Category: School Education
-
How Education System is Promoting Non-Readers and “Functional Illiteracy”: Top Ten Reasons
Our educational system is producing graduates who can read but are not readers, who can write but are not writers i.e. functional illiterates [1]. They do not read fiction, have often never read books except those that they were forced to read for their exams, but which mostly they cunningly avoided by cramming the notes, and…
-
Anti-National Language Policy leads to Rule by Rich and Corrupt Elites
One of the major reasons that has led to the continuous deterioration of economy and culture in Pakistan can be attributed to the anti-national language policies by the status-quo troika. This status-quo troika consisted of rich ruling elites in the bureaucracy that quickly joined hand with the establishment and the landed aristocracy during the rule…
-
Who Fails when a Student Fails
Should not this be true also for schools? Are we willing to take responsibility of the failure of our students? We conveniently try to shift the blame to the student, or to his genetic intelligence, or to his learning disability, or to his psychological deficiency, or to his parents, or to his family, or to his…
-
From Disposable Cups to Throwaway Relationships: Costs of Disposable Culture
Transforming a Disposable Culture By Dr. Irfan Hyder Disposable Relationships The emerging lifestyle of today requires that we restrict ourselves to a small cocoon. We are sold that we should gain expertise in only one particular subject. Our occupations are specialised, limiting our view to a narrowly focused area, and our daily chores revolve around…
-
A Formula is Worth a Thousand Pictures: Dijkstra vs Buzan’s Mind-Maps
A Formula is Worth a Thousand Pictures: Dijkstra vs Buzan’s Mind-Maps Problems with Pictures with too many details and Complexity I had the opportunity to attend Tony Buzan’s presentation of his famous Mind-Maps at the convention of Management Association of Pakistan held at Karachi in September 2014. Mind-maps became popular in Pakistan some years ago thanks to their use for…
-
Testing/Grading vs Motivation: A Variation on Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle for Academics
Testing/Grading vs Motivation: A Variation on Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle for Academics Whenever there is a discussion of the performance of students, lack of motivation of students is the most frequent complaint of nearly all the teachers, whether in higher education institutions or in schools, whether today or 20 years ago. Performance of students and hence…
-
Why Project Based Learning? An Experiential Learning Case Study of Language Teaching
Why Project Based Learning? An Experiential Learning Case Study of Language Teaching This post describes a major step in my personal journey towards becoming an advocate of PBL approach, which is often referred to as “Learning by Doing” and is part of the “Experiential Learning” landscape. Please note that that the learning through this case…
-
13 Myths of Schooling and Education: Resources
Myths of Schooling and Education: Resources There are popular “Myths” about education and schools that have become a matter of unquestionable belief for a large section of population during the industrial age. See Changing Education Paradigms by Ken Robinson Many successful and great people have busted these myths through their own personal achievements, examples, research and successful…
-
Why Education and Why Higher Education: Leadership in Life and Society
Why Education and Why Higher Education: Leadership in Life and Society 1. What is the Purpose of Education We grew up in schools where the day started with an assembly where everyone used to pray that the mission of our lives should be to become a source of light. We prayed for the capacity to…
-
Why do our graduates want to leave the country? Curriculum’s Relevance to Social Impact
Curriculum’s Relevance to Social Impact: Why do our graduates want to leave the country? Why do our elite schools derive their prestige from the fact that their graduates get immediate placements in Western countries? Why do our highest performers of our universities consider their destiny to leave this country and build their life in well…
-
Overprotected Kids: Need for Risk Taking and Self Discovery
Overprotected Kids: Need for Risk Taking and Self Discovery Risk taking used to be part of the every day growing up experience of every child. With our over-protection and over-carefulness we are throttling the innovation, creativity and liveliness of our children. Risk taking and suspense used to make kids mentally strong and develop an ability…
-
Secret of Happiness: One Simple Rule
I was taught a very important rule about the secret of happiness and its relationship with expectations, the hard way, by my mother when I had returned back in 1995 from USA after having been there for over seven years. The lesson threw me on the ground, flat, and got the steam out of me.…
-
How Language Acquisition is Made Difficult for Children: Eight Lessons from an Urdu Acquisition Case Study
How Language Acquisition is Made Difficult for Children: Eight Lessons from an Urdu Acquisition Case Study [The later part of this post would derive the lessons that I learned from my experience of how I learned Urdu which is described first. These lessons address the problems that our faulty methodologies are creating today in language…
-
Fairness in Grading: A Lesson by the Great Dijkstra
Fairness in Grading: A Lesson by the Great Dijkstra In my another post “Beauty is Our Business: Mathematics and Dijkstra“, I describe how I came to be enrolled with Dijkstra at UT Austin in the course Capita Selecta and how he and his students understood the meaning of beauty and excellence. But, my intention of…
-
Problems with Bloom’s Taxonomy: Impact on Curriculum and Motivation of Students
Problems with Bloom’s Taxonomy: Impact on Curriculum and Motivation of Students The basic problem with Bloom’s taxonomy is defining the learning process as a sequence of progression from simpler memory recall function to the supposedly higher levels such as synthesis and evaluation which as Frank Smith argues below is contrary to the actual process of…
-
Most Effective Way of Cutting a Nation from its History and Ideals – Imposing a Foreign Language
Most Effective Way of Cutting a Nation from its History – Imposing a Foreign Language The project for cutting a nation from its history and roots always starts with the introduction of a foreign “language”. We know how Ataturk’s drive for secularism led him to change the Turkish script from Arabic to Latin script to…
-
Education as Tazkia: Is a child like a clean slate?
Education as Tazkia: Is a child like a clean slate? In the academic circles, one often hears the view of a child as “clean slate”, meaning there is nothing written on the slate, and unless we make sure that we write something “good”, as quickly as possible, others may spoil it by writing on it…
-
How Parental Judgments can Shatter a Child: Self Fulfilled Prophecies
How Parental Judgments can Shatter a Child: Self Fulfilled Prophecies It is often said when you are dealing with children: “Treat them as you want them to be, not how they are!” Basically the driving force while the child is growing and learning is the “Future Potential” of the child and not his “Current State”.…
-
Which Field with Great Scope Should My Child Choose: There is always a room at the top
Which Field with Great Scope Should My Child Choose: There is always room at the top I often see parents coming to me for guidance about the field that their son/daughter should choose that would have scope in the future. They want to know the field which would be in great demand so that when…
-
Charter of Children’s Recognition
A Charter of Children’s Recognition By Salman Asif Siddiqui Founder and director of Educational Resource Development Centre. director@erdconline.org Children learn best when they are respected, and this respect is every child’s right. If we take a look at the quality of experience that children undergo during their education, we will arrive at the conclusion that it is…
-
Why My Child does not Sit and Concentrate?
My Child does not Sit and Concentrate Ah! We remember the good old days when there only used to be a single PTV broadcast channel and that too would start with “Baseerat” at 6pm and end with “Farman e Ilahi” at around 12. Kids like us will open the TV much before the start time…
-
Who is educated! – Iqbal’s View
Iqbal on Education [1909] I unhesitatingly declare that I have greater respect for an illiterate shopkeeper, who earns his honest bread and has sufficient force in his arms to defend his wife and children in times of trouble than the brainy graduate of high culture, whose low timid voice betokens the dearth of soul in…
-
Can Grades and Degrees Measure the Success of Students?
Can Grades and Degrees Measure the Success of Students? We see schools in Pakistan proudly displaying their biggest achievement as the number of A grades secured or the number of positions obtained in board examinations. There seems to be a mad rush to secure a large number of A’s with the benchmark recently set at…
-
How Maths is made difficult
How Maths is made difficult Children should use tools Maths becomes difficult when the natural progression of how children learn maths is not followed. This progression is often designated by ELPS: E for Experience L for Language P for Pictures S for Symbols Typically the maths books start from the Picture (P) stage and, then…
-
Beauty is Our Business – Mathematics, Excellence and the Great Dijkstra
I remember here the lessons Dijkstra gave about beauty and excellence through personal examples. His colleagues celebrated his works with the salute: “Beauty is Our Business”[1]. Dijkstra is one of the most revered computer scientist whose footprint on the fundamental ideas in computer science is now legendary. This was 1988-89. I was at The University…
-
Syllabus- Coverage is Enemy of Understanding
The operative word in conventional schools is “cover“. There is a mad rush for coverage. Every one is after this elusive goal. The designers develop the lesson plans keeping in view how much of the subject can be covered during one period. The teacher is now forced to cover the lesson during one period. Teacher fills out the coverage form. The administrator…
-
School Discipline vs Prison Discipline
[Delivered as L2L Talk on 2011-05-08] What is the prison experience? The gate is heavily guarded. There is an eerie silence prevailing. There is a formal process of meeting the inmates or the officials. You can’t go any place you want. There are strict rules for movement. There is a meeting area where you need to go,…
-
How our Curriculum Design (from Simple to Complex) Insults the Intelligence of a Student
[Delivered as L2L Talk on 2011-03-20] A child is naturally curious and interested in exploring about things that he does not know. Complex and unknown things are the ones that interest him (and us). We are interested in mysteries, conspiracy theories, adventure, drama, and are amused by the unexpected, stupendous, super-natural or sci-fi. We insult a child’s…