Learning challenges of three ages

In today’s constantly changing world of work, if there is one ability that determines the child's capacity to deal with future, it is his capability to learn effectively. This is called Learning Coefficient – LCF. Just like we develop any skill with practice, child’s LCF also increases when the child utilises his/her existing capacity more efficiently. Unfortunately, schools and coaching classes practice rote learning – memorization technique based on repetition. Hence it becomes parent's responsibility to help child in enhancing his/her LCF by practicing meaningful learning i.e. learning by understanding the meaning.

 

Good thing is that child learns through his natural urge of understanding the world. Jean Piaget, the first Swiss psychologist to study cognitive development in child, suggests that child learns by constructing his mind-map brick by brick. This is called theory of constructivism. If parents understand this theory well, they can contribute to child’s learning ability.

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While constructing his/her mind map, a child develops certain ability and faces a specific hurdle according to his/her age. The three distinct stages are: Preschool (up to age 6), Elementary School (Class I to V) and Secondary School (Class VIth to Xth). Parent's response to child’s achievements and challenges at every stage influences childs learning ability.

If parents wants to help his/her child develop his LCF, they must understand cognitive and emotional hurdles of every stage and respond accordingly.

Preschool stage (up to age six)

Until age of six, child constructs his mind-map by using extensive motor coordination (hand and eye coordination), language-learning (use of mother tongue to communicate), and sensorial development (use of five senses in understanding the world). All these three developments help the child to construct his mind-map 'unconsciously'. At this stage, parents face two hurdles in helping the child to increase his Learning Coefficient (LCF).

One hurdle is to abstract. Building intelligence of child is helping him to abstract or differentiate essence from non-essence. To 'learn' numbers, child must learn to abstract 'quantity' in the number symbol. For instance, in the number symbol of 36, he must learn to abstract the quantity of three tens and six units or understand that 36 is larger than 26. For a child below six, it is very difficult to abstract because he can only see and relate to concrete 'items' like number symbols.

But the second hurdle of 'emotions' is much bigger for a preschool child. Due to emotions, preschool-child is highly distracted and experiences huge stress of failing whenever he takes up a new thinking challenge. Without helping child to negotiate his emotions (or increasing his EQ) parent cannot help child in developing his IQ.

Dr Maria Montessori, an Italian born physician and educator, discovered unique method of negotiating these two hurdles which is why her education method is so popular in the world. Parents, with some expert guidance, can use this method now to help their preschool child.

Elementary school group (class I to V)

If you have missed helping your child at Preschool stage, your child has to develop his/her 'thinking' mind from scratch.

On the one hand, child's 'thinking' engine is ready to negotiate the challenge at this age. But, on the other hand, her 'emotional' engine is yet to start 'ticking'. These children therefore require extensive help in coordinating the emotional development (which is EQ) with the development of thinking mind, which is IQ. Increasing LCF is like climbing on two ladders: IQ and EQ. One cannot go too much ahead on one ladder. One has to coordinate both. Learning coefficient increases when the child coordinates this climbing of two ladders.

At this age, the child can understand instructions. Parents mistakenly therefore believe that 'teaching' is equivalent to 'learning'. They overuse 'instructions'; they bombard the child with explanations which the child cannot understand. Unable to understand, the child feels inadequate. Either he accepts it as his 'fault', or he blames his parents for being too domineering. In both situations, child becomes defensive and stops learning.

Parents have to understand the child psychology and respond differently. They have to wait for the right 'moments' that emerge in the daily encounters with child. In order to spot these moments, parents first must become keen observers of child. But observation is the first step. They must also learn to channelize their 'advice' that suits a given moment. This is the skill of facilitation. Parents therefore must be keen observers and facilitators to help their Elementary stage child.

This stage is important for another reason. At the end of this stage, the child makes a subconscious 'conclusion' in dealing with his life. Alfred Alder, founder of the school of individual psychology, calls it 'lifestyle' conclusion. This conclusion hinders or helps the learning of next stage: Am I capable to make my own mind-maps? Can I negotiate the hurdle of my emotional mind? Can I use challenges to develop my thinking mind? Are friends to help or hinder? Are elders to guide or instruct?

Secondary School stage (Class VI to X)

At this stage, the child's thinking mind is better prepared to abstract. He starts learning algebra, physics and other abstract subjects. Because he has started learning to think, he has also started explaining his emotions, which helps his EQ development.

If the child's lifestyle conclusion at the end of earlier stage is dysfunctional, the child will not listen to parental advice in this age even if the parent has honest intentions and well developed skills.

In this stage, parents also must understand the process of abstraction in details. Without understanding this, a parent cannot find ideas to help his child utilise his learning capacity further. For instance, without understanding the abstraction involved in numbers, the parent cannot help the child unfold the mystery involved in unraveling prime numbers. Without understanding the abstraction involved in using language, he cannot help the child in telling a compelling story. Without understanding abstraction, Parents also cannot increase child's learning capacity. They are stuck.

But the bigger hurdle that Parent has to overcome is to help the child process his emotions. Like a preschool child, Secondary school child is flooded with emotions due to his hormonal changes. Adolescent child also identifies more with his peers in this age. If parents understand these changes in his emotional make-up, they help construct a resilient and strong child. But when parents fail to understand, they unwittingly construct their child as emotionally-fragile and diffident. And without processing emotions parents cannot help their child in finding their sources of motivation.

Conclusion

By understanding the principles of learning and child psychology, parent can make a huge difference in their child's learning ability, LCF. Even if they fail to help the child in earlier stage, they can catch up in the next stage by investing more effort. But when parents try to help their child without understanding these principles, despite their good intentions, they unknowingly obstruct their child’s learning ability.

Learning is not pushing the child in the water....

Today, I was sitting near a swimming pool. It was painful for me to watch fathers trying to teach 'swimming' their 5 year old children. I watched three examples which should never be followed if you want your child to learn anything.

• One father was constantly urging his child to do different things to expose him to different challenges of swimming. " Jump in the pool. I will catch you". " Catch me on the back and we will swim". The child was howling in a very big voice and constantly saying "No".
• Second father was over-helping the child. Child went to jump. Father was telling him  "Come slowly or you will slip". Or when the child was using 'life jacket' to swim, father was constantly 'ensuring' that his buckles are strapped properly. 
• Third father was too impatient with his child. Even when the child was swimming well with his life jacket, his father was urging the child to take up new activities such as " Close your mouth and go in the water". The child did it, but gulped lot of water when he went inside. 

Three principles of learning are

• Learning is voluntary. Child volunteers when he learns to overcome his 'fear of failing'. Child slowly learns to 'overcome' this fear by 'expressing' his fear honestly without hiding it under the mask of " I am superman". But when we do not 'acknowledge' his fear, he is stuck. He stops volunteering for new activities.   
• Learning happens when the child gets 'minimum help'. Do not help the child beyond what is necessary. Second father was doing this. When the child 'discovers' his way, he cherishes the learning and wants to repeat it again. By helping him too much, we rob the child of this joy. And also indirectly stop him from 'relying on his own capacity'
• Learning happens when the child is just stretching beyond his 'zone'. Third father was constantly forcing the child to go above his challenge zone. It is true that the child will not learn if he does not cross the challenge zone. But pushing him too high above his challenge , when he is not ready, is inviting trouble. One has to strike a fine balance between 'too high' and 'just high' challenge.  Today's modern parents make this mistake a lot. They buy too many 'kits' for which the child is not ready. This only makes the child doubt his own capacity.  

Swimming is perhaps a best activity for the parent to help the child learn because swimming has a 'short' feedback loop of learning. But it is important to remind ourselves that Learning is always done by the child. We can only 'enable' the environment around the child to help him learn. Patience, planning and right help are needed for our children to learn. 

Use Lesson study method to improve teacher-centric method of education

If you want your student to learn, Teacher-centric method is inherently more difficult method because it is focused on the delivery of content, not on the student's understanding of content. We have earlier seen how the Swedish method of getting feedback from the student after the content is delivered in the class is one way of improving teacher-centric method of education. 

Here is another method. It is called Lesson study practice in Japan. Read this link to understand more about it. It is basically a method that is aligned with inquiry-based teaching. 

Lesson study can be bifurcated in six steps and should be done by a group of teachers together. Here are the steps in short. For more detailed steps, go through this pdf.

Step 1: Identify the teaching problem one wants to solve. The problem could be 'teaching fractions', or teaching division with remainders, or teaching subtraction where one has to carry forward the 'ten' like 31 minus 13. The problem could also be of retention. For instance, students, after being taught a subject in Physics, say a Lesson on measuring Reflection of Light , do not remember the content while writing the answer sheet.

Step 2: Teachers should discuss and dialogue with each other and find out the 'exact problem' that the teachers are facing. Talk with teachers outside the school to understand the difficulties that student face. That will help the teacher 'scope' the problem in a better way. 

Step 3: Do some 'research' to understand the issues in more detail and specifically how other teachers have 'solved' the difficulties identified in the problem, if any. This step may require an 'outside consultant' to locate the research papers so that the third-person objective analysis can be done. 

Step 4: Design a Lesson plan that will help the students to 'understand' the lesson in a more effective manner. Teachers will also list down the different 'measurements' that will help the teacher to 'measure' the effectiveness of teaching plan. Will it be a test after the lesson? Or will it be a specific question which is indirect? 

Step 5: Teach the 'lesson' according to the lesson-plan to one class. While teaching, one teacher will teach, while rest of the teachers will observe. The observers should focus on the student's learning, not on the teacher's teaching. 

Step 6: Incorporate the feedback of the observers and improve the lesson plan. Use the new Lesson plan to deliver the lesson. 

Conclusion

Lesson study method is meant to improve 'teaching', not the 'teachers'. This method is more difficult to implement because the teachers have to sit together and openly accept their problems to find better solutions. Teachers often do not like doing this.

This is not a quick-fix method. Schools often send teachers for 'training' and hope that the training will directly help the students, or they will call an "Expert teacher" to give ideas and tips of good teaching. In this method of Lesson study, the teachers are forced to think, take feedback from others, and improve teaching. 

As you would have guessed, a big benefit of this method is that the relationship between the teachers also change: they become more collaborative, invite feedback on their teaching method from other teachers, and more importantly focus on the student on how they learn.  

Which rope ladder design should we use to enable learning of child?

Here is a beautiful symbol of teacher-centric education. Watch this rope ladder put in a school. Do you think the child will learn to climb the ladder? At the end of six months, how many children do you think must have climbed this ladder?

Teacher-centric design: Rope ladder with granite flooring

Answer: This design almost guarantees that no child will learn to climb the rope ladder. In six months, not a single child could climb the rope ladder. Why ? 

One, because the floor is granite, the teacher wants to help the child to climb the ladder every time so that the fall may not hurt him so much. This dependency cripples the child in choosing his own time to climb. Two, because the teacher is helping ( we call it teaching ) the child to climb, the child never learns when to leave the rope with his hand or when to push his legs to climb the next rung even though the teacher may instruct him. Three, until he does it repetitively, the child will never build enough 'muscle strength' to balance his body. But the child cannot do this repetitively, because he has to depend on you every time to attempt it. Four, the child even if he had initial confidence, slowly loses his confidence that he can do it on his own and then becomes over-dependent on you while climbing. This is the final nail in the coffin of learning.  

Now, let us change the design a bit. The ground is of sand. 

Student-centric design: Rope ladder with sand flooring

Now the child can climb on his own. With no help from teacher, the child can learn to coordinate his hands and legs faster.  More importantly, the child can do this repetitively as many times as she wishes. This helps the child to build her muscle strength making it more and more easier to climb. At the end of six months, more than 50% of the child were climbing the rope ladder upto 5 steps. Some were climbing upto 2 steps. (By the way, this is the real record of a school where this was installed) 

Lesson : Design the ' education system' to enable learning

In education, the design is the most important element, not teachers, nor curriculum ( SSC, CBSE, ICSE or...) nor infrastructure ( e-learning, computers), nor extra curricular activities ( like horse riding, swimming or). All these elements are 'tools' to achieve the final end-objective of enabling learning of the child.

Take the 4 design elements of new rope ladder design. 1>You simply must give 'freedom' to the child to climb as many times as he/she wishes. You do not need a 'class of rope climbing' at fixed time and of fixed interval. 2> You need 'fail-safe' method to ensure that even failed trials will not physically harm the child. More importantly, you need a system of not punishing the child after his failed attempts. Because, if you punish his mistakes, he will stop trying. 3> You need to give freedom to repeat it as long as the child masters the climbing. Not when you want him to stop climbing 4> And you do not need 'grading' system to find who climbed how many steps. Only when the child wants to become an expert climber, you may set up a 'grading' system to measure his progress. Or you may hire 'experts' to train him. In other words, the system should be 'customisable' for a student. In short, student-centric.

Where are the designers of education system please? Schools do not need smart teachers, or sophisticated technology, or brilliant infrastructure to help the child. We want designers who can 'put' all this elements - teachers, technology, infrastructure -  together in enabling learning of the child, and not to perform better teaching. 

Ideas for injecting student centricness in teacher-centric schools

Teacher centric schools, the most popular format of schools in India, often suffer from one big disadvantage. As teacher teaches students in a group, he cannot customise his 'instructions' for each student to ensure that student 'gets' it. Some student learn, some do not. Child-centric schools like Montessori do not face this problem, because each student is 'addressed' separately by a teacher.

Can teacher-centric schools do something about this? For instance, the best teacher-centric schools in the world, the schools in Finland, have one of the best system to counter one of the central weakness of teacher-centric system. They assess every student immediately after the lesson, spot the lagging student, and then do immediate correction through an alternate teacher.

Another BIG idea that can help a school is to guide student based on his/her strengths and preferences. How can schools do this?

Schools can use Student Guide to help them.

Role of Student Guide : His primary role should be to help the student 'discover' his potential abilities, nurture it using different support systems, and use corrections in the nurturing by monitoring the student's progress. Many schools currently have Psychological counselors, who counsel 'mentally sick' students. Student Guide however should coach 'mentally healthy' students and help him prevent sickness instead of correcting after getting sickness.

Tasks of Student Guide: Student Guide will have 4 main tasks:

1. Profile every student in the school : Profile every student to understand his/her strengths, preferences, study habits, learning blindspots and challenges. More importantly, this should not be done through standard psychometric testing, because these 'snapshot photos' are too static and do not capture the dynamic changes of a child ( at least in India). Instead, this should be done through 'interactive sessions', meaningful engagements, and multiple observational inputs from teachers, students friends. This profiling can be done only for students beyond 7th/8th  class to ensure that students guidance can be focused and deep enough to yield results.

2. Guide students and their parents to unfold their abilities : Use the profiling information to guide student on a path to nurture those strengths. Because a student is too young, he also needs support from his 'family support' system. This includes enabling the student to gain the three core skills of self-starter: planning, communication and self-management. Ideally, this should be incorporated in the basic method of teaching. But , if it is not possible, external 'crucible' interventions can be used.

3. Utilise subject teachers in nurturing these strengths : Enable subject teachers , like physics, maths, language and History to nurture the student's strengths. For instance, helping the teachers to understand the development of three 3 key abilities and what can teachers do to build them in their given subject. The two connections that teachers can help the student are building real life connection of a topic and showing how the topic connects with other subjects. Not every school may be able to utilise teachers due to readiness of the teachers. In that scenario, external teachers can be used to support the school teachers. Many schools use Maths Lab and Science Lab to help their student nurture their specific logical abilities.

4. Fine tune the guidance by monitoring the students progress ( or lack of progress) so that the student gains self confidence in his own abilities. A student whose abilities are rewarded by the school, such as in Science and Maths, do not face this problem. But student with 'different abilities' often suffers from poor self confidence. Such students often need to see the 'ideal path' as well as the 'possible destinations' that their abilities will help them reach. More than anything, student must become a self-starter, who can chose his own direction when the time comes and then has the 'necessary skills' to execute those decisions.

Summary

Having worked in 'Talent identification and nurturing' for last 10 years, i have found that the role of schools is not in identifying or nurturing talent, but in exploring cognitive abilities in different domains (arts, science, history, language ) and ensure that the requisite abilities are learnt. Therefore the suggested role of Student guide is not 'talent identification', but 'abilities exploration'.

School should also take sufficient time to find the right Student Guide, because this field is fraught with experts who have the 'education', but lack sufficient 'experience' to work in this field.

School education is only about achieving one central purpose

You see different methods of school education: teacher versus student centric, learning versus development oriented, practical versus theoretical focus and on and on. And there are various combinations that one can devise, depending on one's ingenuity, objective and student community. But ultimately, how should one evaluate these different practices? Is there any benchmark? Here is one 'gold' benchmark.

I think that the purpose of any school education are achieving three ends singly or together:  1>Help the child to understand the 'process' of learning. 2> Help him become a self-starter. 3> Help the child to understand the universe better. 

How far our schools help our children to achieve these end objectives? Let us look at the objectives in the reverse order. 

1. Third objective: Help the child to understand the universe better 

If you pause and look at these three end objectives, it is obvious that most of the school education systems are not meant to achieve any of these three ends. Their sole purpose is to help the student to answer the known questions in the prescribed academic content, be it mathematics, science or geography, and get better marks in the final exam. These schools do not even help the student to apply the content in understanding the universe. 

New schools, i have observed, emerge only to fulfill this objective. Some experimental schools for instance help the student to understand the content better by applying them in real schools. For instance, by helping them understand how 'sugar and charcoal' are same in chemical composition, they help understand one 'essential aspect of universe'. Or by understanding that sun takes 365 plus some hours to traverse the earth, it helps them understand why an year consist of 365 days and why there is a leap year after four years?  It is surprising that some content like accounts, taxation, and public policies are just not introduced to the child. 

2. First objective: Help the student to understand his/her process of learning

We have forgotten that the first purpose of education is help the student understand the process of learning, not the content. Content, such as mathematics, biology, or language is useful only because it helps us understand the process of learning better. That is why it is important to understand the process of finding a solution, not just get the final solution. 

Please read this interview of a school teacher which helps the student to learn the process of learning. This school, called the democratic school, employs student-centric method of learning. In this school, student drives his own learning. It is teachers job to help the student understand his process of learning, instead of learning the content. As an educator, we use the same student-centric method of learning in Montessori and it creates children who are better equipped to face the challenges of learning, than learning something by rote.

3. Second objective: Help the student become a self-starter

Becoming a self starter makes a student makes his own choices and live with those choices. Living with choices is difficult, that is why we use 'others' to make choices. It means student makes his own choices of learning, for instance. He forms his own opinions about his friends and lives by them. He strives for something and lives with its outcome, be it success or failure. He makes mistakes and does not get so much scared that he stops learning.

Summary

Traditionally, the school has always centered on the third objective: helping the student understand the universe better. Even here, the success rate of schools has been very poor. The objective of making a student a self-starter was taken over by parents and society. The objective of helping the student to understand his purpose of learning is taken up by colleges is many of the societies. 

But schools have also been very daring in their approach. Child-centric schools like Montessori have ventured and tried helping student in the first and second objective. You must read about the democratic schools like Sudbury Valley and their success in helping the student to learn the first and second objective. Their success prompts us to use these practices and suggest that we can use them innovatively and help us all the three objectives in one go. 

I feel that the most important objective of school should be to help the student to understand his process of learning. But that is my personal opinion. What is yours?

Honest intentions are not enough to create good schools

Some educators believe that good philosophy ( whether it is of Krishnamurthy or the IB school philosophy of developing global citizens) can itself help produce good schools. Some believe that attractive tools such as activity-oriented schools, experimental schools or Holistic schools itself will produce good schools. Some believe that good teachers alone can produce good schools, so we have teachers starting their own schools like Toto-Chan's teacher Sosaku Kobayashi who could run a school in a train coach. 

However, Good philosophy, Attractive tools and Good hearted teachers alone are not enough to produce good schools, because good schools have to consistently produce good results. All these three threads have to be tied together in a 'Method of teaching'. This is called Pedagogy in the language of educators. 

Without the right design of 'teaching method', even good teachers cannot produce good schools. We need a good pedagogical method to tie the three threads together. Without tying these three elements in one Strand, each individual thread does not produce good schools.

Please see this video of a brilliant pedagogical method designed by Chennai corporation schools in 2005 for primary school. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kxJ0fV0mIU&feature=youtu.be ) Although the entire video is of an hour, you can view the video of 15 minutes ( from 6th to 21st minute) to appreciate the brilliant design of Primary school which now runs in all Chennai corporation primary schools. It was initiated by then Chennai Collector M.P. Vijaya Kumar. It synthesises the principles of Activity based school of Rishi Valley schools and Montessori child-centric method in a tightly knitted thread. 

I earnestly request you to spend 15 minutes in seeing this video to appreciate the 4 basic pedagogical principles of designing a good school:

1. Child-centric design of teaching: Child determines the sequence and pace of learning curriculum. Child-centricmethod compels a teacher to teach every child individually, not in a group. When child determines his pace of education, learning is guaranteed. In a teacher-centricdesign of teaching, where a teacher teaches a group of student at his pace, learning is guaranteed to fail.  Despite a wonderful philosophy and brilliant teachers, a school cannot succeed if the pedagogical method is not child-centric.

2. Tools and kits to impart teaching : If you have observed the video carefully, you would observe the cards and pictures for Language material as well as the 100-year old Montessori beads for teaching Mathematics. Observe the use of blackboards which are meant for children. These kits are part of good design. If you have seen any Montessori, you will see the entire set of kits which help a child choose them according to his needs. I have seen many of the wonderful brilliant schools who do not have any tools and kits to impart teaching. Without these tools and kits, the child is unable to self-learn and take guidance when needed.

3. Self-corrective design to detect and correct the mistakes : When a child is trying to learn something,  mistakes are bound to happen. Pedagogical method should be designed in such a way that these mistakes can be detected by the student himself so that he/she can also correct it. This simple principle of design is necessary to ensure that the student does not feel demotivated while making mistakes. Unfortunately, very few pedagogical methods incorporate this principle in the design. I know of one method which incorporates self correction in the design: Montessori method.  

4. Well trained teachers in the designed pedagogical method: Teachers have to be trained in the designed pedagogical method, not just be a good teacher. Although qualities of good teacher, such as self-reflectiveness and empathy, are required in a good teacher, these qualities are not enough to ensure learning. Teacher's qualities are determined by the pedagogical method. For instance, subject-wise knowledge of a subject is more important in teachers in certain pedagogical methods of teaching.

Summary

In my last 2 years, I have met many educationists, school founders and teachers. I have been surprised to observe that piece-meal thinking ( that only one element can produce good school) is popular in the world of education. Schools are supposed to produce learning, and they can do this only, if all the elements are synergised together in one strand of pedagogy. Only good teachers, beautiful infrastructure, learning aids such as computers or well articulated philosophy of teaching is not enough to make good schools.

We need only one reform in education

Almost everyone involved in education wants to be a 'reformer' to show how the current education system does not work, and how his 'reform' of education can solve the problem. Some try to nudge the system by adding 'practical ways' of teaching - like experimental education, project based schooling - while some try to shift the education system introducing standardised curriculum. Some try to follow a modern route and claim that 'technology' can transform the education by using different teaching systems.

But very few educationist are willing to admit the basic flaw in the current education system: that the education system is basically 'coercive' and one cannot learn if one is coerced to learn. You can take horse to the water, but cannot make the horse drink. Imagine helping your child to learn something, say addition of fractions. You can make him/her sit on the desk, but cannot ensure that the child learns ' addition of fraction' if you sit and teach the child. In education, one can 'enable' learning to happen, one cannot make it happen.One can teach someone, but one cannot however ensure that the person learns.

One can teach someone, but one cannot ensure that the other person learns.

In short, the current 'coercive' education system cannot work, whatever tinkering one does with it. It needs just one basic reform: Change the education system to 'non-coercive' so that the students and kids take charge of their own learning. 

If the education system is coercive, nothing will work, because we are coercing child to sit even when he is not willing or ready. Periods and sequence are fixed. Group teaching further thwarts any discussion on the subject. Without ensuring basic willingness of the child, better technology will not enable learning. Good intentions won't help. Effective learning philosophies will not be useful. Better curriculum won't ensure learning. Experimental method of teaching won't work.

On the other hand, if the education system is non-coercive, it will work, because we learn only when we want to learn. If the answer is so self-evident, then what is the basic challenge in setting up a non-coercive system of education? It faces three design challenges. 

1. Non-coercive education needs a robust design of curriculum and 'teaching tools': Coercive system is structured, systematic and ensures control. The perception of control is important for both educators and parents. Non-coercive system, because it depends on the voluntary efforts of students, cannot lend this feeling of control. Parents are worried that "if their children do not produce voluntary effort, what will happen to their lives"? Educators cannot take money from the parents for the education of their children if they cannot ensure that the child learns. What structure can offer both the benefits :control for the parents and educators, and freedom for the students? 

2. Non-coercive education also requires assessment to correct the progress of student: Because of the structured system of Coercive education, students can easily be assessed, compared, and then hopefully shown the path of correction based on their grades. We now know that we have abused this system of grading so much that it is now ruling the 'process of education'. Progress in non-coercive education is difficult to assess. Because every individual is growing at a different rate, it cannot be compared. One therefore requires a different 'benchmark' for assessing a child's progress in non-coercive education, if the system has to flourish in the current educational system.

3. Non coercive education requires active partnering from the parents : Currently, in the coercive education system, parent can outsource education to the 'school educators' and let them do whatever they deem fit. In non-coercive education, parents cannot take this approach of 'outsourcing'. They need to partner with the school, understand the progress of their child, fill the gaps themselves when the school cannot tackle the needs of their unique child. In short, parents need to participate more actively with the school educators. Both school educators and parents need to work together to create a mechanism for mutual coordination and control.

Summary

It is not difficult to design these three elements of non-coercive education system. We already know of two such systems which are well proven. Montessori system is one such design. For more information on Montessori design, see these details. Another well tested system is of Greenberg's Sudbury Valley school which started in 1968 and is therefore equally tested.

In other words, the design is available to launch a non-coercive school anywhere in the world. Do we have the educators who have the gumption to take the challenge? Or do we have enough caring parents who would walk a mile to help their children?

Update after the post

1. Here is an update of Fairhaven school which uses Sudbury valley system method ( democratic school)
2. Here is an interesting differences and similarities between democratic school and other models like Montessori and  Waldorf.

What is the purpose of today's Indian schools ?

Despite Korean students ranking first in reading and maths, and third in science, in the 2009 PISA survey, South Korea’s ex-minister for education Byong Man Ahn made this comment on South Korea's system of education

“While Korea's students excel at learning, they believe its purpose lies not in self-development based on personal interest or motivation, but in entrance into a highly ranked university. Students have no time to ponder the fundamental question of “What do I need to learn, and why?” They simply need to prepare for the test by learning the most-effective methods for digesting tremendous quantities of material and committing more to memory than others do.”

When I read this, i thought that the South Korean Minister is speaking of Indian schools. Our schools are also, I think, preparing students to get into better Engineering or Medical colleges through digesting huge material in the coaching classes ( not schools) and then getting it out in the engineering or medical entrance tests. Although accounting stream and vocational courses like ITI are encouraged indirectly through the focus on basic skills of numeracy, other streams of arts, design, or literature ( literacy oriented) are not even encouraged indirectly. But even in the basic education skills of numeracy and literacy, India ranked below average in the PISA 2009 ranking of countries, so I am not sure if we are doing that well in the basic education of numeracy and literacy.

And if you look at our education system, the purpose of school system is very confusing. If you see the number of ITI insitutes in India , one wonders if the schools are meant to provide a set of skilled employees for the industrial labor market  to the growing industry? If you see the scampering of students in IIT's and engineering colleges, one wonders if the schools are meant to provide top level students in science so that national economic competitiveness is improved ? Or, if you see the growing number of alternate schools in India, one wonders if the schools are meant to develop the ‘whole’ child – emotionally, intellectually, creatively? Or if you see the Governments attempt to make education compulsory, are the schools meant to just help the students get the basic skills of numeracy ( numbers) and literacy ( language speaking, reading and writing)?

Because, if we get our objective right, we can at least find the best possible route. All the above objectives are not either/or. They can coexist. But the objectives should be clearly articulated. Because it then helps to focus on making the system more effective. For instance, if want to develop more ITI students for the industry, we can 'spruce up the ITI curriculum, get more industry participation, add curriculum of entrepreneurship for trades like plumbers and electricians . If you agree on a destination, you can at least find the best possible use of limited resources.

Instead, what we’re left with is a public discourse permanently afflicted by the curse of binary, oppositional arguments. The either/or positioning (selective vs. comprehensive school systems; instruction-led teaching vs inquiry-led; head vs hand; academic vs vocational; knowledge vs skills) is further aggravated by constant political interference, resulting in a series of pendulum swings with every change of administration. That diffuses the already limited resources and we are left with nothing in hand.  No real progress can be made in such a situation.

A universal school will soon vanish if ....

In my days of schooling, we had only one school. That school was meant to help me explore all my abilities - maths, sports, arts, verbal. Everything was offered in one package. This was the era of universal school. If i was not good in academic abilities of maths and verbal, i was labelled as poor student and had to find a way to get my self belief. If i was good in them, i was lucky. Sports and arts were considered as extra curricular activities. If i was good in them, i still had to prove myself.

Now the schools have become slowly and surely into specialised schools. They offer alternative paths of development. Parents can now take advantage of these schools depending on their child's development trajectory !

Sports based school:  Last week, i had gone to a school at a small town near Nashik, which calls itself a sport school. It offers students to explore different type of games starting from a field game like hockey to individual game like tennis. It has sports coaches. Some of the games have been handed over to experts in that field on BO - build and operate - basis such as volleyball.

Although these schools focus on deepening interest in sports, it also offers good academic atmosphere to ensure that the students also do well in academics. 

In this school, 'sports' acts as a motivation engine for students who yearn to display their physical mastery. Once they express well through sports, they are able to gain the 'kernel' of self belief which enables them to work on their academics. Sports enables them to develop their 'character trait' of self regulation ( like we saw in this example) which then helps them grow in academics. ( Remember the talent rule: Developing Talent = Developing Cognitive abilities(CA)+ Developing Character traits(CAT)+ Developing Conative traits(CAT). These schools smartly exploit development trajectory of those students who develop faster through 'sports route', and help these students find their 'self belief' quickly. 

Arts based school: This school helps a student to explore and deepen the growth of artistic interests in dramatics, dancing, music and other performing arts. Although i have not yet seen a school which specialises only in these artistic endeavours, i have seen numerous schools who have huge infrastructure and specialised teachers to help the students explore their 'artistic' interests. 

It is common knowledge that students upto VI and VIIIth class show extra interest in artistic endeavours. If this inherent motivation energy of arts can be tapped at this age, it helps the child to express herself/himself and find self belief. Some students, who have this development trajectory, benefit immensely from this route. By developing character traits through 'arts', they open the path of developing their cognitive abilities later. 

Academics based school: Some students tend to learn a subject, say mathematics, faster than their colleagues. The more they learn mathematics, the more challenges they desire. Please remember that a student is motivated only when 'the challenge is high enough than his current ability'. If the challenge is too high, he gives up. If the challenge is too low, he feels bored.  So, if a student is following a development trajectory, of learning mathematics, it is important for the school to offer increasing challenges in mathematics so that the student's motivation engine and learning engine are synchronised. For some 'academically brilliant' students, this is the right development trajectory. They either learn  mathematics, science, software or other technical domains. These students, who can follow the Ability route to develop, are lucky, because these schools are numerous. A typical universal school however is not useful to them, because this typical school is unable to offer them constantly increasing challenge. It needs an academic focused school to help the student to use his development trajectory. 

Other kind of schools: There are many other kind of schools which focus on different trajectory of development. Some tend to use the 'nature' route by enabling the student to explore nature actively through gardening, trekking and farming. Some are open schools that focus on development of conative traits like 'purpose' through meditation, yoga, dealing with philosophical abstractions. These are Krishnmurthy or Ashram schools. 

Summary

Arts, sports and academic schools are not meant to develop the talent of students in arts, sports or academic respectively. That happens later in life. At the school age, these domains are merely the 'zones' that allow a student to come out of his shell and express himself. They act as motivation engines, rather as cognition engines. And while engaging in them, they help the students to develop their important character traits of self regulation, emotional stability and creativity.

Once these character traits start getting formed and crystallized, these specialised schools then enable them to align with the learning of cognitive abilities later. It is a matter of sequencing. While academic schools help the student to learn cognitive abilities first and character traits later, these specialised schools help the student to learn character traits first and cognitive abilities later. Parents can smartly use these schools by choosing a school which aligns with the development trajectory of their child. 

Is home schooling viable for Indian Parents?

More than 20 lakhs children in the United States get educated at home, rather than at school. In the town I am living, in Nashik, there is a growing population of parents who are also engaged in home schooling. John Holt is considered as the father of Self-Directed, Home-Based Learning. See his website for more information  on the benefits and other resources of home schooling.India also has an association called Indian Association of Homeschoolers called Swashikshan. They also have online presence here.

Why so many parents favour home-school learning? 

Researchers have discovered three main reasons for avoiding the normal schooling. One, most students - bright, average, or failing ones - lose their zest for learning by the time they reach middle school or high school.  In school, children often are seen to be bored, anxious or both. Other researchers have shown that, with each successive grade, students develop increasingly negative attitudes toward the subjects taught, especially math and science. Two, school students are disconnected with the actual life and the community around them. These students not only lose the opportunity of learning, but they also do not learn the 'skills' to navigate real life problems. And three, the unwanted homework creates a huge problem in the families that further decreases the opportunity of learning for the child.

Parents are not surprised to know that learning is unpleasant in schools. However, most of the parents think of it as bad-tasting medicine, tough to swallow but good for children in the long run. Many of the parents therefore tend to shrug off such findings and tend to put their children in the school as an inevitable hardship of life. But some parents wish to do something to counter these disadvantages. One of the alternative is home schooling.

These parents provide a home environment that facilitates learning, and they help connect their children to community activities from which they learn. Some of these families began this approach long ago and have adult children who are now thriving in higher education and careers.

There are various research reports on the benefits of homeschooling. See these reports here. One of the report is on Indian Village in Kerala. According to these reports, the main benefit of this approach lies in the children’s continued curiosity, creativity and zest  for learning. The above mentioned authors are completing a study of approximately 80 adults who themselves were home schooled in this self-directed way when they were of “school age. Their results are awaited.

However, home schooling parents have to overcome two big handicaps of home schooling, if they want their child to benefit: 

Knowledge of development and education for parents: One is the availability of one competent parent at home. Lot of Content of teaching is available on the internet. With MOOC sites like Khan Academy, EDx ( managed by top universities like Harvard and Berkeley), and Courseera ( another site managed by top universities in the world) , finding content on any subject has become very easy. Here are some books on homeschooling, and videos on home schooling. Indian association also have lot of resources.

But the gap is elsewhere. The parents must understand the fundamental difference between learning versus teaching, appreciate the developmental bottlenecks of growth of child that impact learning, and help the child to negotiate typical learning bottlenecks in, say subjects like Algebra. In other words, a home schooling parent needs to find a person -  good 'educator' and 'developer' - who can help her understand this, and guide her whenever she is stuck. 

Fill the gap of social learning: One of the big gaps in homeschooling is the unavailability of 'social medium' to enhance a child's learning. Researchers know that the learning happens best when it is driven by curiosity and 'social interactions'. Social interactions play a major role in the learning of a child, because a child learns by seeing the difficulties of other child, understand the fine nuances by sometimes helping someone else solve a difficulty, or sometimes getting help from others. Social context is also critical in building interest in non-academic domains such as play, arts and other areas.We have seen, how playing of tabla can help a child develop qualities that are complementary to his talent. Parents have to find active 'social groups' in different areas to help her child. This group need not be just active in non academic domain like arts, but they can also be passionate about some subject like Astronomy or Robotics. 

Summary

In other words, if a parent can manage to fill these two gaps, home schooling is definitely a viable option. I know of some parents, who prefer home schooling for a different reason. For instance, one of the parent has a child who has 'queer' mannerisms and therefore finds it difficult to deal socially with friends. I also know a parent who prefers home-schooling because her child is extremely good in 'Arts', something that is not encouraged in a school. Another parent uses homeschooling because she is herself a good teacher. 

Therefore, if you are interested in avoiding school for your child, it is practical, doable and also beneficial for your child. 

Gap between teaching and learning can be bridged with these three enablers

Teaching and learning are different. Teachers teach and students learn. Teaching necessarily does not lead to learning. To ensure that teaching does get converted into learning, Teachers can only 'enable the conditions that foster learning'. As Loris Malaguzzi, writes

The aim of teaching is not to produce learning but to produce the conditions for learning, this is the focal point, the quality of learning.

Teachers therefore have to find the best conditions that encourage learning. One of the simplest ways to find these conditions is to track research and use that enablers in your class.The research on learning shows that three biggest enablers of learning are Choice, Contextualisation, and Personalisation.

1.Choice : Student's choice to learn is important, because it converts 'external motivation' to 'internal motivation' making it easier for the student to 'want to learn'. In a Montessori method of schooling, this choice is inbuilt in the school philosophy and goes a long way in ensuring learning.

In a conventional school, however, teachers can still manage to do a lot. For instance, instead of using language like 'you must' or 'you have to' with students, learning is more likely to happen when the teacher uses language like 'you can' or 'if you choose'. Even the choice of 'giving wrong answer' helps. Instead of asking questions to bright students, the teacher can make learning happen if the teacher asks questions to lagging students and uses the wrong answers to 'dig out' the mental processes of a student.

2. Contextualisation: Out of three causes, this is the biggest cause of students for not being able to learn in their classes. Students learn chapters and subject without knowing 'what it is being used for', or what is the purpose of learning the subject, or what is the background of learning this new material. For instance, they learn Trigonometry without knowing trigonometry is used to calculate heights, for instance, such as height of tall building. Or the student is taught periodic table, without knowing the basic purpose of periodic table was to categorise elements in a 'logical group'. Or the students learn multiplication, without knowing that it is 'same operation as addition, but with the same number'. Or when the student does not know what is the purpose of learning history, he fails to learn anything from history.

 Stephan Ceci is one of the researcher who has studied students at different levels of formal educations and spanning different countries. After testing students in complex rules of triangles,squares and circles, in the context of a 'video game' the children learnt the concepts so well that Stephan Ceci claims that young children can learn complex concepts if appropriate context ( instead of disembodied laboratory level context) is given to the content.

3. Personalisation: Diana Cordova and Mark Lepper  studied with fourth and fifth grade children to find their speed of learning arithmetical operations ( addition, substraction, division and multiplication) and how they work in parantheses. They personalised the tasks by using the student's name, age and background. The learning outcomes changed drastically for better.

Personalisation, it seems, also affect internal motivation by making the task look like a 'choice that has been exercises by the student. If the teacher therefore uses personal variables in teaching 'abstract' subjects like mathematics, it is helpful for the student. For instance, teacher can teach ' algebraic patterns' by using the ' relationship' of student's height and weight. Or teach history, by relating a student with his 'family tree' of father, grandfather and great grandfather.

Summary

Of course, all the researchers unanimously agree that the biggest learning happens when the conditions of teaching are enabled by three enablers - contextualisation, personalisation and choice - together. Individually, the effect of each variable is not very high, but together they cause a drastic increase in learning. 

Can we use development coach with test expert to customise education?

I found an interesting approach to address three of the seven bottlenecks of learning in schools when I read about the father of Intelligence testing, Alan Kaufman. Let me explain how.

Alan S. Kaufman, who introduced the notion of Intelligent testing and told us how IQ tests should be used. Most of the time IQ tests are used to spot students with learning disability. Or to find how gifted is the student. Global IQ tests (which takes the average performance across different subtests) are of no use, according to him.

What is the intelligent testing approach, as coined by Alan S. Kaufman ? 

Instead of this approach,  let us use IQ tests intelligently, Alan Kaufman suggests.  If a student is finding grave difficulty, say in learning mathematics, he may be referred to a Test expert. The clinician may decide to administer an IQ test - not a global IQ test, but a specific test - to determine the student’s pattern of cognitive strengths and weaknesses in mathematics and then design a custom-tailored intervention. Or, if the student is scoring poorly in faring fast-paced tests, the test expert can test the students 'Working memory' bottleneck. Or, a student may want to increase creativity. Creative thinking is an important skill, but which is often missed when someone just looks at an individual’s global IQ score. For this you require an astute test administrator.

But test administrator is not enough.  A tester can focus on the person being tested, and how that student responds, or why that student responds in a certain manner, in addition to how well they respond. But he also needs a support of a smart student development coach.

What is the work of development coach ?

The smart coach will also observe the behaviour of the child such as anxiety, or his problem-solving strategies. As IQ tests do not capture emotional reactions like stress, distraction, or the student's method of employing willpower strategies, the coach will observe these traits and share with the Test administrator. Neither do the tests capture the conative abilities like passion and desire to study in a domain, which a coach is trained to observe. A development coach is also trained to observe the complete profile of a student, ask the teachers and parents about his behaviors that are unfolding. Test results are meaningless until the individual’s scores are put into context by the test administrator with the coach.

In other words, we should look beyond global IQ scores. More importantly, the development coach has the knowledge of intelligence-creativity research, is aware of the latest theories of development of students including prodigies. He can bring in many aspects of development psychology to bear in the analysis and interpretation of a test scores.  He can understand and use the powerful peer effects to accelerate the student's learning, if required. And he can help the student to focus on domain so that he can use his 'limited IQ' to produce more than commensurate results !

Conclusion

In other words, test administrator and a development coach can help us address the three bottlenecks of learning: no assistance to slow learners, lack of encouragement for fast learners, and no importance of non-academic learning in schools. Test administrator and development coach can together help the student remove the-bottlenecks of their learning and keep them motivated by finding avenues for non-academic abilities.

Morever the development coach can also help teachers in using the diverse traits of a student, instead of overtly focussing on academic IQ. For instance, the coach can share the multiplier effect of development with the teachers. This will enable teachers, for instance, to appreciate how a student's small lag of ability at the age of 3 may have put him behind by miles at the age of 6. This will help teachers to understand the learning styles of their students and help them alter their teaching method to help some 'kinesthetic learning' students !

In the next blog, i will share with you a group which is doing good work on  giving quick feedback to the students on their learning effort ( the first bottleneck of learning). Because the student does not feedback on what they have learnt quickly enough, they cannot correct their learning progress quickly enough. This group helps the students fill this gap by giving this quick feedback.

Can our schools overcome seven major bottlenecks of learning in the future?

Students face seven major bottlenecks in learning ( please remember the distinction of teaching and learning that we talked in the earlier blog) in a normal learning-centric school in India. Let us list them so that we can appreciate and find how we can re-dress them in the later blogs.

1. Common standardised tests that test reproduction of content are used to evaluate students : Every student is grouped together by age and grade irrespective of the pace of his or her academic learning. They are given the same standardised tests which are meant to measure the ability of the student to reproduce the content ( and not apply the content!).  Standardised tests are meant to label students  as 'average' 'below par' or 'excellent.' Excellent students feel good although they are not aware that these tests do not measure subjects or skills that are useful. Below par students however feel demotivated, because others brand them as failures.

2. No feedback system is used to measure the 'quality of delivery' of teaching content: Because  feedback is not collected on the teaching content, the teacher never knows if his 'method' of teaching is appropriate or not. As this feedback system is not taken, teacher never modifies the 'teaching method' or even tries to improve his method. Teachers are not even aware that their teaching methods may need modification ! As such, teachers do not learn from each other. Neither do they learn from their experience. Therefore, when the student is not 'learning' the content, the teacher can easily assume that the student is either inattentive, lazy or dumb.

3. Slow learners are penalised: Every student is assumed to learn at the same rate. Students who are learning slowly relative to their same-aged peers , fall behind even more in the next class, because next class builds on the concept of the earlier class. These lagging students then are asked to attend 'special coaching classes' to raise their performance on these standardized tests. In the new system where no student is failed, they are promoted till 9th class. However, if their performance is not improved even till 9th, they are dropped from the school to ensure that school has a 'clean record' of successful results in SSC board exam. The loss of motivation is a common side effect observed in these students!

4. Fast learners are not encouraged: Because every student is assumed to learn at the same rate, students who are learning too fast are also stuck up. Schools refuse to even recognize that they can do something to benefit these fast learners of a subject from accelerated learning in their interested subjects. These students are supposed to wait for next year to get demanding curriculum. If they lose motivation in the mean while and get engaged in other activities ( which typically happens at the age of adolescence), the schools are not responsible for that eventuality. Boredom arising from the lack of challenges is the common feeling among these students.

5  Non academic domains are ignored in schools: Domains such as art, music, computing or language style are considered optional. Schools assume that development of these non-academic domains ( although important to develop a person)  is not their responsibility, and therefore there is no rigor or commitment in conducting these courses. On the other hand, other domains of excellence such as entrepreneurial domain, commerce, accounts, politics, civil governance or design fields are not even considered as optional and therefore are not even introduced in the schools. Students good in these non-academic domains find themselves branded as lazy and dumb.

6. Schools do very little to develop 21st century skills ( Life Skills) : Schools avoid developing  critical skills of the future life, such as problem solving, planning, decision making, creative thinking, communication and social skills, although they profess these skills ardently. Today's students need them more urgently than our fathers did, but schools cannot impart them through classroom teaching. Unable to find time and expertise to develop them ( we have seen the elaborate and methodical steps that Montessori system takes to develop social skills), they leave today's students unprepared for 21st century global competition.

7. Personal needs are not considered as valid requirement of learning: Social and emotional needs of the students are rarely accommodated in teaching, except by good teachers. Personal goals, dreams, and aspirations of a student are not even accepted as a valid input in teaching. Many personal characteristics of a student that are bursting to express are not even noticed. In short, all the personal and individual characteristics of student are ignored by the schools. Because a students needs are not acknowledged in the schools, students motivation of learning never becomes 'internal', it remains focused on 'external' characteristics like marks and rank.

Learning, if it happens under this situation, can only occur by chance. What can schools do to address these seven bottlenecks of learning? 

Are parents ready for a more demanding type of learning-centric school?

You must have heard of different kind of learning-centric schools. If you have seen this blog, you will appreciate the difference between learning-centric school and development-centric school.

Today we will try to focus on three different types of learning-centric schools and how they rate visavis each other.

1. Experimental school

This school advocates experiments to teach the concepts. The concept of science could be taught through  laboratory experiments, while concepts in biology could be taught through direct experiencing of vegetables and ecology and so on. Essentially, the concept is 'isolated' in the form of experiment so that the student 'gets' the meaning of concept. I have seen that one school uses 'the process of election through the election of class monitors' to teach the concept of democracy.

Advantages: This method is powerful in teaching the complex concepts of physics, chemistry and biology. 2> This method promotes development in student by forcing him to ask 'why'
Disadvantages: 1> This method is difficult to use in teaching the concepts of Geography, because of the large scale of the experiment required. For instance, how can you set the experiment of tectonic plates to show one of the causes of earthquake?  2> Schools surprisingly do not use this method in art-oriented subjects like English and  History ( perhaps due to absence of expertise) although one can easily set up the experiment of drama or story in these subjects. 3> If the experiment is designed improperly, this method degenerates into 'experiments' that have no correlation with the learned concept in the class. For instance, if you browse various websites that have beautiful experiments on the net, you will be surprised to find that most of them are unrelated with the concepts in the class.

2. Experience-based school ( Project-based school) 

This school advocates 'experience with real world' to teach the 'application of concepts'. As you will guess from above, there is lot of similarity between this method and the experimental-school method. In this method, the approach is to apply the concept to deal with 'real-life challenges'. This type of school is also called as 'Project based school' or Practical school. This kind of school came into the limelight after the school in '3 Idiots' was shown.

Be it the challenge of solar power, rain water harvesting, or setting of wind power, these real-life experiences help a student in understanding the concepts in depth.

Advantages: 1> This method is useful in teaching the application of concepts in real-life 2> This method is also useful for teaching problem solving skills and creativity - the two critical development traits- that are very useful. As students learn to respect the real constraints they become more creative.
Disadvantages: 1 > Unless real-life project is carefully structured and designed, this method degenerates into copy/pasting of already available projects in the internet with no learning. 2> This method also suffers from the handicap of the experimental method when the real life project does not have any correlation with learnt concept.

3. Outcome-based school 

This learning format advocates that 'visible outcomes' ( such as making a car or bridge or writing a story or enacting a drama) should generate the motivation for the student to take meaningful actions, which should however require the students to learn the underlying concepts.

In a way, this school is an amalgamation of experimental and experience based school. Instead of experiments, real life projects are picked to ensure that students apply the learned concepts. This method was always used 'partially' in schools, especially in subjects like physics and science. Engineering based school is a concept that has come into vogue because of this method.

Advantages : 1> Because of the focus on visible outcomes from real life, right kind of 'projects' are more likely to get selected. Even cooking is used to explain the concepts of chemistry in such school. 2> Both the principles of isolating the concept ( from experimental school) and using real-life experience ( from experience based school) are used to set up the outcomes. 3> This is more development friendly school because students learn 4 development traits: problem solving skill, constraints based creativity, social skills of getting help from others and helping others, and above all the ability to present one's thoughts cogently.
Disadvantages: 1> It also suffers from the disadvantages of the above school. But, because of the focus on visible real-life outcomes, the chances of picking wrong projects are less. 2>This method requires teachers who are either experts on those subjects or should be supported by experts. 3> This method is time-intensive and can often demand a lot of time from students. However, this disadvantage can be converted into a strength if the student chooses to spend less time on attending coaching classes which essential help students to get more marks.

Conclusion

As you will observe, all three schools have one common theme. The end purpose is to help the students understand the concepts deeply enough. Without understanding concepts the learning does not happen. And because uncooked concepts cannot be applied to real practical situations, development also is hampered. One should not forget this important objective of learning-centric school. Some schools tend to forget this important purpose and include 'experience' in the curriculum just for the sake of it, not for learning any concept.

Although outcome based school, the amalgamation of experimental and experience based school, seems to be the better choice, it demands a lot of teaching resources to make it work. Not just the right pedagogical principles of teaching are required, but subject experts ( in mathematics, history, and geography) are equally mandatory in making this method successful. And above all, it requires parents who are willing to understand the demands of school and take the decision to go against the mainstream thinking of mark-centric education system.

Do we have enough such parents who are willing to take the pain to support such schools? 

Do we want our schools to make students develop or learn?

Learning and development are two different objectives of school although both are inter-dependent. Learning is about learning a subject, say English, Science or History. It is understanding the subject in depth as well as  its breadth so that one can use the learning to 'deal with the real world'. On the other hand, development is about developing soft qualities such as Willpower ( should i study mathematics even when i do not like?), Emotional regulation ( should i take help on mathematics from my friend even though i do not want it?), Attention span ( what should i do to sit uninterruptedly for 30 minutes?) and so on.

To be accurate, Learning and development are inter-dependent. If you stop 'developing', sooner or later it starts affecting your learning. For instance, if your child has wrong understanding of 'marks', his learning stops like Mathews, because the child is unable to use feedback of 'marks' to re-direct his efforts . He is stuck. His learning also stops if he does not have the Willpower to focus his efforts on something, or does not meditate to increase his attention span, or understand the turbulence of adolescence to regulate his emotions.

On the other hand, insufficient learning also affects child's development. If i cannot understand that 'English' requires a different learning environment than Physics, i will not learn English well and not be able to communicate my thoughts to my parents. That will affect my development. If i do not understand the 'physical world' of science, i will assume that 'things happen due to wrong reasons' and become superstitious and biased. If i do not understand that 'rice does not cause fatness, but fatness is caused by eating of carbohydrates', i will have wrong knowledge about 'rice'.

Schools do not prefer to 'develop', because unlike learning, development requires setting of environment, until the development traits 'emerge'. Learning can be direct, development is always indirect. You can direct a child to learn 'xyz', but you cannot direct a child to have more willpower. To develop Willpower, Montessori method, for instance, sets up environment and 'guides' the child to make 'choices. Or if you want to develop 'social interaction' quality, you cannot direct a child to tell the child to be 'more communicative', or 'speak'. Instead, you have to set up the school environment in a way, so that child learns social development. The quality of 'social development' emerges from the environmental conditions. One cannot force the emergence of development qualities. One has to nurture it through different 'anchors', and hope the buds turn into fruits sooner or later. Of course, psychologists now know that even learning cannot be forced as we think. 

Schools have an option for setting development-centric schools or learning-centric schools. Development centric schools such as Montessori-philosophy schools have lost the race because parents want their children to learn yesterday and compete with others to get the best colleges and degrees. Although development centric schools also promote Learning in a different way, parents are impatient to wait for results. Development-centric schools like Montessori, Waldorf, or Gurukul are still relevant today, if parents understand the purpose of education, and can actively work with these schools to 'collaborate' for the betterment of their children.

On the other hand, Learning-centric schools , which are the dominant type of schools today, can also promote development indirectly to certain degree. They can, for instance, help students to learn and apply concepts in real life. They can follow these five characteristics to simultaneously promote development. Or they can adopt the three best practices of best schools in the world. More importantly, if they want to promote development, they can use technology to enable teachers to 'connect with the child' despite the class size of over 50 students. They can 'relearn' the use of imagination in the school so that students do not  get mixed with fantasy. Or they can learn to use the intrinsic motivations of children, instead of externally motivating them by rewards. Or help students practice internal discipline instead of external discipline. More importantly, they can actively partner with parents to ensure that 'development' is also actively promoted at homes, and not just take the responsibility of developing the child on themselves.

Conclusion

Parents, out of eight stakeholders, have the most active role to play if we want schools to really develop our children. More importantly, parents have to get actively engaged with the schools. To get engaged, they have to understand the 'different philosophies' of education, find what schools are doing to promote learning, supplement the efforts of schools actively, and give feedback to schools to fine tune the method. Instead of finger pointing at schools, parents must actively collaborate with schools. We must do this for the sake of betterment of our own children, not for the sake of schools.

Are parents ready to actively participate with schools for this change?