Yesterday I was listening to Sanobar Sultana anchoring a discussion Samacheer Kalvi (equal education). It was battle with the panelists going berserk with their ideas and convictions. Yet there was one simple thing that stuck out. They all seemed to agree that that the content is very memory oriented and that it has to be changed. Changed to what? Thats a big mystery.
Equality in education, I feel, will produce a group of students with the same knowledge. Now assume what they have studied is the right thing (which is very much in doubt) 20 years from now you have millions of people who feel, believe, know and talk the same thing. How boring will it be.
Now coming back. Memory orientation is not good but I believe the challenge today is Attention Economy. We need to get the skill of Attention in Children. Have the ones who developed the curriculum factored in the findings of the Neuroscience findings (thanks to FmRI Scans) no how the brain is developing in the digital age? How can we prepare and equip the children as then enter the bio-tech era is the concern?
Now personally the solution lies not in going West but to dig deep in our culture and try to develop skills to take in the knowledge (content) The school should move out of this delivering content focus and shift to delivery of study skills.
My son took a break from studies for 18 months. He was stumbling along in stumble.com and googling and he used to tell me what all he learnt, he used to be so excited. And on teachers day he wanted to wish Google :)
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