A child-inspired education system

In an article about the National Curriculum Framework, Prof. Yash Pal writes in today's The Hindu:

When one talks of individual creativity, one might be accused of "neo-liberal" tendencies. I do not know what sort of abuse that implies, but I cannot accept that any society should feel threatened by the encouragement of individual passion to understand in preference to voluminous short-term memorisation. Long sermons to avoid communalism do not go very far; a deep understanding of the inevitability and value of cultural diversity is far more effective. It is no one's case that there should be complete absence of information. But information and misinformation without understanding is best used for advertising or brainwashing — or for filling up the limited storage space of the brain with junk in which every new idea gets stuck.

I support Yash Pal's position, and I do think the stress in the class room should be on analysis and understanding, not on efficiency and memory.

Not every one is happy though, including several of our distinguished scholars. Romila Thapar wrote in The Hindu that

there is some fear that the emphasis on pedagogy may erode the disciplinary orientation of the subject. Each of the social sciences has its specific take on knowledge and students should be made familiar with these. To pose normative issues in the polity such as equality, justice, and dignity as alternatives to developmental issues hints at avoiding the question of why poverty, illiteracy, casteism, and communalism have come about. How secularism, democracy, and human rights became a concern in Indian society are themes significant to the social sciences.

Romila Thapar's article is very insightful and she has several excellent suggestions regarding regular assessment of teachers, teacher training programmes, and revamping of the examination system. But I think our school education needs to move more in the direction that Yash Pal articulates in the paragraph that I have quoted. A great benefit of child centred education could be that kids find schooling an enjoyable experience. Drop out rates come down, and they learn slowly but steadily. Our text books talking about secularism, democracy, and human rights, hasn't really helped in inculcating those values in the students who mugged up those books. Whereas a seventh grade student comparing various news reports on a given day and a teacher encouraging her to discuss that in the class might help in bringing in more awareness.

Here's an old Frontline story on related matters written when the District Primary Education Programme (DPEP) was implented in several districts in Kerala. Implementing DPEP faced a lot of protests, especially from the left leaning intelligentsia, in Kerala. Now many of them realise that their fears had not much basis.

Some of the stuff that I was supposed to learn in my school days, I never understood then. I never undersrood those later too, because I had read and re-read the relevant parts of the text book many times and the harm was already done. I think it's true that if you develop a distaste for something in your school days, it remains with you throughout. A child centred and child inspired education system doesn't do this harm at least. It keeps one's mind fresh and alert, and such a mind begets new ideas, welcomes new ideas, questioing those at the same time.

Update: "I am over 40, and they expect me to play 'aana' (elephant) and the 'frog in the puddle' before a group of second standard children!", said a teacher to the headmistress at a government primary school, wrote the Frontline correspondent, in his DPEP article. A widely circulated DPEP joke that I heard picturises the teacher bending over to pick up a piece of chalk that fell down. Several kids jump onto his back thinking that it's time to play 'aana'!