The Right kind of questions

I keep hearing people continuously complain about the culture of rote learning pervading our country. Everyone has a point of view on education in India but one thing most agree upon is that we create generations of rote learners through our schooling system.

As economists have laid out amply, human beings respond to incentives. There is also this other tendency among human beings that we can't manage what we can't measure. Put the 2 together and you have the root cause of the 'rote learning' problem.

Parents, Community leaders, educators and administrators all want to know whether learning is being achieved in schools or not. They also want to check this in an objective manner. (Whether the latter is a noble aim is questionable, but we'll come to that). So we need to create questions which have 'unambiguous' standardized answers. Most of such questions start with 'Who', 'What', 'Where' and 'When'.

Creativity is by definition indeterminate. You cannot predict what will happen if you ask a student to create. However, creativity is the highest form of understanding for only when you've comprehended, analyzed and evaluated can you create.

This raises the peculiar problem that you can't measure what you know is right, so you manage with what you can measure.

The other issue is that of incentives. Teachers are not really measured for performance in our country, and when they are, its for the wrong thing. If you have not finished the syllabus before the exams and a question comes from the 'uncovered' portion, you'll have parents come in the PTM and shout at you. And you are lauded if your class is in distinction (in an exam designed for memory). So what do teachers do in such a scenario. Without even reading Freakonomics, you could predict that they would complete the syllabus, teach for rote and test for rote and be hailed as a good teacher!

Students too are rewarded for scoring high in exams designed for memory. So they mug up the answers to the questions they expect for the exam, regurgitate during the exam and promptly forget afterwards.

What is the incentive for teaching for understanding? What is the incentive for learning for understanding? How do we measure whether understanding has been achieved when different learners manifest their understanding differently - making it hard for 'objective' scoring?

I don't have the solution for this . But I have some ideas :
1. Assessing a student's understanding through a portfolio that she makes and maintains through a year might spur application and creativity. A portfolio also allows students with intelligences different from the traditional 'linguistic - logical' to express their understanding in the way they prefer. It also ensure all emphasis is not on a year end examination.

2. This portfolio can be judged not just by a teacher but the community. Portfolios can be exhibited or published and readers or visitors can rate the portfolios. If an auction system can be worked out, students can actually see the market value of their portfolios - something far more concrete than marks!

3. Teachers can be rated on the total market value or rating that their class generates. This will incentivize teaching for understanding and not for rote

4. Teachers need to be trained to be constructivists and not instructionists.

5. At the higher secondary level, there could be standardized tests for each vocation or stream and students could take those to ascertain their proficiency for those fields. Such tests exist (JEE, CBSE Medical etc) but we can create a common test with special subject tests if required. This will facilitate entry into professional or graduate streams.

6. Any other idea that promotes 'real understanding'.

Why women wearing pants didn't need to be that way

AWL County has an interesting employment system for stay at home moms. Realizing that the first 6 years of life witness the highest brain development activity, that Quality Early Childhood Care & Education directly impact an individual's later ability and that women with their nurturing, mothering talent are best placed to nurture the children's potential, AWL County pays the women to stay home and take care of their children. It has a salary structure that varies with the education and health of the mother and an incentive system that rewards initiative and patient behavior. Women in AWL County don't try to compete with the men in Corporate Jobs. Instead, they compete with themselves to be the best mother they can and thereby earn handsome salaries. Given that children exposed to Quality Early Childhood Care & Education turn out to be smart and productive citizens, the county more than recovers its investment in the stay-at-home moms' salaries. Women have dignity because they are being recognised for the work they are doing. Every year, innovative parenting practices that raise happy and inquisitive kids win rewards, thereby creating community heroes out of the mothers. Women are highly satisfied and motivated because they are doing what they are inherently good at and not trying to compete with men in jobs where they have an inherent disadvantage.

Further in AWL County, women also carry the portfolio of Home Ministers. Each Home Minister prepares an annual budget and have annual productivity targets. They work with their suppliers to drive down costs, innovate constantly to drive down operating costs and maintain quality and customer satisfaction at home through on time delivery and excellent culinary products. Again, they are recognized for best practices and those who achieve their profitability targets get to invest their profits in pursuits of their liking. Every year their, the top 5 Home Ministers are fetted and their name put on a roll of honor. Past winners come to felicitate that year's winners and the whole community applauds successful Home Ministers.

Ofcourse, AWL County does not exist but my guess is that if ever it did, it would not have seen the advent of the Women Liberation Movement. The reasons why women left their homes and their children to compete with men to gain respect, dignity and an affirmation of their value would not have existed in the first place.

AWL County also affords some ideas on how the idea of Dignity for Women could have been achieved at a lesser cost to families, children and women's happiness. Fact is that women are good in some areas - really good. And men suck in those faculties. Exceptions, of course exist everywhere. Similarly, men are good in some areas and womnen suck in those.......Ever been stuck behind a woman driver in Mumbai?

If we had just recognized each others strengths and done what we are best at, maybe we would have had a much better world. Now we just have them working harder and harder to prove to themselves that they are as good.........when they could have been great mothers, teachers and home makers and be recognized, valued and cherished for it!

Desperate Networks - a racy read

If you are a TV junkie and love Friends, Desperate Housewives, Tonight Show and Lost...read this book.

On the sidelines, you'll realize how the best series on TV come to the audience because of random events. Some executive, somewhere, talking to someone comes across a script or idea he likes and one thing leads to another. To think that Desperate Housewives or Lost could never have been made, that Joey could have been thrown out of Friends, that Conan O'Brien had to wait 5 years before taking Jay Leno's seat...makes you wonder whether process is really bigger than people.

In the end, this is a story of the people behind the scenes who bring entertainment to our TV every night. Their whims and fancies guide which channel we switch to at 9pm. Supersize egos and edgy talent - this book covers a whole lot of ground in the US TV industry.

A switch in times......

I recently switched from Times of India to Hindustan Times. Trust me, the changeover has not been easy. Having woken up with the TOI masthead for close to my whole living adult memory (except when TOI was Strait Times in Singapore), it was a bit disorienting to see a different bluish band on top of the daily awakener.

But once you get past the facade, a sense of pleasure has come back into reading. Times of India, I felt had become too commercial. On top of that, some of their journalism was becoming plain ignorant. I read some of their education reports for example with some horror, where facts were presented without any investigation and analysis to construe that International Schools in Mumbai were in fact more in number than either CBSE schools or ICSE schools. Also, sometimes I wasn't sure whether I was reading news or a paid placement.

Hindustan Times has been a refreshing change - more content, less ads. HT Cafe is the same - its thinner but that's because it is not filled with senseless paid Page 3 material. Their sports coverage is far superior to TOI - and I'm loving it!

Pati, Patni aur Woh

What makes parents put their children through an experience such as PPW is beyond my comprehension. Is it money? Is it fame? I think it is just another example of the Indian 'Chalta hai' attitude.

Too often, I have come across people who don't say it in words, but still express eloquently how they think we are paranoid and OC parents. The two most frequent quotes I have heard are, " Hamare zamaane mein to itna nahi karte the.....phir bhi hum theek thaak hi nikal aaye hain!" or "Kuch nahi hota.....bachche apne aap barhe ho jaate hain".

I think people who have volunteered their babies for the show are well-meaning, loving parents. They don't really think they are doing anything untoward to the baby by putting her through the ordeal that is PPW. They would have been taken in by the assurances of the channel, the availability of doctors & nurses, the free flow of coke and pizza and the air conditioning. What can go wrong? 'Hum wahin pe the.....barhe achhe se khayal rakha ji unho ne bachchon ka' - they would say. 'Ek din mein kya ho jana hai......different experience ho gaya!' - would be the other response.

I don't really think the question is whether the experience (or nightmare) of spending 24 hours with strangers is detrimental to the child or not. The question is how far can parents take their natural right to decide what is right or wrong for the child till he is old enough to decide for himself. Where does one draw the line between eager and irresponsible parenting? Shouldn't we see the child's protests and cries as adequate evidence of his disagreement and accord it the respect it deserves? Or should parents conclude that they know what is best for their child and go with what suits their fancy?

PPW sickens me but this whole tamasha raises important questions on what is Good Parenting. The least we can do is NOT watch the show - else this TRP race will have cripples flying down ramps to see who falls the farthest!

something is not always better than nothing

One of the comments to my previous post on the Education Policy being misdirected was that even though it impacts a miniscule part of the population, it at least does some good to some people. This falls under the traditional argument applied to a lot of our policy conundrums - Something is better than nothing.

Only in this case something is not really better than nothing. Let's investigate the reasons behind the decision to abolish CBSE class X exams. The decision purports to lower the stress faced by students in preparing for the exams.

But it forgets that the stress exists because a low score in Class X means not getting the Junior College or stream that the student wants. Since people wanting to change schools post X still have to take the Class X exam and nothing has been done to increase the availability of quality colleges.......how will the stress go away?

Classic case of taking symptomatic treatment without treating the underlying cause - it might have a placebo effect of garnering short term pubilicity and press induced fawning but in the long term nothing changes.

Unless we increase the quality of Junior College education and increase the availability of seats in 'in-demand' streams........Class X stress will remain - exams or no exams.

There's something wrong

As I read the various papers and websites writing ad-nauseum on the current education initiatives being taken by Mr. Kapil Sibal and I hear the minister himself hogging limelight on the 'only-too-eager' TV channels, I get the feeling that there is something deeply wrong about the whole situation. Let me explain why -

In matters of public policy, priority should be given to address the most important issues that impact the maximum number of people. This needs no further emphasis. If you disagree, proceed no further and advise me why this is wrong.

If we agree with the 'Most important impacting Most people' criteria and apply it to Education in India then the announcements and initiatives in the last 100 odd days not only seem mis-directed, they also seem diversionary.

The most important issue facing Indian Education today is 'Access to Quality School Education for All'. There are 3 key concepts here - Access, Quality School Education and For All. The problem is that quality school education is accessible to only a very very minuscule portion of population. Out of 361 million children of school going age in India, my estimate is that the no. of school going children getting quality education is not more than 1 million.

Why is this important? Brain science says that more than 90% of your brain patterns are formed by the age of 12 – the age when the child is in school. So if we don’t fix it there, we are only going to be able to make cosmetic improvements to the human capital of our country. Also, consider this. If we don’t fix school education now, we are condemned till 2021 for that’s when students entering schools today will enter the workforce! (assuming 12 years of school education).

Why is it a problem? Quality of School Education is being provided at various levels today. See the graphic below :

Out of 361 million children of school going age, 219million are actually in school. Among them, most of the 20 million in Govt Schools in Rural India would fall in level 1 or 2 of the above graphic where either they appear as enrolled without any teacher or with high teacher absenteeism or without a school building or just about manage some schooling with a 10th pass person taking them through the motions of chanting tables and alphabets 100 times a day. Most of the remaining children going to Govt Schools (38+71 million) would fall in level 3.

The situation for the 90 million in Private Schools is slightly better in that almost all are atleast at level 3. A few thousand schools would fall in level 4 and 5 where there is learning beyond the classroom but rote learning and rote testing still prevails. And the school is still an assembly line of numbing every student into conformity.

A couple of hundred would fall in level 6 & 7 – the levels that can actually claim to be providing quality education. And taking 1000-2000 as average enrolments for these level 6 & 7 schools, not more than half a million children have access to quality education today in India!!!!

Ironical isn’t it for we are talking about abolishing class X exams in CBSE!! Let’s see how many does this impact. There are about 8 lakh children who pass out of CBSE Xth every year. Out of them, a large percentage opt for a Junior College or Vocational Stream (diploma) – people who would still need to take an exam. Even if 2/3rd stay in the same school, that still means only 0.5 million children.

So we are ignoring the need of 360 million children to solve the problem of 0.5 million children! Doesn’t it sound absurd to say the least??

The problem of Access to Quality Education for All runs at 2 levels.

First, Lack of access to Quality education is creating a huge demographic divide where the rich with access to better education are becoming better and the poor with either no access or access to poor education are becoming more disadvantaged.

While the logic of ‘you get what you pay for’ can apply to normal products or services, Education is a life skill. If you give poor life skills to a poor person, you’re preparing him to remain mired in the cesspool of few opportunities. This has to change.

Second, those who think they are getting Quality education by sending their children to so called ‘good schools’ are actually sending their children to education factories where they are numbed into conformity. Granted, these children are better off than their poorer counterparts (who don’t even get access to the information and knowledge that richer children can) but they are reaching nowhere near their true potential.

Any policy initiative in India has to target this fundamental issue of giving Access of Quality Education to All.

Quality should be uniformly defined. Let an independent, constitutionally formed body lead this. Availability should be left to the private sector. They can run and manage schools better than the government. Access should be enabled by putting money in the hands of the disadvantaged or poor, possibly through a coupon system, so that everyone can afford good quality education. The government can channel the money it currently spends on teacher salaries and a leaky school system towards this and manage its disbursement when the UID program is ready.

When everyone has access to an education that enables them to achieve their unique, true potential, half the problems we currently see will disappear. So isn’t it better to focus on the most important issue that impacts the most than applying band-aids to an ailing system?