Higher education off the shelf

[This is in continuation of my previous post, "What ails our education system". I would request you to read that article, if you haven't already done so, before you read this.]

It has been heartening to see some thought-provoking comments in response to the blog post of 4 May: What ails our education system. I am quoting two of them here. The first one, written by Indrani, is:

Single child is the norm in today's world. Most children are not even taught the basic duties of caring for their near ones. Parents send their kids to distant schools and when they grow up, to distant cities to give them a wider and better exposure. Rich parents pay huge sums of money to get their kids admitted to foreign universities. In most cases these kids are pretty average and completely confused and selfish lot. It is high time we revamp our education systems.

A friend of mine who doesn’t want to share his name wrote:

[When we were young,] education meant much more than scoring high marks in the exams. We were taught to be decent, selfless, helpful, compassionate and loving human beings. It wasn't just the teachers who “educated” us. Our parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts and even neighbours too played a crucial role in shaping us.

This “education” that we received is etched in stone in our hearts and minds. Our teachers ... had a gift that seems to be pitifully lacking in teachers these days. I'm talking of the sheer love and passion to teach! Our teachers went beyond our textbooks to enrich our young minds. 

At home, our parents guided us by imparting high moral values for us to emulate. 

I finished my schooling in 1966. Yet, forty six long years later, I still remember the names of EVERY teacher who taught me. I just have to shut my eyes and think of them for the faces of these noble souls to appear in front of me.

Do the students these days even bother to remember the names of the previous year's teachers? Having said that, it may not be the fault of the children alone. The fault lies with the teachers! What is the calibre of the average teacher in a school these days? Apart from “finishing the portions” in time for the exams, what do they teach?

… With teachers who are only bothered about their paycheque and the parents placing the onus on the schools and teachers, what we see today is a generation totally devoid of any social skills. 

Their parents are probably very thrilled that they're scoring the expected high marks. What sort of human beings will they grow up to be? Who cares!

I couldn’t agree with them more. We have conveniently accepted a narrow definition of the word “education”. And the problems of our education system stems from that basic sin. It would be wrong to blame students for what’s gone wrong. They are following a path shown by their parents. They are both beneficiaries and victims of the system.

What do middleclass and richer parents want their offspring to become? Better human beings or someone with a comfortable job with a fat pay-packet? Although the two are not mutually exclusive, the question is relevant. And we all know the answer. Commodification of education that began in the 1990s suits them fine. If I have money, I can BUY a comfortable future for my son or daughter. It doesn’t matter whether they are intelligent or mediocre, hardworking or lazy. This has been a fact of life in some countries like the USA for long. Otherwise George W Bush wouldn’t have become a President of a country that has produced hundreds of Nobel Laureates. In India, this is a recent phenomenon. How will this work in the long run?

My peripheral connection with two engineering colleges convinces me that nowadays, education is indeed available to the highest bidder. Students with bare pass marks in school leaving exams can enrol in an engineering (or medical) college!. And there is an unwritten agreement between the college and the parents that none will fail. Teachers have become education vendors rather than teachers. Consequently, they deserve and receive as much respect as shop assistants do. But that is only collateral damage.

The main issue is that in the present scenario, rich people’s kids are cornering all the opportunities while the doors are being shut on the faces of the poor. Parts of India like Bangalore and Noida are first-worldly glitzy, while more and more people are being pushed to the margins. The India where I was born was much poorer, but the difference between the rich and the poor was never so obscenely stark. Neither was greed the force that ran everything. A cash-and-carry higher education system will perpetuate the present situation. Already, it is making the odds impossibly high for a vast majority of our people. If APJ Abdul Kalam were to be born today, he wouldn’t possibly become a scientist or the President of India.

Every Indian should demand two things from our government: (a) make primary education available and compulsory for all, and (b) fund the higher education of every student that qualifies for admission to government run and other reputed institutions of higher education. Funding shouldn’t cover only the tuition fees, but all other expenses as well.

The government of course has no money to meet either of the demands. But if you buy a Mitsubisi Pajero for Rs.25 lakh, or some other fancy vehicle, our government will give you about Rs.10 for every litre of the diesel you buy. How much money does it cost the exchequer to subsidise owners of private vehicles by way of cheaper petrol and diesel?

But should we complain? Doesn’t the government run for people like you and me, who own computers, drive cars, and holiday abroad?

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

Beyond pain

Shun Fujimoto

[I stumbled upon this while rummaging through the Net. I am sure you'll like it.]


Before the 1976 Montreal Olympics, Japan had won the team gold in in gymnastics in all the four previous Olympics. So one can say that the Japanese were the undisputed champions in men's gymnastics in the 1960s and 70s. Naturally, they were contenders for the gold in Montreal too.

Shun Fujimoto, a member of the Japanese men’s gymnastics team at the Games, broke his right knee while doing floor exercises in the finals.

Shun ignored his injury, knowing that if he withdrew, his team would lose out to the USSR in the overall tally. He did not even reveal the magnitude of his hurt to his teammates, fearing that it would impact their performance adversely. Despite terrible pain, he managed to complete the pommel horse routine, and quite miraculously, scored 9.5 out of 10. He then faced the rings, his final event. Shun performed extraordinarily, without getting distracted by the thought of the inevitable effects of dismounting from a height of eight feet with his broken knee. After completing his routine, he hurled himself into a beautifully executed somersault dismount.

When he hit the floor, he felt excruciating pain, but kept his poise and raised his arms in a perfect finish before falling down. He had scored a 9.7, his highest-ever score on the rings. And he won the individual gold for the event. But the dismount dislocated his broken kneecap and tore ligaments.

His superb performance in the face of physical agony enabled the Japanese team (576.85 points) win Gold, beating the USSR by a margin of, hold your breath, 0.40 points! After winning the closest gymnastics team competition in Olympic history, Shun joined his team at the victory stand to receive his gold medal, and he did it without assistance.

He stated that he had not wanted to let his team down by revealing his injury. Later, when asked whether he would do what he did again, he replied frankly, “No, I wouldn’t.”

This simple statement shows that Shun is human after all, but a very special kind of human. And Shun Fujimoto is a revered name in Japan today.

[Source: Wikipedia, http://gymnasticszone.com and other Internet sites. The picture is from Wikipedia.]

Happy Holi!

To what new tune my veena plays today,
To what a fleeting new rhythm …

As I woke up this morning, the Tagore song about the season of creation and fertility floated in from the park opposite our house.  A group of about thirty men and women had gathered around a square arena in the park and were singing merrily.  There were some more-than-competent singers in the group, it was wonderful choral music. The sparkling morning sun and the cool breeze of the spring seemed to have decided to join in, to lend their voice to the chorus.

The group had people ranging from seventeen to seventy years of age and most of them were wearing yellow t-shirts, kameez or saris. I thought some of the faces were familiar, I had often seen them walking round the lake in the park. But it was only a guess, I could hardly identify them as they were smeared with gulal. It’s Holi today.

But clearly, they did not belong to a group of close friends. They were strangers or near-strangers who had decided to come together in the spirit of the day. In the process, they created a bit of happiness and warmth and perhaps came a little closer to each other, besides exhibiting a fine grip on the best of the local cultural traditions. Does this small thing have any significance? Or should we think it was just “one of those things” and pass by?

Normally, the morning is a terrible time for me, and I guess for many others too. It is impossible not to open the newspaper, but all that you read in papers is reports of murders, rapes, robbery, frauds, and of course, monumental callousness, stealth, and inefficiency of our masters. There seems to be no escape, or is there?

Occasionally hope is rekindled when a fresh politician comes to power, when we think, okay, things have bottomed out, it can’t get worse. But future holds funny surprises; every new dispensation introduces us to new depths evil governance. The messiah of Dalits metamorphoses into a queen of arrogance. She constructs a shamelessly gaudy palace with her ill-gotten cash close to the hovel where she was born, although “her people” continue to live in the same hovels, surrounded by the same filth. One who comes to power with a promise to re-establish the rule of law quickly decides to crush laws and sheds all the trappings of decency for perceived political expediency. The learned men and women who fought against earlier misrule and showed us the way now show us they are really spineless creatures of clay. Their counterparts on the other side, who were silent when their political masters were killing people, suddenly find voice to protest against political murders now.

Even that is tolerable. Repeated instances of political and administrative mischiefs have blunted our sensitivity; we no longer react to political skulduggery. Much more grotesque is the change that is happening in the psyche of our people.  Everyone for oneself, if I need to kill someone to achieve my goal, so be it. It is a fierce world where I have to survive and prosper, where everyone else is an enemy.

A little boy kills his teacher because she was strict. A failed lover kills his beloved’s father and the killer’s family accompanies him in the crime. A young mother is taken off a train and raped in open fields. The chief minister of the state says it was only a concocted story to malign her government. News means an endless procession of horror. Every passing day dims our optimism further. The situation in large parts of India today is worse than the rule of mafia in Conan Doyle's Valley of Fear. We are in a valley where common people are turning into Mafiosi.

The men and women who sang in front of my house this morning are swimming against the tide. They are trying to come together instead of drifting away, without an eye on anything material. They are trying to make the world a better place. Thank you all, you have rekindled my hope … yet again. You should make headlines in all the national dailies tomorrow.

Let there be a lot more colour around us. And in us. Wish you a wonderful Holi!

Kolkata, 8 March 2012