The world over children has been hovering over screens learning lessons and teachers have been trying their best to finish the course. The scenario has increased our gratitude towards teachers and also on the other hand, teachers have realised how technology has come to their rescue and supported them like never before.
Is it working, or is it stressing out children and teachers both? With educational institutions not opening soon one wonders is technology going to replace the teacher.
CAN TECH REPLACE THE TEACHER?
Yes, when it comes to imparting knowledge. Some of the most difficult concepts have been explained in the most beautiful ways with the help of technology. Be it the Khan Academy, Byjus, Coursera or any of the Edtech platforms, there is no shortage of courses. You want to learn anything it is available at the click of a button.
This takes me to my next set of question-
What is learning?
How do we learn?
Is listening to lectures the best way to make children learn?
INFORMATION IS PLENTIFUL, MOTIVATION IS SCARCE
There is no shortage of information or knowledge. The most amazing courses are out there on the internet. Then why is it that lakhs of students enroll in online classes yet many don’t complete them. Many enroll in a college and don’t finish it either- Why?
There is something that schools are not doing right.
In 2013 a study was done in the US named ‘The Missing Piece’ Lots of educators were asked what was that missing link which was preventing students from achieving better and higher outcomes? The outcome of the study matched the research outcomes of cognitive scientists and of neuroscientists.
Real learning happens when the learning environment is different.
Learning never happens because the book is beautifully designed or the video has amazing graphics.
Learning happens when the student feels loved- period.
LOVE THEM AND LET THEM LOVE YOU
The ‘missing piece’ is love.
Neuroscientists call it SEL- Social and Emotional Learning, the missing piece that is required to improve and transform our schools.
Love and emotions need to be put at the centre of education. Only when students feel cared for, feel needed are they most likely to engage in learning. Cognitive scientists have over years of research reached a consensus that our emotions decide what things we pay attention to.
Children learn when they trust the teacher. That strong sense of trust is what makes them more receptive and motivated towards learning and more responsive to adult feedback. Learning does not take place when you teach them the subject- any software can do that today (maybe even better than ever before with virtual reality entering classrooms at supersonic speed).
TEACH THEM TO TICK THE RIGHT BOX
Learning takes place when they feel that they are loved, listened to and understood.
Learning does not take place when children are under pressure and stress.
In most schools both teachers and students are under pressure and stress. Schools have for years been rewarding the rote memorisation experts all these years. The best performers have been those who had the capacity to cram, keep up with the robotic class schedules and ace the standardised tests.
Daniel Koretz professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and the author of the book ‘The Testing Charade, Pretending to make schools better’ has been studying for decades the various approaches to improving schools says this test-based system has done more harm to students and corrupted the whole concept of learning.
Today competence in a subject is judged by your ability to tick the right box. As a consequence students are learning and teachers are teaching with the sole purpose of helping them tick the maximum right boxes. The ability to complete worksheets within a set time period is not learning.
David Brooks, a professor at Yale, the author of numerous books and an acclaimed columnist of the New York Times says the key job of a school is to give students new things to love, to introduce them to exciting fields of study, to make friends.
When teachers teach and students cram for the sole purpose of passing a test then learning is the last thing that happens. Schools should not be meant for this. Schools were not created to pass tests. They were created to inculcate a joy for learning.
A teacher’s job is to show the students his/ her passion for their subject. Passion is contagious- believe me. Passion ignites your desire to learn. Students witness that passion and then they too progress on their own journey of finding their passions.
A teacher’s job is to nurture a close relationship with his/her students. One of the most famous studios done by Harvard ran for 75 years. They followed two groups of men for 75 years to understand how childhood experiences affect health , happiness and mental well-being in middle age. The clearest message that the study gave was that ‘good relationships’ were instrumental in keeping one happy and healthy not fame and money. If you had someone to rely on and love, your nervous system relaxed and helped the brain stay healthy and reduce emotional pain.
Nurturing close relationships and teaching children how to handle emotions and relationships will be the most important skill required in the future- which will be filled will extreme uncertainty and constant change. The ability to think critically, solve novel and complex problems are the skills we need to equip our children with. They should know themselves and have the confidence to take initiative in learning new things constantly. The Hewlett Foundation has done significant research in this area and their findings state that for students to be future ready they need to possess skills like critical thinking, communication, and social and emotional skills, as well as the ability to be self-directed learners with a growth mindset.
Schools have for decades focused on rote learning – and that is most definitely not the skill required in the future.
If you have to teach them how to tick the right boxes then those boxes need to be love for learning, self-belief and constant growth.
The boxes we are focused on are the ability to cram, the ability to compete with others. Schools have stressed students into competing and defeating each other. So students are fighting to outpace their fellow classmates, schools are fighting to out rank other schools.
In Finland there are no rankings for top schools or top teachers. As the very famous Finnish thinker Samuli Paronen said ‘Real winners do not compete.” Finland does not focus on excellent marks but equality.
In his column in The New York Times titled ‘This is how Scandinavia Got Great’, Brooks says everybody admires the Nordic model, but no country has done what they did decades ago. In the 19th century the Nordic elites realised that if their countries were to prosper they had to create successful ‘folk schools’ for the least educated among them. They had to make a society where lifelong learning was a basic part of the fabric. And they had to instil a sense of pride in their students about their history and heritage.
If you look at the results then it has been a mighty successful model. They have high economic productivity, high social trust and high levels of personal happiness.
We are not teaching our children how to really win this game of life. Instead they are being stressed to no end chained in a 100 year old system that is doing nothing to prepare them for the real world.
TECH OR TEACHER?
Technology will have a definitive role to play in the future. It will eliminate rote learning. It should also eliminate lectures. Children can listen to them at home.
However there is only so much that technology can do. While there is so much more that teachers can do to change lives.
Teachers need to understand that they can no longer be knowledge providers. As Karen Boyes, a pioneer in the field of education, says, “Teachers should learn to give up control. They need to give up control over content.”
She tells teachers “Never work harder than your students, let them do the thinking. Don’t make students passive consumers of information. The world of tomorrow is highly uncertain and individuals who cannot think for themselves will turn out to be ill prepared and rudderless with a myopic vision.” Students need to be taught only one thing and that is the ability to think for themselves.
This is where most schools go wrong. The teacher, who has the best intentions, does all the hard work, unfortunately students just watch passively. Giving up control is difficult. It requires you to trust your students. There are schools that are trying to do just that and getting amazing results.
High Tech High a school in California believes in personalisation of classes. It does not mean students sitting in front of a computer doing a self-paced math program, rather it means spending hours in small groups with their teachers trying to figure out an authentic project that is not just academically relevant but which genuinely motivates them.
The Monument Mountain Regional High School has a unique semester called ‘The Independent Project’. This semester is designed by the students. They decide what they want to learn and how they want to learn it. Students get to design their own curriculum, tackle their own interests with absolutely no adult involvement and they are doing a fantastic job of it.
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Almost every piece of research has pointed to one fact -‘Academic excellence is a by-product of who is teaching.’
A school with face-recognition technology or one with ‘face-recognising-teachers’? Where would you want to go? Teachers have to become guides and mentors using most of their time to understand their students, build deep emotional connects and turn the students into life-long learners by helping them experience the joy of learning.
WARS HAVE ALWAYS CHANGED THE WORLD
Schools changed after WW II.
It was a period of rapid industrialisation and skilled labour was the need of the hour. Schools changed to produce workers. The focus shifted to academics and academic testing. Since then high scores have been the focus of all schools resulting in the creation of high pressure and unhealthy environments for both teachers and students.
This war against COVID should mark as a turning point in bringing back the joy of learning. This is critical because the future shall belong to those individuals who are constant learners.
Covid should remind us that things can change overnight and the world outside the classroom is rife with uncertainty and challenges.
It’s time schools changed.
It’s time we removed stress from schools.
It’s time we made learning fun.
It’s time we realised that test scores are irrelevant and incorrect way to judge learning.
It’s time we made our children resilient, emotionally balanced and future ready.
The wellbeing of a nation depends on its children; and schools need to make sure that they are providing the right way of learning. Let tech teach and let teachers love & let’s watch our children really learn.
(Author, Dr Rajita Chaudhuri, is President at Great Indian Dream Foundation -GIDF, and is experienced Editorial Director with a demonstrated history of working in the writing and editing industry. She is skilled in Entrepreneurship, Team Building, Public Speaking, Curriculum Development, and Market Research)
(Click here to read Dr Rajita’s views on Future of Travel)
