Right to Education

A good resource on Right to Education act - http://www.facebook.com/update_security_info.php?wizard=1#!/rteindia

McKinsey Research in Education

How does a school system improve?

New research suggests that common sets of interventions can help systems move from one performance level to the next, without regard to culture, geography, politics, or history.

http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Public_Sector/Education/How_does_a_school_system_improve_2713

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Purchasing lessons for schools

Districts that improve their purchasing processes can capture significant savings.

http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Public_Sector/Education/Purchasing_lessons_for_schools_1350

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The economic cost of the US education gap

Gaps in academic achievement cost the US economy trillions of dollars a year. Yet there is reason to think they could be closed.

http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Public_Sector/Education/The_economic_cost_of_the_US_education_gap_2388
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Attracting and retaining top talent in US teaching

Only 23 percent of entering teachers come from the top third of their graduating class. What would it take to do better?

http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/Public_Sector/Education/Attracting_and_retaining_top_talent_in_US_teaching_2673

Foreign management schools will train Indian Uni Admins

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/article937992.ece

Promise Center

Visited the promise center yesterday near Banaswadi Bangalore. Absolutely loved the place. It is made of clay bricks. The nursery looked like a house more than a school and surely the children felt at home too. Seeing the Steiner kindergarten in reality was a dream come true. Spoke to the founder Lalitha for a long time and she explained the concept of Steiner education to me. Makes so much sense. The education system must reflect the nature of man and follow the natural process of growth. May all children go to a school that they love to go to. Would love to see the school evolve to include all grades upto 12th. Right now its only till standard 1. However there are Steiner schools in Mumbai and Hyderabad that have classes till grade 10th. Also met a few happy parents and the other teachers - Jyotsana, Usha and Gopa. The Waldorf teacher's community in India, although small seems to be growing fast. There is an IPMT conference in Bangalore from 12th to 18th December which has a separate series on Waldorf Kindergarten. Wish I could attend! If only I had known earlier. The school was a dream come true. Wish I have a similar one some day :)

Right to Education

The Right to Education (RTE) Act threatens the very existence of about 300,000 budget schools. Their fate now rests with the states, says John Samuel Raja D ....

http://www.peerpower.com/et/2927/Notice-Period

Helping young learn media arts

http://www.youtube.com/user/streetsidestoriessf

Community colleges in Tamil Nadu

http://www.thehindu.com/education/article907549.ece

Teaching through computers

The Concord Consortium has  amazing simulations and models that teach basic concepts. Must try!

"The best part about it? Hundreds of our resources are free, research-based, and available for you to use today. As a non-profit organization, we’re committed to quality science and math. And we’re focused on showing the world how technology can lead to better learning."

http://www.concord.org/about/information-for-teachers

How Technology is Improving Education

Don Knezek, the CEO of the International Society for Technology in Education, compares education without technology to the medical profession without technology.

“If in 1970 you had knee surgery, you got a huge scar,” he says. “Now, if you have knee surgery you have two little dots.”

Technology is helping teachers to expand beyond linear, text-based learning and to engage students who learn best in other ways. Its role in schools has evolved from a contained “computer class” into a versatile learning tool that could change how we demonstrate concepts, assign projects and assess progress.

Despite these opportunities, adoption of technology by schools is still anything but ubiquitous. Knezek says that U.S. schools are still asking if they should incorporate more technology, while other countries are asking how. But in the following eight areas, technology has shown its potential for improving education.

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Read more -  http://mashable.com/2010/11/22/technology-in-education

How we learn - Ted Channel !!

http://www.ted.com/themes/how_we_learn.html

Five dangerous things for kids

Tinkering School

Alternative Schooling in India

http://www.lifepositive.com/mind/education/alternative-education/education.asp

My Green School Dream

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzllVlzzeuo

Hole in the Wall

101 uses of a quadratic equation

http://plus.maths.org/issue29/features/quadratic/index.html

Teaching Math with Computers

Let the Revolution Begin

Planning to do something to cause transformation in the education sector during the next one and a half years at college. Really excited about it. The details however are not clear as yet. There are so many things to be done in this sector that I am finding it difficult to choose one problem to go after. Also planning to build a community of individuals to take on the change. Visiting the Promise Foundation next Friday to find out how they are implementing the Steiner system of education.

Saw an awesome Ted video by Sir Ken Robinson on the need for revolution in education -

Also joined a facebook community with like minded people - http://www.facebook.com/pages/I-hate-Indian-Education-System/307332222995

Bouncing ideas like opening a small school in Bilekhalli for children of nearby colonies and test alternate education. Seems far fetched right now though. Lets see what the visit to Promise reveals.

Haven't read something so amazing in a while!

http://rbalu.wordpress.com/2010/10/08/58-appiraj-and-his-mid-day-meal/

Appiraj and his mid-day meal

October 8, 2010 

 

On a recent trip to Hosahalli, Kumar, the head master was proudly mentioning that the average daily attendance at the tribal school was always over 90%. This was indeed impressive considering that it was the cotton-plucking season and most of the children would have normally been away plucking cotton at this time. He was telling me that the school was not only ensuring giving our children education but had also worked quietly in breaking the cycle of child labour. I was not sure if I could agree with him. I was unwilling to believe that poverty alone forced the child to pluck cotton. I always felt that the schooling system also contributed in keeping the children out of school. Dull monotonous teachers, non-creative curricula, dingy and suffocating classrooms, and fear of punishment – all contributed. Our tribal school not only had large open cottages, creative learning facilitators, sumptuous meals and clothing, but also ensured that the curriculum was child centric and that the teaching-learning happened in an environment of fun. It was only natural that after more than two decades of running a school on these lines, the attendance of children would naturally improve. As I was thinking about all this and the plight of thousands of other children in mostly Government schools in rural and tribal areas, my mind was drawn to a special child called Appiraj.
Appiraj was a Jenukuruba child from Alanahalli,  a distant tribal colony whom I first met more than 10 years ago at Hosahalli. Malathi had pointed this shy child to me and explained that he was proving to be a challenge to keep engaged in the classroom and outside. On one of my visits to Hosahalli, I found Malathi and all the other teachers flustered. It was just after lunch-time and they found Appiraj missing. The whole school went into a tizzy. Being situated on the fringes of the Bandipur National Park, one had to be anxious, as this was tiger and leopard territory. The whole campus was searched and one could still not find little Appiraj. As we were contemplating reaching out to the tribal colony that he came from, one of the cooks found him sleeping soundly in the room that housed the steam generator. Cooking in the school was done by using steam that was generated in a room just outside the kitchen complex. Appiraj was woken from his slumber and given a scolding for scaring all the teachers. As he was being sent to the classroom, I asked Malathi to find out what the child was doing in that room.
Appiraj narrated an extraordinary story. He told Malathi that he was tired of the ‘vegetarian’ fare that was dished out to him three times daily. He longed for some meat and knew that the school could not provide him with any. He only had himself and his Jenukuruba instincts to help him get some. He then scouted around the thickly wooded school campus and located the trees that had a sticky resin. Using the resin, he built a bird trap and placed it on trees that nested small birds. The next day, nature rewarded him with a small bird large enough to whet his appetite. Being just five years old did not deter him from climbing up this tree and bringing down his prized possession. He had quietly put the dead bird into his pockets and spent the morning classes planning his next steps. Just before the lunch break, he had quietly slipped into the steam generator room. There he defeathered the bird and cleaned it up. Using a small iron rod that he had found nearby, he had barbecued the bird in the fire that was burning in the generator. Having had a sumptuous meal, he could not resist sleeping in these warm environs.
Listening to him was such a revelation. Here was a 5-year-old child who knew exactly which resin to use and which tree that it was exuded from. He also knew which trees small birds nested in and how to make the trap to catch them with. He was independent enough to decide that he had to provide for himself and knew exactly how. Isn’t this what schooling aspired to do for our students? Why did Appiraj have to spend the next 10 years of his life in our school forgetting what he already knew and adding on something that was possibly going to help him succeed in an environment that he did not care much about? To echo the words of Mark Twain, I was desperately hoping that our schooling did not interfere with Appiraj’s education.
Education needs to be context-specific and engage hundreds of children like Appiraj. We need to make sure that the school system builds on the creative energies of such children and not make them stereo types of each other, competing in a world that they neither desire nor benefit from. Skills and competences should be added to what children already have and empower them to cope and flourish in a constantly changing external environment. Like Swami Vivekananda said, we need to make sure that “Education brings out the perfection already inherent in man’.

- Balu

Success is it?

Activist and publisher of Zubaan Books, Urvashi Butalia suggests that whether she is a corporate executive, a model, or a village panchayat head, a woman usually has to pay a deep personal cost for success; she is often forced to make a choice between her career and family. The tragedy is that she can't seem to have both. "I have no doubt that the hollowness of success at the cost of all other things hits men also, but it hits women very differently," says Butalia. And that is, perhaps, where the "soul-starvation" comes in. "When the image in the mirror - of beauty, success or talent - doesn't match the image inside, you have the breeding ground for vulnerability," says literary critic and writer Nilanjana Roy. "Many of the great women writers had this: not so much a fragility as the lack of an extra skin, coupled with an abnormal sensitivity to their environments. I think of writers like Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf; all of them struggled and often overcame their tendencies to depression, learned to use their insecurities and fragilities as material, but in the end were brought down by this."

Roy questions the prevailing culture "which insists that the beautiful and the successful should be placed under the burden of also having to be flawless - why they can't always ask for or get the help and support they need. We still live in a society where it's considered a sign of weakness to ask for help, or to admit to having problems; the surface counts for more than what's going on inside, and that burden is doubled for the beautiful and the successful."

Read more: Smart women, unsmart choices - The Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/life-style/relationships/man-woman/Smart-women-unsmart-choices-/articleshow/6124049.cms#ixzz10q3UhmDv

Education?

Wrote another article for Viewspaper -  http://theviewspaper.net/education/

I studied in one of the most expensive schools of Delhi. All through my school life, I saw my parents struggle to pay my fee on time. Not only did they sacrifice their leisure to get me an education, they also made sure that I got everything that proper schooling might ever require. Be it money to buy books, pens and notebooks; or to afford outings, picnics, fests, annual days and birthday parties; or even extra tuitions, swimming classes, robotics and dance classes – they never let me feel the scarcity which lurked in our middle class household.

Now that I meet a lot of people, I realize that there is nothing unique in this unique story of mine. This is in fact, the story of every middle class Indian household. Education is seen as the only means of ensuring a successful life. Parents spend their life savings, toil extra hours and even sacrifice holidays and television shows to ensure that their children study hard and fare well in school. But, what do our schools provide in return?

Does your child’s school teach them the art of relating to people and understanding what the other person wants? This is undoubtedly the most important aspect of any successful business conversation. Does their school teach them acting spontaneously under pressure? Life isn’t always predictable you know! Does their school teach them the importance of learning from experience rather than memorizing all the right answers? Are there any right answers in life? Can your children introspect their day and understand what could have been done differently? Does their school teach them the importance of taking risks and failing in life, or is it always about succeeding, winning and getting more marks? Most importantly, does their school teach them to listen to their hearts and understand their desires, or is it just about following rules and winning the game set for them?

Our country has always held knowledge in high esteem – “Balihari Guru Aapki, Govind Diyo bataye” (I bow to you my teacher, before I bow to God, because you are the one who told me about God). History brings with itself years of experience, Mathematics sharpens the mind, Science helps raise curiosity, Geography entices us to explore, and Languages aid in communication. However, the essence of these subjects must not be lost in the race to get more marks to prove a child’s worth. Are their calculus sums and geography maps really educating the children to lead a happy life? Or have we started confusing financial success for happiness? Why is it important to get straight A’s in all subjects? Why is not important to succeed in fulfilling the basic human traits of loving our own parents, taking care of our planet and ensuring our own health?

A child who has walked through a slum knows humility better than a child who has memorized essays on Nelson Mandela. A child who has seen his mother make butter knows centrifugal force better than any book could describe. It is these small experiences that form a child’s education. Is your child experiencing the world around him? Are schools centers of learning, that enhance a child’s experience of the world or do they construct a gigantic system of 70 books that a child must rote by heart just to delay their arrival into the real world? Its high time we answer these questions and start bringing about a change in the way we perceive education. Education is a part of living not a means for living in this world.

To begin with, schools could encourage ‘teaching by experience’ as against book learning. This system has been piloted in a number of schools across the country and is slowly maturing. Companies like iDiscoveri even provide books that recommend classroom activities for each topic, for each subject and for each class. Parallel systems of education like the Waldorf (Steiner) Education are gaining popularity. The Steiner system of education focuses entirely on experiential learning.

It is important to generate awareness amongst parents as well. Parents should focus on the all round development of their young ones. I would personally recommend keeping aside some time in their schedule to watch shows on Discovery Channel, for playing outdoor games and for engaging in different activities like gardening, painting, drawing, dancing, sewing, pottery and even cleaning. Inculcating a reading habit in children could also go a long way in contributing to their future. Reading opens up the mind to new ideas and thoughts. Encourage the child to read books apart from his textbook.

Ensuring these small changes in our schools and homes could go a long way in ensuring that our children are strong, creative and happy individuals; who will bring about inclusive growth in our society, eradicate poverty and unemployment, cure cancer and AIDS, reduce environmental degradation and make this world a better place.