Big on Thinking

Volunteers and teachers from the centre have been trained to organise Socho Melas in schools,carnivals and colonies,in order to spread the message among children,teachers and parents. Kohli points out that CBSE has also started bringing changes in the education pattern since 2004 and has introduced continuous and comprehensive evaluation in primary classes. The new system promotes HOTS and focuses on knowledge,comprehension,application and analysis. “There is a 20 per cent weightage for HOTS in Classes IX and X. We have to concentrate on academic and co-curricular activities to promote the habit of thinking,” says Kohli,pointing out that information is increasing at such a rate that people require transferable skills to enable them to address different problems,in different contexts,at different times,throughout their lives.

The melas stress that thinking is a life-long process and that one should look at options before taking decisions. It is important to consider positive and negative consequences before taking a call. “True creativity involves putting together things that serve a human purpose. So what is required is remembering,questioning,forming concepts,planning,reasoning,imagining,problem solving and decision-making,says Kohli,as she advices parents to encourage children to question and mull over new concepts and develop creative and critical thinking skills. The next Socho Mela at Chandigarh Carnival scheduled to take place in the last week of November.