Learning is a very complex and multifaceted process and for the sake of comparison we have picked up five dimensions of learning – the stated goal of learning, the nature of knowledge that is the target of learning, the stated role of reading in learning, the nature of learning expected at the homes of students […]
Read more >We learn through our sensory organs and their interactions with the brain. We learn when some change occurs in our brain in response to new ‘sensory inputs’. To draw an analogy, think of our brain as a ‘telephone exchange/network’ and each incoming call as a potential source of new inputs and each outgoing call as […]
Read more >We all know what learning is, in our own ways. Expectedly, the discussion on this question is more about exploring how appropriate is what we think learning to be. It will be easier to get to what learning is if we begin by discussing what learning is not, because we register differences with prior knowledge […]
Read more >I recently served on a panel at a meeting organized by the California Higher Education Innovation Council to look at “Alternative Credentials and Unbundling the Degree: Meeting Employer Needs or Short-Circuiting Proven Approaches?” Our panel was challenged beforehand by its moderator, Ryan Craig, to imagine how conditions had to change over the next decade in […]
Read more >One of the more wonderfully unique things about us is the childhood phase in our growth. Unlike all other animals, human offspring is completely ‘educable’ in every way as a child – mother-tongue and other language(s), choices of food, religion, choices of cloth, interests, etc. Childhood is a very impressionable age and traditionally parents were […]
Read more >In 1966, William Baumol and William Bowen looked at the origins of rising salaries for live performances (music, theater, dance), and noted that an underlying issue was that such performances could not easily be made more efficient – productivity could not be increased (Baumol and Bowen, Wikopedia). The oft-quoted ( and quite convincing) formulation of […]
Read more >It makes better sense to discuss this question with parents. The discussion that follows could be directly shared with parents, without any need to edit. To be frank, this is a wrong question for a parent to be worried about; school is the primary institution for academic excellence and family has a secondary role (e.g. […]
Read more >There are over 4,000 colleges and universities in the United States, but Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen says that half are bound for bankruptcy in the next few decades. Christensen is known for coining the theory of disruptive innovation in his 1997 book, “The Innovator’s Dilemma.” Since then, he has applied his theory of […]
Read more >Tighten your belt! The discussion on this question may just be too harsh a reality for you. You would have already read several times in this book that schools have not really changed in the past 200 years. You may also have read the section ‘Organic linkages with society’ and recall that schools were architected […]
Read more >Perhaps the greatest of illusions about schools is that the institution was launched by a group of kindly men and women who wanted to help the children of ordinary families, to level the playing field for all. Unfortunately, the origin and genesis of the school education system is not all that altruistic, even if we […]
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