Call for overhaul in school teaching, a change not confined merely to the syllabus or pedagogy

A symposium on education was unanimous on one thing.

That there has to be a change in the way children are taught in schools now. A change not confined merely to the syllabus or pedagogy but an overhaul that shakes up the systems in place for many years.

A panel discussion that included educators, teachers, board representatives and a life coach, who delivered the keynote address, spoke of building stronger individuals who are not scared of failure, who care for fellow human beings and who debate and discuss issues.

As much as the guests on the dais, teachers and school heads in attendance recognised the need for creating a school environment that encourages children to ask questions.

The occasion was SIP abacus presents admissiontree.in CONVERSATIONS 2023 partnered by Narayana Group of Schools and The Telegraph.

From a rich discussion, The Telegraph culled some of the changes that the speakers thought were essential.

Need for empathy

The educators said the world was banking on the human capital of the most populous country on the planet. But the opportunity comes with a rider.

“It is not just the skills or knowledge that are required. We also need very empathetic people. We need people who can appreciate diversity. We need people who can appreciate different cultural aspects,” said Arun Rajamani, managing director and CEO of Cambridge Assessment and Board and one of the panellists.

The Indian education system needs to step up to the challenge, he said.

Arna Seal, a social development consultant, told the panel discussion “obliteration of human values” was responsible for the “current episodes that are happening around us, in the premiere educational institutes”.

Seal did not take names but around the same time she spoke, Jadavpur University, around 9km away, continued to be on the boil in the wake of the death of a first-year student, allegedly ragged and thrown from a second-floor balcony of the main hostel on the night of August 9.

If taught early in school, empathy will find a permanent place in a student’s heart, a school owner who was in the audience later told The Telegraph. “Later on, in college or at work, where people come from diverse backgrounds, they should be able to accept the differences,” said Janet Gasper Chowdhury, president of St Augustine’s Education Society, which runs four schools.

Mental health

Almost every speaker pointed out how the current education system was almost oblivious to mental health concerns.

Seal cited the results of a recent mental health survey of schoolchildren, which says that anxiety about exam results and not being able to answer questions in class were “troubling children across all age groups in all kinds of schools”.

“If there is so much stress in the system, then clearly joyful learning is not happening,” she said.

Nupur Ghosh, vice-principal, Mahadevi Birla World Academy, told The Telegraph that joy in learning is possible if it is “integrated as part of education and not as an addendum”.

A recent Facebook message from a former student made Ricardo Henry Soler, deputy secretary, CISCE, realise that “we need to look and relook at the school education from the point of view of the students”.

The message, in the form of a pie chart, had two sections, what he learnt in school and what he wished he had learnt in school. The first included “how to multiply” and “what is a verb and a noun”. The second section included issues like “mental health, self-esteem and personal finance”.

Another panellist, Debalina Saha, CEO, Narayana Group of Schools, said: “We need to bring more real-life problems into our curriculum. Children need to know the context.”

The discussion, titled To Challenge and To Change, was moderated by cardiac surgeon and debater Kunal Sarkar.

Encourage questions

Teaching children to ask questions is more important than teaching them to write answers, said Deepali Singhee, principal, JD Birla Institute, another panellist.

“It is important that the child is taught to think out of the box. But that can only happen if the child is trained to question rather than give answers. We forget that until you know how to question, it is very difficult to know how to answer,” she said.

For that to happen, a change is needed in the mindset of teachers, a principal said later. “Students are aware of things around them and a teacher cannot walk into a classroom with an ‘I know it all’ attitude,” said Loveleen Saigal, principal, Birla High School for Boys.

Failed? So what?

The keynote address by Gaur Gopal Das, a popular motivational speaker in the country, dwelled on the need to learn to cope with failure and accept pain.

“Don’t lose hope. Wherever you are broken, start from there. Even broken things have value. It is alright to fail,” said Das, as the audience broke into applause.

The panel discussed the need for resilience in students because the future may not always be bright in a volatile world.

“There are going to be so many changes that the children face. Job losses, failures, company closures. They need to be resilient,” said Dinesh Victor, managing director, SIP Academy.

Resilience comes with independence, a principal said later. “Parents cannot and should not hand hold a child to an extent that they have no freedom. We have to give them the freedom and space to make mistakes and learn from them.”

What lies inside

Das, whose speeches generate huge traction on social media, kept a pencil in his hand
for almost the entire 45 minutes he spoke. It was a recurrent metaphor.

No matter how important the wood outside is, you need the lead to make an impact, he said. “In the pencil, there is a casing and the lead. No matter how beautiful the casing is, the pencil’s purpose is not about the casing. The pencil’s purpose is about the lead inside it.”

“In education and in life, there is an external and an internal. The external is the casing, very in the face. The internal is not so obvious. Today, not just in the educational institutions but in the general society, there is so much focus on the external that we forget the very purpose — the internal,” he said.