Why is there a hurry in our classrooms?

Aneesh Bangia, Cofounder, Open-Door Education

by admin

Let us say that babies were given a time limit of one year to learn to walk. If they could not learn to walk in 12 months, then they have to spend their entire life crawling.

Let us say you were given a time limit of 15 days to learn to drive a car. If you did learn to drive the car in 15 days, you could never learn to drive a car? What if you got a time limit of 7 days to learn to use a phone? If you could not learn in that much time, you could never use the phone!

You may find this absurd. But very similar examples play out in schools every day. Students are given 8 periods to understand Newton’s laws for motion when it took Newton himself years to develop his laws. Teachers have to finish teaching Newton’s laws of motion and move to teaching the next topic.

The ‘hurry’ of teaching a chapter and moving to the next chapter leads to 80% students in believing that ‘Math or Science’ is not their cup of tea. Open Door’s research shows that if students were given some more time to understand a conceptual topic then many students can develop a deep mastery of the topic.

Unfortunately, many intelligent people who run businesses and do phenomenal work turn jittery if you talk about ‘Science or Math’. Why? Because of the hurry in our classrooms.

Why is it important to understand Science and Math? These subjects develop the ability to question, to solve problems and take better decisions. In turn, these skills lead to a more fulfilling life. The absurd ‘hurry’ in schools is leading to us becoming poorer thinkers and poorer problem-solvers.

Why is it important to learn deeply? The process of learning deeply takes you through a long of journey of ups and downs, a journey where you try to apply to learning to various situations, look for evidences before agreeing with it. Learning deeply teaches us how to learn and eventually makes our life more fulfilling.

How can we teach so many topics and still ensure that students understand in depth? Here are some ideas:

  1. The amount of time needed to understand a topic is not proportional to the number of pages in the book: A common error made by many teachers to allot teaching time based on the number of pages in the book. Instead of this, teachers should re-evaluate all chapters and allot more time to topics that require more time to understand and less time to chapters that are less conceptual.
  2. Teachers should assess regularly, remediate and regularly: A common misconception among educators is that ‘testing’ takes away teaching time. They sometimes ignore that:

(i) The process of answering questions can deepen learning

(ii) There is no way to find out if students have understand a topic until you ask questions. Testing, remediation and re-testing is essential to make teaching more efficient.

What do you think?

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Connect with the Author:

Name & Designation: Aneesh Bangia is the Cofounder of Open Door Education and an IIT Madras alumnus. He is a teacher turned entrepreneur.

His company is currently making 1,80,000 students across India, UAE, Oman, Bahrain and Nepal in becoming deep thinkers with the power of questions.

Email ID: aneesh@opendooreducation.in
Website : www.opendooreducation.in

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