Suggestions for Educational Amendments

Dear friends, Today, in regards of Open Teaching Learning initiative, I had today communicated some views regarding education to some respected people who are always eager and devoted to improving Education system. This includes APJ Abdul Kalam, Prof Yashpal and CBSE committee members. I hope this becomes a stepping stones in future of our next generation. I insist you to give as many suggestions as you can.

Letter follows like this : 

Sir,
I am a student, who is going to do Masters from IISc Banglore. Having completed my primary education in CBSE, I intend to comprehend in words how wonderful CBSE initiatives are and what needs to be done.

These are list of few ideas I wish to suggest :1. Open Education(like Open source) :  How great would it be, if children themselves become a part of teaching process. For instance, Ekalavya school in Ahmedabad did a very successful experiment of making students design questions by themselves and seek answers. The level of involvement went immensely high.  My recommendation is to give a blue-print of the book to the teachers and involve children in creating their own versions of text books!. Of course, the approval needs to be sanctioned by some body, but these versions if uploaded in CBSE portal can work great wonders. For example, if a group of students in ShantiNiketan designs their books in an artistic way, then it could be a form of inspiration to other students with an artistic bend.

 In such a way, if an IIT colony students design it, then it would be an inspiration for such reasoning bend students. The idea of Opening up education is a very revolutionary idea which I want to suggest. There can be one main book but integrating teaching and learning process in an organic way is fantastic in both essence and practicality. Idea came up to me by Vivekananda's idea that education even in translation means - That which comes from within.

The idea that a child judges himself by marks gets replaced by a child rewarding or judging himself on basis of how wonderfully he went to depths of subject and creating questions worth exploring. This would be a great enhancement in whole process of Education.

2. Encouraging Part-time Teaching: By giving a very basic qualification (based on some test) to IT Engineers, doctors and educated people, we can formally allow them to teach on Saturdays and Sundays or after Office timings. I mean these experienced people can be so much of an inspiration to the next generation, and I think, we can very well directly incorporate and channelize  the passion and enthusiasm of this generation to sharing and inspiring the next generation. We may encourage them to share their experiences through talks, videos or personally along with teaching contribution. If flower of compassion sprout's in such people, a phenomenal wave of growth and harmony is bound. It would be gratifying and also phenomenal possibility to Nation as a whole.

3. Multifaceted form of Examination - To judge a needle by standards of sword will always create judgement errors. But if we create multiple standards, we lose transparency. So what I wish to convey is that at-least in few science and non-science subjects like English, Social Science - Marksheet may contain multiple form of scores - Let’s say Innovative Expression or ideas : 27/30(sub score), Tough Reasoning(29/30) Correctness(Main score) : 80/100. So NIFT will see the innovative expression aspect, IITs will see a tough reasoning aspect of it. In this way a child will not be demoralized by his under- performance in one aspect and on other hand it will become easier and rather more effective way for Admissions in Higher Education.

 I appreciate the efforts of dividing the score into Viva and Theory, but there are many challenges, especially the level of ambiguity involved is too high. Purely objective way is Transparent but not all inclusive and doesn't recognizes the Grey areas of a child.

4. Integrating ICT with Education: CBSE has strongly promoted such moves. But still as a student of DA-IICT which is only university in India giving degree in ICT, I had some practical suggestions regarding it:

               a. Encouraging Teachers to create online Practice test's with time out  (eg Moodle, etc)

               b. Encouraging Teachers to record class lectures and share it on YouTube: NPTEL's success story is not unknown to us, but I still see the bar of teaching to MIT's Physics’ professor Dr Walter's who is great inspiration to me person in terms of risking his life for teaching: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Zc9Nuoe2Ow . Of course I remember Dr. Yashpal's serials and phenomenal work of Prof. Arvind Gupta. Every municipal school has 5 desktop computers out of which at-least one is working, which still, can be useful. We will know how.

Even if the teacher doesn't come there, either such video lectures or Skype can do great aid.

               c. Guiding and showing various possibilities of learning things and projects through ICT.

I wish to give more practical suggestions on this. My dream and wish is that students start enjoying the learning process and take it as an inspiration which takes them ahead from where they are and not an experience of demoralized faces which fade away by crisis of competition. Idea of competition is a curse of single objective judgement, but when the doorways to multiple possibilities flourish by the maturity of education system, idea of competition fades and blossoming of individual potential happens.

Attached is a 25 page open book named Inspire Child, Inspire World, which I found very insightful.

Regards,

Jaley H Dholakiya