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’.

An ode to Shaktiman - A horse with a name

The parable of the 'boiling frog' Put a frog into a vessel fill with water and start heating the water.
As the temperature of the water begins to rise, the frog adjust its body temperature accordingly...
This is one of my favourite stories ... the import of its meaning is powerful ...

If you truly want to 'destroy' people ... never put them in boiling water .. but gradually ... 'kill' their souls ... 'kill' their will to 'live' ... start with sops ... give them 'rice' at 'dirt' cheap rates ... help them forget to work ...remember the water has just begun to boil ..

When you come to think of it ...Quite a few of our 'policies and schemes' are not quite unlike the 'gradually boiling water' ... take for example the 'no detention policy' a master stroke ... to kill 'curious minds' ... In our country 'no detention' has long ago degenerated into 'no teaching' and thereby ensured, 'no learning both for the teacher and the taught' ...children 'pass' right up to class 8 ... and their ...'foundations' are so tenuous.. that ... ASER has to constantly revise and revisit their findings ...even before the ink has dried. Then to the utter 'delight' of the teachers we now have 'CCE' ... so up to class 10 ... we have 'no detention' and of course 'no learning' ...

Well, incase you missed it ... listen to this ...'Govt plan: Must meet minimum standard for promotion to Class IX' (The Sunday Express, April 17, 2016, p.1)... you get the drift right ... could the minimum standard be the plan to ensure .. fodder for the success of the much touted 'Skill Development' that vows to 'Transforming the skill landscape' ... now that's not right ... flunked children fodder for the skill landscape ... and why not ...history is replete with famous college/school dropouts ... who've 'made it to the top'...

Reductionistic and myopic policies ... with the promise of 'instant gratification' may be destined the 'Shaktiman way'! ...The brave 'Shaktiman (a horse with a name!) learns to walk again - with a shoe, prosthetic leg from US' (The Sunday Express, April 17, 2016, p.1)... and then before we even know that the water is boiling.. too late ...'Kids would peep in, ask how's Shaktiman ... now he's gone' (The Indian Express, April 21, 2016, p.1) ...

It is hard to ignore the screaming ASER by PRATHAM ... which unequivocally declares how the head, hearts and hands of the majority of our children condemned to partake of the education doled out by the nearly 1.5 million Goverment Schools in the country, are hacked down, drained physically, emotionally, financially, spiritually and  mentally ... not quite unlike the brave and powerful Shaktiman ... ... the time between Shaktiman '....learns to walk again and ....now he's gone' is scary!

Trust, Complexity and Agility

Ongoing personal and professional debates in society about the nature of TRUST and the conditions necessary to establish and sustain it, continue to question the very nature of mutual coexistence.

 

Our sense of consciousness of risk continues to rise in almost all facets of human living, health, education, and services in general.  

 

How do we engender ways and means for individuals to trust themselves and cultivate and promote perspectives of trust?

 

The implication/s for trust to replace the corrosive influence/s of COMPLEXITY and usher in agility is hard to ignore. Trust, we can trust ourselves, is not that magic wand or a new process or methodology - but an ideology - a way of viewing and acting in the world. A value  - opposed to the ideology of compliance and accountability, with its focus on efficiency and predictability and detailed plans and internal focus, it’s an ideology of a ‘trust enabling environment’ that could engender a focus on self-organization, continuous improvement, an iterative approach, and above all, an enduring ability to trust ourselves as individuals.

 

A trust enabling environment sparks off true motivation, leading to an engagement with mastery, autonomy, and purpose – referred to in the Fifth Discipline of Peter Senge. This ‘motivation’ is the deeply human need to direct our own lives, to learn and create new things, and to do better by ourselves and our world’. In a world, where ‘the profit motive gets unmoored from the purpose motive’ and where individuals and teams strive for the creation of value. Life and Living assume complexity!

 

Leaders are usually held responsible for the trust, health and ‘success’ of an organization, but it is the CULTURE of organizations that provides the true foundation for these important factors.  While a leader's personality and skills influence how a trustful environment and working relationship is created, the organization too has a culture, tradition and experience of its own which influences the leaders' and here I may add other members’ success. The level of trust in an organization's culture will ultimately determine whether or not it is trustful, healthy and successful.

 

Organizations and institutions are often subject to the PROFIT MAXIMIZATION assault, and this usually comes in the guise of 'accountability' and 'choice', cloaking itself in the 'scientifically-proven' with an over-emphasis of data. Such an outlook, squanders away the realization that at every moment our fundamental task is to create and safeguard an open, accessible, and free environment, conducive to the growth of creative, caring, autonomous and responsible thinkers!