How buildingBlocks intends to complete education?

The last two posts talk about the caveats or problems in the current schooling system and the ideal role that education needs to play. This post would highlight how we at buildingBlocks intend to play a role in completing the education. The chart below would give a pictorial view of what are the aspects of education that we would emphasise on:



Obviously, Vedic Teachings and Yoga are nothing but some examples of providing a spiritual experience and physical exercise respectively. So, if we add the incomplete education system of today and the buildingBlocks experience, it would complete the educational experience of the kids of today. Our experiments at the Arya Samaj, Moti Nagar are good examples of how this correction in the system works. Additionally, you can see how this complete system works in the picture below:



Finally, if you think there are some holes that exist in this holistic educational framework, please feel free to add anything through the comments section.

What's wrong with the current schooling system?

So here's my second post in the series of analysis about the education and its purposes?

So, let's see how the current schooling system in India (and that too public -- forget about the government aided) is faring? I believe that the current schooling system is able to do only 25% of it's job. Explanation is below:



As you can see in the figure above, the schools should be able to impart training/education in six categories, however, the Indian schools are providing training only in three areas (academics, physical and creative) aspects. One may ask why half bit of proficiency in the field of Academics, Physical and Creative aspects (actually the reason for 25% performance level). We do not need any science to prove that the learning, prevalent in our schools, is very rote based where the joy of learning is sucked out of the whole experience. Evidently, we faired worst amongst countries like Singapore, US and Australia if we believe India Today's recent survey. So, a lack of experiential learning from academics makes us believe that even schools are failing in imparting the 'right' academics education. Physical and Creative education is also suffering from similar problems (details on that to follow soon...).

So, how are we going to change this when these problems exist in overwhelming quantities throughout the urban society irresepective of any segment. My next post would try to tackle that issue. However, if you differ with our analysis at any point of time, please feel free to jump in -- the discussion would only create a better understanding of the problems and possibly solutions.

holistic schooling system

I reckon our organization is as strong as the research that we put in definition of our course curriculum. We have decided to invest into this very important and often overlooked aspect of education, the curriculum.

In order to ensure that we do justice with the same, we spent close to a month to come up with the role of education in the society. Can education be limited to the box of market based education, which is pervasive in today's world?

a). Is the education system limited to produce linear dimensioned individuals (read doctors, engineers, CA's, journalists etc).

b). Or is the purpose of the education to produce people who have multiple dimensions -- leaders at work, participants in community, compassionate for poor or the disadvantaged, ethical in their dealings.

After the brainstorming sessions with several eminent educationists and thought leaders, we have come to the conclusion that education is supposed to do (b). Unfortunately, what it's ending up to do is (a) and yes! that's true even for the creamy schools. The results are evident in the failure of the evolution of the Indian society into a ethical, compassionate and homogenous group. The results are also evident in today's kids becoming good engineers and doctors, however, insecure and lacklustre leaders.

We also came up with the model for holistic education -- and what it essentially means. Additionally, we analyzed what's being done by today's schools and where is the education system miserably failing and the role that buildingBlocks can play to complete the education -- I plan to cover this in two-three entries. This entry would just talk about what is holistic education:



As shown in the picture, the education is more than the commonly perceived academics and physical education. Education includes other very important fields like moral/ethical, spiritual, civic and creative education. If you think that there's more or less to education than this -- please enrich the discussion with your comments.

Indian Montessori Congress 2007

Anyone who has any stake in the education of the child education should definitely attend this Indian Montessory Congress 2007. I think it's a must for the educationists and NTT course holders. If you are planning to be in Bangalore during this time and have interest in knowing more about buildingblocks, please let me know through the comments section.

what's our wealth?

An observation that was impressed upon us in our Macro Economics class by Professor Karma was that the wealth of any nation is it's people. This is truer for some nations than others. For instance, our nation India has been built only by the human resources as we have not been blessed with natural resources (read oil) like Saudi Arabia, Iran or some of the countries in the world.

Whatever modest achievements, we have had, have been through our people's enterprise, perseverance and grit. So, essentially our true wealth lies in our people rather than any particular mineral, stone or whatever. So our goal should be to pay most attention to the grooming our people. This is a question that I would like to pose to the audience of this blog -- are we really doing that?

Is our government, rising above the petty partisan politics, ready to consider education as an equally important asset as roads or electricity. Our we as individuals ensuring that we become a stakeholder in the education of not our own kids, however of the whole society itself. I am sure the answers to all these questions are very grim and so is the future of nation.

I have thought about this a lot and have also worked on a long-term solution. I will post my solution on the blog in next couple of days. However, would be interested in listening to yours as well.

Further, we just launched a new feedback form on our website as we consider that the parents and teachers are the most important stakeholders in the whole educational reform process and we intend to learn a lot from their suggestions -- if you happen to be one of those concerned with the wealth of this nation, please give suggestions over here.

buildingBlocks@wikipedia

Finally, started promoted buildingBlocks on wiki as well... Wrote down a little blurb abt the mission and ideology of buildingblocks over here. People may pass it as a cheap marketing tool, however, I envision this wiki to become a source of universal feedback on the concept of something like buildingBlocks. Further, we plan to upload all the minutest details of our course curriculum and expansion plans on the wiki to initiate an unhindered third party dialogue with the consumers.

Next to come an entry about my experience of Mumbai as well.

Meeting with Aakar

Finally, I got a chance to meet up with some extraordinarily good and responsible talent in India. After talking to so many entrepreneurs/professionals who have their minds fixated on bottom lines, it was very refreshing to talk to someone who thought about social responsibility as well.

Yes! I got a chance to meet one of the founders of Aakar solutions (Saurabh Saxena). He was also in favor of doing something socially responsibly with a keen eye towards maintaining a healthy bottom line to ensure longevity of the organization. We got a chance to talk about the ailing aspects of contemporary education system. The whole discussion was very enriching and encouraging.


Additionally, I got some really good suggestions from him about not waiting till eternity to get out with something that is a good foundation and can be improved upon. Further, we seemed to agree on the problem of pervasive mediocrity in every aspect of our society – essentially the need to differentiate buildingBlocks.The issue that it is not just another hobby class, rather a place that offers holistic approach towards education. On the whole, it was great to catch up with entrepreneurs who are as passionate (and in all likelihoods more) about providing enriching education to today’s kids. The only hope is that collectively, we will take today’s education system to the next level.

off to Bombay

I will be meeting with the founder member of Aakar solution during my trip in Bombay. This would be a good trip as we intend to learn a lot from the meeting and see how their curriculum has enriched the lives of the aspiring children of today. We may have many synergies with what we are trying to do with buildingblocks.

Further, I am hoping that the travel time would allow me to work on some good theories of Montessori approach.

Content Management Intern Wanted

Content Management Intern: Job Profile


Job Title: Content Manager, iMom.in

Job Responsibilities:

1. Content:
a. Driving the syndication of content for iMom.in.
b. Assisting in formulation of features in the website.
c. Assisting in deciding the strategy for content.
d. Owning the site editorial feature.
e. Owning the site blog feature.

2. Advertisement:
a. Create advertisement revenue strategy for iMom.in
i. Identify potential partners
ii. Initiate the relationship building with the advertisers.

3. Product Management:
a. Provide inputs/requirements for customization of content management system.

Desired Qualities:
The candidate should be an enterprising, driven and creative individual with good written English communication skills. He/she would be connecting with different content specialists of related fields therefore we expect the candidate to be good at getting along with others. Finally, most importantly ethics are extremely important for our organization and absence of same in the candidate would warrant disqualification. Further, the candidate should be a first/second year Journalism/Mass Communication student at Delhi based reputable university.

Length of internship:
The length of internship is variable with a review every three months or at the end of the internship, which ever is earlier.

Remuneration:
The interns would be paid Rs. 2500/- per month on the 5th of every month and they would be expected to work anywhere from 80-100 hours a month. In case of examination days, the interns would be paid on an hourly basis of Rs. 30/- per hour.

Anyone who is interested can contact us at tarun.bhalla@buildingblocks.in

Chandigarh: The only planned city in India

I was in Chandigarh for last two days to attend a friend's wedding (who was visiting from Seattle). The whole experience was very interesting and enriching. For one, Chandigarh is the only planned city in India. And, believe me it was visible in the wonderfully laid out six lane city roads and complete absence of skyscrapers. The traffic, on Chandigarh's streets, is easily negotiable and I can bet running/walking on the roads early morning would be a wonderful experience. Further, the way the different sectors are laid out makes it extremely easy for any new visitor to figure out the directions.

The planned nature of the city has also in some sense provided civic sense to the citizens of the city. Lane driving was strictly being followed and the rowdism (a common trait of travel in Delhi) was unbelievably absent from the lovely streets of Chandigarh. Most of the city seems to be inhabitated by the so-called elites of the urban society. An interesting question to answer would be if the wonderful beauty of the city is because of the elites or the elites are present there because of the planned city. Anyways, I would pose this question to the audience of this blog?

Further, we (Mausam and I) did some sight seeing as well. We went to the High Court of Punjab (an architectural wonder), the Nek Chand Rock garden and a play school in Chandigarh. We actually sat through a hearing in the High court, which was very intriguing and broke so many stereotypes that many of us would have had of Indian courts (thanks to the pervasive Bollywood). The high court experience warrants a separate blog entry and so does the session in Classical music that Mausam gave to me.

However, I do want to talk about the Nek Chand Rock garden. It was an incredible piece of art, creativity and love for the enviornment for an unknown Roads Inspector of Chandigarh city (Nek Chand).

To do justice to his works, I would start wiuth a quotation that Mr. M.N.Sharma, the former chief architect of Chandigarh had to say, "Nek Chand's architectural and engineering innovations have touch of Antonio Gaudi". Since, I visited Barcelona recently, I cannot agree more with this statement.

You can find out more about Nek Chand's rock garden over here.

mathMonkey

I was exchanging few emails with Ken Williams of Vedic Mathematics Academy. It seems that he has joined a new venture based in US on bringing Vedic Maths to the popular mass. Their venture is called MathMonkey. Is'nt it ironical that India, which is sitting on such wealth of spiritual and scientific knowledge, is not able to use it for it's own betterment.

Having had the privilege to use some of the ten sutras of Vedic Mathematics, I can say that its such a beautiful language of Maths. And, it's great that there is growing recognition of Vedic Mathematics now. I hope our efforts with buildingBlocks would help us further propogate this incredible powerful mathematics tool here in India itself.

May be someday we can branch out to have Mathematics specific crash courses called mathBlocks :).

Thanks,
Tarun

philosophy behind buildingBlocks (an educational venture)

So, why education and that too primary and elementary?

1. The future of the nation: It’s an adage that “children are the future of any nation”. What’s the state of future of our nation or may be some economist or statistician may want to ask what the “future of nation” index is? I can bet you without even going after any empirical evidence, its worse than what it was 10 or 20 years back.
And, what are the reasons?
a. Growing indifference or ignorance of parents towards what’s right for their children.
b. Rampant commercialization of education sector in absence of proactive regulatory or monitoring authorities.
c. Increased proliferation of Television in the Indian household and worst still unmonitored viewing of censored programs.
And the results:
1. Today’s kids mature before the right age.
2. Traditional values in our kids are a thing of past.
3. Today’s kids are prone to depression and psychological problems (that were unheard of just a few years back).

Still, all these issues in themselves do not warrant a start of yet another new school or educational institution as there are already existing schools and even alternatives, so why don’t they fix the problem in our society?

2. Existing education system is weak: The existing education system of India has comprehensively weakened since independence for all the different sections of the society. The lowest strata of the society (i.e. the poor and impoverished) are pretty much helpless and in a dismal state, given the indifference of the majority of government supported educational institutions. Further, even the schools catering to the middle class and affluent parts of the society are in a mess. A good example of that is the India Today’s recent survey where our supposedly genius kids are trailing behind their counterparts from other countries. Mind you these samples were taken from supposedly the best schools of India. So, it’s up to the reader to contemplate how bad would we perform in the case of MCD, NDMC or other government supported schools. One may think that there are already existing alternate education systems that could support the ailing education system. However, there is a caveat there as well:

3. Unethical practices prevalent by Private players: One of the most unfortunate aspects of the reasonably working free market capitalism is that the worst aspects of capitalism are mostly visible in the developing nations. The alternate education mostly being carried out by private players like Mother’s pride and Shemrock are nothing but mammoth factories with a penchant in good marketing. It is shocking how these factories operate a Marketing department under the name of Research and Development. Additionally, none of the big players (especially Mother’s pride and Shemrock) are adhering to the recommended guidelines set up by NCERT (worst they don’t even know if these guidelines exist). As, Dr. Ranjana Sharma has pointed out in her recent research, these money thirsty corporate pre school raiders are fiercely after profits and bottom lines so the costs spent on training figures last in their scheme of things. Lack of proper training and pomp and show of these marketing outfits are doing no good to the society other than creating consumers out of these innocent kids.

So, with such dismal situations prevailing in the education system, I could have done two things:
1. Crib about the problem and feel helpless.
2. Else, take control of the situation and try to offer solutions which work towards making the future of nation complete well rounded individuals. Citizens who enjoy their freedoms and rights, however, at the same time are cognizant of their responsibilities towards themselves, their families, society and finally the nation.

So, that’s the goal and philosophy of building blocks:

To instill confidence, moral values, mental sharpness and responsibility into the children of today so that they grow up to become model citizens of tomorrow.

In order to breakaway from the dubious past of inefficiencies and over promise and introduce long lasting change, we have invested heavily into Research and Design of course curriculum and our program. If you would like to know how we have knitted together both science and spirituality to come up with this new form of corrective education, please click over here.

Unrelated, however, good content

I saw this ad sent to me by an old friend about Mahatma Gandhi. This was a masterpiece and honestly I used to ponder about how was Mahatma Gandhi able to generate a mass revolution in the absence of the real time communication tools that we have today. I guess it was his steadfast belief in truth, integrity and honesty that lead to the trust that people had in him.

And, as he said in one of his writings: "If your mission is true and you follow the path honestly without expecting any results, people would join you and you would win in the truest form".

May we get that messenger of God again in this life term.

Thanks,
Tarun

Vedic Mathematics

hello there,

I got this email today from the Vedic Mathematics Newsletter that I had enrolled to last year. Infact, my tryst with the beauty of Vedic Mathematics was fairly recent. Last year, during a seminar organized at University of Washington, I got to know about the tremendous potential of Vedic Mathematics in creative computation.

Anyhow, I got this note from one Ken Williams (who and I think his organization) is trying to debate and discuss the decision of Ireland's government on the accession to the usage of calculators in the state examinations. You can read more about the post over here.

Since, I have been fortunate to be enchanted by the symmetry and one-ness of Vedic Mathematics, I believe this debate is crucial and holds high importance to stop deterioation of our over dependence on machines. Let's see what course does this debate in the future.

Thanks,
Tarun Bhalla

First plane of children's development

Montessori observed that children less than six years old are clearly self centric and ego centric in action and attitude. Although, these qualities could have been interpreted as negative, but Montessori realized that this natural drive of young children can possible provide the focus and energy for their self development.

She envisioned of a program whereby a child could develop, with proper aide by the adult, into a strong individual capable of independent action, language, self discipline, and basic academic skills of writing, reading and mathematics.

Additionally, she noted that children less than six years old could go through specific and well defined periods of interest in certain areas of development. For example, there is a period of intense absorption with order, another for language, and another for learning to walk. During each of these time frames, varying in duration from months to years, the child is so focused on the particular development that he will ignore other phenomena previously of great interest to him. His energy level and dedication to his single minded task are extra ordinary but terminate just as abruptly as they began. Montessori called these intervals Sensitive Periods and the children in this plane of development as "Sensorial Explorers".

We, at buildingBlocks, plan to use these "sensory explorer" qualities of kids to really develop them into individuals capable of independent action, language and self discipline.

Montessori Approach revisited

The travel allowed me to read a very interesting book on the Montessori approach. I will use the medium of this blog to write summary about this book.

As per Dr. Montessori, a child goes through four planes of development that span through the age 0 to 24. At the conclusion of age 24, the adult is fully formed. If all has gone well, he/she is a mature being, ready to live wisely and responsibly and to fulfill his/her part in serving humanity.

The four different planes of development identified by Dr. Montessori are as:
1. First plane of development: 0 to 6 years old.
2. Second plane of development: 6 to 12 years old.
3. Third plane of development: 12 to 18 years old.
4. Fourth and final plane of development: 18 to 24 years old.

Each plane of development is associated with certain characterstics and associated challenges, I would go into these planes individually in a separate blog entry.

Two Months break

hello readers and fellow educators,

Sorry! for such a long break on this blog. Actually, I was on a vacation for two months and as a result was not able to add much to this blog. The break was really good and refreshing and now I can concentrate on putting all these theories to actual use in buildingBlocks.

BTW, if any of you is interested in knowing about our travel experiences, you can log on to our travel blog.

Rest from now on I will ensure to populate this blog with important information frequently.