Decoding Learning: Teacher Learning, Prof. Krishna Kumar and Soren Kierkegaard

..The gloomy outlook ... for education, particularly School Education in India... is all out there... ‘Blind Faith’ (Krishna Kumar, Indian Express, April 23, 2016, p. 15). For want of a better lollipop ... 'education' in India (the packaged public variety) continues to seductively sway ...fervid minds.

The 'inputs' to 'packaged and programmed public instruction/education' have predictably failed to translate into any discernible learning outcomes, ask ASER! So here's my take ... let’s attempt to DECODE LEARNING ... and spare our children the ignominy of measuring their ... 3R's (ggrrrrrrrrr ... ASER). 

I was recently awed by Pratham Education Foundation’s Faiyaz Ahmed and Samyukta Subramanian when they spoke about the amazing efficacy of a three month CAMaL model to implement targeted instruction (IIC, Delhi, April 14, 2016). Stumbling out the stupor of, ‘yeh to kamaal ho gaya...’ I realized ... it could well be a cabalistic attempt to valorizing reading and ... raising questions about the rigor and relevance of Teacher Education.

How would an attempt to DECODE TEACHER LEARNING sound? I want to believe that rigorous and relevant attempts to understand TEACHER LEARNING ... (a fervent appeal to PRATHAM, ASER) could automatically ensure ... STUDENT LEARNING...  and, Pratham, you’d mercifully spare young hearts and minds the torture of stammering out ‘expected responses’ to ‘inane stimulus’ and the ensuing predictable collective angst of a suitably inured general public. Reliable sources claim policy makers, are delighted with the ASER ... findings!

Let’s get back to Delhi. I would love to be part of the 90 that is all set to visit the UK ... WOWO....I am trying to imagine their shopping lists ... A 10 day training in Leadership in Oxford for 90 Principals (Indian Express, April 23, 2016, p. 15)... at best it could be a 10 day dabbling with dappled notions of School Leadership.

'Blind Faith' ... is how Prof. Krishna Kumar, chose to call it ... but... why not... even as we grapple with the question of whether Religion is a question of identity or faith ... perhaps, we’d do well to ask ... the same of EDCUATION particularly school education in India ...

‘Control’ and ‘autonomy’ are highlighted as the areas of concerns of the good professor and I wholeheartedly concur. Given the current collective penchant for reducing complex and diverse notions, for example patriotism and other concepts into ... attractive alliterations ... our 90 School Heads raised on the staple of compliance, would set off ... to ‘discover’ albeit in foreign shores ... the blind adherence to standards, compliance and accountability. One is reminded of the Talmudic saying, ‘we don’t see things the way they are, we see them the way we are’. Such an outlook strikes at the very root of an individual’s sense of responsibility, caring and autonomy.

It’s not all gloom and doom, while the 90 Principals get to dabble in School Leadership ‘best practices’ in Oxford, they all be soon back. A sign of hope for me would be, to set off on attempts to “Decoding Learning: Shifting the Conversations from Student Learning to Teacher Learning” Here’s something to help us along ... ‘Love does not alter the beloved, it alters itself.’ – Soren Kierkegaard. Ever wondered, how fraught today’s teachers are ... valiantly attempting to alter their students ... I am reminded of the ‘serenity prayer’.