Rohit Dhankar
Entire Indian education system, hundreds of NGOs and corporate foundations are trying to teach our children reading-writing, counting and fundamental arithmetic operations. They are finding this task very confusing and extremely daunting. The NCERT and NGOs are churning out literature on how to tame this beast of reading-writing and counting, the traditional 3Rs (Reading, wRiting and aRithmatic). The profusion of literature and co-called innovative approaches should actually enlighten the teachers and ground level workers; in reality it is making the mental fog of confusion impossibly denser by the day. And the beast of 3Rs is determinedly refusing to be tamed, scaring this rag-tag army of education workers out of their wits.
Why so? Why are we being continuously trounced by this formidable enemy for several decades without any light at the end of the tunnel? How to make sense of this situation? Pondering over this question a paragraph from Kant comes to mind. He writes:
“A sum of rules, even of practical rules, is called theory if those rules are thought as principles having a certain generality, so that abstraction is made from a multitude of conditions that yet have a necessary influence on their application. Conversely, not every doing is called practice, but only that effecting of an end which is thought as the observance of certain principles of procedure represented in their generality.”
In comparison with Kant’s writing generally the paragraph is rather simple. First, he defines theory, and then practice making connection between the two transparent.
Theory (in this para): Is sum of rules which are abstracted from multiple conditions (contexts) having a certain generality (applicable to many contexts in terms of making sense of them and acting), and these general rules have a necessary influence on their application in practical contexts. Which means these rules are not vacuous musings of an idle mind, but have practical value in understanding and action.
Practice (in this para): Not every action is practice, only those actions which are guided by the procedures represented in the theoretical principles and directed to an end, that is, objective to be achieved. Which means physical monkey activities of energetic running round or mental random gymnastics don’t constitute practice. A series of conscious acts woven into a procedure directed at an end and guided by theoretical principles makes the collection of those acts into worthwhile practice. This is especially true of educational practice.
Further down the essay Kant states that there is a necessary gap between theory and practice which is impossible to fill however detailed and comprehensive the theory one tris to make. That gap can be filled only by the judgment (and action) of the practitioner on the ground; in case of education, often on his/her feet in the classroom facing 30 or more active but possibly unruly minds. Therefore, there is a possibility of a theoretician who will fail as a practitioner, and a practitioner who will fail because of his/her blindness of theory. Regarding a theoretically blind practitioner he says, “no one can pretend to be practically proficient in a science and yet scorn theory without declaring that he is an ignoramus in his field”.
Could it be that our education system is populated either by supposed theoreticians who lack practical judgment and ability to translate an idea into action or theoretically blind “ignoramuses”, as Kant calls them? One declared to “know” how to achieve desired results in 3Rs but cannot himself do it; other though engages children up to some extent but fails to achieve the goals because does not fully understand what he is doing and why?
If this perspective has any worth, then we need people who have a rigorously justifiable theory and can competently translate it into action; that is, can fill the gap by their own judgment and choice of action. Capsules of activities and manuals of methods will not be able to do it. One must understand that manuals to be useful have to be read, understood, evaluated, visualized into action, worked bout in terms of material and activities and engagement with children. This brings us back to theory as success accomplishment in all these tasks requires a framework of principles well understood, justified for one’s own satisfaction and cognitively internalized.
To understand implications of this idea let’s take an example.
NCFSE 23 states that “[A]ttaining Foundational Literacy and Numeracy for all students must therefore become an immediate national mission and a central goal of the Foundational Stage curriculum.”
The foundational literacy (I prefer to call it Foundational Language, rather than literacy, but using the term here for ease of communication in the currently popular discourse) is explicated as “Literacy means that all students demonstrate fluent and critical reading, writing, and comprehension capacities in the Language”. It says that “At the end of this (Foundational) Stage, students are expected to read fluently in R1 and comprehend what they read, and begin writing sentences in R1 to express experiences, themes, and what they see in pictures.” Foundational stage is from age 3+ to 8 years, that is from pre-primary to standard 2.
Similarly, foundational numeracy (Arithmetic) emphasises “abilities to read and write, and perform basic operations with numbers” up to 99; and dealing with various measurements and simple problem solving.
As a teacher if one has to achieve all this s/he needs to understand a fair bit of structure of language and its nature, how it develops, what relationship it has with human life, education and child’s mind, and so on. Second, s/he has to form some commitment to this goal, which cannot come from simple prescription in the curriculum, but requires a vision of education as a whole and place of language in it as well as human life. Third, s/he needs to have a fair idea of children’s development of learning abelites and how their minds work. Forth, she will have to plan a route map of development from the mind and capabilities of a 3+ year old to what is defined here as Foundational Literacy. Fragmented manual reading will not work. A comprehensive plan may succeed. The issue is how to develop all this and convince the teacher, connect all this with her cognition and moral principles?
We all know it very well that development of such detailed frameworks of principles, judgment to use them properly and repertoire of practical skills to translate it into action takes time, hard work and resources. But the quick-fixers enter and convince us that simple discrete capsules of activities and packages of TLM will accomplish the task. What we really need is a carefully organized experience to work from theory to classroom practices and a vision of classroom practice that ensures gradual step-by-step progression of each student.
Digantar has announced an eight-days residential workshop precisely to focus on these issues. The workshop will provide enough theoretical background to situate foundational language and mathematics teaching in human life, education and curriculum. Then will proceed to take participants through a method of helping children achieve the goals of Foundational Language and Mathematics (FLM). The participants will be exposed to and provided opportunity to practice a step-by-stem teaching programme on guided, self-paced, conceptual learning, which not only achieves the stated goals but also makes children motivated self-learners and develops their confidence to use language, mathematics and their own thinking. The complete package needed for such a teaching programme will also be introduces. The package includes all needed TLM, sample worksheets and notes for the teacher.
यह कार्यशाला हिंदी में होगी।
रजिस्ट्रेशन की अंतिम तिथि: 10 फरवरी 2025
रजिस्ट्रेशन फॉर्म के लिए लिंक: https://lnkd.in/gBK3hhYM
अधिक जनकारी के लिए: फोन—9799498936, ईमेल—taru.digantar@gmail
Thinking Aloud 