Rahul Bhandari, IAS
Albert Einstein believed that education is not the learning of facts but the training of the mind to think. The world then could not comprehend how something so complicated can be incorporated into a system that has, for the most part of it, continued to encourage mechanical learning without the base of application and discouraging imagination in its core. But the experiments to improve the system of education around the world have seemed to flip the minds of policy makers completely.
New Teaching Approach Helps
For instance, students from Leasowes Community College in Dudley in England were taken to visit local businesses so that they could connect the bookish knowledge served to them in their class rooms with the real world. For many days, the students were required to wear business suits to these places and participate and apply into the market, what they had earlier read about. Study shows that when the teachers showed them how whatever they teach connects to real life situations, then their own brain cells were going to connect and associate with them. Before this method was used, only 40 percent of students could achieve grades between A to C. After the introduction of this new teaching method, the number rose to a humongous 91 percent of students bagging grades A to C.
Another Wild Secret
Researchers and psychologists have started recommending another wild secret for effective classroom teaching, i.e., VAK- Visual, Audio and Kinesthetic. They say that the ideal learning environment is not one wherein students passively wait for a lecture to end. It is actually one in which they are allowed to see, hear as well as feel the material of learning, all combined into one. This is the reason why animated videos and presentations are becoming such popular and effective ways of teaching. These two things cover the audio and visual part quite efficiently, and when the students engage in the act of building and creating, they are able to learn in a kinesthetic way as well.
Student-Teacher Ratio
The student-teacher ratio in India fell down to 24:1 this year, which is even lower than Brazil’s 19:1. To address the issue of inadequately qualified teachers in order to try and fill this massive gap especially in rural areas, Teach for India launched a web portal called ‘Firki’. It is an online teacher training portal that offers eight courses on training people in ‘the art of teaching’. At the end of evaluation tests in subjects like Goal Setting, Vision of Excellence, Planning and Preparation, Personality Development etc, one is awarded with a certificate of completion from Teach for India. And when we are talking about technology, we must acknowledge Byju’s App (made by a Bangalore based edtech and online tutoring firm founded by Byju Raveendran), that offers a wide range of comprehensive learning program. It is especially equipped to help students do well at school, while also building a strong foundation for successful education in future. Features like interactive games, reward system and personalized learning apart from lessons by expert teachers; the app is structured in a format of an exciting adventure map, known attractive to children.
Teachers are not Replaceable
The coming in of technological innovations doesn’t mean that teachers are replaceable. The values, ethical foundation, compassion and love from a teacher has been the most important part of Indian Education since the Gurukal times, and that remains intact in the face of newest possible teaching methods.