Education: what do I/we mean by it?

I wish to write more details about how to orient an undergraduate teaching program in a liberal arts setting. Given the influence of Harvard's "Peer Instruction" and how radical schools (Summerhill and Tagore's Shantiniketan) approach school teaching, I would like to remodel the undergraduate program along similar lines. I will illustrate details using Physics/Astronomy examples, but I believe the principles will apply to other science/social-science streams as well. 

Here is an outline of my future posts: the color codes indicate various groupings under which I will attempt to address the various questions. Perhaps the answers clubbed in this way will allow more systematic thought into this set of problems.

1. What does a man/woman learn?
2. What is learning?
3. What use is learning?
4. Learner, society, industry...
5. How to learn?
6. How can a 'learner' be helped best?
7. How does 'skill-gap' occur?
8. What use of a structured program for learning?
9. How to bridge skill gap through structured degree programs?
10. What is the right model of higher education?
11. Economics of higher education.

Educating India: Schools

Here I will elaborate the idea first introduced in the earlier post, where I proposed an outline of my solution to India's chronic problem of education.

The proposed plan is to have schools where students enjoy learning, live without burden from parents and explore their own life. I am impressed by Summerhill, Tottochan and scattered readings of Tagore. If you are interested in these books and similar other books/ articles, go to Arvind Gupta's excellent website.

Before we look at schools and colleges, here are the basic set of principles:

• Happiness is paramount, therefore learning to be happy is of utmost importance.
• Children should move/ play/ act, not sit idle and cram material at one place.
• Anyone's worth is not measured by her/his productivity or knowledge, therefore education should be geared towards learning what one likes to do, and emphasizing the pleasure derived from it.
• Adults should not enforce their sense of morality, importance and life on children.

So, here is what the schools should do:

1. Students set their daily lives and ground rules: periodic and out-of-turn meetings of the entire schools will set rules for daily lives and punishments for breaking the rules. What is excluded from their purview is: academic matters and dealings with society outside the schools.
2. Classes are optional: most students play, read books, listen to stories/ music, learn dance, engage in outdoor/ indoor sports. These rules will be set by rule 1 above.
3. Learning is by demand: teachers assist students when they demand. Teachers will be trained to provide Montessori education to younger ones. The older students (12-16) will be essentially on their own, reading and working. The scientific laboratory spaces will be manned by assistants for safety purposes.
4. Grading is oriented towards learning: There is no scope for points-based grading in this system, forget 99.23% kind of silly scores. The teachers decide who has gained skills at what level, and when a student is ready, she/he can attend ICSE/ CBSE kind of examinations for their own satisfaction. We will develop alternative to other colleges, where students can register for degree or certificate courses to obtain their livelihoods.
5. Schools are residential: Parents are responsible for most problems in their children's lives. Schools will be entirely residential and students go home only twice in the year (around December and May-June.)

How we treat children is most crucial here. They have to be treated with respect, sincerity and honesty. Why did Summerhill succeed so much in bringing back so many apparently wild, unruly children to the main-stream? Neill understood the way children approached life, the role honesty and kindness while dealing with them. He never moralized them, never forced them and never judged anyone based on history.

There are many elements here that we want to keep in mind before running a school. John Holt summarizes the bit about 'permissive schools' (please read the entire piece) as follows:

....

In any case, to call Neill permissive is not just an oversimplification but a serious mistake. Let me cite an example that is widely, indeed almost always misunderstood-the matter of his rewarding with a gift a child who steals something. When Neill gives a child sixpence for stealing, is he "permitting" him to steal? Nonsense! If Neill meant to “permit" it, didn't care whether a child stole or not he would simply take no notice. But in fact he takes a very particular kind of notice, whose meaning is not for a second lost on the child. The child knows, when Neill gives him the six- pence, that he is not saying, "Sure, stealing is fine, go steal some more." The child knows already that Neill does not steal and does not want stealing around the school. What then does he hear Neill saying with this gift of suspense? He hears him saying, "I know you are not a thief." He is rightly amazed, thinks, "Not a thief! Of course I'm a thief, everyone tells me so, all the time. Besides, I just proved it, by stealing." To these thoughts he hears Neill’s silent reply, "No, not a thief. If I thought you were a thief, and would go on stealing indefinitely, I'd be a bloody idiot to give you money every time you did it, wouldn't I?" No way to argue with that; Neill is clearly no idiot. "No, at heart you're not a thief. You may be stealing now, trying to satisfy important needs that you don't know how to satisfy any other way. But there are other ways. I am ready to help you look for them, and I think you will find them.”

...

There is a good deal of child psychology to understand, develop in-house and internalize in practice. This also means that the school gradation is going to be unique, not the usual 10+2 gradation each year, with x/10 point system. Heck, even home-work will not be mentioned here.

Indian is not a free, as in free thinking. There are several things considered taboo, and children being thought as 'minors' will be one of the hardest to beat. Therefore, a free/ democratic school described above remains a huge challenge...

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Siddhartha : 2010

I am reading Siddhartha, iconic novel by Herman Hesse. You can find a copy at Project Gutenberg. I believe 2010 will be the year of awakening for me, I have to discover myself, reinvent my cause and start moving forward.

Awakening

When Siddhartha left the grove, where the Buddha, the perfected one, stayed behind, where Govinda stayed behind, then he felt that in this grove his past life also stayed behind and parted from him. He pondered about this sensation, which filled him completely, as he was slowly walking along. He pondered deeply, like diving into a deep water he let himself sink down to the ground of the sensation, down to the place where the causes lie, because to identify the causes, so it seemed to him, is the very essence of thinking, and by this alone sensations turn into realizations and are not lost, but become entities and start to emit like rays of light what is inside of them.

Slowly walking along, Siddhartha pondered. He realized that he was no youth any more, but had turned into a man. He realized that one thing had left him, as a snake is left by its old skin, that one thing no longer existed in him, which had accompanied him throughout his youth and used to be a part of him: the wish to have teachers and to listen to teachings. He had also left the last teacher who had appeared on his path, even him, the highest and wisest teacher, the most holy one, Buddha, he had left him, had to part with him, was not able to accept his teachings.

Slower, he walked along in his thoughts and asked himself: "But what is this, what you have sought to learn from teachings and from teachers, and what they, who have taught you much, were still unable to teach you?" And he found: "It was the self, the purpose and essence of which I sought to learn. It was the self, I wanted to free myself from, which I sought to overcome. But I was not able to overcome it, could only deceive it, could only flee from it, only hide from it. Truly, no thing in this world has kept my thoughts thus busy, as this my very own self, this mystery of me being alive, of me being one and being separated and isolated from all others, of me being Siddhartha! And there is no thing in this world I know less about than about me, about Siddhartha!"

Having been pondering while slowly walking along, he now stopped as these thoughts caught hold of him, and right away another thought sprang forth from these, a new thought, which was: "That I know nothing about myself, that Siddhartha has remained thus alien and unknown to me, stems from one cause, a single cause: I was afraid of myself, I was fleeing from myself! I searched Atman, I searched Brahman, I was willing to to dissect my self and peel off all of its layers, to find the core of all peels in its unknown interior, the Atman, life, the divine part, the ultimate part. But I have lost myself in the process."

Siddhartha opened his eyes and looked around, a smile filled his face and a feeling of awakening from long dreams flowed through him from his head down to his toes. And it was not long before he walked again, walked quickly like a man who knows what he has got to do.

"Oh," he thought, taking a deep breath, "now I would not let Siddhartha escape from me again! No longer, I want to begin my thoughts and my life with Atman and with the suffering of the world. I do not want to kill and dissect myself any longer, to find a secret behind the ruins. Neither Yoga-Veda shall teach me any more, nor Atharva-Veda, nor the ascetics, nor any kind of teachings. I want to learn from myself, want to be my student, want to get to know myself, the secret of Siddhartha."

He looked around, as if he was seeing the world for the first time. Beautiful was the world, colourful was the world, strange and mysterious was the world! Here was blue, here was yellow, here was green, the sky and the river flowed, the forest and the mountains were rigid, all of it was beautiful, all of it was mysterious and magical, and in its midst was he, Siddhartha, the awakening one, on the path to himself. All of this, all this yellow and blue, river and forest, entered Siddhartha for the first time through the eyes, was no longer a spell of Mara, was no longer the veil of Maya, was no longer a pointless and coincidental diversity of mere appearances, despicable to the deeply thinking Brahman, who scorns diversity, who seeks unity. Blue was blue, river was river, and if also in the blue and the river, in Siddhartha, the singular and divine lived hidden, so it was still that very divinity's way and purpose, to be here yellow, here blue, there sky, there forest, and here Siddhartha. The purpose and the essential properties were not somewhere behind the things, they were in them, in everything.

"How deaf and stupid have I been!" he thought, walking swiftly along. "When someone reads a text, wants to discover its meaning, he will not scorn the symbols and letters and call them deceptions, coincidence, and worthless hull, but he will read them, he will study and love them, letter by letter. But I, who wanted to read the book of the world and the book of my own being, I have, for the sake of a meaning I had anticipated before I read, scorned the symbols and letters, I called the visible world a deception, called my eyes and my tongue coincidental and worthless forms without substance. No, this is over, I have awakened, I have indeed awakened and have not been born before this very day."

In thinking this thoughts, Siddhartha stopped once again, suddenly, as if there was a snake lying in front of him on the path.

Because suddenly, he had also become aware of this: He, who was indeed like someone who had just woken up or like a new-born baby, he had to start his life anew and start again at the very beginning. When he had left in this very morning from the grove Jetavana, the grove of that exalted one, already awakening, already on the path towards himself, he he had every intention, regarded as natural and took for granted, that he, after years as an ascetic, would return to his home and his father. But now, only in this moment, when he stopped as if a snake was lying on his path, he also awoke to this realization: "But I am no longer the one I was, I am no ascetic any more, I am not a priest any more, I am no Brahman any more. Whatever should I do at home and at my father's place? Study? Make offerings? Practise meditation? But all this is over, all of this is no longer alongside my path."

Lesson for my child : Curiosity

Humans are curious about variety of phenomena in our daily lives: rains, fires, hurricanes/ storms, waves, tides. It also applies to things that we can not experience using our senses: clear sky, ocean depths, stars, Sun, Moon, etc.

1. Throughout their existence humans all over the planet have asked questions about things that were around them: their surroundings, our planet, the cosmos, the origin of all the things, and where were all going to end. वेद, or the Vedas called them पंचमहाभूत, or the five elements: Earth, Water, Fire, Wind, and Sky. Everything is made of them. It is not important if Vedas were correct or not, what matters most is that, humans thought of the cosmos. The surrounding natural elements and cosmos on the larger scale made an impact on those early Hindu thinkers.
2. Those Hindu thinkers related various phenomena as manifestations of those five elements. This is characteristic of humans: we relate seemingly disparate phenomena using fewer logical elements. At one level, we should understand that those associations are not real, but they allow us to comprehend phenomena in an organized manner; and if the exercise is successful, we can predict certain things using those associations.
3. Curious human will observe and think about apparent patterns. This is most crucial for the survival of species: food resources, predicting natural phenomena (predicting tides is crucial for fisher-folk, rains are important for farming).
4. This curiosity also leads to betterment of lives:

-- waves/ tides and fishing
-- rains and paddy farming
-- diseases and micro-organisms

Here is a true story of a Goan boy who was bitten by a snake. The snake was of harmless kind, although very similar to poisonous adder snake in its appearance. A Tantrik was summoned by parents to `cure' their boy of the poison. No wonder, the boy was fine after the Tantrik performed his rituals. It so happened that the boy was bitten by a snake again, however, this time by a real poisonous adder. His parents preferred the Tantrik once more, however, all his rituals took precious time away. The boy died the next morning.

The story is important, in that one has to be curious and understand that poisonous snake alone cause harm. As far as we can make out patterns on the snake-back, we are safe, else we face grave consequences. The same goes for the rest of the nature.

Life is precious and there are no guarantees. However, curiosity and learning allow us to survive in this world better, and also make it a richer experience.