The Learning process (contd..)

In my recent post I briefly introduced my views on the key elements of the learning process. Comprehension, visualization, verbalization, memorization and finally integration with the exisitng knowledge base consitute the multi step learning methodology. Verbalization is the cornerstone of this entire process. Once the child learns how to express in his own words the concept that he has learnt, then its safe to say a major learning objective has been achieved. But more on verbalization later.



I sincerely believe that with practice as a child masters these elements of the learning process and can start consciously applying this methodology to any new area of knowledge on his own then one of the key objectives of educating him has already been achieved. He now has the requisite tools that would help him 'learn to learn'. I honestly believe that from this point onwards even if he fails to complete his formal education he has already learnt enough to be successful in any career of his choice. Though I hardly think once he has picked up these learning skills he would want to cut his own education short voluntarily. But in a country like ours there are many families that can barely afford to provide their children a complete education. So there could be reasons other than a lack of the child's interest that would force him /her to drop out early. But as long as a love for learning has been retained I believe education can be continued at any stage later in the child's life. If a child picks up the basic learning skills early in his educational journey he most certainly would retain the will and the confidence to continue his educational journey later. I strongly believe that if today the reasons for a high drop out rate in our schools are closely examined, lack of interest and self confidence in their learning ability would emerge as one of the strognest reasons for it. That should speak volumes about the failure of the current system in fostering a love for learning.



Lets dwell a little more on this five step learning methodology to see how it can be implemented in the classroom. The first step, comprehension, should ideally be the most uncomplicated. But I suspect this is where we usually make our first mistake. There are two key issues that need to be addressed here. The written word itself and the the capability of the reader. Often the written text is too poorly written to retain the student's attention for any length of time. Some of the key shortcomings are a certain lack of continuity between the various parts of the written text and complicated words thrown in that only serve to confuse instead of enabling easy comprehension. The writing style should be lucid and easy to understand. It should follow certain basic rules of good writing. Its fairly easy to understand where our books are lacking if one just compares an Indian curriculum course book with another one on the same topic written by a an Amrican or a British author. The writing styles are distinctly different. Good writing in these countries is a skill that is developed with proper training and a lot of research goes into understanding what consitutes good writing.

I believe anyone who wishes to write a school text book should certainly be encouraged to undergo a writing skills training course. Course books should be as widely peer reviewed as possible before being approved for induction into the school curriculum.



The second requirement important to achieving a robust comprehension is the attention span of the reader itself. This probably is the first serious hurdle that this process needs to overcome. Most children today are exposed to a multitude of distractions. In th presence of competitors like on-demand Television, internet, cinema, video games and imaginative toys its hard for a text book to hold a child's attention for any reasonable length of time. It is a known fact that attention spans continue to decline. The marketing and advertising community has been the first to realize this and has been quick to adapt to this situation by churning more and more imaginative advertising campaigns. Its no wonder that kids today remember the latest ad jingle more clearly than anything else in their school curriculum. In the western countries this phenomenon is well understood by the education community than in our country and for this reason they have made attempts to make education experience a more 'fun' experience by adopting imaginative new methods even if they are more expensive to implement. Obviosuly a society that treats entertainment as an industry would hesitate to put any curbs on it so it decides to make education entertaining as well. But a poor society like ours can ill afford to adopt such expensive methods of education. Although there is plenty that can be done to make learning a 'fun' experience by improving the quality of the text and the teaching methodology I believe its important for parents to exercise restraint in expposing their children to these new modes of electronic entertainment. Most parents appear to believe that these popular media provide their children much needed exposure that they themselves never had while growing up. But I think this exposure does more harm than good in the long run. From my own experience I can remember many examples that validate this opinion.

Education-Key elements of the learning process

Its always been quite a mystery to me how we manage not to produce world beating talent from our schools depsite the fact that the curriculum is probably one of the toughest in the world. Is it possible that we may have got our priorities wrong-far too much focus on the content than on the process of learning

My own educational journey through school and college has been nothing short of truamatic as it must be for most others in our country. I am sure most people would agree that the content of our course curricula is far too voluminous to allow any meaningful learning to take place in such a short time. The focus is an excessive focus on memorizing and then reproducing the content in the examination process. As a result a small minority of students manage to do well but a vast majority neither achieve success nor manage to retain the curiosity and passion, two emotions badly needed to retain a lifelong love for learning. I have had the good fortune to belong to the small minority. And that fact has always worried me. It has worried me that our education process can not help the vasr majority achieve what id does for an exalted few. And that perhaps is the reason that we have not succeeded as a country to achieve the objective of universal education. There are far too many children who turn away from education in our country. The system itself has to accept some blame for it

But I am sure this is not the first time these issue are being raised. So on a more constrcutive note, I would like to talk about what can be done to correct the situation. I would like to suggest a learning methodology that I have used with a fair amount of success till now in my own educational pursuits. As students we are often required to understand abstract concepts as part of our education. we often do not have any means of relating these concepts do our life experiences and it is this that makes learning about these concepts difficult for a child. To understand why this is so I have tried to outline the process that I suspect most of us consciously or subsconsciously follow to internalize these concepts. I hope to demonstrate that memorizing alone is not the only key element of this process. It certainly is an important one but our current examination process is so poorly structured that memorization alone has come to be highly overrated. There are other key elements of this learning process which if given due recognition will help in making the entire process a much easier and pleasant experience

As I see it, the learning of a concept starts with comprehension as the first step and by this I mean purely literal understanding of the text that is attempting to explain the concept. Simple vocabulary and an easy to follow structure goes a long way in promoting comprehension.This is followed by visualization ie seeing the concept play itself out in my mind's eye. Good examples that mimic real life expereiences and if possible audio visual aids are very helpful. To ensure that the student fully understands the concept it is important to help him verbalize this new concept that he has learnt. The next step is then, obviously, verbalization. Having to explain to his friends or to his tutors what he has understood in his own words will be very useful in helping him understand where there are still gaps in his understanding of the concetp. Not just explain the concept, but be able to reply to field queries as well.

Memorization is the next step of the learning process so that the new concept can now be committed to long term memory. The first three steps have already played a useful part in facilitating memorization. But often further reinforcement is often needed to help commit the learning to long term memory. Obviosuly the exam oriented process incentivizes short term memorization only so its a hardsell convincing anyone that long term memorization serves a useful purpose.
The next step and probably the hardest to explain, is integration. That is the process of making the new concept a part of my existing knowledge base. My knowledge base is a repository of ideas and thoughts about how the world works. Its a body of knowledge that I have accumulated from my education and life experiences accumulated so far. This new concept needs to be appropriately placed in this knowledge base structure to esnure that it fits in there. If there is a clash with any of the other pre-existing ideas then either one of the pre-existing concepts needs to be rejected or the new idea needs to be rejected. In fact, the attempt at long term memorization will not be successful unless any clash with my existing knowledge base is not adequately addressed.

In brief, this is the underlying philosophy of my own learning process. I have developed this methodology gradually over the last fifteen to twenty years to try and make my own learning experience as efficient and interesting as possible. There have been instances where I have not fully succeeded. Rightly or wrongly, I attribute those failures to an education system that is so exam oriented that it does not allow for a sufficient amount of time for this learning process to be used properly. My current observations of the education system in England has further strengthened my beliefs in this direction. Recently I have observed that the primary school curriculum in the UK has been moving towards what is being called 'Theme based ' learning which I interpret to be the same as concepts based learning. I strongly believe that the learning model that needs to be adopted for this kind of education has to be based on a multiple step process based in comprehension, visualization,verbalization, memorization and integration.

The five step learning methodology that I suggested needs to explained further with emphasis on the methods that can be used in the classroom to promote this methodology and ultimately to make its use second nature for all students . Students need to be made aware of how it works and to gradually adopt the process in all their learning experiences. Once students take this process on board it and habitually start using it I am convinced it will guarantee them success in all their future endeavours. It will also make the governments effort in the direction of achieving universal education a self sustaining one. Obviously the current mindset needs to change from one that favours volume of learning in favour of quality of learning. More of this discussion in my next post..

The culture question

It started off from our little discussion about culture during the recent Swiss vacation. The discussion had centred about the question that do, we as a society, need to put in a conscious effort into preserving our cultural heritage. Of course, very soon we ended up discussing what constitutes cultural heritage. Is it anything and everything that we do in our leisure time? And when we say 'we' is that we as individuals or is it 'we' as in a community? These were difficult questions for little group, given our pathetically poor grounding on all things cultural. I was hugely enjoying all the confusion these questions were creating when suddenly someone asked me what I thought were the right answers to these questions. And it set me thinking. Honestly, what I called culture vaguely referred to anything related to performing arts. But then as someone from the group had already pointed out, anything we did in out lesiure time was 'culture'. I thought that was a bit weak. We, as individuals, have so many different hobbies and interests that fill up our lesiure time. Does that mean there are just as many cultures and sub-cultures that we were talking about here? I didnt think so. I think it was the activities we angaged in as a community could in some way be said to consitute culture. And then why limit ourselves to leisure activities. What we do for a living, how we raise our families, what we consider as good or evil, all of these constitute culture provided we do these things as community. The key question was, with the breakdown of the smalled social unit called family do we really have anything today that even closely resembles a community? Most parts of the developed world has already seen this happening. And now the malaise has even spread to the developing countries. The blame for splitting the community is very conveniently put on the pressures of earning a living. People drift away from their near and dear ones because they have jobs to do and often these jobs will often take them away to other town, cities even countries. As we celebrate the phenomeon of 'global village' is it worth taking a step back and considering what we have lost on the way : our little communities that provided a social support system and that little something we could call our 'culture'. We'd had a heated debate about the belief that culture should be allowed to evolve organically, not needing to be guided by any particular belief systems or philosophies. We should be free to do anything that pleases us as long as it doesnt harm anyone else and treat it as a part of our culture. There were some of us who believed that there had to be something a little more than this to culture. We used to hear so much about the cultural heritage of India, so was it all based on this seemingly mundane definition of culture.

And then I heard about the Amish community. I actually saw a movie prominently featuring an Amish community living in Americal. The move was 'Witness' with Harrison Ford playing the lead. It had even won an Oscar at one point of time. The Amish way of life was shown to be amazingly different from the rest of the Americans whom they call 'English'. Inspsite of living in one the most advanced technological nations, the Amish apparently have a deep resistance to anything related to modern technology. It would be easy to dismiss them as yet another primitive tribe living in a remote third world country. Except that neither are they a primitive tribe nor do they live in a poor third world country. In fact, some Amish communities live nextdoor to average American families. They dont use Automobiles, electricity or phones. They dont subsribe to the benefits of the social security system, they dont buy insurance, they dont pay taxes and they are totally non violent. And amazingly enough, the American government has laid down special laws that respect them for their belief system and help them preserve their way of life. And why is it that these people are so different? Is it because any old religious scripture says so? In fact, they do follow the teachings of Christianity literally to the last word. And their interpretation of it is that the ego needs to be suppressed to achieve closeness to God. One of the important ways to do this is to subordinate the needs of the individual to those of the family and the community. So they deliberately adopt a way of life that makes all individuals dependent on other members of the community. The avoidance of all things related to modern technology is a key part of this strategy as they believe, perhaps righlty so, that technology weakens the dependence of the individual on his community. It wouldnt be fair to say that they totally avoid any contact with technology. They do adopt technology where it is seen to not violate the basic principle of interdependence. And these decisions are taken collectively by members of the community. The way they support their families, educate their children, take care of their elders, etc everything appears unique and perhaps truly defines their culture

In praise of the Small : Introduction to EF Schumacher

Lately I have been in the midst of all this busy-ness. In the past I used to think its all right. In fact, I pretty much used to welcome these phases. Perhaps somewher in my mind I thought it provided a welcome break from the existential angst. But strangely enough, now I have begun to look upon it as an unwelcome diversion from things that I really want to do - writing this blog, for instance. I have had the opportunity to spend more time doing something I really love, reading. Recently I was introduced to the wiritngs of E F Schumaker, an Brtitish economist of the sixties and seventies whose ideas look and sound remarkably like Mahatma Gandhi's.

My stay in the UK has made me more acutely aware of the issues surrounding climate change. As I delve deeper into the science behind climate change I realize that there are so many different disciplines that tie into it-geology, volcanology, seismology, glaciology, palaentology, marine biology, astronomy and obviously, climatology. All these sciences have been coming together to explain what the climate has been like in the past and how it has slowly changed over the aeons and disturbingly enough, how that pace of change appears to have speeded up in the more recent past.

The most important medium of my ongoing education has been, quite amazingly, the idiot box itself. In the UK particulalry, climate change is an issue of concern and nowhere is this more obvious than in the popular media. Television channels like Natgeo, UK TV and BBC dedicate a lot of airtime to programs that explore the climate change issue and the underlying science. Most of these program, I feel, do a pretty good job of examining and presenting the issue as objectively as possible.

But the more I get familiar with the science, I feel its not the science that is central to the ongoing debate but the more fundamental issue of what has been called 'sustainable living'. Hearing about ongoings in the climate change conferences, etc one may be forgiven for thinking that sustainable living is an invention, more as an outcome of the ongoing climate change debate. But the wiritings of the likes of Gandhi and Schumacher suggest otherwise. Its not hard to realize that from the beginning of the 20th century as human knowldege of the sciences virtually exploded and manifested itself very explicitly in the in the form of modern technology, sustainable living has been a strong concern for most modern day thinkers. And these were not people who felt morally obligated to retaliate because their conventional beliefs were being threatened by the 'age of reason'. They were, in fact, much more articulate and rational thinkers and they presented their arguements after much in depth objective thinking.

I had read about quite a few of the arguments in favour of sustainable living presented from the ethical / metaphysical standpoint but none so far from an economist's point of view. At least not before, I started reading E F Schumacher in the form of one of his more well known works 'Small is Beautiful', a compilation of some of his essays on technology, sustainable living and economics. I am only half wa through the book. But what strikes me is the clarity and conciseness with which wide ranging issues like energy security, education, ethics, science & technology and urban development have been addressed as issues so central to sustainable living. There are two essays in particular that stand out in my memory-one on education and another on Buddhist economics. I like the idea that the primary objective of education should be to familiarize the student with this huge repository of 'ideas' in the human knowldge base that will help him make sense of the apparently chaotic world around him. Its important to understand the difference between an idea and objective Truth. More often than not we fool ourselves into believing that what we learn in our 'insitutions of learning' are objective, unchanging truths. In reality, they are just theories that may survive till a better one comes along and dethrones them. So the objective of education must be to learn about these ideas and then test them in the crucible of life to see which ones are worth embracing and which ones need to be 'dethroned'.

As I read more of Schumacher I realize that the one of the idea that is gradually getting dethroned in my mind'e eye is about technology being the ultimate panacea for human suffering. Another idea that is taking a severe beating is the one about modern economics being a perfect tool for cost-benefit analysis for all technology related endeavours. The fact that it provides tools for quantitative measurements and looks down on qualitative evaluations seems to provide a great endorsement in terms of its objectivity but schumacher turns this arguement on its head and says that it is the qualitative aspect of cost-benefit analysis that provides a holistic and objective outlook. The over -emphasis in modern economics on 'quantification' has been at the cost of objectivity. He has used the term 'meta-economics' while referring to the qualitative aspect of the cost-benefit analysis just as we use the term 'metaphysics' in relation to physics and appears to suggest that quantitative analysis alone is not sufficient to produce a decision in favour or against a proposed economic activity but the qualititative analysis that also evaluates the impact on the environment, individuals and the society also needs to be considered

The London Diaries (contd..)

Watched another hour long feature on TV today about the 'snowball' earth theory. It was a very well done feature. Started with a brief introduction to the theory and the ridicule the proponents had to face when they proposed it for the first time. The key issue that it addresses is that at some distant time in the past the entire earth has been covered in ice. The fact that the polar ice caps could have advanced to as far as the tropics was inititally unbelievable till the evidence started building up.
The first piece of evidence was the presence of 'dropout' boulders found almost all over the world. These boulders that were conveyed by gaciers into the sea and were ultimately deposited into the marine sediments which over time cemented into rocks. When these rocks were dated they appeared to be as old as 600MY. This was not considered conclusive proof since the oceans have been drifting for ages and as far back as 180 MY, all of todays continents were part of a single aupercontinent called Pangea. So the 'dropout' boulders could have been deposited before tectonic plate movement moved the continents away from the poles.

Interestingly the magnetic polarity within rocks could be used to show that some of these boulders were, in fact, formed close to the equator. Having established the origins of these rocks the feature went on to explore and answer more profound questions like how earth could have been entirely covered in ice despite the presence of the sun and how it ultimately managed to get out of the deep freeze, since apparently the process is quite irreversible. Another important question that was asked was how life, particulalrly, photosynthesis dependent life could survive the severe ice age and go onto to evolve into more complex organisms. How marine plant life could have sruvived under 10's of metres of ice seemed like a difficult one to answer until it was demonstrated with the help of lakes in Antarctica that the ice on the lakes was, in fact quite transparent because of the gradual freezing process that helped exclude the impurities like salt and dirt. The impurities are the key reason why at some places ice is totally opaque.

The fact that volcanic activity helped release greenhouse gases and the absence of water precluded rains further helped explain how the CO2 could have kept building up and forming a greenhouse blanket was a farily interesting one. The gas helped trap whatever little heat was received and reflected back by the ice and ultimately aided in bringing the earth out of the deep freeze. The geological evidence showing an abrupt change to limestone rock accompanied by the suddern disappearance of 'droput' boulders helped confirm the theory that the carbon cycle had resumed with the recommencement of rains and helped dissolve the calcium out of the rocks. The same caclium ended up as limestobe rocks at the bottom of the seas. This evidence was found where else, but in the the centre of the African continent where no other trace of any of the primordial seas exists any more.

I particlularly liked the journey the narrator took the audience through. It built up the case very well with all the right arguements and did a good job of explaining the counter arguements very well also.
I only wish we could replicate the same process in our schools and universities

First anniversary of our stay in London

Completed one year's stay in London. No elaborate celebrations. We did have some chocolate mousse from Selfridges, though.



The real interesting thing today was the series of documentaries on UK documentary TV channel today. There was one documentary feature on plate tectonics induced volcanics (Cascadian subduction zone story) , another one on the history of climate change (dating back from 300My). There was another interesting feature on Darwin's travels through the Galapegos archipelago - an experience that was to later lead to the publication of his most famous work, The Origin of Species.



Spent time with my nephew, Dhruv last night explaining to him the ongoing debate about climate change and how it ties into earth's geological history. we looked at some great animations of geological processes posted on a Kentucky university website