What ails our education system?

A recent article in the Guardian[1] on what works and what doesn't to improve exam performance of school children discusses some research findings that fly in the face of conventional wisdom. The research was conducted by Durham University. The issues are worth considering because the research deals with problems that are universal. The main findings are as follows:

Reducing class sizes and setting homework for primary school children are among the least effective ways to raise standards. The benefits of reducing class sizes “are not particularly large or clear, until class size is reduced to under 20 or even below 15”.

Secondly, the benefits of homework are modest. The optimum time spent doing homework for secondary school children is one to two hours per school day, but the benefits tail off as the amount of time increases, and there is little benefit in primary school pupils doing homework.

Thirdly, one of the most effective uses of a teacher's time is in giving good feedback – which should be sparing, specific and encouraging. It is "more important to give feedback about what is right than what is wrong," researchers say. It is also best to praise a particular task that has been accomplished well rather than praise a pupil with phrases like "good girl".

Finally, Students should be encouraged to develop independent "learning strategies" and to learn from each other. Teachers should encourage pupils to plan, monitor, and evaluate their own learning.

While this report focuses on schools, let me enlarge the context and include the parents’ role too, with a particular reference to India. Let’s recall the incontrovertible fact that education, like charity, begins at home. If parents mismanage the early childhood training of their offspring, it is difficult to undo the damage later. 

Bringing up children is one of the most complex tasks humans perform. But a lot of parents have not the vaguest idea about how to go about it and in fact, just sleepwalk through this onerous task. Let me share a personal experience. One afternoon, I was on a crowded public bus. A boy of about ten in school uniform sat splay-legged on a seat. His mother stood by his side, although there was enough room for her to share the seat. She was even carrying his bag! A little later, an elderly woman approached the boy and requested him to move aside and make room for her. Son didn’t budge, and mother shouted, ‘It’s my seat. I have left it for him!’ This scene was repeated several times as new unsuspecting people – mostly women – got onto the bus and approached the child.

Although such insensitivity is rare, the general standard of parenting is not much better. In my city, parents often enroll their children in presumably good schools far away from their homes. It is a common practice among young mothers to accompany the offspring to school, spend the entire school hours hanging around and gossiping with other moms, and return home in the evening. In the process, the child – s/he is more likely to be a single child – learns that s/he is the fulcrum around which the family revolves. It won’t be their fault if they grow up into selfish and cussed individuals.

If we may move over from ethical training to academic training, many Indian parents – from Kolkata to Kochi – would be scandalized if their secondary school children were not allowed to do more than “one to two hours” of homework. For us, the motto seems to be: the more the merrier. And what matters are grades, not education. The goal is not learning, but enrolment in premier colleges. Dependence on “private tuition”, the most pernicious system invented to kill the student’s initiative, follows naturally. Every evening, one sees children carrying heavy bags scurrying from one tuition centre to another, at a time when they ought be in a playground. In the process, the child loses two things.

The twenty-first century Indian child does not know much of the fun and frolic of childhood, and as they grow up, their faculty to think independently atrophies through lack of use. Once I asked my first year students at an engineering college to write down their personal strategies about how to improve their English. The first assignment that I read was by a student with limited English competency. But the language of his submission was impeccable; it had been written by his private tutor! So much for students “planning, monitoring, and evaluating” their own learning! You may say that one cannot generalize a specific experience. But if you talk with college teachers in india, you will realize that a majority of students just cannot “think”. The situation is bad, and our planners and administrators do not seem to be aware of the problem. Therefore, there is no reason to hope that the situation will change for the better in the foreseeable future.

Imagine a situation when secondary school students will not focus on solving innumerable problems of mathematics or physics in milliseconds, and instead will focus on the concepts behind the problems … when students, instead of “learning” a language, will focus on “using” the language creatively.  Imagine a situation when the best of our graduate students who wish to do research are not selected through a test that asks inane multiple-choice questions, but based on evaluation of real merit. It may never happen, but if it did, a necessary precondition would be that students were “encouraged to develop independent learning strategies and to learn from each other”.

You may say I am a dreamer, but hopefully, I am not the only one.

[1] 21 June 2012