How schooling fails us? (part 1)
My deepest regards to all the teachers out there who are trying to give their best performance (in covid times), when overnight they had to adapt to online teaching and realizing soon enough that they have to be good actors and techies too apart from having domain knowledge, specially as the audience was not just the students but parents too. My heart goes out to them! Kudos to each one of them!
Being a teacher myself for the last 20+ years and having taught online for more than 8 years, with a considerable following, can truly empathize with them
But in spite of all the training in video class apps and technology adoption they are over stressed and discontent with their classes so far. Hence, it becomes imperative to understand the reasons and try to find out real workable solutions. Lets analyse a few:
- The first glaring fundamental problem with our schooling system is the atmosphere that is created in the campuses where students are literally pitted against each other, competing for personal success. The system (read principal and teachers) recognizes and rewards only the toppers (the meritorious), remains indifferent to the mediocre and shames the ones who fail. No intelligent student ever thinks of helping the not so bright ones to cope up. In contrast when they finish their education and step into the real world, the first shock they get is to realise that individual excellence has no place. Its all about teamwork. Its all about helping out each other to achieve organisational goals. Now with schools being under lockdown and absolutely no communication amongst the students, the whole system of competitive spirit has collapsed. Teachers are finding it very difficult to keep students motivated. The long term solution is to shift the focus from competition to collaboration. Instead of individual scores, team accomplishments should be measured. Students must learn leadership skills, communication, delegation, helping out each other and interpersonal skills. Teams should keep changing for different tasks so that all the skills are honed every time. Had this being in place since long, peer to peer collaboration and learning platforms could have been built and would have reduced the burden on teachers.
- The second problem is far worse than the first. And that is the focus on rote learning. Examinations only test how much you remember and not how much you understand or how much you can apply to solve real life problems. Now before you argue how the prestigious (on the basis of fees charged in lakhs) schools and private coaching institutes are using animation and virtual reality, I would like to mention from my years of teaching experience that though all this hi tech methodologies make learning easier they do not help much in developing imaginative skills. It is these skills which ultimately become the foundation for creative, critical and lateral thinking, that in turn helps in managerial decision making. The probable solution for this is to give abstract situations and problems to teams of students and let them develop fresh ideas, find unique solutions.
Will discuss more of the challenges in my next article, but would like the readers to contribute your thoughts and solutions to the above two issues through comments.
We at www.yoedutech.com are dwelling on this idea of developing the most complete education platform ever. A one of its kind portal where perhaps a student of class 10th learning a math equation can see its various practical usages , perhaps for the construction of a dam, research about those industries, career opportunities , job prospects, connect and talk to people working in that field, and much more.
We would like people to associate with us in any capacity like teachers, researchers, technology experts, psychologists, story tellers or investors. Mail me on [email protected]
Thanks for your time and don't forget to share your thoughts.