it that work overload and unavailability of time are not factors considered while making the decision to suspend classes? In recent months, a number of schools have temporarily suspended classes – some of them being the most prestigious and best in India – as a precautionary measure against H1N1 (Swine Flu). Now, closure of an educational institution as a precaution against swine flu makes perfect sense – but this does not take away the schools responsibility to take measures to compensate for lost time. Most schools, especially when it comes to their senior school and students who will be sitting for the external board exams, will put in a programme which will make up for lost time. This brings me to the point that I would like to make – where there is a will, there is a way and where there is a need, solutions are found and in these situations constraints are not impediments but catalysts for creative solutions. When it comes to our education system, we need to recognise the dire need for bringing about positive change to make the system more relevant to the requirements of the 21st century (there is an urgent need and ways to address the need must be found). Mr. Kapil Sibal’s reform push have provided the thrust for change; the other stakeholders now must to do their bit to ensure that there is a positive outcome to these initiatives.
Tags: Ashram Harimandir, best practice, Eat, Education, educational institution, Elizabeth Gilbert, Gurgaon, H1N1, India, Julia Roberts, Kapil Sibal, Love, Pataudi Haryana, Pray, Ryan Murphy, Swine Flu, syllabi, teaching-learning
Posted in Education, News | No Comments »
September 22nd, 2009
For most people “change” is an alarming concept. It signifies the end of continuity or familiarity, the start of a journey into the unknown. If change is difficult for adults then it probably has a magnified impact on children who carry the baggage of their own expectations, in addition to the baggage of expectations and insecurities of their elders – so unreasonably thrust upon their tender shoulders. I can see how changes to the education system can result in feelings of fear and anxiety in children and in everyone who are stakeholders in their journey into the real world. After all, India’s education system has virtually not changed for decades and students have mastered the “Art of Performance” through rote learning and teachers the “Art of Delivery” through chalk and talk. Marks in high 90’s are common practice and is symptomatic of how the system has been mastered. Thus, there is bound to be resistance towards any significant changes to this system.
Over the last few weeks, I have been reading with keen interest the various aspects of Mr. Kapil Sibal’s proposed reforms to the Indian education system, including the abolition of the Class X external exam, assessment & grading system, and his proposal to introduce an all India exam for admission into the science stream; amongst other things. While most of us would agree that the system needs review and revamp and it is high time a well thought-out action plan was implemented to weed out the malaise that infects the K-10/K-12 system, there is significant resistance to the changes from almost all quarters. I have also had the opportunity of speaking with a number of principals, who too, are not enthusiastic about the changes proposed by Mr. Sibal. Why is it that we are resisting? Some of the objections that I have read or heard are akin to clutching to the last straws and do not withstand any degree of scrutiny.
Evaluating the arguments, it seems to me that the resistance is not against the changes, but against the lack of insight into how the proposed reforms will be implemented and more importantly, how the system will work post reforms. Change, in any context, needs to be undertaken with great sensitivity; and in most successful implementations significant time, effort and money is expended to educate the affected stakeholders on their standing and understanding of the new system. Buy-in from the main stakeholders is a prerequisite for achieving any significant degree of success.
Unfortunately, Mr. Kapil Sibal’s has not articulated his vision of what the system will look like once he has implemented his full range of proposals/ initiatives. Nor has he provided an insight into how the individual components of reforms fit into this vision. To assuage the fears of the parents, teachers, administrators and students, Mr. Sibal should start communicating with the nation on what his proposed changes will mean for them, instead of their receiving piecemeal information in the form of selected passages provided by the media.
Mr. Sibal and his band of Merry Men in the education ministry, should also reach out to as many principals and education professionals by holding discussions and by articulating the many benefits they see from the reforms and by addressing common concerns.
It seems to me, that the changes proposed by Mr. Sibal are well intentioned and if implemented well, could result in a significant improvement in the teaching learning practices adopted in our schools. However, I am concerned that the implementation process is not robust and significant areas still need to be addressed before we can be made comfortable with Mr. Sibal’s vision. At the moment, Mr. Sibal is adding more stress to the lives of the children and parents instead of his claim of trying to reduce it. My suggestion to him would be to defer the implementation of making 10th class exams optional from academic year 2010-11 to say academic year 2014-15. This would give schools, administrators and regulators adequate opportunity to implement a holistic model and to cater to the needs of the new reality and to address its shortcomings.
Change cannot merely be brought about by a mere sound bite or stroke of a pen; it needs to be understood before it can be embraced.
Tags: abolition of the Class X external exam, action plan, anxiety in children, assessment & grading system, chalk and talk, Education Ministry, education professionals, Education Reform, education roadmap, impact of change on education, Indian education system, Kapil Sibal, principals, schools, teachers, teaching, teaching-learning
Posted in Education, National Curriculum Framework, News | No Comments »
August 14th, 2009
A long time ago I read, “Teachers are designers”. It has taken me years to understand the implications of that simple sentence. As a teacher who has taught across the grades and continents, I have struggled in designing curriculum (as per school, board, provincial and national standards), teaching-learning activities and assessment tasks. It takes a lot of time and creativity, both of which teachers find themselves deficient in! As an administrator, I have empathised with and supported teachers struggling to play the designer of their students’ learning.
So am I implying that textbooks have no place in a classroom? Certainly not! Textbooks are a tool, one of the many learning tools that a teacher/school uses to make students learn as per expectations/ standards. They are based on a certain syllabus but they are certainly not the syllabus. Textbooks are useful as sources of organised information about topics from the syllabus providing many exercises for reinforcing key knowledge. But they distort how understanding of an issue develops, since they present “only the cleaned-up residue”, “a simplified summation of findings”. The school in general and teacher in particular, need to use it as a resource for what it does well and compensate from other sources/ resources what textbooks do poorly.
Driven by convenience and profit motive, it seems that teachers/schools are abdicating their responsibility of designing students’ learning, passing it off to publishers, who have evolved into a powerful lobby. With the backing of the Who’s Who in the educational boards, they have successfully positioned and marketed textbooks as curriculum itself. Some publishing houses are also making inroads into training teachers about teaching. It’s simple quid pro quo, where the schools order textbooks in bulk from a particular publishing house who in-turn commit to train teachers about teaching learning. It goes unsaid that this training is a means to an end, the end being more sales for the publishing house.
It seems that convention has been turned on its head with teachers becoming a resource for the textbook instead of it being the other way round – textbooks being one of the resources for the teachers.
Tags: classroom, Curriculum, curriculum design, Education, publishing houses, school, syllabus, Teacher Training, Teachers are designers, teaching-learning, teaching-learning activities, textbook
Posted in Curriculum, Education, Teacher Training | No Comments »
June 23rd, 2009
Over the last few days, newspapers have been carrying articles about the revival of “unfinished agenda” of the HRD Ministry, that was mooted by the previous UPA government, but put on the backburner for reasons best known to them. In the wake of proliferation of international and deemed universities that are “beyond the purview of any government control”, the ministry intends to set up a standing committee for screening and regulation of these institutions.
I whole-heartedly support this initiative of the HRD, especially since every second student enrols in a private college (TOI dated June 22nd, 2009). I am concerned about the ministry’s reason for such a move, and hope that their intention is not just “government control” as in the days of the license raj but more honourable in monitoring and enforcing accountability of such institutions.
As someone who has experience of working with international schools in India and overseas, it never ceases to amaze and annoy me, in equal measures, how the term “international school” is used or misused. Only two things make a school international, an internationally heterogeneous school population (staff and students) and / or an international curriculum (formal and informal). International schools are rooted in their local context but with global approach. Most “international schools” in India lack these necessary credentials.
Another proposal of the HRD ministry in this regard is the cap on the number of expatriate teachers employed by these international schools. This makes sense considering the abundance of good teachers in the country who are either underemployed or unemployed. But the onus of this does not fall on the schools alone. Expatriates may be hired by schools for two main reasons – as a marketing and PR gimmick to attract more enrolment – a reflection of our colonial mindset as parents. Schools also look hire expatriate teaching professionals for their rich repertoire of teaching-learning tools, which Indian teachers may be found lacking. In these cases, the HRD minister needs to address the teacher training, both pre-service and in-service, that is completely out of sync with the needs of international and national education. Expecting the international schools to change this is curing the symptoms and not the malady itself.
As a firm believer that quality education is the right of each child and it is the responsibility of the government to ensure that appropriate checks and balances are in place to ensure that he gets his right and also considering that the fee in some of the international schools is a king’s ransom, they do need to be held accountable for their practices and therefore, the ministry is justified in preparing guidelines and monitoring standards for them. Therefore, it need to be well thought out so that it becomes an instrument of regulation and not just “control”.
Tags: deemed universities, expatriate teachers, government control, HRD Ministry, Indian teachers, international curriculum, international education, international schools, international universities, national education, private colleges, quality education, teacher, teaching-learning, teaching-learning tools, UPA government
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June 15th, 2009
Curriculum is the driving force of a school and can be loosely defined as the framework within which the teaching learning in a school is designed. In that sense, it is the most crucial operational document and yet the schools have the least say in its creation. This document which, in sanctity, is treated next only to the country’s constitution and holy text, is designed by Curriculum Committees largely composed of bureaucrats, scholars and academicians, with few, if any representing the schools. Most of these people have a very sound understanding of the theoretical underpinnings of learning and pedagogy but are clueless about the dynamics of a classroom. A few are also politically motivated with no interest in education and learning but see curriculum as means for scoring political mileage.
Curriculum committees have served their purpose in the past but today its confining, cumbersome and insular style of working is hindering and retarding the process of curriculum design. Yet they have the mandate of creating information that inform school/classroom decisions. Curriculum committees in their current form are redundant and are on the verge of extinction unless they refocus their purpose and modus operandi.
At a time when elementary curriculum is becoming more and more transdisciplinary, Indian curriculum creators in their bid to pay obeisance to the sanctity of disciplines with utter disregard to principles of understanding and working of the brain, like it compartmentalised and departmentalised. Although a beginning has been made in the form of National Curriculum Framework (NCF)-2005, we are yet to make our elementary curriculum interdisciplinary! In some cases the curriculum fails to align vertically and horizontally making it imbalanced, repetitive or incomplete, a problem acknowledged by the makers of the NCF-2005. Most of these committees base their work on national calendar and not on school calendar that actually determines the goings on in a school.
In many countries curriculum committees are, slowly but surely, being replaced by curriculum mapping, a concept that owes its origin to work undertaken by Fenwick English is rooted in commonsense practices. Curriculum mapping provides for increasing inclusion of teachers in decision-making roles making the exercise more meaningful and data more accessible for the purpose of analysis, sorting and communicating; and also been acknowledged in the NCF-2005. This ensures better articulation of the curriculum to all stakeholders and its integration by making natural intersecting points more visible; ensuring realistic and meaningful understanding by the learners. Curriculum mapping provides for best developmental placement of concept and skills within and across the grades, especially in the elementary grades.
Tags: Curriculum, Curriculum Committee, Curriculum mapping, elementary curriculum, Fenwick English, interdisciplinary, learning, National Curriculum Framework, NCF 2005, teaching, teaching-learning, transdisciplinary
Posted in Curriculum | No Comments »
