Tag: Education

Exams Cancelled: Adults Failed, Not Students

For the second year running, the school exams are cancelled in India. This year, even the board exams got cancelled. With no exams, there isn’t scope to ask questions to students. So, let’s try asking some questions to adults: The Government, the education establishment and also us, the parents.

Online education/online learning works, why not online exams?

Ever since the schools were shut down, the Government, Central and States, have been very enthusiastic about online education/online learning. Umpteen statements have been made that no learning loss has been ensured to students by the seamless transition to digital teaching mode. The claims say that the students are doing well, as they would have done by physically attending schools.

Now, the question to be asked is that if online education/online learning has been so successful, why can’t the same success be replicated for online exams? No, this is not possible. Why would that be? It will be said that there are issues with infrastructure/connectivity/integrity and all. It will be said that online exams are not feasible for every student.

Agreed, online exams do not work in India. Well, then how does online education/online learning work in India? If online exams, even as a concept, do not have a presence in India, how can online education/online learning have a real-life application? If online exams are looked down upon as a bane, why a diametrically opposite treatment for online education/online learning as a boon?

What did the education establishment do for a full year?

COVID-19 is sure to be blamed for exams postponement and cancellations in 2020. But in 2021 also? Even after one full year? When the emergency strikes without notice, we are unprepared. We say – what to do, we are helpless? However, when the emergency continues, even then do we continue to be unprepared? Even then, do we say – what to do, we are helpless?

Surely, the Government authorities and the education establishment that control the destiny of students as know-all didn’t assume that the pandemic will vanish in a month or two or even six months/a year. They are THE people expected to be with foresight, with immaculate judgement, with advanced tools to guide the country’s children.

So, what was the scenario planning that the education establishment did for one full year? What were the multiple options considered for the students? What were the considerations, trade-offs, alternatives basis the levels of the pandemic across the country for school and board exams?

Well, after one full year, we got the same answer – school and board exams cancelled, as they were last year. Did the education establishment do any homework at all for the last full year?

Everything moves on, why not the exams?

Between last year and to date, everything in India has got a move on. The country has wobbled across various stages of lockdown all throughout. The IPL, cinemas, bars and nightclubs have also opened, shut down again and will reopen shortly. However, one aspect has remained steadfast – The schools are shut the whole time.

As a country, we come up with paradoxical solutions. The safety of the children is the topmost priority. So, how do we go about ensuring it? By locking them inside and making everyone else free to their will. The future of the children is the second priority. So, how do we go about ensuring it? By cancelling school and board exams and continuing with everything else as normal.

The school and board exams are for a short duration, unlike school reopening. If the school and board exams are so important, that they are claimed to be, why not consider shutting down everything else for a week to ten days so that the exams are done and dusted with? Why can’t the country stand still for a brief time so that the students can write their exams in the mean-while?

If the nation has a hard lockdown, all of us would remain home compulsorily. Won’t we remain home for our children to write exams safely? Why can’t the Prime Minister of the country ask the citizens for this small contribution?

Why school and board exams can exist ONLY as a rote festival?

Are school and board exams an end in itself or the means to an end? If they are means to an end, which they are supposed to be, they can surely go beyond the three hours rote festival. Why can’t the education establishment come up with even a single alternative to exams in its current format? There can be multiple avenues to gauge the learning and the application of the students.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. COVID-19 lockdown called for online education/online learning. However, when it came to school and board exams, rather than desperate measures, we chose no measures, with exams cancelled. Is the three-hour rote festival so sacrosanct that we would rather not have exams in any other format?

The Adults Failed

Well, adults are not supposed to give exams. Also, our children are not taught to question the adults. What’s the bother?  No answers required for any of the above questions or whatever.

The Government and the education establishment get away with their shameful and irresponsible failures and we, parents, remain spectators.

The nation continues failing her children. School and board exams are dead. Long live school and board exams.

What are your views on the subject?

PS: I am a stay-at-home father to six-year-old twin daughters, neither an educationist nor an expert, just growing up together with my children. The above thoughts are an expression of parenting is having an opinion, getting involved and trying to better.

Stand UP, Speak OUT!!! #IAmAParent.

Learning Environment For Children Is Everywhere

Our soon-to-be seven-year-old twin daughters do not go to school because they are children. So, what about their learning environment? How/Where/When do they learn? Well, they learn from each experience/interaction, all the time, all around them. Unschooling doesn’t mean that their learning is compromised in any manner.

I am not talking about any abstract concept when I say that the learning environment for children is everywhere. Parents are much better at imparting learning than what they are made to believe. More so, we grossly under-estimate a child’s innate capability to grasp and soak up learning by believing that learning can happen only in a certain environment.

Learning Environment For My Daughters

Plants. Nature-walk. House-hold chores. Vegetable shopping. Playing with mud. Yes, with seeds, too. Cooking. Positive screen time. Krishna Fruit Juice Centre. Number Recognition Activity. Stone Collection. Of course, in-house numerous art and craft sessions. Visits to parks and lakes. Trips and events with Dirty Feet. Language Games. Indian Wedding. Rangoli Making. Anganwadi Visit.

Anything and everything. Anywhere and everywhere. Anytime and every time. Activities done multiple times and also, one-off.

If one believes that the children are better served with hands-on experiential learning, what would be the logical extension? Omnipresent learning environment with parental involvement. We have seen ample evidence that the twins learn at each experience, every interaction. I might forget the reference in future, but they don’t. I might forget what I taught them, but they won’t.

Reading books to daughters is an integral part of the learning environment but by no means the only part. It is just one among many. We don’t leave our tasks to give the girls a monologue. Rather, the children get interwoven with the job-on-hand and their learning becomes a part of the narrative, at their pace. And, nothing digital, please.

For us, the learning environment has been diverse physical locations and contexts. We give a free hand to the curiosity, the urge to explore, the inquisitiveness of our daughters and that’s about it. They ask questions, we try answering. We raise queries, they try guessing. Together, we make assumptions, put it into action, see the output faltering and that’s the learning, for them and also us.

Rocket science and medical science would not be amenable to the above. But, it works for logical reasoning and common sense, numerical capability and literacy, real-life application and critical thinking. For passing on life skills to children, the omnipresent learning environment is a sure-shot winner.

The Power Of Unstructured Time

We are made to believe that a packed schedule is a must for a child’s learning. The child has to be up to something, have to be engaged and taught for her/him to learn. For us, adults, learning has to be tangible, assessed and proven that the child has learned. We assume that learning requires a structured environment, certified instructors, certain pedagogy and more of the same.

Well, somehow, the children did not get the message. Not until they become well-meaning but misdirected adults themselves, like us. The children are blank slates and they pick up from whatever, wherever, whenever they question, do, see and are told in that order. The structured time believes in exactly the reverse order, with major, if not all, stress on instructions to be followed to the rote.

Unstructured time exposes the children to different ways of using their minds and bodies. They are not told, not expected to memorize and reproduce what is. Rather, they try and figure out what isn’t, what can’t, what won’t followed by what might and if they are lucky enough, they also learn what is. And, this remains with them for the rest of their lives.

The adults yearn for the unstructured time of their childhood. However, when it comes to their children, they are all shackled up in structured time in the name of learning. We need to give our children and ourselves a break for the unstructured time – for this is when the memories are made and lifelong learning happen.

The Barriers And The Belief

There are, of course, many barriers to the belief of the learning environment for children is everywhere. However, when the child will show in action/put in words what they have seen and perceived in any of their interactions, it will reinforce that you are on the right path. Each experience with the child has a value beyond anything that a classroom can ever teach. And, the child surely learns.

I am not an educator. I have no empirical data/study to back up my belief. My wife’s and my hands-on experiences with our twin daughters show that they are learning – intended/unintended/not even thought in our wildest dreams with each interaction and we move on to the next experience.

What are your thoughts on the learning environment for children?

PS: I am a stay-at-home father to six-year-old twin daughters, neither an educationist nor an expert, just growing up together with my children. The above thoughts are an expression of parenting is having an opinion, getting involved and trying to better.

Stand UP, Speak OUT!!! #IAmAParent.