Back to Basics movement in education Or Forward with basics in education!
Back to basics is the most innovative way forward. Way forward for any country is by educating itself more. After years of relative silence, basic education has recently been back on the focus. There is quite a broad interpretation of what basic education is or should be, and as yet there is no convergence towards a shared understanding of the term.
All available data- RTE, shows that India is close to achieving ‘schooling for all’. Now is the time to make ‘learning for all’ a national priority.
We have a crisis of learning on hand. To enable millions of children to learn how to read, to comprehend, and to calculate we need a massive ‘catch up’ effort. This ‘catch up’ needs a ‘push forward’ and not a ‘hold back’ approach. We need to believe that the real right to education is not only in terms of years of schooling but ‘value added’ in terms of learning; first foundational skills, then higher level capabilities and knowledge, and finally to being able to cope with a dynamic and changing wide world beyond.
History has shown that many of India’s brightest minds have time and again come from impoverished backgrounds and yet they broke free from the shackles of poverty to get ahead in life. Education played a key role in their thinking and eventual success, both on a personal and public level.
Finally, any educational reform must be aligned to the ground realities. We need to tap into the creative potential lurking within every child, regardless of social and economic background. It is only in the knowledge, talent and innovativeness of our children that we can realize the promise of education as a transformative force for nation building.
The Right to Education — RTE Act
· Eighty-sixth Amendment
· Article 21-A
· Provides free and compulsory education of all children in the age group of 6 to 14 years as a Fundamental Right.
· Right to free and compulsory education in a neighborhood school till completion of Elementary Education.
· Right to Education Act, 2009 to abolish the no-detention policy in schools.
- There shall be a regular examination in the fifth class and in the eighth class at the end of every academic year.
- If a child fails in the examination he shall be given an opportunity for re-examination within a period of two months from the date of declaration of the result.
- The State Government may allow schools to hold back a child in the fifth class or in the eighth class or in both classes if he fails in the re-examination.
- The State Government may also decide not to hold back a child in any class until the completion of elementary education.
- No child shall be expelled from a school till the completion of elementary Education.
Annual Status of Education Report- ASER- 2018.
Learning levels: ‘Beyond Basics’- In ASER 2018, children in the age group 14 to 16 were given a few tasks which required calculations to be done in everyday contexts. Children were asked to calculate time, compute and figure out where to buy books given two different price lists (financial decision making), compute a discount etc.
Of the 14–16 year olds — a little under half could compute the time question correctly, 52% could apply the unitary method to calculate, about 37% were able to take the correct decision regarding the purchase of books, and less than 30% could compute the discount correctly. In all cases, fewer girls could solve questions correctly as compared to boys.
If a learning profile is flat- schooling only measures ‘time served’ and not ‘skills gained’!
The surveys are widely known — the learning levels of Indian school going children are worryingly low. After five years of schooling, only half of all children in India could read at grade 2 level. And that the results for basic arithmetic are even more worrying. In the early years of ASER, there was disbelief. But year after year, like clockwork, the report would become available in mid-January. The results were consistently saying that learning needs attention. The relentless hard work of thousands of people involved in the effort began to pay off. More studies of children’s learning began to appear. All of this influenced and contributed to local as well as national debates on education.
Back to basics is a notion of what is basic in the life of a child and where schools fit into the picture. So here are my four: 1) reading and writing; 2) numeracy; 3) creativity; and 4) health and nutrition. We have in the past focused on ‘The Three R’s” of reading, ‘riting and ‘rithmetic, which is euphonious but short-sighted.
· Reading and writing are inseparable and are the first ‘basic.’ We read to gain information, and we write to convey it. Both must be learned. schools can handle this basic
· Numeracy (‘rithmetic) is a basic skill, and the best teachers engage their young students in the joy of mastery of the mystery and utter rationality of numbers.
· The third ‘basic’ is creativity; I believe the earlier ‘back to basics’ movements failed because schools obsessed about The Three R are to the exclusion of creativity, fun, art, music and physical education.
· My fourth ‘basic’ may push health and nutrition which are basic components of a balanced education.
Today, we live in an invisible universe of mathematics. We burned fossil fuels to power the engines of the industrial age. The fuel we burn to drive the information age is mathematics. Mathematics is used in modern communications, transport, medicine, entertainment, sport, financial trading, law enforcement, science, engineering, and many other areas of life. Most of that mathematics is so specialized that we cannot hope to teach it in our schools.
What we can and should do is — make sure our children are prepared to acquire, quickly and efficiently, what particular math skills they require if and when the time comes in later life. The mathematics we teach today’s students should not be the same as their parents learned. For example, using calculators and computers does not represent a reduction in skill or the need for accuracy. On the contrary, successful use of today’s computational aids requires far greater mathematical skill, and much more mathematical insight, than we old timers had to master to get our sums right.
Diet makes a difference to learning.
It should be noted that under nutrition is usually accompanied by extreme poverty, which could impact on children’s mental development in many ways, making the unique contribution of diet difficult to untangle. Micronutrients of note include iodine, with iodine insufficiency in children being associated with around a 13 point drop in IQ; and thiamine, an insufficiency of which can lead to aggressive behavior in adolescents that can be reversed by providing thiamine supplements.
The most extreme long-term effect of diet on cognition is from malnutrition or under nutrition. Under nutrition leads to stunted growth in the first two years of life, deficits in cognition are seen right through the teenage years, even after nutritional rehabilitation. Everyone agrees that in one way or another diet has an impact on children’s cognitive abilities.
Nutrition education is the process of teaching the science of nutrition to students. It has a broad vision which encompasses educational strategies and environmental supports to encourage adoption of healthier, sustainable food choices and eating patterns. Nutrition education has the broad goal of promoting individual, family, community and global wellbeing. The school provides a rich and dynamic environment which can assist in achieving this goal.
It is tough enough being a teacher as it is. Larger classes with increasing numbers of children who are undernourished or otherwise in poor health are not a prescription for a vibrant future, not for kids, not for teachers, not for the nation. So that’s my view of ‘the basics’ in public health and Nutrition education. It’s not about going back to basics, because we’ve never gone there. I think it’s time we did.
Improving the standards of basic education is the need of the hour — it is the foundation on which the future of India’s children will depend. However, despite a steady growth in literacy rates, our education standards lag woefully due to policy changes. India’s underprivileged children continue to be deprived of good quality education- now a fundamental right.
Teachers are the other vital component of this ecosystem. Over the decades, in the absence of a robust rewards and penalty system, the interest of primary school teachers in teaching has generally been laidback. When this is combined with faulty teaching design and pedagogy rooted in top-down and rote learning, the results are hardly surprising.
Ignorance is much swifter than intelligence”, because it travels like wildfire and is the first to arrive anywhere. That’s the thing. Useless words and meaningless fads abound. We live at a time when euphemisms reign and new high-sounding words are coined left and right. We are in the midst of a naming war that wages on to occupy our unique spaces.
These days, speaking simply and concisely, using the language of our fathers and, when necessary, dusting off old words to reveal their original meaning, almost seems to be an act of bravery. In short, going back to basics appears to be the most revolutionary thing we can do amidst so much turbulence.
· There is a broad international consensus that basic education, including early childhood education, is a key building block for other levels of education. Basic education contributes to the wellbeing of individuals, their families, and the broader society in different ways.
· There is a conclusive body of evidence to indicate that the quality of education is more important than years of schooling in increasing the returns of education to individuals and society as a whole
· An integrated approach with a long-term perspective — support for basic education should be approached in an integrated way
· Adaptive learning is a working concept realized with technology which analyses learner’s skill level through advanced machine learning and creates a self learning environment for each student. In simplest words it is a personalized learning path carved for each student, it saves time and effort if you already know the lesson, and puts extra effort and time to make you comprehend a lesson, if there is a need.
· It’s a learning technique centered around the interests and needs of each individual learner as opposed to universal standards. Rapidly adopted by schools and universities across the developed part of the world, adaptive learning is touted to revolutionize education in future.
Dr N prabhu dev
Former VC Bangalore university
Former Director Jayadeva institute of cardiology.
Back to Basics movement in education
Back to Basics movement in education Or Forward with basics in education!
Back to basics is the most innovative way forward. Way forward for any country is by educating itself more. After years of relative silence, basic education has recently been back on the focus. There is quite a broad interpretation of what basic education is or should be, and as yet there is no convergence towards a shared understanding of the term.
All available data- RTE, shows that India is close to achieving ‘schooling for all’. Now is the time to make ‘learning for all’ a national priority.
We have a crisis of learning on hand. To enable millions of children to learn how to read, to comprehend, and to calculate we need a massive ‘catch up’ effort. This ‘catch up’ needs a ‘push forward’ and not a ‘hold back’ approach. We need to believe that the real right to education is not only in terms of years of schooling but ‘value added’ in terms of learning; first foundational skills, then higher level capabilities and knowledge, and finally to being able to cope with a dynamic and changing wide world beyond.
History has shown that many of India’s brightest minds have time and again come from impoverished backgrounds and yet they broke free from the shackles of poverty to get ahead in life. Education played a key role in their thinking and eventual success, both on a personal and public level.
Finally, any educational reform must be aligned to the ground realities. We need to tap into the creative potential lurking within every child, regardless of social and economic background. It is only in the knowledge, talent and innovativeness of our children that we can realize the promise of education as a transformative force for nation building.
The Right to Education — RTE Act
· Eighty-sixth Amendment
· Article 21-A
· Provides free and compulsory education of all children in the age group of 6 to 14 years as a Fundamental Right.
· Right to free and compulsory education in a neighborhood school till completion of Elementary Education.
· Right to Education Act, 2009 to abolish the no-detention policy in schools.
- There shall be a regular examination in the fifth class and in the eighth class at the end of every academic year.
- If a child fails in the examination he shall be given an opportunity for re-examination within a period of two months from the date of declaration of the result.
- The State Government may allow schools to hold back a child in the fifth class or in the eighth class or in both classes if he fails in the re-examination.
- The State Government may also decide not to hold back a child in any class until the completion of elementary education.
- No child shall be expelled from a school till the completion of elementary Education.
Annual Status of Education Report- ASER- 2018.
Learning levels: ‘Beyond Basics’- In ASER 2018, children in the age group 14 to 16 were given a few tasks which required calculations to be done in everyday contexts. Children were asked to calculate time, compute and figure out where to buy books given two different price lists (financial decision making), compute a discount etc.
Of the 14–16 year olds — a little under half could compute the time question correctly, 52% could apply the unitary method to calculate, about 37% were able to take the correct decision regarding the purchase of books, and less than 30% could compute the discount correctly. In all cases, fewer girls could solve questions correctly as compared to boys.
If a learning profile is flat- schooling only measures ‘time served’ and not ‘skills gained’!
The surveys are widely known — the learning levels of Indian school going children are worryingly low. After five years of schooling, only half of all children in India could read at grade 2 level. And that the results for basic arithmetic are even more worrying. In the early years of ASER, there was disbelief. But year after year, like clockwork, the report would become available in mid-January. The results were consistently saying that learning needs attention. The relentless hard work of thousands of people involved in the effort began to pay off. More studies of children’s learning began to appear. All of this influenced and contributed to local as well as national debates on education.
Back to basics is a notion of what is basic in the life of a child and where schools fit into the picture. So here are my four: 1) reading and writing; 2) numeracy; 3) creativity; and 4) health and nutrition. We have in the past focused on ‘The Three R’s” of reading, ‘riting and ‘rithmetic, which is euphonious but short-sighted.
· Reading and writing are inseparable and are the first ‘basic.’ We read to gain information, and we write to convey it. Both must be learned. schools can handle this basic
· Numeracy (‘rithmetic) is a basic skill, and the best teachers engage their young students in the joy of mastery of the mystery and utter rationality of numbers.
· The third ‘basic’ is creativity; I believe the earlier ‘back to basics’ movements failed because schools obsessed about The Three R are to the exclusion of creativity, fun, art, music and physical education.
· My fourth ‘basic’ may push health and nutrition which are basic components of a balanced education.
Today, we live in an invisible universe of mathematics. We burned fossil fuels to power the engines of the industrial age. The fuel we burn to drive the information age is mathematics. Mathematics is used in modern communications, transport, medicine, entertainment, sport, financial trading, law enforcement, science, engineering, and many other areas of life. Most of that mathematics is so specialized that we cannot hope to teach it in our schools.
What we can and should do is — make sure our children are prepared to acquire, quickly and efficiently, what particular math skills they require if and when the time comes in later life. The mathematics we teach today’s students should not be the same as their parents learned. For example, using calculators and computers does not represent a reduction in skill or the need for accuracy. On the contrary, successful use of today’s computational aids requires far greater mathematical skill, and much more mathematical insight, than we old timers had to master to get our sums right.
Diet makes a difference to learning.
It should be noted that under nutrition is usually accompanied by extreme poverty, which could impact on children’s mental development in many ways, making the unique contribution of diet difficult to untangle. Micronutrients of note include iodine, with iodine insufficiency in children being associated with around a 13 point drop in IQ; and thiamine, an insufficiency of which can lead to aggressive behavior in adolescents that can be reversed by providing thiamine supplements.
The most extreme long-term effect of diet on cognition is from malnutrition or under nutrition. Under nutrition leads to stunted growth in the first two years of life, deficits in cognition are seen right through the teenage years, even after nutritional rehabilitation. Everyone agrees that in one way or another diet has an impact on children’s cognitive abilities.
Nutrition education is the process of teaching the science of nutrition to students. It has a broad vision which encompasses educational strategies and environmental supports to encourage adoption of healthier, sustainable food choices and eating patterns. Nutrition education has the broad goal of promoting individual, family, community and global wellbeing. The school provides a rich and dynamic environment which can assist in achieving this goal.
It is tough enough being a teacher as it is. Larger classes with increasing numbers of children who are undernourished or otherwise in poor health are not a prescription for a vibrant future, not for kids, not for teachers, not for the nation. So that’s my view of ‘the basics’ in public health and Nutrition education. It’s not about going back to basics, because we’ve never gone there. I think it’s time we did.
Improving the standards of basic education is the need of the hour — it is the foundation on which the future of India’s children will depend. However, despite a steady growth in literacy rates, our education standards lag woefully due to policy changes. India’s underprivileged children continue to be deprived of good quality education- now a fundamental right.
Teachers are the other vital component of this ecosystem. Over the decades, in the absence of a robust rewards and penalty system, the interest of primary school teachers in teaching has generally been laidback. When this is combined with faulty teaching design and pedagogy rooted in top-down and rote learning, the results are hardly surprising.
Ignorance is much swifter than intelligence”, because it travels like wildfire and is the first to arrive anywhere. That’s the thing. Useless words and meaningless fads abound. We live at a time when euphemisms reign and new high-sounding words are coined left and right. We are in the midst of a naming war that wages on to occupy our unique spaces.
These days, speaking simply and concisely, using the language of our fathers and, when necessary, dusting off old words to reveal their original meaning, almost seems to be an act of bravery. In short, going back to basics appears to be the most revolutionary thing we can do amidst so much turbulence.
· There is a broad international consensus that basic education, including early childhood education, is a key building block for other levels of education. Basic education contributes to the wellbeing of individuals, their families, and the broader society in different ways.
· There is a conclusive body of evidence to indicate that the quality of education is more important than years of schooling in increasing the returns of education to individuals and society as a whole
· An integrated approach with a long-term perspective — support for basic education should be approached in an integrated way
· Adaptive learning is a working concept realized with technology which analyses learner’s skill level through advanced machine learning and creates a self learning environment for each student. In simplest words it is a personalized learning path carved for each student, it saves time and effort if you already know the lesson, and puts extra effort and time to make you comprehend a lesson, if there is a need.
· It’s a learning technique centered around the interests and needs of each individual learner as opposed to universal standards. Rapidly adopted by schools and universities across the developed part of the world, adaptive learning is touted to revolutionize education in future.
Dr N prabhu dev
Former VC Bangalore university
Former Director Jayadeva institute of cardiology.