Building the bridge between 19th & 21st century teaching styles!

A couple of days back there was a news in daily vernacular of how a local school (a well reputed chain of school) had asked some of the students from Grade 6-8 to write a note on stating that they will be regular in class and do their work carefully and in case there was no improvement from thereon then they will be asked to leave the school. 

Well I am not here to criticize the school or how it affects the child's mental health, but would honestly like to ask ourselves  what do we as parents, expect from schools and secondly with what objectives are schools operating in the 21st century?

 

In today's era when we are talking about education for sustainable development and how life skills and cognitive skills together can help us reach the ultimate goal of sustainable development, then why are we still stuck to the old method of teaching which were developed to enthuse clerical labour force for the industrial development some 200 years back...

CCE is all about development of the child by using the method of Observation, Exploration and Expression. The letter which the school made the children write does not spill the ethos of CCE or modern day teaching anywhere... it still believes in the old fashioned ways of learning where they believe school's function is only about imparting knowledge and churning the same out of the child's mind without letting him go thru the three steps advocated by CCE.

  

      Its time for the schools to re-think the challenges they face in the 21st century, you definitely cannot follow 19th century model of teaching. Please understand, you are the ones who are failing; not the students. The result is right in front of you, you failed in teaching and thus you got an uninterested lot of students not paying attention in your class. 

    

     The challenge which teachers & parents face alike, is how to make children think in the direction of finding solutions to the problems which we as grown up adults have created for ourselves by using the current resources available to us. 

     

     Today's child is inquisitive and likes to think. We grown ups, have been tutored not to think (thanks to the 19th century teaching style). So there comes the clash of views and thus starts a new emotional tug of war among the new gen and old gen (which we  beautifully term as Generation gap). Schools have to find ways and methods to integrate the life skills (WHO defined) with academics so that students are able to go beyond the application of the concepts taught in books and help them establish the connect with day to day living.

     Its high time we accept that there is a need to build the bridge between the 19th and 21st century teaching techniques, else we all are doomed to the new emotional hazards which we will face in the coming decades.

 

 

"Synchronizing child's education at home"- Clash of Viewpoints!

As a 21st century parent I think we have more challenges to face than our parents faced (though every generation keeps saying they had a tough time raising their offspring's but nevertheless, I still believe we are going through tougher times). The reason being the ever exploding mediums of communications which are available to our children... All thanks to the booming technological advancements... we have definitely moved really fast in this one sector!

So lets face it, its here to stay and has become a part of our ecosystem (I don't want to get onto the pros and cons of this)  but will like to find out how do we use this beautiful invention to the betterment of our children's development... or in other words synchronize it with their education.

My seven year old son loves playing online games, his current fav is Clash of Clans [I think its quite popular among kids, coz I saw it being mentioned in the Dastak (a life-skill program run by our organization) stories too]. I would have to admit it, I too love playing that game when my son is in school... :P

Clash of Clans- Android apps on Google Play

The point I am driving is not the addiction to games but how kids can be motivated using these games as examples to get their interests back to books. As a parent the biggest mistake we make is completely belittle these games or activities which our kids love to play. This act of ours eventually leads to developing rebellious minds. 

The first fall out of the rebellious mind is the already very fickle concentration levels... Lo behold we end up blaming everything on these games or the cartoons or whatever extra curricular activities the kid had been spending time on.

Human mind is very egoistic!We all love throwing tantrums and also love being cajoled if we want others to follow them. So the same rules applies with kids too... they are our offspring and have inherited the same genes!

The tip is use these games or the cartoons which they watch as the model examples to help them bring back their concentration levels.

Lemme give you a small example, this weekend my son was doing his homework as usual he was bargaining with me if he finishes off his homework within stipulated time, I will let him play Clash of Clans! My answer was yes! But, fickle concentration started playing the devils role! The work which was supposed to be finished in 1 hour took 3 hours and with umpteen number of breaks and the quality of work was also not up to my son's standard.

So after lot of cribbing and shouting I gave up and asked him to wrap up for the day. In the evening while playing this game on my phone, he was excitingly telling me his various strategies of why he wants to collect gold coins and elixirs. So he continued telling me if he uses gems he will be able to boost the production of both resources and therefore he will be able to upgrade his village and army etc (you need to play this game before you understand what I am talking about) and defend as well as attack other player's villages. Like this he will be able to move up in levels. After the discussion he asked me to go so that he could concentrate on his game, because he was going to take revenge from fellow players and had to work on his little raiding strategy. I obliged him and moved away. 

When he was done with a couple of attacks and was able to increase his gold booty and points, I just told him,"My dear this is exactly why you need to study and do your homework, so that you can increase your concentration levels and be able to grab all the information and knowledge which is being taught to you in school. The information and knowledge are your gold coins and elixirs the resources you need to upgrade your mind. Assignments and home work is being given to you so that you are able to strategically apply to solving bigger problems which will be given to you as you move to higher levels/classes!"  The expression on my son's face told he understood what I was hinting at :D

One thing I have learned in my seven years of mother hood, if I want to guide my children and make them to listen to my ideas (but let them take their own decisions) then for that herculean task to happen, I need to get inside their little minds and learn to see the world from their perspectives. Once I realize what they can see, then I begin to drop in my seeds of wisdom as understood by them!

Dilemma over getting Life Skills in Schools

Of late there has been lot of buzz on life skills(LS) and their integration with academics (and yes by life skills I mean the same ten LS which have been defined by WHO...) The last time I was talking to some senior educationist about LS being the core ingredient of education, they looked at me with a puzzled expression and corrected me, Ma'am you mean core life skills, life skills are different and tried to explain me the difference between the two...

In my four years of grass root work in education, (by grass root, I mean teaching students myself , have taught over 8000 students in both urban and rural schools through programs developed by our small team of experts) where I have tried various methods in which LS can be integrated with academics, I suddenly had my eureka moment some time back and realized at Life Skills are the essence of life. They can not be separated from life at any cost so how can we teach them to children in schools. (I know some of you must be wondering from where is this coming, there is nothing new in it, but you see our education system has been developed in such a way that every aspect of education has been compartmentalized and thus making it very difficult to see the big picture)

We as student read in History about World War I then World War II and so on,major events which were interconnected between the two wars, but somewhere  teacher forgot to connect it with the present day scenario. How these major events that shook the world almost 100 years back actually accelerated the process of ever changing political world map. For that we then & students of today are asked to refer the newspaper (b'coz their teachers when students were taught the same way) and keep abreast with the so called current affairs. Leaving the student  wondering what is he supposed to do with that extra set of information from newspaper.. how is it connected with me scoring marks in school exams.

The conundrum of an educationist (a class teacher is who I am referring to ) today is how does she/ he integrate these ever important life skills in day to day teaching. My question to everyone of you is please first understand Why suddenly there has been such a dire need to integrate them?

Life skills are the core of human existence. They are the reason why we are so called superior beings and now we are creating so much hula-bulla about getting them back in school.

In real time, they never went out of the teaching system, its just that we ignored them and put them in the back burner and gave the student the time and space to mull over the knowledge and information which was given to him in school to learn to apply it on his own once he reaches a certain age.

That technique is not wrong at all... Look at us, if it was wrong, we wouldn't have reached this level of interaction...But in today's scenario that's become obsolete!

Answer is simple- explosion and bombardment of information 24*7* 365 days via all streams of communication. Children know more than we know... so do they really need another human being giving them some piece of information like what are fossils and how are they made when they have already seen it 100 times in some movie or cartoon series or on a you tube educational video, before the teacher starts teaching it in classroom...

What the student wants to know is how should he be able to use this information for making his environment/ surroundings better. He wants to understand why are we as adult human beings not able to take any action to curb on the use of this fossil fuels when its actually hampering our ecosystem.

They want to know how should they learn to take the steps to solve these problems and not what is causing the problem.

That is what life skills are needed for!