‘Of course I joined school; but never had I allowed it to interfere with my education’
- Mark Twain's Notebook, 1898
In the first place God made idiots. This was for practice. Then He made school boards.
- Following the Equator, Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar
Education is a social process. Education is growth. Education is, not a preparation for life; education is life itself. - John Dewey
Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.
“I've been making a list of the things they don't teach you at school. They don't teach you how to love somebody. They don't teach you how to be famous. They don't teach you how to be rich or how to be poor. They don't teach you how to walk away from someone you don't love any longer. They don't teach you how to know what's going on in someone else's mind. They don't teach you what to say to someone who's dying. They don't teach you anything worth knowing.”
- Neil Gaiman
*************************
What was their discontentment with the school?
Are they against a formal education?
Have they faced failure in this institution.?
What are those assumptions that prompted these great men to comment the way they did. Is there some thing in the human life influencing more for their success than that of a formal school? Is it family, is it religion or any other institution? Did sociologists cover this crucial institution in its fullest sense?
The acclaimed agencies of socialization are family, the school, mass media, religion and Peer group. These agencies play a vital role in developing ones personality by its enduring and accepted norms to either control or leverage human imagination.
One of the generalist view is that a candidate in a selection interview gets selected 98% due to her attitude and 2% due to her knowledge and skills. The paradox is all the above social agencies develop knowledge and skills 98% of the time and spend 2% of the time for developing the vital aspect i.e., attitude. May be little different is the peer group which slightly different in the informality of status. Can we attribute every aspect of learning from other than family and school to the sociology half heartedly accepted institution called peers? Is there any other important aspect the sociology forgot to capture in terms of time and depth of learning? There is a wide spread acceptance that there are life skills which are problem solving, creativity, anger management, influencing skills, Team spirit, Drive , Dependability, accountability, Interpersonal skills, flexibility, adaptability, Fore sightedness, strategy to win, perseverance, risk taking, independent thinking, willingness to stretch, common sense, endurance, self motivation, smile and so on and on. Which of these skills are taught in a formal environment especially in schools. If all these are going to be critical for some one which is the agency or institution instills these qualities in her. While looking at the over all quality time spent by a child on the socialization process during the formative years the street comes to the mind in a big way.
What is street?
Role of street in developing one’s personality is more than that of any other institution. Group dynamics, concept of winning and losing, Leadership qualities like taking initiative, ownership, lateral thinking abilities, strategies for winning and more importantly the pursuit to goal in spite of losing with the same spirit. The formal institutions impart exactly the opposite like individualism against group, fear for failure, growth is always upward progression, etc.,
The spread of street doesn’t end with the actual physical space it is even inside a class room when teacher teaches the lesson students play with chits passing (the last bench activities), the street is also inside house when there is a co operation or fight with siblings. Thus if we calculate the number of street hours are much more than all other formal institutional hours. Hence we can conclude 98% of the most important element the ATTITUDE gets picked up from streets.
What is in it for the future generation?
The present gen “z” does not have the physical street and they are confined to four walls within the vertical streets in concrete jungles. They are spending all their time either as couch potatoes or on the play stations.
Weightage of evaluating the kids is day by day increasing while the age of children joining school is decreasing day by day, It was primary school, nursery school, kindergarten, Preprimary and play school. The formative years of these kids are dependant more on the formal institutions today. Are the formal institutions have sufficient know how what impact they are going to make on the children’s future?
Present education system
A student is studying 10 years of history without a comprehensive understanding of the chronological history neither does she acquire the analytical history and what is very important to note is this is the case with all other subjects also. The expectation on the student is to just acquire the knowledge on ad-hoc basis and forget everything once the examination is over. At the end of generic curriculum neither the time spent was useful to neither the student nor the society. This is evident in government schools where more than 85% of today’s youth are studying. For e.g., a student studies English as language for a time minimum of one hour a day and 24 hours in a month which will equal 2400 hours in 10 years, and yet she can not speak in English. This speaks of failure of this 150 years old model of education system.
What are the learning out comes which will help individuals grow for a better life? Knowledge change? Skill Change? Attitude Change? Analysis capability? Capability to synthesize? Or capacity to evaluate? ( Benjamin Bloom model of Learning outcomes)
How family and schools fail to influence a student ?
These formal institutions though influence the child it is teacher centered learning and not learner centered learning. Out of the both the family to a certain extent is better when compared to the school. The school miserably fails in the attempt to unleash the potentials of the child rather it confines the knowledge and learning to the prescribed syllabus. This is evident from the number of suicides attempted at every Board exam by children.
What are the skills and knowledge acquired by the student in the school that is helpful?
From where does the student pick up the most vital element of competence for social standing.
How does a game influence individual's attitude that drives behaviors.
There is a game called BOCCE which is the basisfor the Bowling game, used for corporate training programs( Pegasus institute for Out bound Learning uses this game for teaching the corporate strategy and observe individual alignment with the team's alignment. What is funny is this game is almost similar to that of the marble game played by kids on the streets. Cricket has replaced children's most of the playtime today the periodical games like marble games, flying the kite, playing the Tops, Playing police and thief and many more such games are long forgotten and faded away.
In fact these games were just a part of the whole street life. The theme changes according to the age and knowledge level of the friends ( I am not using the word peers because it reduces the depth of meaning in the given context of street). They roam together go to rivers, wells and catch up with the kabaddi matches with the neighbourhood street all brings in lot of learning which teaches the competence we spoke about in the first few paragraphs.
No comments:
Post a Comment