A learning nation

- Azim Premji

Outlook – State of the Nation || Mar 26, 2007

Often we adults talk about the incessant questioning children subject us to. We either react in jest to the impossibility of some of the questions or in mock frustration at the insatiable curiosity of the child. But either way, it is in some form of indulgent pride.

During one of my journeys I remember a 6 year old looked around and asked her father, ‘How many seats are there in the plane?’ The father indulgently told her the total number of rows and asked her to calculate and she promptly did. Not satisfied with this she started calculating the number of seats in 2 planes and then 5 and then 10 and 20. She went on until she reached 100 planes. This led to a discussion on how she was doing the arithmetic and she kept discovering easier methods to play with numbers, techniques making multiplication easy, that multiplication was in fact successive addition. The sparkle in her eyes was moving. She had stumbled upon a new world. Mathematics for her would never be the same as before.

But the child doesn’t see all this as ‘mathematics’ or ‘arithmetic’. It is just an interesting exercise for her driven by curiosity. Contrast this with conversations we hear 12-13 year olds having. It typically revolves around subjects. Which subject is easy and which one is difficult. What questions are most likely to be asked in examinations? Learning eventually becomes an activity that has to be dealt with. Learning becomes focused on negotiating the prescribed curriculum and the purpose of learning becomes restricted to doing well in examinations. It is likely the child we met in the airplane will grow up to become like this too. Why does this happen?

During childhood and schooling, children become victims of constraints, regulation, discipline and regimen. Times during which children don’t study but just talk, interact with each other, play, draw, dismantle toys or just have fun is considered a waste of study time. We seem to have designed a schooling system which in trying to encourage learning seems to do the opposite. Children start feeling guilty about wanting to do anything other than “studying”. Learning restricts itself to the textbooks and subjects prescribed as part of our curriculum. Marks in examinations are the only means for a child to demonstrate her learning capabilities. And the few extra-curricular activities encouraged by schools are anyways not assessed as rigorously as the main subjects so in a way we discourage children from spending too much time in those activities.

I think we miss out numerous opportunities for children to correlate, to link and understand concepts. We encourage distinction between various learning experiences and over time children learn to dislike certain experiences and like some other. And this gradually erodes the quality of learning itself. We don’t put enough effort in helping children establish a comprehensive world view from all her learning experiences.

I think children learn at different times and in different ways. It is the responsibility of a school, teachers and parents to understand this and we should not stifle any effort made by children to make this leap into the enchanting and beautiful world of learning. Rather we need to look at the education in such a manner that it provides as many opportunities for learning as possible. The focus of the schooling systems needs to be not only on content and information but on the learning process.

Our curriculum framework advocates the need for integration of subjects, to connect topics to real life, to encourage observation and experimentation. In the classroom there are various ways for us to integrate these subjects into a comprehensive learning experience for children. Connections of these subjects to daily events make learning so much deeper and interesting. Education should focus on the process of learning and use information to further learning. We should use textbooks, computers and other tools for information dissemination and as triggers for thought. We need to allow the child to be an independent thinker. We need to broaden our perspective and see the larger aim of education, which is that of influencing the child to become a motivated learner.

In India now there is the growing realization of the need for change. We have begun to realize that our children don’t seem to learn how to learn. There are numerous studies through which this is being proven and the concern for the quality of education is growing.

I think progress is defined by the changing nature of issues that a society considers topical. We have made the transition from concern for just basic literacy to improvement of the quality of education. We need to progress from a compulsion to mass-produce stereotypes to creating independent thinkers and active learners. We have to create the right balance between our diverse subcultures and create an education system that caters to the need of every one of them.

We need to revamp the system that compels children to become mechanical learners. Let us not stifle ourselves the child’s mind with archaic definitions of rigidity, rigour and discipline. Let us create an environment that allows the child’s mind to blossom. Let us open our schools to the world of learning. We need to take this step and launch ourselves into this new paradigm, the paradigm of autonomous learning. Only then will we progress towards becoming a learning nation!

Azim Premji