Archive for the '- Education' Category

India Literacy Project

charukesi May 5th, 2005

Anya blogs about the India Literacy Project. Their website is lucid and informative - unlike that of more ‘popular’ ones within India like the Infosys Foundation for instance… They appear to have thought through the various and complex issues involved in the ‘100% literacy’ objective - and consequently have funding for projects which tackle this at different levels - including bridge schools and adult education programs.

Particularly heartening was one of their focus areas - low cost formal schools and innovative schools - in tribal areas and slums - this is one of the beliefs that the Azim Premji Foundation works with - that education to the underpriveleged does not necessarily mean informal schooling - people in rural / tribal/ slum areas have as much faith in and need for formal education systems as the rest of us….

It is encouraging to come aross such organisations - especially those based out of India - who are doing their bit for the literacy movement - I had got in touch with Asha a while ago when I was working on a project on computer literacy for underpriveleged kids in India - and I was swamped with responses and suggestions in a matter of days.

And all of them have on their websites ways in which we can help…

Outsourcing tuition from India

charukesi January 18th, 2005

California, Boston kids dial India to brush up maths, science, reports the Indian Express. More outsourcing from India and this time what can only be called ‘knowledge’.

Twice a week, Ann Maria, a sixth grader at Silver Oak Elementary School, California, logs on the Internet from home.

She’s not chatting up with friends, but connecting to her personal tutor—already online, armed with a headset and a pen mouse—in a cubicle almost a timezone away in Kochi. .

Read on…

Teacher truancy

charukesi December 3rd, 2004

For a country in which higher education is so valued, India’s record in primary education is dismal, says Prof. Kaushik Basu in the BBC News. With a literacy rate (percentage of adults who can read and write) of 65%, India compares poorly to not just industrialised nations but also several much-poorer economies, such as Vietnam (90% literacy), Zambia (80%), Tanzania (77%), and Cambodia (70%).

And the culprit is truancy - no, not absentee children but teachers.

…. a majority of parents who kept their children away from school, did so only because there were no schools of minimal quality in their vicinity. Takes me back to my favourite statistic :
the proportion of ‘never enrolled’ children has been declining steadily : from 50% in 1986 (6-14 years in the most backward states) to 20% in 1996. More and more parents who cannot strictly afford this (economically and otherwise) are willing to give education a chance.

I know the common agument is to cite the conditions under which teachers work, and their low salary and therefore motivation levels. However, this report also says : Salaries do not make any significant difference to truancy. Better infrastructure improves teacher attendance a little. The problem is much deeper - merely improving salary levels will not make a difference.

Is it that fundamentally, teachers themselves do not believe in the importance or power of education? Teaching therefore remains just another job - clerical and mechanical in nature. Scary thought that.

What can be done to combat this apathy / inertia - to motivate teachers - who in turn can persuade parents to send and keep their children in school?

Taking the mountain to mohammed - Infothelas

charukesi September 6th, 2004

Came across this article on the Infothela*. Three days a week, Bithoor, a small town in UP (roughly 30 km NW of Kanpur, the state capital) gets connected to the world through a computer with a high-speed, wireless internet connection, that is brought in a cycle-rickshaw.

Wheels of hope bring internet to villagers

(Link thru a new blog I discovered thru Dina on social and cultural anthropology)

A strong believer in the power of technology to being about quick and equal reform, I have often heard people say - when we lack schools, trained teachers, and in many places access to even clean drinking water, then why all this noise about technology? Why are we even talking about computers in rural areas? (This question almost sems reasonable, given that currently in India, close to 60 million children are out of school and 38% of all children who enroll in school drop out by the time they reach the fifth grade)

Research done by Azim Premji Foundation suggests that the presence of a highly motivated and dynamic teacher is what excites a community most about school. A close second is taken by a multi-media based interactive learning environment.

Children feel excited about working with computers and parents take pride in the fact that their children are learning computers (in the course of research on education in rural areas, I have found that ‘English’ and ‘computers’ are two subjects parents are willing to send their children to school for at any cost).

Children are now eager to study… can you believe it?
Students learn on their own and ask us questions…. So we have to be well prepared before we come to class everyday…
Wahan angrezi nahi sikhatey, to bacche ko school bhejne se kya faida?
Aaj kal to sab jagah computer hi chalta hai… mere bacche ko to mein kaise bhi school bhejungi woh sab seekhne ke liye
(Some quotes from teachers and parents I met in the course of fieldwork)

Plus, children are naturally curious and computers kindle and channel this curiousity in a way teachers can never hope to, unless exceptionally commmitted and creative (especially in a situation like in rural India - just to provide primary education for all children of school-going age, India requires seven million teachers, if the teacher to student ratio stands at 1:50).

The success of NIIT’s Hole in The Wall Experiment is proof that children are capable of learning without actually being ‘taught’ (The Constructivist Theory of Learning propounds the belief that the learner constructs knowledge according to his or her own understanding of the concept. Construction moves the focus of learning from the teacher to the taught.)

Based on the idea of Minimally Invasive Education, these computers were envisioned as a pedagogic method that uses the learning environment to generate an adequate level of motivation to induce learning in groups of children, with minimal, or no intervention by a teacher.

My answer to the nay-sayers would be that if computers atleast serve the purpose of creating interest in learning and education, the task of getting children to school is half done. The first step in the huge task.

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thela - hand push-cart typically used for vending on the streets.

No more homework - only blogging

charukesi August 26th, 2004

With blogs, class doesn’t have to end when the bell rings - taking school home, and enjoying it too….

Learning on a blog… is much easier…. and so much more fun…

The teacher also says that she found that those who were quiet in class usually came alive online - on the net, anyone, just anyone can stay anonymous and invulnerable….

Link thru NY Times

Teaching - content v/s methodology ?

charukesi February 23rd, 2004

Going by the comments on my earlier post on education standards, I have some more thoughts : where we seem to getting it right is in content. And where we are goofing up is in teaching methodology….

I used to see kids in UK schools being encouraged to draw and paint and write stories at an age where children in India were being taught multiple fractions… Will those kids grow up to be creative thinkers but poor spellers ? And in that case, can it be said that their education system was good for them ?

While kids in India grow up with their ‘fundas’ strong, they also grow up in to a strait-laced, low creative thinking mode…..

What we teach in schools must be good stuff….. going by the way people who have schooled in India tend to do well in the West, even when compared to their peers there….. Sure, we learn from an ‘inside the box’ format, but along the way, we also learn to be inquisitive, efficient and creative…..

Satya has posted an article from The Tribune on how conventional schooling stifles curiousity….

While I agree with this, I am not so sure if we are not making much ado about nothing….. Story telling and painting, even mimickry and buffooning (as the article suggests) is all fine, but we need to think about it practically…. This is a country with an acute shortage of trained teachers….. Where more than 75% of all teachers in rural areas provide multi-grade teaching, which means that they are handling more than one (and sometimes as many as 3-4) classes at the same time…. with an average of seventy students in each class…..

Given this, I should think that our current methodology is doing very well….

Also if we agree with the reasoning that conventional methodology stifles curiousity and motivation, we need to think : is the reverse true then? Does unconventional teaching kindle curiousity by default ? Do kids in the West come with high motivation levels to learn merely because they have a lot more fun in school ? I am not so sure…..

While we certainly need to think of ways to make learning more fun and joyful for children, I think it is time we stopped our favourite sport of teacher-bashing…..

Education standards : here and there

charukesi February 21st, 2004

While we in India are struggling with the huge problem of universalisation of primary education, there are more and more rumblings from the West, struggling with yet another issue : providing literacy and learning.

Note, not schooling, for that is a given, but education, the expected end-product of those fifteen odd years at school. While in India, the question is about access, there the issue is about results.

In a paper (link through the Adam Smith Institute) called ‘the standards of today’, the former Chief Inspector of Schools, Chris Woodhead laments the decline of standards in school education across the UK. Some of the things the article says upfront:

- Education remains a lottery….
- Teachers are confused about how to raise the standards of literacy…
- Our very brightest pupils too are underachieving….

Woodhead not only questions the existing standards in school education today, but also raises another interesting point : are our expectations high enough ? More and more students in the West are leaving school, even unable to read and add.

This is not just about the UK… although anyone who’s read anything about Tony Blair’s spelling capabilities will laugh at the huge hoardings inviting students to the UK for higher education. That apart, this lamentable lack of learning is also what the American schooling system cultivates.

Johnny Can’t Add But Suresh Venktasubramanian Can, says Fred Reed, in a totally honest ripping apart of the Amercian primary education system. Fred goes one step further and says that American schools are crawling with teachers who cannot spell or do math.

As with Mark Twain, these kids are firm in their policy that they not let their schooling interfere with their education!

Like I said, in our country the issue remains one of providing access…. but it seems to me that we are doing something right as far as teaching methodology goes….

What do you think ?

IIMs now made ‘affordable’

charukesi February 6th, 2004

Cheap IIMs. Is Indian corporata ready for this ?

The Union HR Minister Murli Manohar Joshi has announced an 80% slash in the yearly fees : from Rs. 1.5 lakhs to Rs.30000. Who gives him this right to interfere in everything he chooses? If corruption (all this started with the leak in this year’s admission test papers) is his peeve, then it is time to close in on the innumerable private dental colleges and engineering colleges across the country that charge students much much more and provide them with worthless degrees at the end of it all (that is, when the college has bothered to carry on classes for the specified three or four years).

That being that, here are a few more steps proposed for the IIMs starting this academic year :

* IIMs will now take lessons in fund generation and adminstration from such private colleges….. And fill in quotas openly. And take ‘building donations’…..

* Next, of course, the texts prescribed by the IIMs will come in for scrutiny. How dare they teach the works of foreign writers and thinkers here!

* There will also be a new subject introduced in the curriculum, jyotir vigyan, or vedic astrology…..

* And finally, all IIMs will now be renamed….. As Chhatrapati Shivaji Institutes of Management…..

Heil Joshi !

Capitalism and universal education

charukesi January 3rd, 2004

We have lost faith in our state’s ability to run schools, says Gurcharan Das in the Times of India. I second that, quoting here my favourite bit of statistics : the proportion of ‘never enrolled’ children has been declining steadily : from 50% in 1986 (6-14 years in the most backward states) to 20% in 1996. Whiuch means that more and more parents who cannot strictly afford this are willing to give education a chance. (Source : PROBE)

But given the state of Government run schools, is their struggle even worth it ? After all the effort involved in going to and staying in school involves, do children even enjoy school, like they ought to ? Are they learning anything or merely going through the process of ‘getting an education’ ? And above all, is there any accountability from anywhere ?

Das discusses the model suggested by Sanjay Kumar, B J Koppar, and S Balasubramanium in the Economic and Political Weekly (23/8), purporting that government should not run primary schools but lease them to teacher-entrepreneurs (with minimum HSC qualification) who would manage them up to class 4 according to a standard curriculum of ankh and akshar.

The need is for low cost, quality education for all, which the state has not been able to provide, in all these years. Is it now time to fully admit the defeat of the socialism of India-yesterday, and embrace capitalism as the way for India-tomorrow? If this is working in other areas, why not education ? Accountability will only be the beginning…..

Their future looks bright

charukesi November 7th, 2003

Who says the paper route is a thing of the past ?

The girl who delivers the newspapers at our house every morning (here in Madras) is studying in college. I like chatting with her whenever I manage to catch her. She proudly tells me that she pays for her own fees and books. She is full of beans and makes me mornings more bearable !

Our flower girl who comes by late in the evenings is also studying. She is training to be a nurse. And her younger sister goes to school. Her mother is a maid somewhere in our building. And no, she does not have starry-eyed dreams of moving to the UK or the Middle East as a professional nurse.

Our maid at home has four children, two of whom go to school and one who is in a technical college studying electrical repairs. They will not go through what I have endured in my life, she says. And I can actually see the glow in her eyes when she talks about her children’s future.

These women are not figments of my imagination; I meet and interact with them everyday. And they make me feel so so so good…. So optimistic about the future of our country. Ohmygod, do I sound like a patronizing Shobha De talking about “interesting” women that she has met? I hope not, for meeting such people truly gives me a high.

I had written about a couple of girls I met in Madurai a while ago on work. Mind, these women do not speak good English, a few not at all. What strikes me most about these women is the confidence they have. In themselves. The unshakable faith that they have in education as the ultimate deliverance. From their present miserable lives.

Some food for thought : the proportion of “never enrolled” children (meaning children who have never been to school, as opposed to drop-outs) has been declining steadily : from 50% in 1986 (6-14 years in the most backward states) to 20% in 1996. More and more parents who cannot strictly afford this are willing to give education a chance.

But is their faith justified ? Is our education system (I am talking about elementary education here) living up to their expectations ? Ah, that is several blogs by themselves…..

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