A Look at Experiments in Accelerating Education
Mrs.
Aruna Raghavan
Shikshayatan School
Arasavangkadu Village, Tamil Nadu
email: actrust@sancharnet.in
September 27, 1999
The thought
:
"Education is a process by which society
passes on the accumulated knowledge and experience of countless centuries to
new generations in a systematic, concentrated and abridged form, so that today's
young people can start their lives at the
This thought is especially true today, poised
as we are at the turn of the millennium. The quick dissemination of ideas
thanks to the dramatic improvements in Information technology call for a
different brand of education. One that will help children move into a rapidly
shrinking world without losing truths that have come to us through the
preceding millennia. The process, the methods and the forms of teaching,
learning too have to restructure and sometimes change fundamentally, as to
appear as a new form altogether.
There is an obvious
general agreement that the greatest forces for social progress are human energy
and human creative potential. These are the real and ultimate determinants of
human development. Yet human potential is like an uncut, unpolished gem or a
field of fertile soil which has never been ploughed or cultivated. To bring out
that potential and generate prosperity, it needs to be cultivated. That is the
role of education.
The spread of democracy in this century is regarded by many as the greatest single step for the liberation of human potential and advancement of the general population. Yet the obvious point, often overlooked, is that the quality of a democracy depends entirely on the quality of those who govern, which in turn depends on the wisdom of the electorate in choosing its leaders. That wisdom in turn depends (though not exclusively) on the level of education of the population.
Economic development also depends to a very large extend on the same basic social foundation - the general level of education and skills of the workforce.
In common parlance,
education is treated like a commodity that can be bought and sold and measured
in terms of literacy, enrollment levels, number of schools, degrees conferred
and marks lists. Education by the numbers may partially serve all these
purposes, but when we mistake that for the power of education we overlook the
greatest transformative power for the world's development.
But education as a power
to cultivate and develop human potential has very little to do with these
things. It has everything to do with awakening the minds of children, evoking
their enthusiastic interest in the world around them, and releasing their
curiosity and creative energies. We need an education that incorporates the
facile teaching aids of the electronic media and the warm springs of a human
guide.
Having been a teacher for
many years, when my own daughter Niru was an infant, I felt a strong urge to
offer her the very best possibilities to discover and develop her own innate
potential. In the course of studying a wide range of educational methods, my
husband and I stumbled upon the work of an American educator, Glenn Doman, who
had discovered and demonstrated that the natural born learning potential of
children is many times greater than what we commonly believe and that most
systems of education actually do more to smother that natural capacity than to
develop it.
More than forty years ago in
In his writings, Doman
made an interesting observation - that except in rare exceptions, every child
learns to speak his or her native language by a very early age, regardless of
nationality, native intelligence, or the income and educational level of their
parents, often with little or no formal training. Every child also learns to
recognize a wide range of people, living things, objects, activities and ways
of functioning. This all children do naturally at a very early age. He went on
to observe that children who are deprived of the opportunity to learn things
during the first few years of life find it extremely difficult to learn these
and other things later on. For example, children in urban slums who are not
exposed to a wide range of colors early usually never acquire the ability to
visually distinguish many colors. Most have us have struggled trying to master
a second or third language in college, yet how many recall having that much
trouble with the first one? We don't because we didn't.
Doman concluded that the
first six years of life are a time when children learn naturally,
spontaneously, effortlessly and joyously - as a form of play - and that the more
opportunities the child has for learning during this period, the more rapidly
he learns and the greater his capacities for learning. In fact he stresses that
the younger the child the greater the capacity to learn. Every child's natural
ability to learn far exceeds what we are tapping, because of the deficiency in
our teaching methods. Our present educational methods tap and develop only a
very small portion (at best 5%) of human capacity. Each child is a potential
genius, with unique capacities. The system should be capable of recognizing
this and drawing it out. The programmes
are propagated to begin with three week babies and go on till the child is five
years. By then, the child was well into reading books beyond his level. But it
is understood that the figures may vary.
The methods consist of using flash cards extensively and methodically.
Since the stress is on the idea that the
younger a child is, the better equipped is he to learn, the method is teaching
focused. The child is taught systematically to synchronise two of his sense
organs namely his eyes and ears. Even as the words are being flashed the word
is called out. The child learns to assimilate skilfully the two pieces of information being given.
The baby is taught to see a word, hear it and know it simultaneously. The child
is taught a word as a complete unit of sound and its meaning. The pedagogy is
to teach something as a whole first: to know the whole requires a little insight or
intuition aided by teaching -in
keeping with the Indian
philosophy of Advaita! What then is being taught are skills that enable a child
to do a task effectively. The child is
not so much taught a language as much as a skill to acquire and learn as many
languages as his environment will permit. And then when the child is
capable of logic he is shown its various components of alphabets,
syllables and phoneme Similarly, the child is taught numerals before numbers
and functions in mathematics. Encyclopaedic knowledge is taught to a child by
first teaching bits of information about
any topic. The ring of knowledge is slowly enlarged until it encompasses and
includes other topics too. The ring grows big enough to move from topics to
subject to interdisciplinary ideas. The result is a very broad based learning,
a very wide foundation to understanding,
assimilating and finally creating new ideas. The speed at which the child
learns is very great. Statistics indicate a learning rate of 150 words per month at the average level to
an astonishing 300 words per month at the expert. To imagine this in the
context of an average adult having a vocabulary of less than 6000 words,
appears to be mind boggling. To reiterate, the reasons are : the methodology
and the ever widening ring of knowledge.
It is as important to emphasise here that all this is done with the
barometer registering zero pressure on the child ! In fact there appears to be
a need for the teacher to restrain the child from demanding for more.
Some highlights of the method :
Fun in
Learning - The principle stressed is, as long as a child wants to know and we
cater to that quest we preserve the fun in learning. Teach the child what he
asks; stop short of expounding on the subject in question -- it is the
teacher's problem to create that environment, kindle that curiosity leading him
to the point of prompting from him the next logical question !
A
pitfall in the traditional trends of education is the stress on literacy,
acquiring of degree, passing of examinations. This has significantly infected the
student to concentrate on what helps these stresses. We are thus ignoring that
higher value to the learning. This alternative definitely changes the stress --
learn what is desired ; learn it precisely ; learn it swiftly ; expand
multi-directionally as per the leading quest .
It can
be easily accepted that we are born with a natural thirst for knowledge ; a
thirst that is naturally insatiable. As long as we are clear that we are
getting what we "WANT" there is no stress, no pressure - we are
"learning" and not being "taught" and as long as we are
learning we are only satisfying a "Need". We are thus able to obviate
the issues of - "Are we pressurising the child to know more ?";
"Does he need all this ? ".
It is a fact that as the network of associations of a concept expands, we assimilate faster,
the various levels of perception are established and recall is
accelerated. Using as many physical senses as is possible assists in putting
the subject wholly into the being -- the knowledge was always a part of the
being -- learning is only recognising the perspectives.
The
wonder of the system is that it makes the child a compulsive reader. The child
needs you only when calling on the known associations completely fails. The
teacher's role as the source of knowing is soon made redundant and is replaced
as that of a friend to turn to, a guide to look up to. The child becomes clear
that he has only to go to depths within himself to understand -- the teacher is
always there to assist in removing the blocks that hinder this exploration.
The
method deals with the honing of the skill of reading - i.e. distinguishing one
word from another. (One has only to open a newspaper, in a totally foreign
language to know what we mean. The whole paper appears to be a mass of
unrecognisable characters.) Once this skill is mastered it is only a routine
application in learning any other language. And the beauty is each language is
presented in the manner of our learning the native language. Rules of grammar
are not memorised, rules of sentence formations are not learnt by rote,
spellings are not committed to memory -- one just ingrains this as one goes
along in the program.
When Raghavan and I decided to teach our
daughter at home eleven years ago, we were questioned in detail. They even had
us on the TV. as 'non conformists'. That was the time when female infanticide
cases were being reported almost hourly!
So, we were asked if our child was not being sent to school because she
was only a girl? Our thoughts towards
a different education began in the early 80s.
We began our school in 1994 in rural Tamil
Nadu. Sociologically speaking, when a child from the rural and backward areas
first comes to school, the child has no clear "Vyaktitva" - or
individuality - due to the undeveloped feudal social background. There is only
a strong will to compete for everything - from the teacher's attention, to
food, to toys and games. In most cases, the child in a few weeks of schooling
develops a sense of individuality. The first step to any education is that
sense of individual worth and dignity. The simplest devices we adopt to foster
individuality are hugging every child at the start of the day, by calling out
to their special features / nature, admiring their colouring, pinning them up,
and sending their work home to be admired. Offering flowers and ensuring that
every child does so makes the child feel special. Soon, they develop a sense of
freedom; they learn to demand on the basis of individual freedom. A specific
task is demanded, a favourite book is sought and demands are made to read the
book aloud.
As individuals, they have a sense of freedom
but there is still no sense of social responsibility. This is the second step
in education - to make the individual grow into a person, in whom freedom is
enriched by psychic maturity through the influx of the sense of social
responsibility. When this second step in spiritual growth sets in, a nation
will have in its educated section millions and millions of free and responsible
citizens. It requires co-operation and team effort. Man as individual does not
possess it; only man as a person does.
Fostering this in individuals draws on all of
a teacher's resources and creativity. In our school we take on children who are
as bright as buttons, children who have severe learning disabilities and mildly
brain-injured children. The thought is that learning is itself a therapy;
denial of a learning environment leads to behavioural and emotional
disturbances. Children are the world's only pace setters, the world's only
learners. They mostly teach themselves by observation and continual effort at
arriving at perfection. It is the only reason that we have all learned to walk,
but few of us have refined driving to an art and still fewer have taken to flying.
Had we been expected to fly as children we doubtless would have learned that
too. So, we wait for the children to begin learning and then teaching takes
over.
A child is given all chances to explore,
investigate and form their own impressions. Then the teacher steps in and takes
their impression to formalising into thoughts and facts. The children may
explore as individuals but are expected to share their findings with their
friends. They sit as a group when they discuss and help each other with the
facts they may have learned or observed. By 6 years our children are divided
into small groups of 4 or 5. In each group we have children who do very well at
the chosen task of the hour. We may have a couple that are average and a couple
that need help all through the way. The group that does well is always the
group that has most helped each other. So without much insistence on social
responsibilities as a theory we are able to establish a form of thinking and
attitude.
It is not to say that our children are angels.
By no means. When Anandhi, our mild brain injured child joined us a year and
quarter ago, she created quite an uproar. The children found her mannerisms
amusing and took every chance to tease her on the sly. Like all children they
were caught at it. The teachers converted it into an opportunity to talk in
detail about neurological development of the brain, the dysfunctions and why
people were different. Today, those who can help, those who can't help directly
help by not laughing at her attempts at learning. The upshot is that Anandhi
has gained the reputation of not forgetting important things like locking up
after class, who has been served who not, which teacher has stationery that she can put to use. We can
safely use her memory box when our own fail. She came to us at twelve with no
learning, with severe behavioural problems and bouts of violent anger. She is
now thirteen, still shows signs of stubbornness but is absolutely tractable if
promised a book that she can read. Her pride at being able to read grows by the
day and with it the children who watch her are assured that learning is a
child's enjoyable mode of growing up. Learning has given her a chance at being
a part of the society that might otherwise reject her. Learning has given her a
dignity and a confidence in herself.
We recently had our doctor friend from Mumbai
visit us. He was floored by our children who listened in silence to a friend of
theirs stammer her way through a speech on Indian Independence movement.
"They did not even snigger, how is that?" was his question. Our
children floored me when they celebrated Krishna's birthday.
We did not have to tell them what was expected
of them. From the seventeen year olds to the 3 year olds, the children reacted
as one, where the social responsibility of ensuring that everyone got a share
was of prime importance.
Reviewing that day, our only thought was :
maybe our children may not shake the earth with a Newtonian theory but they
will be among the silent unsung heroes who take their society along. They are
on their way to fully being persons and move on to the next stage of evolution.
Maybe they too share the thought that "learning
is the greatest gift one can give to a child; to learn always and everywhere."
Though encouraged by the results in that
remote, back-ward village, it was felt that this may be a one only experiment
and not an educational alternative ; there was a need to prove this at the
other end of the rainbow? A model established only in the backward rural area
may not be sufficient for the needs of a much more progressive urban
population. There was a need to prove the efficacy of the system at the top of
the social ladder, and look for it to percolate. Therefore, another school was
conceived by
Here was a population much more ready to
receive, eager to evaluate , quick to criticise. Here was an opportunity to
provide an engine which could propel much faster towards a wider acceptance ;
one more proof of the fact if an idea could be acclaimed by the socially higher
strata and standards acceptable to them set,
the process of following the leaders would be in motion ; what is
perceived as success by those already measured by society as successful , would
be more easily influence general acceptance. The motives driving this process
may not be the ones conceived by the pioneers but the same objectives may be
achieved. The common acceptance in its first principles by the social fabric
would take its time - but the direction would be already indicated.
Sample list of teaching
methods:
1. The most important
aspect of the approach is attitude of the teacher, which should be that
learning is a form of play which fosters the blossoming of the child's natural
development. Learning should and can be made interesting, enjoyable, fun.
2. A large portion of the
teaching materials are produced at the school by the teachers, who customize
their teaching aids to suit the interests and knowledge levels of the students.
3. First attention is
given to the health and nutrition of the children to ensure that they have the
physical energy and natural attention span needed for learning. Nutritional and
medical supplements are provided to under nourished children from low income
families. Free exercise and play are encouraged to build strength and stamina.
4. Children learn
spontaneously when their interest and curiosity are awakened. 'Teaching' is
confined to brief periods according to the natural attention span of each
child, which is normally 15-30 minutes daily during the first two years. It is
never extended beyond the child's span of interest.
5. The student-teacher
ratio is kept very low to enable the teacher to work with small groups of 4-5
children at a time while the others are absorbed in learning games or
recreational play.
6. The act of teaching
consists primarily of presenting sensory images, objects and information to the
child in a pleasant and interesting manner and permitting the child to observe
and inquire about the subject, without compelling the child to memorize.
Coloured flash cards with large images are utilized as convenient, low cost
teaching aids.
7. Rapid acquisition of
basic reading and verbal skills in multiple languages occurs naturally by
exposing the child to whole words as objects repetitively for very brief
periods. In this manner at a young age even children of illiterate parents
learn several languages as effortlessly as they normally learn to speak their
native tongue.
8. Story telling is used
to make learning fun and to communicate basic values of goodness, beauty,
harmony, responsibility and right conduct.
9. Information on people
and other living things, places, history, geography, and other cultures are
presented to the child in the form of stories, pictorial information and
explanations combined together to present facts in a living, integrated context
rather than as a series of separate divorced subjects.
10. Rapid acquisition of basic math skills is achieved through the use of number line method which enables the child to physically experiment and act out different combinations of addition and subtraction.
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