https://edition.cnn.com/videos/world/2021/03/27/suez-canal-ship-kids-solve-orig-jnd.cnn
Very good.
This is how actually teaching must be done.
All that I am going to say may be interpreted as idealism but it is just a matter of change in perspective ( especially with regard to 'Primary Education'.) of teachers moving from imparting something to enabling, encouraging and supervising without excessive interferences and instructions.
While the business of education ( read as mass literacy) has to be business to be viable and sustainable, at least in primary education it must also be about creating contexts and conducive atmosphere to enable children to explore and to learn in many ways besides and beyond making them as mere passive listening robots.
I wish many in teaching profession first must learn that teaching is not about imparting or transmitting anything ( then it becomes a one way traffic of jamming the ears) but it is more about enabling various or any skill that a child likes, curious to know, observes with interest, wants or feels happy and good at.
This very perspective will first create humility in teachers to know that they have not descended from heaven and their job is not to block curiosity, imagination, creativity, passion, naughtiness, mocking, imitation and many other natural instincts of human beings, especially more so in children but to enable children to enjoy and explore the world around them using these instincts and interests.
I also wish that teachers are first made to go through and learn about the Thinking Schools of Edward De Bono's Lateral Thinking skills development centers, Tony Buzan's Mindmapping techniques and Glenn Doman's methods plus encouragement to include initially imitation as part of learning as done in Japanese education system along with limited memory techniques of Indian system and most importantly allow them to question ( based on their curiosity and observations) reason ( according to their level of knowledge and understanding) and allow them to involve as per their attention span ( which may vary from children to children, subject to subject etc. They must also read Deschooling Society by Ivan Illich.
The advantage of all these would be the children may not end up learning a huge volume of information or knowledge but will internalize and use what they have learnt with their conscious active participation and may end up confident with at least some usable skill sets rather than mere paper qualification.
In every nation the systems goof up.
They have their own agenda driven by multiple factors which may range from promoting religiously sanctified morals, politically sponsored history or ideology, socio- culturally acceptable ideas to manufacturing work force for various commercial activities. While some or all of these may be inevitable, unfortunately, the charm of learning gets compromised in the process.
The systems presume and underestimate the human intelligences and narrow the thinking in such a way that it is made to swing between two extremes the over obedient ( subservient good citizens) and the radical ones who question everything.
So, the systems create their own versions of discipline, right and wrong, good and bad etc.
The present education system in India deprives the children the charms of childhood recreations, pleasures, carefree engagement in games and enjoying in some play.
We tend to bring everything within the radar of accomplishment and competition.
This puts so much of pressure on various aspects on all the stake holders and unfortunately, everyone ends up liking this process of pleasurable scratching of an itch without realizing that it increases the wound. We end up with frustrated poor performers in this system.
What Friedenberg wrote in 1959
is as relevant today as it was when it was written:
“Teaching, unlike learning, can be industrialized and mechanized; it can be controlled, scheduled, timed, measured, and observed. But teaching is at most an input to the learning process, not an output. Nevertheless, our current educational system operates as though an ounce of teaching produces at least an ounce of learning. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Therefore, Systems Age education should focus on the learning process, not the teaching process. Learning outside of school is not organized into subjects, semesters, courses, or other discrete units. A child's learning of a language, for example, ample, is not separated from its learning of other subjects but is intimately bound up with it. A child learns a great deal without any concept of subjects and disciplines, and without being pushed into learning by examinations and grades. One might argue that this is only true for things the child wants to learn. But school, one might continue, must teach a child.” and I would like to add to enable it to grasp and to learn.
