Serendipity and Learning

As I thought about my previous post, it set me thinking. On the one hand, there are a lot of regulations on who can open a school, who can run it - what you need and so on and so forth. And on the other hand, there is technology and there are people. Why does one need to transport children in uniform across thousands of (cumulative) kilometres, when they can learn very well where they are? Yes, maybe in the industrial age, it had to be done, but why now? India already has a National Institute of Open Schooling. And a Virtual Open School. Why aren't enough parents taking more advantage of it? Why are we still sending children to school (I still am, even as I write this)? Is it because that schools are also a place where children go daily - thus allowing parents to work? Why cant this be extended to simplify the process of licensing schools? (I think some part of licensing is free atleast in Karnataka - for some types of schools). So why cant it be simplified further? To make ...

India is a unique country. With 122 odd major languages and 1599 other languages. And yet, the languages available in schools is dependent on many factors - like demand, availability of teachers and so on. So, on the one hand, there are a range of options of choose from, on the other hand it is not uniform. Here is where the power of the internet can be used. If for every language, the government made courses available online with tests and practice lessons - anybody can learn any language at home. Without having to depend on the quality of teachers, number of students and suchlike. All they need is a standard question paper that gets delivered (and this can be automated from a huge question bank) to do the tests. Wonder if something like this is already available? The truth is also that schools with non English mediums of instructions are closing down in urban areas - slowly but surely. And English is the language of opportunities, the other languages deserve to be learnt -...

  This is a snapshot from the little ones text book on 'Computers'.  Now, computers does not mean that they learn programming. They are learning, of all things, MS Word. And they are learning the theory of MS Word (if there ever can be such a thing) and then working on some lab exercises.  Now, my take on this is that, it is practically useless. There are concepts one needs to know - and these concepts like indenting text and column breaks are supposed to be learnt when it is to be used. I really do not see the point making children learn by rote such concepts like indenting and then trying to explain it in theory. MS Word will be used by these kids in a few years from now, when they create project documents or something like that. And at that point, they will learn it. There is no dying need for children in class 4 to learn MS Word. Sure, they can play around with computers - and playing around DOES NOT mean Excel and Powerpoint (isnt that what people do in wor...

Over the weekend, I chanced upon a board at a school which was holding a science expo. The board said, “Open to all”. So, in a bid to give “exposure” to Science to the little one, we landed there. And walked around, talking to students – who were explaining things with a lot of gusto. The little one was, of course, impressed, seeing children do stuff and explain to him was a thrill in itself. Also, to see them demonstrate concepts such as robotics, electronics was something else. I can imagine the rush of adrenaline he must have had on seeing it. More on that in a moment. But first, a word on the exhibition itself. The Chemistry and Biology section were quite ordinary – not in terms of the exhibit itself – or on the enthusiasm of the students. What I mean here is that, as concepts go, the concepts that the chemistry and biology section were talking about are all atleast 50 years old. When I was in school (and that was not 50 years ago), we had pretty much the same exhibits then...