Vijoy Prakash

(Excerpt from the book Creative Learning by Vijoy Prakash)

Family is said to be the first school, but we have done little to develop it as the first school. Swami Dayanand had identified father, mother and teacher to be the three pillars of education of a child. In Satpatha Brahman it was said,

matriman pitrimanaachryavan purusho ved
(A man is knowledgeable, if he is under the guidance of  learned mother, father, and teacher.)

Unless all pillars are equally strong, the child cannot be said to be properly educated. Today couples get married. They also have children. But, they are never trained in the methods of rearing the children. They are never told how they should steer the child in the elementary stages of learning. It has now been established that about 90% of the development of brain take place before the end of 5 years. Since couples do not know how to take care of the child, they depend mainly upon hit and trial methods. Thus, children may not attain full development of brain as per their own potential.  As such, they are not fully prepared to take advantage of the learning system, when they enter the school system.

There are many games you play in your due course of activities. But have you ever thought about learning with games?

For example, there are many children love playing cricket.

Is it possible to learn from Cricket? Let us see…

In this game learners are divided into two groups. One group asks questions whereas the other group is supposed to tell the answer. As in cricket the baller is given chance to ask 6 questions in a row. Rules have been framed for getting boundaries and sixes based on the complexities of the problem and nature of answer.

Learning Science

Learning through Games

In this game learners are divided into two groups. One group asks questions whereas the other group is supposed to tell the answer. As in cricket the baller is given chance to ask 6 questions in a row. Rules have been framed for getting boundaries and sixes based on the complexities of the problem and nature of answer. Children enjoy the game and learn the lessons as well. Similarly, children play the game of puzzles as well as carrom. If we improvise the game for learning laws of motion, laws of friction, laws of reflection, chemical combinations etc. it would be much easier to understand.

It can also be used for developing imagination by asking learners to arrange the coins in different shapes and patterns and give them exciting names.

As floor games are quite popular among the village children, they can arrange lot of floor games to learn mathematics, grammar, science and social sciences. In fact, in all classrooms 10X10 squarish pattern can be drawn. In the corridor various patterns 3X3, 4X4, 5X5, 6X6, etc and other geometrical patterns can be displayed.

These activities are new to both teachers and learners, but can be an interesting session of learning.

Educating Underprivileged - Some critical concerns

Despite several alluring programmes and incentives in the form of cash and kinds, majority of underprivileged and poor children prefer not to go to school. Even if they do, they don’t continue there. Is it because they don’t understand the value of education or the interventions are not attractive enough to retain them in school? So far we thought that poor people being deprived of physical amenities may be lured by physical benefits only. But, this has not proved correct. Physical allurement have not been able to retain poorer children within four walls of schools. Our approach has been grossly misdirected. The main malaise seems to lie somewhere else. Education today is highly dominated by middle class considerations and concerns with no room for lower class aspirations and talent to be nurtured properly to fully blossom. Unless education system takes care of the peculiar nature of the psychology of the underprivileged, their needs and aspirations and the special circumstances in which a underprivileged child is born and brought up, we cannot expect to make a dent in the existing scenario.

Scientific studies have established that maximum development of brain in a child takes place before the age of 5 years. So the learning of the child would largely depend on the foundation laid during these early years. It has been found that if a child is born with good eyes but his eyes are covered for 3-4 years, then he may not be able to see all through his life even though his eyes may be physically well. This happens because the connections of neurons in respect of vision matures by the age of 3-4 years. If proper care is not taken to develop them, then these neuron connections may not develop in future.

Considering that all children are born with statistically similar physical properties of brain, environmental factors in which the child is brought up in initial years would greatly influence the nature of the development of brain. How does a underprivileged child spend his initial years of life? He is born in a family where earning largely depends on the manual work. Their parents are experts in manual jobs, so he also gets more exposure of manual activities. A child in a shepherd’s family starts going to the field with his sheep early in life. So the sensory organs pertaining to various competencies related to the rearing of sheep would get more opportunity of development. He would have better recognition of the expression of the voices of sheep at different hours of day or in times of hunger and pain. He would have better power of listening of the foot steps of sheep. All this he may learn from his parents even in the course of daily interaction. In the process of rearing he gets more chance of moving through fields and forests, so he gets more opportunity for development of his kinesthetic ability. In fact, the peculiar nature of the family background provides him with certain definite pattern of the development of his brain. He gets an initial advantage in certain skills, whereas he may not get similar advantage in other skills.

Now what happens when he is taken to the school? In the schools intellectual skills are valued more than the skills for manual work. The child who had seen in the family giving more time and energy for manual work suddenly finds that his skills pertaining to manual work is of no significance here. No one discusses there anything about sheep rearing or anything related to that. He gets a severe psychological trauma. So far he had held the values related to sheep rearing to be so important. He must have dreamt of becoming a big shepherd on becoming adult having thousand of sheep in his herd. But, now he finds that knowledge to be of no use. In the schools there is no talk of the conditions in which a child has been living before coming to the school. In fact, there is no attempt to build upon the existing knowledge acquired by the child. There is a standard theory of education of teaching from “known to unknown”. In the name of having uniform syllabi, we have same set of books for all schools and all children. That too is heavily dominated by care and concerns of urban middle class. Thus, a underprivileged child finds the atmosphere to be suffocating and disgusting and is not motivated enough to stay in the class. Even if he stays there under parents’ pressure or other circumstances, his achievement level is generally low. Let’s probe the matter a little further.

When children do not get good grades in any subject or are not able to perform up to our expectation, we often chide and goad them to work harder in the subject. Is it the right way to assess and motivate the child?

Experiences at School of Creative Learning have shown that the issue of failure in the examination may be a product of various factors like physical ailment, emotional distraction or disturbance, lack of proper motivation, etc. However, even if there is no such problem a child may not do well in the examination due to different learning style or lack of proper mental competencies. For example, if the child is not doing well in mathematical competencies, one must also look whether the child is of different learning style than logical and/or is deficient in

• Concentration
• Memory(logical)
• Rational thinking

If the child is really deficient in these competencies, the child should be asked to perform exercises to develop those competencies. For example, if the learner’s learning style is different, the teaching learning strategy has to be different. See A short note on Multiple intelligence and How to identify the Learning Style of Your Child for details. Further, if the child does not have good concentration, he should do exercises to develop it. Once concentration is developed, a bit of hard work may do wonders. Following chart may help in diagnosing the basic problems in a child. For appropriate solution consult Creative Learning Volunteers or write to us. The table here shows the reasons for poor performance in the following categories (You can click on them to take you to related matter directly):

Empowerment of Underprivileged