Notes from Paatashaala session on June 1, 2007

The meeting had an informal beginning with the discussion slipping into the Activity Based Learning (ABL) programme being upscaled by the Tamilnadu government. A brief introduction of the current initiative and developments in ABL as well as NCERT chief Krishna Kumar’s column on quality of education, was given by Priya. Smt Saraswathi shared her experience with this programme as also her life’s work with education.

Some of the highlights of her sharing included:

• Ÿ Flash cards that are being introduced as part of the ABL programme in the schools now are of no use without the children first being used to self-learning.
  
  
• Ÿ The problem with the teachers is that they all want to TEACH rather than allow the students to LEARN on their own
  
  
  
• ŸThough the teachers are convinced after they undergo a training on the benefits of ABL, they cannot often connect to the student
  
  
  
• Ÿ An anecdote she narrated was about a teacher who complained that despite the teacher repeatedly asking the student in a Tamil language class what a ‘vaali’ (tamil for bucket) is, the student did not understand. But, when the teacher asked him to write about the card containing an image of a bucket, she wrote down that it was a ‘buckit’ (local lingo for bucket)! This is because in many parts of Tamilnadu, particularly Chennai, children learn the English terms before they learn the Tamil ones. But, this particular teacher found it to be inadequacy on the part of the student that she did not understand what a ‘vaali’ was.
  
  
  
• ŸIf and when the teacher thinks her teaching is more important than the child’s learning, then the problems starts
  
  
  
• ŸOften in ABL, the teaching aid and the learners’ material gets mixed up
  
  
• ŸWhere there was nothing but boring rote learning, now there is something at least (the flash cards), although in many cases it has been found they use the cards only during the inspection reverting to rote learning during other times
  
  
  
• Ÿ The problem is also with teachers’ training – in many cases they have not changed at all, they ‘tell’ the teacher how to use different methods and tools for encouraging learning rather than allow the teachers to go through the process themselves so that they first get an experience and enjoy the learning process; in her experience she found that there are teachers training colleges where some of the supposedly most popular trainers often don’t even use the black board and just drone on to the class about teaching and aids of teaching. Such lecturing can only bore the future teachers to death and cannot inspire them to either adopt any methods or take up teaching seriously

Mr. Jeyapal, Ramanujam Mathematics Museum, who has used the ABL methods in his teaching and has a teaching experience of over 30 years shared his thoughts:

• Ÿ The ABL is the only child-centered method of learning, earlier methods were either teacher centered or material centered.
  
  
• ŸEvaluation of students performance has been modeled to make evaluation process easy rather than actually provide an opportunity for the student to express themselves
  
  
  
• ŸThe state board evaluation is more of rote learning whereas the CBSE tries to emphasise on the application of knowledge, the state board only looks at the knowledge
  
  
  
• ŸIt is not true that the new method (ABL) of learning has become more demanding on the teaching staff, it is not true, they were supposed to provide such personal care to the students even before, but, they didn’t and because they could escape in the earlier system and blame it all on the students, now they are complaining
  
  
  
• Ÿ Here the child herself evaluates her learning process

Saraswathi (showing the chart that children in the corporation schools use once they shift to the ABL programme, to evaluate their own performance)

• Ÿ The perspective of education among the teaching community has to change, this has to happen through re-doing the courses in the teacher’s training college
• In some teacher’s training colleges often the learners’ materials are used as teaching aids!

Akila: How do the teachers change / adopt to the changes? Is it a problem with our tradition that maintained that we listen to our elders and look up to them??

Saraswathi: Traditionally children were permitted to play much and they learnt through their games, however, the current problem is that there is no scope for any games.

Chitra Nagesh: We have seen it in schools that whenever there was a emphasis on games and games centered activities, the children innovate, they can come up with things themselves rather well

At this stage there was an introduction of all the participants present:Ram, Chitra Nagesh, Saraswathi, Nithyanandam, Priya, Sangeetha, Naveen, Jayapal, Akila, Rama

While talking about children an how they are natural learners, there was also much discussion about traditional processes of learning as well as experiences with education in rural scenarios. For instance, Smt. Saraswathi spoke of an activity where children had to exhibit and explain about the things that they had made. One small boy had made a clay model of a “working” rice mill with all the intricate details in place. One part was with clay and the second was in wood. So she asked him why this was in wood? “well, there was no more clay so I used the wood (of course)!” was the answer. So this working model comes out of pure observation and instead we sit inside the class room and go on and on about how a rice mill works, which neither the teacher nor the children woul have seen.

A brief introduction to the Multiversity initiative was given by Ram and more discussion reserved for a later date. The review of NCERT textbook content which ha also been planned has been postponed to the next session.

- Priya