Topic by S.K. Ravi
What needs to be changed?
Responses
Venkat Raghavan
Below is the link to a brief write-up of mine published in a web magazine 13 years ago. This was in response to an article on education on this Tamil/English magazine Nilacharal. This was in June 2001, and I am glad some progress has been made in using visual aids in schools. When I wrote this, I would have never imagined that we would have cheap tablets (2001 was long before iPAD) available for distribution to rural students.
http://www.nilacharal.com/news/rajan/venk.html
Chitra - wife of H.K. Siva
Siva used to tell that various topics are discussed among your circle and he used tell about them briefly. Since this time, the topic was about education, he asked me to give my views too. I am not very clear about what is happening in Indian education completely other than children studying for the sake of studying and not for gaining knowledge to build their career.
When I went to Japan in 1995, I was told that Japan was like India 30 years before and changed drastically in a short span of time. They admire for Indian Software knowledge. Now surely India is surviving due to the strong analytical ability and more than that the adaptability to any conditions. Even now, our friends admire Indian brains. In that case, why should we blame our educational system? Since we see other educational system, we find fault with our system. Do we have a faulty system or what? I cannot answer these questions anyway.
Here I would like to just introduce few things that I know which many of you might also know about. When we interviewed teachers for our school in Guangzhou, one had just come from Delhi, India. She told that there is a very well designed computer educational system that needs to be introduced in our school too. It is Educomp, education through visual media. Then I came back home and surfed the Internet to know more about it. I was literally taken aback to see the modern way of teaching that is spreading all over India. They have reached millions of students through that system. Science is more fun to learn as every topic is covered with media visualization. There was one more educational package that allows children to learn Science by doing practically even to explain a small scientific concept. That was also quite interesting.
The next thing that I would like to share is really quite interesting. I have a friend living in Hong Kong who wanted to introduce once of her schoolmate friend who lived in Mumbai but working now in a remote village in Maharashtra. This Headmaster had taken a more interesting step to teach English to his students. Yes. My friend is teaching spoken English to those children through Skype few times in a week. I think this is a very good initiative from both of them. I used to think if more people try to do this, not only for English for other subjects too, there will be more knowledge sharing in our schools.
I would like to put forward this into the forum that if even one of the group member succeeds in doing this, that would be great. There will be many to donate a computer, projector and Internet connection for the school but very few to do this as a service in their free time. Even if we love to do, we need to find the right person who can implement this in the school. We need to find a dedicated teacher for that.
From the time my children were studying here in Hong Kong, I found that the subjects taught here are all applied to day to day life may be Mathematics, Geography or General Studies. I always think about our system. They teach lot of things but they must teach how to connect them to their life. They must know why we should learn History or Geography or Science.
Last year for a strength of just 15 pupil in our school, we had 9 teachers, five class teachers, art and craft teacher, music teacher, ICT teacher and PE teacher. That is the trend of International schools outside India.
Hope our school system changes in due course and mould more brainy people.
Devanand
This is my 2 cents on the above and my take is on the normal Academic institutions and not highly sophisticated private institutions.
Academic content: very high
Room for self expression: does not exist
Communication media: Mostly written and oral. Traditional giving no scope for improvisation. Spoon feeding and not thought provocative.
Extra curricular activities: only sports and limited self development activities like elocution, debates.
Almost zero emphasis on Arts and Music.
Today the emphasis should be more on learning through exploration, Group activities, character building, leadership and organizational skills at the early ages . This grooming should help them conquer whatever field they develop their interests at a later date without any external support.
Krishnan
Thanks for these interesting links.
Power of internet today. When we were studying, we had only the single channel TV ( Doordarshan ) and the UGC programs were very informative.
Watching UGC programs regularly helped me in answering the GATE entrance test in geology !!!
On the Indian education system:
1) Schools:
The syllabus has changed quite well today. Many schools have Educomp Smart boards to screen informative videos for kids, and the kids enjoy it.
Additionally school kids in cities & towns resort to internet to learn.
2) The drop outs:
What about the rest of India ?
The school dropout percentage is pretty high. At the end of it, many cannot even read & understand, speak, write & communicate, cannot do simple math for their money matters.
It is time that a capsule mode of learning is put in place in villages for these dropouts, even adults to make them more "Educated" or "Smart".
The medium could be TV, or Radio in villages, or even Camps at regular intervals.
Time these people are Lifted Up from their depths of despair.
3) Professional courses:
With the number of engineering colleges and medical colleges in the country, there is a lack of quality lecturers in these colleges. Many courses do not even have lecturers and the students fend for themselves through internet and self-study.
There are very good professors in different colleges who can deliver good lectures..............and we were fortunate to have had a majority of them in PSG Tech.
It might be a great idea to have an audio-visual collection of lectures from these great professors as an internet library collection for any student to access, and even lecturers to hone their skills.
For any one looking for a business idea, this could be a great one to take up.
4) Recertification: Time to have recertification of professionals every 3 years with certain hours of compulsory study. This is followed in the medical fraternity in US.
What needs to be changed?
Responses
Venkat Raghavan
Below is the link to a brief write-up of mine published in a web magazine 13 years ago. This was in response to an article on education on this Tamil/English magazine Nilacharal. This was in June 2001, and I am glad some progress has been made in using visual aids in schools. When I wrote this, I would have never imagined that we would have cheap tablets (2001 was long before iPAD) available for distribution to rural students.
http://www.nilacharal.com/news/rajan/venk.html
Chitra - wife of H.K. Siva
Siva used to tell that various topics are discussed among your circle and he used tell about them briefly. Since this time, the topic was about education, he asked me to give my views too. I am not very clear about what is happening in Indian education completely other than children studying for the sake of studying and not for gaining knowledge to build their career.
When I went to Japan in 1995, I was told that Japan was like India 30 years before and changed drastically in a short span of time. They admire for Indian Software knowledge. Now surely India is surviving due to the strong analytical ability and more than that the adaptability to any conditions. Even now, our friends admire Indian brains. In that case, why should we blame our educational system? Since we see other educational system, we find fault with our system. Do we have a faulty system or what? I cannot answer these questions anyway.
Here I would like to just introduce few things that I know which many of you might also know about. When we interviewed teachers for our school in Guangzhou, one had just come from Delhi, India. She told that there is a very well designed computer educational system that needs to be introduced in our school too. It is Educomp, education through visual media. Then I came back home and surfed the Internet to know more about it. I was literally taken aback to see the modern way of teaching that is spreading all over India. They have reached millions of students through that system. Science is more fun to learn as every topic is covered with media visualization. There was one more educational package that allows children to learn Science by doing practically even to explain a small scientific concept. That was also quite interesting.
The next thing that I would like to share is really quite interesting. I have a friend living in Hong Kong who wanted to introduce once of her schoolmate friend who lived in Mumbai but working now in a remote village in Maharashtra. This Headmaster had taken a more interesting step to teach English to his students. Yes. My friend is teaching spoken English to those children through Skype few times in a week. I think this is a very good initiative from both of them. I used to think if more people try to do this, not only for English for other subjects too, there will be more knowledge sharing in our schools.
I would like to put forward this into the forum that if even one of the group member succeeds in doing this, that would be great. There will be many to donate a computer, projector and Internet connection for the school but very few to do this as a service in their free time. Even if we love to do, we need to find the right person who can implement this in the school. We need to find a dedicated teacher for that.
From the time my children were studying here in Hong Kong, I found that the subjects taught here are all applied to day to day life may be Mathematics, Geography or General Studies. I always think about our system. They teach lot of things but they must teach how to connect them to their life. They must know why we should learn History or Geography or Science.
Last year for a strength of just 15 pupil in our school, we had 9 teachers, five class teachers, art and craft teacher, music teacher, ICT teacher and PE teacher. That is the trend of International schools outside India.
Hope our school system changes in due course and mould more brainy people.
Devanand
This is my 2 cents on the above and my take is on the normal Academic institutions and not highly sophisticated private institutions.
Academic content: very high
Room for self expression: does not exist
Communication media: Mostly written and oral. Traditional giving no scope for improvisation. Spoon feeding and not thought provocative.
Extra curricular activities: only sports and limited self development activities like elocution, debates.
Almost zero emphasis on Arts and Music.
Today the emphasis should be more on learning through exploration, Group activities, character building, leadership and organizational skills at the early ages . This grooming should help them conquer whatever field they develop their interests at a later date without any external support.
Krishnan
Thanks for these interesting links.
Power of internet today. When we were studying, we had only the single channel TV ( Doordarshan ) and the UGC programs were very informative.
Watching UGC programs regularly helped me in answering the GATE entrance test in geology !!!
On the Indian education system:
1) Schools:
The syllabus has changed quite well today. Many schools have Educomp Smart boards to screen informative videos for kids, and the kids enjoy it.
Additionally school kids in cities & towns resort to internet to learn.
2) The drop outs:
What about the rest of India ?
The school dropout percentage is pretty high. At the end of it, many cannot even read & understand, speak, write & communicate, cannot do simple math for their money matters.
It is time that a capsule mode of learning is put in place in villages for these dropouts, even adults to make them more "Educated" or "Smart".
The medium could be TV, or Radio in villages, or even Camps at regular intervals.
Time these people are Lifted Up from their depths of despair.
3) Professional courses:
With the number of engineering colleges and medical colleges in the country, there is a lack of quality lecturers in these colleges. Many courses do not even have lecturers and the students fend for themselves through internet and self-study.
There are very good professors in different colleges who can deliver good lectures..............and we were fortunate to have had a majority of them in PSG Tech.
It might be a great idea to have an audio-visual collection of lectures from these great professors as an internet library collection for any student to access, and even lecturers to hone their skills.
For any one looking for a business idea, this could be a great one to take up.
4) Recertification: Time to have recertification of professionals every 3 years with certain hours of compulsory study. This is followed in the medical fraternity in US.