TEACHERS Day, September 5, has arrived and we, at Delhi University, are gearing for yet another foray into schools, where our B Ed. students will experience what it is to be a teacher (trainee) during the next few months. As part of their orientation we showed them excerpts from a film Before We Begin the Lesson made by Deepa Dhanraj. A primary school teacher, trying to ‘‘teach’’ a large group of bright-eyed children aged 7-8 years, squatting in a cramped classroom, is shouting in a typically high pitched voice, asking them (in Kannada) the question ‘‘Where does beauty lie?’’. The camera pans across the faces which understandably look stumped by this, just as were our B. Ed. students, one of whom spontaneously responded ‘‘within us.’’ No, but that was not the ‘‘correct’’ answer! The teacher in the film reprimands the children and provides the canonical truth inscribed in the textbook, shouting ‘‘Didn’t I tell you, beauty lies all around us!’’ The inquisition in question is a routine ‘‘question and answer’’ session that follows a lesson, presumably a poem in this case, which has effectively been decimated and shorn of any lyrical sensibilities it may have hoped to inspire. The teacher seems singularly concerned with ‘‘teaching the facts’’ so that children can reproduce what is written in the textbook. The apparent ambiguity of the question and the possible ways in which children might understand and interpret it seem to completely elude her. She continues undaunted, conscientiously spouting more of such conundrums. The children respond to the irrelevance of this experience by engaging in other (more interesting) activities, frustrated by which she screams even louder and threatens to stop them from going for lunch. Several of them outsmart her authority with their ultimate brahmastra, the raised little finger, and realising she cannot stop the exodus from relieving themselves (of boredom, besides the obvious natural fluid), she helplessly screams, ‘‘Go, get lost all of you!’’ The above instance of ‘‘teaching to the text’’ is common to our schools. Educational reforms have emphasised the urgency to change the system of examinations which buttresses this ‘‘textbook culture,’’ by making children reproduce meaningless facts and irrelevant information. Kerala did develop better examinations which, however, were not sustained; these had encouraged critical thinking, expression and manual dexterity, as opposed to its conventional pattern, where a Class IV paper asked children to choose the correct answer to ‘‘What is not found on earth? (Love, Happiness, Peace)’’ The popular discourse on education has loosely adopted phrases such as ‘‘child-friendly’’ or ‘‘activity-oriented’’ but has not always engaged with the underlying theoretical assumptions. As a result, there is normally uninformed resistance from parents and others towards major reforms in the curriculum or teaching approaches. Indeed, some of the criticism of the National Curriculum Framework (NCF) 2005 from eminent academics surprisingly reflects a sharp disconnect with the theoretical discourse of education. In the ’70s, the philosophy of school education had been influenced by the principle of ‘‘learning by doing,’’ which suggested that learners actively construct their understanding while directly interacting with their environment. This model of learning looked at each learner as a solitary individual—struggling alone to develop each concept—and was associated with Piaget’s ‘‘cognitive constructivism.’’ However, in the last few decades of research on the mind and processes of learning, it has been increasingly seen that children do not construct knowledge alone, but more through talking and discussing with others, both adults and children. This psychological approach known as ‘‘social constructivism’’ has been influenced by the work of Vygotsky and Bruner, who showed that adult support is crucial to a child’s thinking and understanding, which can be ‘‘scaffolded’’ to extend far beyond the point which she could have reached on her own. The Culture of Education by Jerome Bruner beautifully describes what the ongoing ‘‘cognitive revolution’’ has taught us about teaching and learning, and the shaping of minds through cultures. ‘‘Teaching is fitted into a mold in which a single, presumably omniscient teacher explicitly tells or shows presumably unknowing learners something they presumably know nothing about. I believe that one of the most important gifts that cultural psychology can give to education is a reformulation of this impoverished conception. For only a very small part of educating takes place on such a one-way street and it is probably one of the least successful parts.’’ Bruner critiques the didactic approach which refuses to ‘‘enter the thoughts’’ of a child, and deplores such a regimen where her ‘‘failure’’ or shortcomings can be explained by her lack of ‘‘mental abilities,’’ while the educational establishment ‘‘goes scot-free.’’ He envisions classrooms as a ‘‘community of mutual learners’’ where understanding is fostered through collaboration and discussion to help the ‘‘creation’’ of knowledge. This shift in the educational discourse toward knowledge construction can be seen in the following questions students were asked during the recent M.Ed. and B.Ed. examinations: • What is the essential difference between providing a ‘‘learning experience’’ and ‘‘transacting a lesson’’? • What would be the nature of a textbook that aims to provide learning experiences to children? • What are the specific social and cultural aspects about her learners that a teacher would need to understand and in what way do these influence the teaching-learning process? • As a primary school teacher, explain how would you differentiate between ‘‘knowledge’’ and ‘‘information?’’ The National Curriculum Framework 2005 pursues this view of education and one only hopes it would adequately measure up to the challenges such a major restructuring would require, in both policy and practice—in the architecture of classrooms, the pattern of examinations, the design of textbooks and, most crucially, the orientation of teachers. Rampal is Professor, Department of Education, Delhi University, and Member, Executive Committee of NCERT
