Need for a disruptive approach to learning

Upon rereading my last blog, I realized that possibly I was not able to do justice to some key thoughts.

As a child navigates through his primary and high school education and heads towards competitive exams, the weight-age of concepts and applicability takes on overwhelming proportions. For example, IIT and Regional Engineering exams are a pure play of applicability of concepts. In essence, the a child's career pivots around his ability to solve problems – show his mastery in applicability of knowledge.

I am not challenging or critiquing the fact. It is the way it is and I personally believe that it is absolutely the right way to evaluate a child's acumen in the field of engineering.

What I am pained about is the way we propels a child towards his future. All of his formative years, the largest pie of a child's evaluation is centered around his ability to memorize and recollect. Suddenly the moment he crosses the threshold of 10^th standard, he finds himself facing a different reality. A radical move away from retention and recollection to concepts and applicability.

The child's predicament is not a flaw of our education system. It is because of the flawed way we impart and make the child assimilate knowledge.

Retention and recollection, however devalued it may sound, forms the foundation of knowledge. Subjects like History, Biology, Geography, Civics, Literature etc, form an integral part of a child's knowledge base. Even aspects of concepts and applicability are rooted in one's ability to retain and recollect. The importance of retention and recollection can't be overstated and consequently we can not afford to neglect or shallow our efforts in practicing retention and recollection of knowledge.

So, where's the problem? The problem is volume, time and effectiveness of retain-able knowledge and the psychological negative reinforcement that subjects like History, Biology, Geography... are not the ones which will decide a child's career.

The solution is to find a way to devote radically more time to understanding concepts and practicing applicability. But, not at the cost of compromising other subjects.

This calls for bringing in a disruptive change in the way a child studies. A mechanism to enhance his coverage of knowledge, along with his ability to retain and recollect vast amounts of information. All this at a fraction of the time that he spends today. Unless we solve this primordial problem, we will never be able to gift a child the time and the relaxed atmosphere he needs to appreciate the lovely concepts behind Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry … and to see the beauty of weaving the concepts into magical things.

 In my next blog, I will talk about a way to break the conundrum.