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© 2012 Sanjeev Sabhlok's revolutionary blog
We all know about the famous hole in the wall experiments of Sugata Mitra. Suresh Anand shared the following TED video. It is amazing, astonishing, particularly given my recent readings on the human brain. It all makes sense now (particularly why memory is enhanced through group discussion, etc.).
It is not going to be possible to explain this video, so please watch it. It will totally open you mind.
I'd particularly recommend it to Anil Sharma, senior FTI member (in case he's not seen it yet) who has been working on an education project in the heart of UP. This might prove very helpful to him (given his contacts in UK, where he could tap into Sugata's granny network: I had actually spoken on Skype with his students in UP from Melbourne and found it a brilliant idea, but getting grannies from England would be even better! ) I'd suggest that Anil consider catching a train on the weekend to meet Sugata Mitra for new ideas.
What I liked particularly was the Hayekian message that Sugata brings. That interests me a lot.
Somnath Bharati (FTI member and the new President of IIT Delhi alumni association) may please consider writing to him about FTI. FTI would be very fortunate if people like Sugata with EXTREME innovation and vision join.The goal, the challenge, of providing HIGH QUALITY education to millions of Indians drives me to desperation, at times. Sugata's new ways of thinking could just make it happen.
Addendum
Links sent by Suresh
A few thoughts came by, so I thought I'd share them with Bhagwad Jal:
1) Abraham Lincoln DID NOT attend any school, but taught himself how to read. Amazing! How could this happen, Bhagwad?
2) "The most successful 19th century entrepreneurs didn’t have much formal schooling, but they had a keen appreciation of learning" [Source]. How did these entrepreneurs learn, Bhagwad?
3) Thomas Alva Edison had "three months of official schooling" [Source]. How did this man create General Electric from scratch, Bhagwad?
History will almost certainly unearth the unpleasant fact (to you) that MOST great geniuses of the past did not attend school.
Indeed, the typical Indian schooling today has created more clerks and petty sheep than leaders. You are well aware of my attempt to convert these sheep into citizens. These are mere robots, Bhagwad, not people who love learning.
Maybe you are also unaware that Bill Gates and Steve Jobs did not complete their university education? True, they did go to school, but their mind was elsewhere, Bhagwad.
I assume you are not going to suggest that parents of these geniuses and presidents were CRIMINALS, and so the state was required to confiscate these people from their parents?
Perhaps you are unaware that it is possible for a human being to learn ANYTHING he (or she) wants to, at ANY stage in his or her life? The human brain is a miraculous super-computer. Its powers are not diminished just because you don't attend school. There are things that unschooled people know that you (or I) will never ever come to know. The human brain doesn't wither away easily. It learns from its environment. It is CONSTANTLY learning.
I await your essay that attempts to prove that compulsory education accompanied by punishment of 'criminal' parents (who "don't" send their children to school) is compatible with ANY sensible conception of liberty and morality.
And if you can't prove it, then why don't you simply admit it? We can then discuss more useful things, about implementing a system of education in India that ACTUALLY WORKS.
Every year Australia's ACER, an NGO that is funded entirely by its own research activities (ACER head office is located in Melbourne, just a few minutes from my house) conducts an international study of literacy across the OECD countries. This study, widely known as the PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment), is perhaps the best comparative benchmark in the world of 15-year-olds’ knowledge and skills in reading, mathematical and scientific literacy.
For the first time INDIA has entered the PISA system of evaluation. True, only two states were brave enough to do so.
I won't go into details of the results. Just two diagrams below explain everything. For more details read the ACER media release (and report).
I'd like to congratulate the governments of Himachal and Tamil Nadu for exposing themselves to the truth. If Bihar were to be included, we'd perhaps need to change the graph to represent negative levels of education.
This is ONE MORE PIECE OF EVIDENCE THAT INDIA IS FLOATING ON A PILE OF …. [you get to pick the missing word yourself based on your reading skills].
Note that CHINA IS AT THE TOP OF THE WORLD IN BOTH READING AND MATHEMATICS. This is consistent with comparative IQ scores which rate the Chinese as the most intelligent in the world, and average Indians as close to "morons" (IQ of 85).
In BFN I've argued that it our socialist policy has aggravated (if not created) this situation. While this might not be the entire truth (a good friend has blamed the caste system), it is clear that if India has to come even close to world average on education (and IQ), it must be liberated urgently, and the education system privatised as I've explained in BFN.
Let me repeat my mantra again. INDIA HAS NO OTHER HOPE BUT FTI. The only problem: it takes good education to understand the value of liberty.
Reading comparison across the world: The winner from the bottom is …. INDIA!
(click for much bigger image)
Mathematics comparison across the world. The winner from the bottom is … INDIA!
(click for bigger image)
Addendum
Half of Class 5 kids can’t read Class 2 texts
A few weeks ago I wrote this: Cheaper and BETTER university education is getting closer
Now I chanced upon a brilliant article: Why Software Is Eating The World
Do read it. This bit stood out:
"Health care and education, in my view, are next up for fundamental software-based transformation."
BUT: "many people in the U.S. and around the world lack the education and skills required to participate in the great new companies coming out of the software revolution. Qualified software engineers, managers, marketers and salespeople in Silicon Valley can rack up dozens of high-paying, high-upside job offers any time they want, while national unemployment and underemployment is sky high."
Here are the results of perhaps the first major study in this area:
Starting the school day 50 minutes later has a significant positive effect on student achievement, which is roughly equivalent to raising teacher quality by one standard deviation. [Source]
Basically the finding is this:
Our results show that starting the school day later in the morning has a significant positive effect on student academic achievement. We find that when a student is randomly assigned to a first period course starting prior to 8 am, they perform significantly worse in all their courses taken on that day compared to students who are not assigned to a first period course. Importantly, we find that this negative effect diminishes the later the school day begins.
We verify that the negative start time effect is not solely driven by worse performance in the first period class. Hence, our results show that student achievement suffers from earlier start times in not only courses taken during the early morning hours, but also throughout the entire day.
Study
Carrell, Scott E., Teny Maghakian, and James E. West. 2011. "A's from Zzzz's? The Causal Effect of School Start Time on the Academic Achievement of Adolescents." American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 3(3): 62–81. DOI:10.1257/pol.3.3.62
Here's a nice comment by Supratim about why we don't think critically or independently in India, and why India survives primarily because of the systems that the British rulers of India built for us. The autopilot, he show, applies not only to our bureaucracy, laws and democracy, but to our city plans and even drainage.
It all starts with our "DNA" – our educational methods.
A slightly edited extract of his comment is provided below, followed by my brief comment:
Taught not to ask questionsWe are taught to always respect our elders, to never question them. From childhood we are indoctrinated to not question. The Guru-shishya parampara of ancient India has degenerated into rote and blind obedience. This may be the genetic feature that Vishal was searching for.We, Indians despise/hate westerners – who question their parents, their elders and their teachers, even if the questions themselves are framed respectfully and with a genuine desire to either learn or to point out a fallacy.Memorising, not even rote learningOur education system builds upon this and takes it further into rote learning (actually, memorising, rather than learning) and an emphasis on grades.I will give you a couple of examples:1. My niece who is in the first grade in the US does projects virtually all the time – you choose a topic, you RESEARCH it and then you make a presentation to your class – can you see how you are being taught to be self-driven, independent thinking and problem solving from such an early age? OTOH, my kids in first grade had a pile of 12 textbooks that they had to memorise and regurtitate in the exams? So what are they teaching in India? To become dictaphones.2. The British built the drainage systems of Mumbai and Kolkata some 150-200 years ago – these drains, even today with the population of these cities having increased over 100x, probably 500x, work quite comfortably in taking out the sewage water from these two cities, except in exception circumstances? Can you see the vision at work here? They built systems that are still capable after 200 years.OTOH, we have the examples of Bangalore and Chennai, which became metropolises much later under Indian "administration", essentially having no drainage system worth the name, so much so that even 2cms of rains will flood these cities.[There is] no easy solution – except the passage of time, and greater exposure of Indians to the "systems of western civilisation".
My comment
Very well said, Supratim. The examples are very evocative. EACH HUMAN in the West is encouraged to reach his highest potential. EACH HUMAN in India is encouraged to become a second-rater – a copycat, a dictaphone, a hard disk.
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