Interviewed by: kakani Veera Brahmam, Editor in Chief, Brainfeed Magazine
The most important lesson from my experience is that we literates learn the word, but illiterates learn the world. Learning the world is effortless and requires no teaching as learning, like breathing, is a choice-less process. My research on is how children create knowledge autonomously and how schools damage this propensity completely underlines that.” This quote by Jinan sums up his idea on the ‘teaching-learning processes.’
In the third year of engineering, he got expelled from college, which turned out to be a life-changing experience as he spent time in a primary school for a year to get a fresh understanding of what and how education happens. He completed his degree the next year and joined NID. Speaking about his NID days, he says, “For the first time, I met students and teachers who were interested in learning. No one was taking attendance, but everyone was deeply involved in learning. there, I found a true learning space, very different from the teaching spaces that I had experienced till then. The next three years at NID became a fertile ground for deep exploration regarding the learning process, development of aesthetics, the meaning of culture, etc.”
Jinan K B believes that life has equipped us to learn the real world in our respective contexts and has given us the tools, the process and the faculty of understanding. It is through play and the making of toys that children create knowledge. This act of playing retains their creativity and develops intelligence, and they use drawing as a cognitive tool.
“One of the biggest paradoxes of our times is that scientists at the Centre for Brain, Mind, and Machines (MIT) are creating Artificial Intelligence capable of learning autonomously, which is based on their research on how children learn autonomously. Then this very AI is being used to teach children how to analyse second-hand information.”
After NID, he worked with rural artisans and came across real learning which was about the creation of contextual knowledge. He also noticed that despite no teaching, children were learning.
According to him, modern research on children is wrong because it is based on how to teach children and not on how children learn autonomously.
With an unconventional approach, Jinan K B is working to make learning interesting
