"Surprise!" Putting back the Magic into School

Nurturing childhood in children through new ways of learning

Dr. Vijaya Raghava

As family doctors, we have to focus on all layers of health, including mental health. Mental habits picked up during childhood have a large role to play - they will create a lifelong impact on the body. And it is not just habits like smoking and drinking addictions, overeating and lack of exercise that impact health - mental rigidity, lack of courage, lack of creativity, lack of focus or purpose, excessive worrying and obsessions all have a major impact on health. Sound mental health is the key to sound physical health. Since the majority of the mental habits are harder (but not impossible) to change when older, it makes sense to change them where they are at their most flexible: in childhood.

If we look at the childhood of children today, the situation is alarming. Physical play has drastically reduced, while the use of mobiles and internet has skyrocketed, leading to widespread (and undiagnosed) internet addiction.

Cramming for exams on the one hand and competitiveness with classmates on the other have almost snuffed out the joy of learning. Since everything can be looked up on the internet, the joy of discovery is rarely to be seen, and real questioning is almost non-existent. The schools have not made any critical changes to their approach, and the few alternative schools that have arisen are yet to have a large-scale impact.

In the light of all this, let me share, from a doctor's perspective, what are the best principles for an education.

• Cooperation - not competition

The bane of modern education is the creation of rivals instead of support and friendship from a very young age - as mothers compare their children's marks with other kids', as the marks card carries the weight of all expectations, and jealousy gets fostered due to these constant comparisons. When getting a rank and beating the classmate is at the core of succeeding in school, the child is made dependent on something outside for approval always. That is an unhealthy mental habit that pursues everyone into professional life (salaries, bank accounts, awards and accolades), and also creates a permanent insecurity for the child when there are no marks cards to measure up against in real life.

It is critical to completely pull the rug out from under this entire mentality. Instead, children who perform better have to be given the responsibility of helping their peers who are struggling, older children must help the younger ones from time to time, and true competition must only be "you vs. you". In other words, the child should internalize that it has to improve constantly, comparing only with its own self. Each day must be a little better than the previous.

• Mimicry and Play

It is important to learn by mimicking at younger ages - until at least 7 - since that is the natural way of learning at that age. Forcing a child to do things independently at this point is counterproductive, and it is important for children to go through this phase properly and complete it. If not, they may spend the rest of their adult life trying to mimic others, to "keep up with the neighbors" and "do what everyone does".

Before the age of 12, the majority of the time (up to 80%) has to be spent in play, and a smaller minority of time in the lessons. Without weaving together learning and playing in this way, creativity suffers. Creativity can only be nourished in later life if the child has played a lot when young, especially physical play and not video games. The world around is three dimensional, and no amount of experience in the two dimensional screen can replace the direct play with the world. Climbing, digging, running, jumping, chasing, balancing, swimming and even a fight now and then - all foster mental creativity later in life. Without that, laziness wins sooner or later, and creative thoughts and questions dry up.

On the other hand, with sufficient play and creativity, there is always a chance to do something totally differently:

• Subjects without boxes

One of the most difficult experiences in school - at least subconsciously for the child - is the rapid rigid switching from subject to subject during the course of the school day. Each class is a hard box - there is no time to really get into the subject, before the bell rings. If there is interest and enjoyment in any lesson - mathematics, Kannada language, biology or drawing - it should be possible to extend it some more up to even two hours. Without sufficient time to get into an activity or lesson, when we constantly switch from one subject to another, we end up creating a superficial attitude in the children and attention deficit disorders. It is no wonder that later in adulthood there is a lack of focus or determination to follow through something that has been started - and things are done half-and-half. The subconscious habit echoes on in the mind.

It is important to avoid other boxes as well - calculators, computers and phones. Just as I discussed in an earlier article how the doctor cannot be outsourced to a machine, no matter how fancy, in the same way education can also not be outsourced to the machine, no matter how many YouTube videos we think will be "very helpful". The direct human connection with the teacher is the lifeblood of education, and mental health.

Instead of calculators, the child may need to spend time and energy for mathematics, to calculate by hand taking as much time as needed. This is why when the calculator was first introduced into high schools in the United States, teachers immediately realized the damage that it can do, and began protesting:

In a similar fashion, phones and computers have to be treated like a hazardous addictive objects (like drugs) and given only sparingly in high school. This is not an impractical fantasy, some schools have begun to do it. It is only after the mind is developed to a certain level can the device be used responsibly. Otherwise it is like giving crutches to a 1.5-year-old who is just learning to walk - it will never learn to walk if we do that.

• Surprise tests only

All planned tests have to be removed, and replaced by surprise tests only. This is very similar to real life, which does not always announce a test of our capacities. There ought to be no cramming, no pressure to produce an immediate result, no clever memory tricks, and no exam day "make or break". The terror of exams gives rise to mental habits that demolish self-confidence - which again later plagues adult life in various disguises.

It is also time to begin including the almost-forgotten viva voce (oral exam) as a preferred method to test capacities, in as many areas as possible, especially when approaching high school. When it is done without intimidating the student, and with an eye only to gather the full extent of the student's knowledge or capacity, it provides an active, direct and honest means of evaluation. Teachers also have to put effort to ask slightly different questions for each student, and the answers will not carry the baggage of merely rote learning.

Students must be observed throughout their learning process, and all of it must go towards a proper evaluation at the end of the year. If a child is spontaneously helpful to a friend, it must be noted; if the child is busy drawing fine cartoons in a mathematics class, it should be noted as a strength instead of only noticing the weakness in mathematics. It may be possible to modify the lesson to include more geometrical elements to engage such a mind. A continuous feedback loop with a scattering of surprise tests will change the atmosphere of learning. In the beginning, yes, the children will be worried that every day might be a day of testing, because they have made it a habit to connect tests with fear. But with a continuity of surprise tests, the fear dies away and will give rise to a courage to face whatever the day brings.

• Breaking the Testing Hierarchy

The traditional way of testing is fully top-down: the teacher sets the paper, the students answer it. But if the focus is on learning, then there is no reason to be stuck to that one method alone. We can change it up like this:

• The students of one class set a paper for the students of the other class

• The teacher has to answer a test paper that is set by the students

• Another teacher should also take the exam with the students, and whatever the teacher gets is the reference (100 marks) for giving marks to the students

In this way, we can break the shackles of excessive authority and actually make the place where learning and teaching is a dynamic back-and-forth process shared by everyone. The teachers are teachers but can also be good students. The students are students, but can also, if need be, be teachers. Only then will knowledge itself be the primary authority, and Saraswati is back in the center.

These principles can be incorporated at any level - in a small school, or the home, or the neighborhood or apartment community - and as long as there are adults in the world who wish to apply them to genuinely nourish the next generation, childhood has a chance to survive. It is only then that we can put the magic back into schooling.

Any takers?