Education breeds Mediocrity

I read this article " Take a Right Turn " in Times of India where the author mentions about the brain tilt in India.I totally agree with his notions that Indians on average are left-minded people i.e they have a better logical and analytical thinking, but lack in terms of creativity and innovation which are the forte of the right-minded people.Why is that so? Do we truly lack original and creative thinkers?
Probably.And the reason for this is our redundant education system and also the upbringing to some extent.All kids are creative, inquisitive, explorers and love challenges.But as they grow up these qualities seem to vanish in thin air.Why? It is because we (society) curb their uniqueness, their creativity and push them to follow the 'safer path' , or a path taken by majority', or a path which gives good returns in terms of fame and finance but never a path which is of one's own calling.
It saddens me to say that most of our schools have become xerox machines which are producing loads of xerox individuals year after year.The kids are losing their originality and individuality.This kind of system breeds mediocrity and in present times we have started celebrating mediocrity! In fact this is the root cause of our failure to produce good leaders.We are conditioning kids from the very beginning to follow the footsteps rather than making their own footprints.Then, how can our nation expect the birth of any leader, forget good or bad.

Eklavya Innovations

I promised earlier to talk in detail about some of the innovations that Eklavya is involved with. I have tried to compile the list and apologize in advance if I missed something:

Eklavya School Innovations:

1. No TV day:

The school observes a No TV day on Thursday and to ensure that it is effective, the children are asked to bring art and handicraft items that are displayed in the assembly. This is a very novel idea and is an initiative from the school to ensure that the children who are the most susceptible to fall prey to the highly intoxicating digital media are kept away from it at least for one day. Further, the usage of incentives for children ensures that they do it for the joy rather than being arm twisted into this. And, this was reflected in the quality of the projects that they were able to come up with.

2. No Tuitions:

The school follows a policy that there would be no tuitions by the children or by the teachers. This again takes care of the extreme stress that some of the students are put to these days by their overly ambitious parents.

3. Low Profile Chief Guests:

This school has a distinct way of celebrating any special day in the school. Instead of calling up some VIP (politician or bureaucrat) to the school, the senior citizens of India are called to the school as chief guests. This serves as two purposes:

1. Ensures that children see real life role models.

2. The senior citizens, who are increasingly seen as the burden on the society, get their due position as the wise of the society.

4. Human Resource Development Program:

This was the first time that I came across the concepts of organizational learning or teacher development within a school environment. I have to be honest that the program was far more effective than all the professional organizations that I have worked at (RealNetworks, Wipro, drugstore and Expedia). Teacher learning had a strong emphasis; there were HRD programs for the bus driver and conductors as well. The programs were implemented both in word and spirit.

5. Research Wing and Taleem:

Eklavya has a professionally managed research wing within the school itself that does research on teaching methodologies, curriculum preparation and teaching aide development. Taleem is an initiative in that direction – the teaching aides, which are developed in Taleem, successfully reflect our cultural ethos, are engaging and above all are successful in teaching children through the medium of aides.

6. Lavya – the counseling Wing:

A group of teachers have formulated a counseling wing amongst themselves. The broad objective of Lavya is to provide counseling support to all the parents. This way the parents and teachers form an inclusive program to take care of the psychological needs of the children of today.

7. Open Libraries:

Eklavya has a concept of open libraries, where the books are not kept inside the closet rather children are enticed to books and encouraged to interact with them.

Obviously, there are many more innovations that Eklavya has succeeded in implementing; however, my three day exposure was able to give me these insights only. One learning for many of Delhi based schools could be that not many of these things are extremely expensive to imitate. So, I would just urge the schools of today to step out of the darkness of ignorance and come forward to be the light of beacon to homogenize our society before its too late.

And on a personal end, the trip was very successful as I have found a living role model in Professor Sunil Handa, who is the founder of the Eklavya foundation.

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.