What would be your response if your child colours a mountain pink? Tendency, of course, is to correct the child right away. “Unfortunately only two out of hundred teachers try to know the reason behind such a colouring,” stated Priya Krishnan, CEO of Kids Learning and You. She was speaking as a panellist in ‘School of Tomorrow’ conference organised by XSEED, a company that works with elementary schools to improve learning abilities in children.
What’s the failure?
“What then are the loopholes of our current education system?” asked journalist Samar Haralnkar, moderator of the panel discussion. Rajat Chauhan, a doctor-turned-athlete, pointed out “Indian education system celebrates medal winners while in reality majority of the workforce is not from the tip of the excellence pyramid. Secondly,” he continued, “our degrees are over-rated. For instance, I train non-qualified people interested in sports medicine as physiotherapists. They are able to sense the body and learn the art quicker than physiotherapy graduates who have studied the subject for years. I need to first make them unlearn before teaching. Therefore, in my experience, marks and degrees need not be the hallmark of quality. But because they are given importance, in trying to win the race, students are losing the purpose of education.”
Praveen Sood, Additional Director General of Police, Bangalore responded: “Students do not know what and why they are studying. If I ask the motivation behind candidates’ applications to the police department, the general answer is: ‘…..as I am qualified’. This may be because students are not taught how to connect what they learn in schools to the outer world.”
On what is deficient in our schooling, Priya mentioned, “We concentrate too much on individual achievement when ten years from now, everything would depend upon ‘collaborative skills’ which our current generation lacks.”
Samar in his concluding remarks added, “The problem with our educational set-up also is that we are made to show respect more than required which many a times depletes the confidence in students.”
The way forward
“Education is one of those industries in which consumer who is receiving the service is different from the payer of the service. Whose interest to satisfy here becomes a question for a service provider talking purely in business terms. Often parents expect a stable and remunerative job from their children while the students might have a different line-up. I think, it is time for Educational Institutions to educate parents of the need to nurture their children’s dreams, rather than catering to their vivid ambitions in order to score admissions” suggested Priya.
Rajat stated, “Like it is crucial for a doctor to listen to his patients, it is equally essential that we listen to children patiently. Half the problems do not prop up if this is followed. And another aspect is that we worry too much about failure.” Rajat who calls himself a student of learning and failing, feels it is important that children learn how to fail. He claimed: “Coping with failure should become the assessing parameter instead of ranks.” Samar recalled at this point that he was once a twelfth standard failure and how his parents’ support made him pursue his education further.
Praveen noted, “For six decades, we never bothered about ‘passion’ in our discussions on education.” “That is why more and more white-collar jobs are getting converted into blue-collar ones in the country today,” remarked Priya on the state of job market in India. “Therefore,” Rajat stressed, “it should be passion which should guide us in our pursuit of education and not the prospect of employability.”
The conference by XSEED emphasised that connectivity, communication, collaboration, management of failure, life-skills, willingness to learn for life long, attitude and problem-solving abilities should be inculcated in school children. Passion oriented learning requires a different commitment on the teachers’ and parents’ side.
