Our entire educational system is based on teaching and examining. The paradigm is paternalistic. It is assumed that the teacher knows all. He has thought of everything. The student has only to imbibe. The whole approach is top-down. Outdatedness is written into it., by its very nature. In this rapidly accelerating, changing times, by the time one is an adult, one is already outdated in view of the knowlege explosion that has taken place in the meantime. On top of it, a person who is at least one generation more outdated than him, teaches him.
Rarely it is accepted ion practice that the whole purpose of education is for the student to learn rather than for the teacher to reach. The teacher teaches and forgets. The educational administrator sets up an elaborate structure to find out how much the student has really imbibed. Once he passes the judgement, he too forgets. No importance is attached to what the student has not learnt. It is nobody's responsibility. Out of the total syllabus, a total of twelve questions are framed and asked once a year. This may perhaps represent seventy percent of the syllabus. A student scoring seventy percent in the paper effectively knows forty nine percent of the total knowlege. We say that such a student has passed First class with distinction forgetting that he does not know 51%. Unfortunately, by the time, it is known as to how much the student has not learnt, it is too late to take any remedial steps.
Everything is taught to the student except how to learn by himself/herself. At different stages, different methods of self-learning are required but at no stage, is the student enabled to learn on his/her own. Nor is any use made of the fact that one can learn faster from the peer group. The student is not enabled to think on his/her own, to project, to extend further the knowlege gained at a particular stage, to discover on his own the areas where a particular knowlege is relevant and/or applicable. Curiosity is not encouraged. In my time, teachers were positively against my asking inconvenient questions or my projecting on or extending the knowlege any further than what was given in the text-book. The epithet used for me was that of an over-wise or a person living in the clouds.
Things are slightly better now. At least in the better schools in some of the urban areas. The need for self-learning has begun to be accepted. The teacher's role should be that of a facilitator in the learning process rather than that of one who forces knowlege down the throats of students who are expected to remember and reproduce. Curiosity should be encouraged. When a student is curious about something and his thirst for knowlege in that area is satisfied, the knowlege is quickly assimilated and retained for a longer period. A student comes across definitions of various things all his/her life. Has anyone ever tried to explain how definitions in general are evolved? What are the characteristics of a definition? How does a particular definition evolve itself? Why is each word in it significant? What repurcussion would take place in its absence or replacement by another word on the meaning of the definition? If this is explained, the student would not have to remember mechanically the definition. He would learn the need for brevity and precision of words. Our textbooks also need to be written the American way which is eminently suited for self-learning.
A very large number of students are rushing in for admission to the Universities. The politicians and administrators are only aiding this process and the universities, unable to cope with the rush have merely become federations of teaching shops. The fact that the university education is meant only for the few, for the serious student and not for every Tom Dick and Harry, has in today's times, become a heresy and a blasphemy.Anyone saying it might almost get lynched.
There ought to be a large number of polytechnics for the masses and universities for the scholar. At the age of 16, after finishing one's secondary education, one ought to be earning on one's own by working at something and simultaneously pursuing a professional course at a polytechnic. This is for the majority. A minority of students who are exceptionally good at thinking on their own and are able to prove their mastery of theory by its application in case study examples, should, after passing suitable competitive tests, be admitted to universities that would have limited seats.
Our present universities have gone too far to retract. Let us continue to call these teaching shops as universities.. Let us however, convert them into polytechnics. The commerce faculty can have, courses on shop assistantship, departmental stores running, stock broker's courses, estate agents' courses, salesmanship and so on. The same types of courses can be replicated in other faculties. Various professional entities in these areas, could be encouraged to take on young apprentices of age 16 onwards, who would work half the time and in the other half time, pursue a relevant course in a polytechnic. The work and study should reinforce each other. For this, syllabus has to be drawn up not by professors sitting in their ivory towers but by a collaborative effort by the professional entities who would employ the apprentices and the academics who would run the courses.
A student who has opted for a polytechnic should not be barred from the real universities which we may call Institutes of Higher Learning. He too, can, after completing the polytechnic course, take the test and enter an institute of higher learning. Both the polytechnics and the institutes of higher learning, should be financially self-supporting. The student at the polytechnic would pay the fee out of the stipend he would earn at work and the student at the institute of higher learning, would pay the fee out of the loan scholarship that would be sponsored by the corporates, businessmen and the government.. The principle is that everyone would pay what it costs to educate him/her. They can be enabled to do it in a variety of ways, but no freebies anymore.
At every stage, whether the pre-primary or the primary, secondary, polytechnic or the institute of higher learning, emphasis should be on self-learning with the teachers acting as facilitators, books and the professional and other environment being the tools for study.
If we are able to do this, we can solve a number of problems at one stroke. Student irresponsibility, unproductive wastage of young lives from age 16 to 21, the burgeoning burden of educational subsidy which in my opinion is a worst narcotic for a society discovered by our political class than any, ever discovered by scientists. If we have to develop as a society, as a nation, let us stop this idleness, let us close down these devil's workshops. Let us instead, create entrepreneurs.
Where do we start? First, we have to transform our teachers into facilitators. Our textbooks have to be suitably revised, our examinations to become more informal, more frequent with immediate remedial action for students who have not picked up the desired knowlege as revealed by the weekly quizzes. Emphasis on the remedy rather than on the symptom. Educational administrators should stop being mere judges of student learning; they have to also ensure that what was not learnt at one go is, at least learnt later on and in good time.
Having prescribed whole lot of things for a paradigm shift, let us examine what is learning/growth, what are the various aspects of learning and what are the assumptions underlying learning.
What is learning?
1 Learning is living.
2 It involves change ( Paradigm shift ).
3 It is concerned with acquisition of new skills,knowlege and attitudes.
4 It enables individuals to make both social and personal adjustments.
5 It is change in behaviour as a result of experiences.
What is learning /growth?
1 Growth is characterised by increasing appropriateness of response of the grower/learner to the stimulus.
2 Growth depends on internalising events.
3 Learning depends upon the systematic interaction between learner and the
environment.
4 Learning is marked by increased capacity to deal with multiple demands.
Some aspects of learning
1 It has quality of total involvement. Learner is involved in learning as a whole person, both his feelings and cognitive aspects.
2 It is self initiated. Even when the inspiration to learn is external, the sense of grasping, comprehending and discovery comes from within.
3 It is pervasive. It influences change in knowlege, skill, attitude and behaviour. Perhaps even the personality of the learner.
4 It is evaluated by the learner. Learner knows whether it is meeting his needs, whether it is leading towards achieving his ends.
5 Learning is easy when it is relevant. Learners grasp aspects much faster when they are relevant or backed by perceived needs.
6 Perceptions multiply learning. Perceptions help the learner to use the learnings from one situation in a different one.
Certain assumptions underlying learning
1 Learning must be a continuous process in a world of accelerating changes.
2 Learning is an active process of enquiry.
3 Learning facilitates development of competencies for performance in life situations.
4 Learners are diverse and this calls for individualised learning / training methods.
5 The primary task of the learning system is to identify the learning resources
and effectively link them with the learners.
6 Learning multiplies by interaction with others.
7 Learning is more effective when it is guided by the process structure than by
the content structure.
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