Educating beyond schooling

(article in the February issue of Responsible Parenting)

Indian students were once renowned the world over, not only for their capacity to work hard, but also for their levels of learning. It is far otherwise at present. The latest ASER document has some very depressing facts to report.  Despite fancy new education systems, plenty of do-it-yourself assignments, supplementary projects and exposure to the farthest frontiers of human knowledge, courtesy the Internet, the learning outcomes for Indian students are falling rapidly. Nor are they faring any better in terms of soft skills and creativity. The critical question then arises, are we raising a generation of ignoramuses or automatons? What is the role of today’s parents in ensuring that their children grow up into well-educated, balanced individuals?

It was renowned nineteenth century author and humourist Mark Twain who once advised someone, “Don’t let your children’s schooling get in the way of their education!” Never has this advice been more applicable to Indian parents than it is today. With learning outcomes as well as soft skills nosediving to alarming extents in the younger generations, the onus of ensuring a well-rounded education for them, which was formerly shared by schools and parents, has shifted squarely on to the parents.

“I can’t understand what is happening in schools these days,” exclaims Sanjay Seth, proprietor of a jewellery firm and father of fourteen year old Sneha, a ninth standard student in one of the prominent public schools of Delhi. “Children are easily scoring eighty to ninety percent, or even more, but they don’t seem to know much. In our time, we knew much more even though we scored between sixty and seventy percent.”

“Heaven knows what this school system is doing to our children,” agrees Keerti Pahwa, whose children, eleven and seven years old, attend one of the oldest, most renowned schools of the capital. “They are always kept with their noses to the grindstone with homework, CCE projects, umpteen kinds of assessments and weird kinds of activities all the time. And yet, their levels of learning and knowledge are ridiculous!”

“All they seem to be teaching our kids is how to surf the Internet, copy-paste stuff, print pictures and prepare highly decorated project files with no regard for the content or learning,” laments Vinita Agarwal, mother of a tenth and an eleventh standard student of one  of the fastest growing schools of the city. “How are they going to fare in the actual world if we leave them to the school system?”

This concern is echoed by virtually all parents who take a personal interest in their children’s education. Parents are mystified on what basis their children are obtaining such marks when their knowledge levels remain abysmal. The question of what their children will do once they leave school and face the real world is the stuff of nightmares for them.

Schooling versus Education

The debate about schooling versus education has been raging as long as there have been schools. A comprehensive education is more than just textbook learning. It is a cultural imperative for all individuals who aspire to be self-determining—the process of exploring various ways of thinking, doing, believing, expressing one’s self. It is the process through which one forms one’s own judgement independently. Schooling is an organized process of transmitting knowledge and values in the form of group learning. The goal of schooling is ostensibly to provide an education to the younger generations.

However, all too often, schooling ends up as a system that squashes out all individuality and creative thought. It is often seen that as children our youngsters have insatiable questions, but as they grow older, they stop asking questions. This is because most schooling is about facts and figures rather than understanding and value transmission.  It does not encourage an inquisitive mind, critical thinking, and creativity; it merely trains students to memorize and regurgitate what the teacher taught.

THE NEW SCHOOLING SYSTEM

For the past four years we have had a new education system in India, whose stated aims are to address these shortcomings of the traditional schooling systems. It emphasizes ‘continuous comprehensive evaluation’ (CCE) of a child’s everyday performance through creatively designed assignments, project work and assessments. The accent is on learning and acquiring soft skills such as comprehension, originality, communication, presentation, team work and lateral thinking. It aims to encourage our youngsters to engage with the latest technologies and developments and truly become global citizens of tomorrow.

However, four years into this experiment, we face the question: How far is this system delivering what it promises and aims at? Can it truly be called an ‘education system’? What are the concrete outcomes that it is giving our children?

Declining learning outcomes: The latest Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) document exposes sharply declining learning outcomes in Indian schools across the board. And although the report focuses primarily on rural government schools, parents as well as education professionals allege that the plight of private schools in urban centres is not much better, and with much less excuse!

Not only is the experience of a wide cross-section of parents whose children are studying in the ‘best’ private schools quite negative with regard to learning outcomes, most educated parents are dissatisfied and disgruntled with the new curriculum under the CCE system. They feel that it simply stresses presentation and bypasses the knowledge and content requirement.

Teacher troubles: Despite these findings, however, most educators continue to staunchly support the design and intent of the CCE System and feel that the failure is that of implementation at the school level.

According to Meeta W Sengupta, Senior Advisor, Center for Civil Society, one of the world’s top fifty five think tanks based in Delhi, “There are multiple problems at the teaching level. Teachers are not supported through proper training and motivation programs. Most private schools don’t even bother with teacher training (although the few that do take the trouble to train their teachers manage to produce highly competent and committed teachers). So, mostly, teachers are overwhelmed with the requirements of the new system. Failing to come to grips with it, they resort to cutting corners and rigging the outcomes.”

Eyewash Tactics: Says Seema Kapoor (name changed), a class nine science teacher in a renowned public school, “Teachers have been landed with greatly increased responsibilities of record-keeping and incessant paperwork under the CCE system, for which they have neither been trained, nor motivated. So, most of them tend to keep students occupied with useless, senseless projects to pay lip service to the system, rather than imparting skills or knowledge. The assessment pattern is also becoming increasingly ‘MCQ-oriented’, which lessens the workload of the teacher, allows students to score on the basis of lucky guesswork and greatly raises the average marks, so everybody is happy. The fact that learning is suffering in the process is another matter”.

Arbitrariness and Apple Polishing: Another problem here is that a large proportion of the students’ marks under the CCE system is subject to the arbitrary whims of teachers. Says Anmol Batra, a ninth standard student of one of Delhi’s prestigious public schools: “Our Science teachers award grades on the basis of how well a project file is decorated. They do not even bother to read what you have written or what kind of effort you have put into researching the project. One of my friends, who always has the highest score in projects, directly copy-pastes material from the Internet. He doesn’t even read what he has put in the projects. In fact, some of the stuff he gets from Wikipedia even has annotation numbers and links embedded in it, which he does not even bother to delete. But his files are the best decorated because his mom is a professional artist. So, he gets the best marks in projects.” Anmol is not the only one with this complaint. Students across schools allege that most teachers evaluate projects and assignments on the basis of decorations and favouritism, rather than content.

Moreover, the arbitrary powers teachers have been vested with is taking the practice of ‘apple polishing’ or buttering up teachers for the sake of higher scores to new and disgusting levels. Teachers themselves agree that parents and students ‘networking’ with the teachers is playing an increasing role in the results of the students.

Unethical practices: Students come up with yet more shocking revelations about the realities of the new system. The various kinds of assessments — PSA, FA, NFLAT etc which are designed to test the soft skills of students, like comprehension, listening, speaking, etc, are rigged even by the best schools. “The assessment assignments, which are supposed to be extempore, are given to students a couple of days in advance, to take home and prepare. Even the questions are provided by the teachers, along with the answers,” says Madhav Chhabra, a class eleven student. Students from other prestigious schools corroborate this allegation.

False Entitlement: Sandhya Gupta, a high school Physics teacher, is concerned that the high percentages that students are getting used to, with minimal studying, simply because the question papers have become objective to ridiculous levels, bodes ill for their future, when they come up against the rigours of higher education. “The sense of complacence and entitlement without hard work that this is fostering will also stand them in very ill stead when they enter the real world as adults and take on work responsibilities,” she worries.

RAISING EDUCATED YOUNGSTERS

These and other findings bring us up against the hard fact that if left to the current schooling system, we will end up with an entire generation of degree-holding ignoramuses who have neither the knowledge nor the skills to make a success of their lives. And so, the onus of ensuring that their children get a well-rounded, value-added education has shifted entirely to the parents. Given this necessity, parents need to find creative solutions to this problem.

Coaching classes: While in earlier times ‘coaching’ or ‘tuitions’ used to be the crutches of weak students, today they have become necessities. The slews of coaching centres errupting all over the country have become a requirement, to do what the schools are neglecting to do. While renowned coaching institutes were earlier only offering coaching to Engineering and Medical aspirants in classes eleven and twelve, some of them have started ‘foundation courses’ as early as class six, to bridge the need gap of the present schooling system.

Study groups: A creative solution devised by many parent groups is that of forming study groups where educated mothers can coach the entire groups in different subjects, according to their ability, or else, identify able teachers to do so—a variant of home schooling. This method is seen to be really effective in a number of cases.

Parent participation in school forums: Perhaps the greatest need is for parents to be more vocal at parent-teacher forums and voice their issues, forcing school authorities to take notice and address the problems.

Parents need to be especially vigilant if they want their children to become ‘educated’ in the real sense, and not just crack the system and obtain degrees which have nothing to back them by way of learning and knowledge.

Tagged: education, learning outcomes, schooling, system, unethucal, unsupported, untrained.