EDUCATION?

CBSE- CCE SCHEME- Class X SA-2 in 2012

2012-01-05T04:56:00.000-08:00

The CBSE CCE Scheme introduced in Oct. 2009; has been a major demand since pre-independence period. Reform in Education & Evaluation has been the concern of all Educational Committees and Commissions.

Education has to ensure holistic development of all aspects of the personality of a student. Schools have focused on Scholastic Areas and marks too long and ignored Life Skills, Values, Attitudes, Performance and Participation of students. The result has been a crisis of character and conscience.

Evaluation is integral to teaching learning and has to help in both the processes.Students need to be assessed continuously in a stress free environment and feedback given to students and parents.

Teachers have to assess their own teaching and the students learning and diagnose the deficiencies and organize remediation. This is assessment for learning and is done through Formative Assessments, twice in each term; four times in a year. Assessment of learning is done twice a year, at the end of each semester and is called Summative assessment.

CBSE has stipulated Course content for each SA and Question Papers with Marking Schemes are sent to Schools. For FA’s teachers are required to use various tools & techniques like: Projects, Assignments, Quiz, Laboratory Work in Math & Science, Discussion, Survey, Presentations and an occasional paper pencil test.
Thus a year has Two Terms: April to Sept. and Oct. to March. Each Term has Two FA’s and an SA at the end of the Term. Hence during the year there are Four FA’s and Two SA’s. The weight age of each FA is 10% and SA is 30% from 2011 Class IX. In 2012 Class X, it is Sa-1 20% and SA-2 40%.

CBSE has thus moved over to School Based Evaluation and made evaluation continuous. Schools that are 10+2 Schools have to conduct internal SA-2 for all students; except those who intend to change the Board after Class X and make a request for the same in writing, well in advance in Oct.

The SA-2 held at School-internal- or held by CBSE-external- are both conducted on the same Syllabus. Question papers & Marking Scheme are provided by CBSE in both the cases. Evaluation is done at the School in internal and by the Board in external; as per the Marking Scheme; checked and moderated, where required by CBSE in both the cases.

Schools are required to send Grades for the remaining 60% evaluation already conducted by the School to CBSE, in both the cases. CBSE tabulates and declares the Results. There is no pass or fail.

The Certificates of all students-internal or external are issued by the CBSE and have no difference. The Certificate does not make any mention of SA-2 as external or internal.

Students of 10+2 Schools move normally from X to XI and the students face only one external examination at the end of schooling at XII.

CCE hence ensures development & assessment of proper Thinking, Social, Emotional Skills, Attitudes and Values. Aesthetic, Scientific, Cultural and Literary tastes are developed and students learn subjects like Science & Math and excel in Life.

Parents Complain about adoloscent children!

2011-08-20T04:37:00.000-07:00

We have been facing crises of character and crises of conscience, the world over. The family which is one of the basic institutions of our society has been under tremendous pressure for quite some time and has been breaking. Our mothers were our first teachers. The family was our first school. Unfortunately, transition from the agrarian society to the industrial society led to the family passing on its role of educating the younger generation to teachers in a school. Eric Ashby regards this as the first revolution of the world.

In India, we had a firm foundation of values and these were transmitted by the family to the children. The ethical foundations of the society were strong and prayer, meditation, fasting, religious teaching gave all of us a strong moral foundation. The elders were respected; parents were held in high esteem and hence obeyed and followed. Cut throat competition, absence of ethical values, desire to be rich as fast as possible and climb the social ladder of influence and power; has led to degradation of human values. Coupled with this, the social upheavals’, the spurt of violence, the influence of media, change in life style and food habits, the impact of peer pressure and the absence of rational and human parental control has led to growth of a misguided younger generation. The percentage of such youth is very high in each social strata and more so in upper middle classes and the upper classes. These youth resent being advised and guided. They want freedom from all controls and resent any intrusion or interference in their life and work. They have their own preferences, likes and dislikes, recreational activities, social and political outlook and look upon the family as an institution that meets their needs. They feel and believe that their parents are obliged to do what they do for their upbringing, education, career since the parents are under a debt to their own parents for having done it for them. Often, if the parents are not so well educated or placed in society, the young start taking charge and advising them on matters concerning family, life etc. The anti-social elements are always on the lookout for such youth as they easily fall prey to their mechanization and the desire to enjoy a life of luxury. Sometimes the youth experiment with their lives and fall prey to substance abuse, become drug addicts, alcoholics and so on.

Our problem as teachers becomes acute when we try to bring the school and the home closer and interact with the parents of such students, in the hope that together we may improve upon the behavior and academic performance of these students. What the parents share in confidence reveals that the student has revolted against parental control already and the parents are scared of him. He has already threatened the parents of dire consequences in case they keep nagging, advising or complaining against him. These threats vary from suicide, running away from home, joining bands of anti-social elements, bringing bad name to the family to physical assault on the parents. Stories from such parents are heart rendering and our blood boils. But this is the true test of a teacher’s patience, care and love for the student.

I have been a strong advocate of love-therapy and even when people regarded my love for my student as a sign of weakness and cowardice; I can boast of the fact that it has helped me in dealing with over 90% cases. The remaining 10% needed psychological counseling for behavior modification. Our Schools have to have a climate of dedicated scholarship and pursuit of excellence in any and all fields has to be rewarded. The students need to find that the school has teachers who are scholars in their subjects and role-models of what they say and desire their students to be. The Schools have to have a vision, a value system, a culture that sets the tone for all activities. Adolescents are passing through a period of stress and strain. They want to assert their authority. They need appreciation and recognition for what they are. They are very conscious of themselves and do not like to be treated as kids or insulted in public or a social group. They thirst for appreciation, for improving upon their self esteem, for recognition and for love. They have reserves of surplus energy and want to use it. They are torn by emotional conflicts, physical bodily and glandular changes, social interactions and the absence of models. The failure of both teachers and parents to understand the growth and developmental needs of the adolescent, the stress levels, the pressure of studies and the peer group influence are the other factors that add to his misery.

What should we as teachers do in these circumstances?
• Be aware of the growth and development characteristics of students.
• Find out more about their family, their peer group, their interests, their study schedule, their learning style, their hopes and fears, their psychological makeup etc
• Provide for a range of activities in the school as keeps the student always engaged. These have to be a variety of Physical Activities, Games & Sports, Recreational Activities, and Activities for Social, Emotional and aesthetic development.
• Activities like Theatre, Adventure Sports, Dramatics, Nature Trips, Tours, Leadership Camps, working in teams for NGO’s, Social causes, Experimentation, Group Projects etc; have been found useful.
• Every teacher has to be a counselor, a surrogate parent, a scholar with expert knowledge of his subject, a human being with a caring and loving heart and a friend.
• Value education has to be an integral part of the School Programme. It can be both Direct and Indirect. Schools have to realize that ‘Values are caught and not taught.’
• Teachers must be good listeners. Do not offer advice at once. Listen. Befriend the child. He needs an understanding friend. Model the behavior you wish your student to acquire. Show him examples and models that are positive. Use anecdotes, parables, and stories to drive home your point.
• Visit the family of the child more often. Have talk sessions with all present. The parents may also need counseling. Set targets and goals with time-lines for the students. Make parents help the child achieve the target.
• Conduct case studies of a few cases that you find alarming and in need of help. Use the Case Study to identify the causes and we can all put our heads together to find remedies.

CORRUPTION IN EDUCATION?

2010-07-18T20:13:00.000-07:00

A recent report by British media revealed that millions of pounds of aid for education under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) programme have literally disappeared. The report put this figure at a staggering £340 million, which is around Rs 2,327 crore!
To further this report, the Comptroller and Auditor General’s (CAG) investigation found that almost £14 million (around Rs 100 crore) had been spent on luxuries viz. new cars, luxury beds, computers et al, that had no connection with SSA. So much so that around Rs 1.02 crore was transferred into non-traceable bank accounts. Not just that, electronic equipments like air conditioners, faxes, photocopiers, colour television sets et al were bought for regions which had no electricity supply! And that’s just one side of the entire SSA story! Another CAG report reveals that around 68 per cent of the Rs 8000 crore allotted for ‘Elementary Education’ development work, which was spent under SSA, had no records. A 2006 report highlighted irregularities of funds usage to the tune of Rs 470 million in almost 14 states in SSA schemes. A brief glimpse through other media reports, in the span of the last few years, is enough to give a concrete idea about how states like Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh are spending allocated funds on projects that have nothing to do with SSA.
In such a situation, what hope can we have of the RTE Act and our pious wish of getting everyone to school and having an educated India.

OUR YOUNG LEARNERS

2010-07-16T03:29:00.000-07:00

We have to recognize the crucial importance of good quality education in the early years. The experiences and environment the children are exposed to in the first five years have a great impact on the child’s life. At our schools the seeds for learning are sown in the blossoming brain. We recognise that learning shifts from age to age. A three year old is not a five year old, but a perfect three year old. Children at different age levels have different needs and ways of learning.

Young children love to play and are naturally curious. They are full of love and purity. Games, puzzles and educational activities have to be incorporated in the syllabus, so that the children learn new skills in both a fun and challenging way. We know that children learn best when they are enjoying themselves. One of our main aims is for children to develop a joy for life-long learning.

School is often the first time the children are away from home, so the classroom becomes a new family. An atmosphere has to be created in which each individual is respected, loved and cared for. Children learn to grow and learn together in a cooperative environment. In parachute games they learn to work together as a team. Students also have opportunities to work in small groups, so that the teacher has more individual time with each child. We ought to have a daily organised routine with a variety of activities for the children to experience learning in a stimulating environment.

Students should start the day with a few minutes of meditation. This helps them to relax, develop their inner peace and be more focused. They should also have a daily period of Life Skill and Value Education, in which they learn to take care of themselves and others. They learn how to share, become a good human being, manners, and polite social interactions. They also learn to appreciate multicultural diversity and different religions.

We should incorporate kinaesthetic learning – learning through movement, in the learning process. Physical activities are a fun way to learn the alphabet, numbers and many environmental topics. Children love to move, jump and run. Children process new information through their whole body, in kinaesthetic learning. Some children learn best through their sense of touch, they are called tactile learners. Such children flourish when they can paint, and create things with their hands. These art and craft activities need to be linked to topics they are learning. They also love educational aids and manipulatives. The school is not about sitting still the whole day.

The preschool years are not the time to engage the children in lengthy memorization exercises. Children at this age develop their thinking processes in the context of play and physical activities.

During the year there have to be special theme days, like an Alphabet Party or a Number Day. On these days the whole day is packed with role play, games, music, and craft activities related to the topic.

Albert Schweitzer, a great Doctor once said: “There are three ways to teach: By example, by example, and by example.”

We need to be aware that children are keen observers. How we speak, listen and interact with others needs to be loving and polite. Children quickly pick up our attitudes and behaviour traits. By modelling how we want our children to behave and the skills we want them to learn, we do the best in creating a conducive atmosphere for learning and growing.
After modelling we also need to give children the opportunity to do things on their own. Learning through doing has to be a key word at our Schools. Mistakes are okay, and part of the learning process. We remember 90 % of what we do, whereas we remember very little of what we read. Our teachers have to be committed to providing the best possible learning experience for your children. Encouragement is an important word for children. Words of encouragement work wonders. We should help our students develop self confidence in them. All of these efforts will make our School a wonderful place for a child to grow.

HOLISTIC TEACHER.

2010-01-04T06:33:00.000-08:00

QUESTION: Who can be called a "Holistic Teacher?
With everyone talking of 'Holistic Education' there is need for 'Holistic Teachers' and we need to list the traits, attributes and qualities of such a teacher. –Prof. B. L. Handoo

k kemper- Management Consultant, writer, past TV show producer

Answer: since i invented "holistic accounting" in 1982,a holistic teacher could be one who brings all subject matter and teaching concepts to the classroom and endeavors to succinctly use those melded together to meet the needs of the students as the instructor "facilitates" the mandated material.

FRANK FEATHER ►CEO ►Strategist ►Customized "Hot-Topic" Keynotes + In-House Seminars ►2020 Forecasts (30-yr track record

Answer: A "holistic teacher" is a "facilitator of learning." The traditional role of teacher has become one of an instructor who drills or pours "info-facts" into a student's head, treating knowledge as content, i.e., finite, and this archaic model has been reinforced by the computer age of how information gets processed. Yet the caveat of "garbage in, garbage out" now applies to today's obsolete industrial-era mass education system.

Holistic education is based on a concept of knowledge as a process of reasoning and of
continuous learning, i.e., infinite.

Carl Rogers wrote about the role of the holistic teacher back in 1967 in "Person to Person: The Problem of Being Human", (Real People Press), as follows:
- concentrate on creating a classroom climate to facilitate self-initiated learning, the freedom to learn and learning to be free.
- allow the students to be free and responsible so they confront real life problems.
- the teacher must be genuine and sincere, with a confident view of humanity and a profound trust in the human organism.
- able to accept their feelings as their own, they have no need to impose them on others.
- the teacher values the feelings and opinions of students who are regarded as imperfect humans with many potentialities.
- the teacher never denies a child's feelings and has empathic awareness of the learning process and education from the student's point of view.

In 1993, John miller, the pioneer of holistic learning at OISE in Toronto, wrote a seminal book "Holistic Teacher", and very recently "The Holistic Curriculum".
Hope that helps.

M. Joyce McMenamin- "Chief-of-Quite-A-Lot"

Answer: Looking around, it appears a lot of people can self-assert a holistic title.
Some of the most famous holistic practitioner-authors have no specific training or credentials.
I have sought out credentials and found that many of the certification programs are elementary and 'wanting'.
The concept of 'holism' is 'complete' (eg., whole).
I tend to believe that holism either "is" or "isn't".
Those that teach successfully are typically holistic from a combination of experience + learning vs. formal training.

Firas Abo Assaf- CEO ♦ Finance & FMCG Professional ♦ Real Estate Brokerage ♦ All In One ♦ One For All

Answer: In holistic education, the teacher is seen less as person of authority who leads and controls but rather is seen as:

1) A friend,
2) A mentor,
3) A facilitator,
4) An experienced traveling companion

Schools should be seen as places where students and adults work toward a mutual goal. Open and honest communication is expected and differences between people are respected and appreciated. Cooperation is the norm, rather than competition. Thus, many schools incorporating holistic beliefs do not give grades or rewards. The reward of helping one another and growing together is emphasized rather than being placed above one another.

In considering curriculum using a holistic approach, one must address the question of what children need to learn. Since holistic education seeks to educate the whole person, there are some key factors that are essential to this type of education.

• First, children need to learn about themselves. This involves learning self respect and self esteem.

• Second, children need to learn about relationships. In learning about their relationships with others, there is a focus on social “literacy” (learning to see social influence) and emotional “literacy” (one’s own self in relation to others).

• Third, children need to learn about resilience. This entails overcoming difficulties, facing challenges and learning how to ensure long-term success.

• Fourth, children need to learn about aesthetics – This encourages the student to see the beauty of what is around them and learn to have awe in life.

Wallace Jackson ; Multimedia Producer and i3D Programmer for Acrobat 3D PDF, JavaFX, Mobile & Virtual Worlds

Answer: A Mentor. An Example. A Leader. A Visionary. One Who Inspires. The Dalai Lama

Adam Maclennan; Lead Tutor at Tutorpedia

Answer: In my opinion very few (if any) people could be called a "Holistic Teachers." Though I would say that some people take a holistic approach to education and that is very good.

My primary bench mark for holistic teaching would be if the teacher seeks to impart a desire to learn and show connections to the real world as well as just disseminate basic knowledge. The teacher doesn't have to be able to teach all subjects by any means but does need to show how the subject being taught relates to others and to life. What's more teacher should seek out what interests and inspires the student and relate the subject to that. Any connection could be made even if it is honestly admitting that the current subject matter is simply a "hoop to be jumped through" on the path to the students eventual life goal.

A holistic approach to education does not mean that the teacher needs to befriend the student, treat them as an intellectual equal, or equally value their opinions about the world. In fact the teacher should do not really do any of these things because they all lead to the loss of credibility. As the teacher, even the holistically minded one, you should be the guru, the master of the material and on a higher intellectual rank than the student. People in general don't tend to learn from those with equal knowledge on a subject, they debate them. I'm not suggesting that students differing in opinion from you are a bad thing; in fact that process is extremely good. However, if you are a teacher worth your salt, nine times out ten the debate should end with both you and the student understanding that you are the winner, but not that the student has lost.

However the image of a mentor or role model is not far from where a holistically minded educator should be. This image must be carefully maintained and needs to differ from student to student. In all cases students must respect the teacher a great deal in order for any holistic program to take place.

Shankar Barua; Writer, Artist, Thinker, Musician, & Oddball Innovator

Answer: A good parent should do Bhushan.

Keep well ~ Shankar

Rayaprolu Sarma; Owner, SASU Academy Pvt. Ltd

Answer: Is being a "Holistic Teacher" a possibility?

Can there be any one who is complete and can we measure the completeness? To me a holistic teacher or some one close to a holistic teacher who understands his limitations as a human and still allows the possibility of other's growth through constant search for answers. A Holistic teacher need not be a subject matter expert always. He can merely be some one who encourages learning not by teaching but by being and becoming.

Teachers most often have to fill in the shoes of unrealistic ideals and hard to survive methodologies. It is important that self realization and truth seeking become the motto of teaching or imparting learning, only then can a teacher be holistic.

From a philosophical, real life, scientific and cultural perspectives, allowing learning to sprout in turbulence along with accepting learning as an event in a journey, all these are qualities which a holistic teacher can aim to have

Siphiwe Silinda; Document Controller B&W Madagascar Sarl

Answer: A holistic Teacher is someone that educates, mentor and do coaching one on one with his or her students. When students see her or him they regard as a role model because of the drive and the skills that he or she is passing on to the students. He or she posses the following attribute
Strong Leadership, Career and Family Counseling, Planning into Detail & Motivator

Nanette de Ville; at Life Reflections

Answer: I work as a Healer and I would expect to see the following qualities in a Holistic Teacher:
They should be someone who is compassionate, understanding and can listen. To be able to give impartial guidance and coaching to child:
Guiding children:
1. to understand they are responsible for the own actions and words
2. to learn how to identify personal issues and deal with the positively
3. learn how to identify goals and the steps to achieve them
4. to identify self-limitations and imposed limitations giving guidance and coaching on how to overcome them and what positive actions they need to take.
5. Learn how to love themselves and be joyous and passionate about their lives.
This will result in children being able to see their unique talent and will bring about a responsive curriculum instead of a restrictive and conditioned curriculum.

The more a person is in control of their lives the more they understand themselves and be who they really are.
There are many successful entrepreneurs who only had limited education clearly we cannot say they are failures but the education system failed them.

Julia Shirkey; Promoting learning as a way of life

Answer: Holistic teachers appeal to cognitive, affective, spiritual, relational, and somatic aspects of learning.

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Answer: My chiropractor, Dr. Howard Kessler, Hillsdale, New Jersey is a wonderful holistic Doctor and teacher...

Harish Nair; Founder, Ragnar & Rearden Consultants

Answer: As an ardent student of systems thinking, i believe, being holistic is the ability to understand something from all possible perspectives, understand the invisible and visible assumptions behind those perspectives; understand that something in its context and outside of that context and the implications thereof.

Being able to also understand as well as detach oneself from one's own beliefs and prejudices to aid objectivity is a key to being holistic.

Anyone who has these capabilities can be considered as someone who is able to view things holistically. Being able to teach is another talent altogether. One who can combine the above along with the basic necessities of being a good teacher in my view can be termed a holistic teacher.

I also believe, being able to get this across to others would be a key to being a holistic teacher. One who has a holistic approach will enable others to do the same as he understands fully the limitations of not being holistic and how much is richness is lost in not being holistic.

Trust that helpful

Cheers
Harish Nair

Gurinder Ahluwalia; Marketing Consultant to SMEs, Professor in Marketing & Director

Answer: First and foremost a teacher must know the subject s/he teaches. Secondly s/he should be able to understand the students' personality and learning abilities. Thirdly a teacher must remain dispassionate in all situations. Lastly a teacher should respect divergent opinion and be open to all viewpoints.

Ida Durling: Management/Executive

Answer: Holistic teachers have clear and simple rules:

1.Respect - for the teacher, for classmates, and for materials
2.Raise Your Hand if you want to speak
3.Always try your best (as a person and on your work)
4.Take responsibility for our classroom (pick up after yourself)

These are just some of the classroom guidelines a holistic teacher will implement:

1.Respond to Adults
2.Make eye contact
3.Congratulate a classmate
4.Respect other students' comments, opinions and ideas
5.If you win, do not brag; if you lose, do not show anger
6.Cover your mouth with the crook in your arm when you sneeze
7.Do not show disrespect with gestures
8.Always say thank you when given something and do not insult the gift or giver
9.Surprise others by performing random acts of kindness
10.Follow along when we read together in class
11.Answer all written questions with a complete sentence
12.You must complete your homework every day
13.Subject transitions will be swift, quiet, and orderly
14.Be organized as possible
15.When a substitute teacher is present, all class rules still apply
16.Follow the specific classroom rules
17.You may bring a bottle of water to class, you may not get up for a drink of water during instruction.
18. Greet visitors and make them feel welcome
19.Do not save seats at lunch or in line
20.Do not stare at a student who is being reprimanded

ACCREDITATION OF SCHOOLS!

2010-01-04T06:28:00.000-08:00

Question asked by Prof. (Dr.) B. L. Handoo
Q: How is Accreditation of Schools going to improve education?

The HRD Minister and the CBSE Chairman have proposed Accreditation of Schools as an initiative to improve Quality in Education. The Schools are wary. The parents want to know the benefits. The students and teachers think exploitation will cease. The managements fear exposure. Good Schools are hopeful of benchmarking their best practices. Some see Business prospectus and the general fear is dilution of standards in the name of Quality, since unscrupulous elements are vying for a piece of the pie.
(Location specific: India)

Answers from Friends from various walks of life

Virendra Pratap Mishra: Professor at Institute of Productivity & Management, Ghaziabad

Accreditation shall surely help. The process need to be set right.
Maximum weight age- 75% and above- should be given to the views and performance of passing out students in last few years. Say pass outs of last one to five years. Accreditations should be derived based on ratios of fees charged by institutes and salaries earned by pass outs in next five years. Minus weight age should be given for un-employment periods beyond six months of just passing out students.

Accreditation ranking should be published and institute be asked to display it prominently at every point of soliciting students.
Admissions to institutes be based on one single all India or state entrance score and no technical or other university should try to fill seats in affiliated colleges. Let all institutes fill their own seats based on their rankings, fees, common entrance scores and candidate preferences.

Accreditation should essentially be done by a private organization and 100% objective based on preset criteria scores. Accreditation agency should not have a subjective decision criterion

Michael Lyubomirskiy: consultant, project manager, inventor, programmer at Lyubomirskiy Consulting, lyubomirskiy@gmail

Government accreditation is not good because it easily gets corrupted and subverted to serve the goals and ideologies of the government. By contrast, private accreditation by private bodies/associations - that's not bad. E.g. if I think that Association 1 is a gang of morons and Association 2 is a gang of thieves, maybe I will go to Association 3 which is not reputed. Or maybe I will start my own Association... Naturally, these various organizations would quickly develop their reputations, and you, as a parent or government official, would have some notion of what their accreditation means.

Incidentally, MIT is, imagine that, not accredited by anybody. Their engineering programs are accredited (otherwise graduates could not have called themselves engineers) but the university itself has no accreditation. Believe it or not, they do fine :-)
Oops, no, I was incorrect. "MIT is accredited by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges, Inc., through its Commission on Institutions of Higher Education."

I distinctly recall reading 12 years ago about how MIT lacked some common accreditation and didn't care about it, but I cannot track down this tidbit anymore.

Rajesh Venkatesan: architect @HCL

I think the intention of an accreditation is good...but as everything else in India, implementation is a whole different nightmare...
I see this as no different from engineering colleges going like mad after getting deemed university status. The schools eventually will work out a strategy to get the accreditation whether they have the right infrastructure/staff/methodology or NOT.
My opinion is that even now some schools are flooded with applications for admission because they are good at what they should do - Education. I don’t see really Good Schools even caring about accreditation as they will get it de facto. It MIGHT serve as motivation for the other schools to better their state of affairs. That might be the only crucial point for me to favor accreditation. I think even if 20% of schools improve, I will support it.

Craig Eyermann: Instructor at University of Phoenix

Accreditation is not well correlated with the ability to achieve meaningful goals in education. For example, most of India's public school teachers are accredited, yet fail to adequately perform their jobs (see second link.)

The current move to accredit schools should be viewed as an attempt to suppress competition from private schools, where the instructors are incented to show up and teach (unlike India's public sector teachers). It's little more than a political power grab intended to take the pressure to perform off the public sector teachers by making it more difficult for private schools to be established to compete with them.

Wallace Jackson: Multimedia Producer and i3D Programmer for Acrobat 3D PDF, JavaFX, Mobile & Virtual Worlds

Any system is prone to corruption under the wrong sequence of events. Time will tell.

Al Macintyre: Computer Professional in IBM Midrange

Depending on what organization sets the standards, and manages the process, there is a potential to let parents know what schools are meeting what standards, so they can select best education for the students.

Ramesh Kumar: CTO & one of the Top 10 All time experts at Linkedin

Accreditation helps the schools which do not have a proper system in place. There are thousands of schools that are affiliated with some board or other and no one knows if the norms are properly implemented.

There are some schools which are more than 100 year old and have best practices in place. They know the importance of infrastructure and teaching practices.

Accreditation brings in some uniformity and the schools will be required to follow certain norms. And these will be reviewed at regular intervals.

Personally, I feel it is good as the accreditation requires minimum requirements for the school. The students, teachers and parents will be happy. However, managements may have to shell down more money for creating the infra required for accreditation. However, the problem is that the managements may try to recover the additional costs from students in one way or other!!

Ramesh
The Human Search Engine

Rayaprolu Sarma: Owner, SASU Academy Pvt. Ltd

First of all Accreditation of Schools will stop the commercialization of education. Following up the accreditation with tough criterion for setting up schools will allow quality and education to prosper rather than mere literacy.

Like many say India's problem is not unemployment, it is un-employability. The problem is not demand, the problem is supply. Accreditation will help in streamlining standards which will enable the best practices to reach out to the deserving people.

Accreditation will also allow the Govt. or Corporate sectors to involve in Global Citizenship and design methodologies of handling socio-economic insecurities which prevail not just in the students but also in the teaching population of the country.

Accreditation should allow the banning of schools which do not match the standards set, there by ensuring only quality to exist. A road map should be sought and enforced in to place by the Govt. to enable the good schools to become better and the better ones the best.

Accreditation if followed by stringent close down measures, will also bring to the fore, innovative low cost high quality interventions which will allow a better reach to the deserving candidates of the rural areas.

My take on the whole topic is that accreditation clubbed with action on low quality schools will be helpful. Lack of follow up action will render the accreditation useless.

Steve Taylor: Instructor at SAU Tech, Manager of Alien Productions, Freelance Video Producer

Obviously, in the US accreditation has failed. Anything that is controlled at the federal level will eventually fall prey to corruption and ultimately failure. Let the free market decide. If a school has graduates who are getting jobs upon graduation, that school will see an increase in students. If a school has graduates who are not getting jobs upon graduation, that school should see a decrease in students. All schools are not created equal. All instructors are not created equal. No mandate from the government (accreditation) will ever make them of equal value to society.

Christoph Knoess: Founder and President, Engaged Minds Inc.

I think the best analogy to accreditation is the government mandated annual inspection of motor vehicles. It sets some minimum standards, but says little about the best schools (or cars). As governments get deeper and deeper into financing education, it is inevitable (and good stewardship) that it will insist on minimum standards for all schools and institutions that receive government funding.

Schools and institutions of course see accreditation as an imposition and a constraint to their academic freedom and pursuit of their educational mission. However, the purpose of accreditation is to protect students and tax payers, not to serve educational institutions.

Quality Education & Accreditation of Schools.

2009-12-09T07:27:00.000-08:00

Education is the most potent instrument for social change and social reconstruction. The formative years of a child are spent in a school and it is here that foundations of holistic development have to be laid. Unfortunately, absence of a clear focus, lack of vigor, unawareness of Quality in educational processes and above all no monitoring to improve the school education has led to the present state of mismatch between objectives, processes and the output. Schools have failed to deliver and provide Quality Education.
Accreditation of Schools would help Indian Education & Schools to understand the Quality Dimension of Education. It will lead to awareness about Holistic Education, give Schools a Mission to strive for, help them to identify Processes and develop a mechanism of monitoring these processes to improve and help in effectiveness and efficiency. Self-assessment, Continual Improvement, Performance Review, Empowerment of the Head of the Institution, Involvement and participation of the Interested parties, Documented procedures and creating ‘Life-long Learners’ is what Accreditation will lead to. Schools will have to comply with Statutory and Regulatory Rules, start their Quality journey and cleanse their systems. Accreditation will then be a by product.
Accreditation by a National Apex Body, is the last hope of improving our School Systems, bringing in efficiency in their processes, including the Teaching-Learning Process and making Schools accountable to the community.

How does the fear of making mistakes and being laughed at affect the way you learn?

2009-10-09T07:57:00.000-07:00

Fear is an emotion that always hinders learning.
Teachers who create fear in the teaching-learning process will not be able to induce learning. The mind gets clogged in fear. The fear of making mistakes while learning needs to be erradicated from the minds of children.
Teachers have to create an environment where it is OK to commit mistakes in the process of learning. We need to create conditions for participatory learning and hence going wrong is natural and is acceptable for ensuring learning.

We need to celebrate learning at every step. We can not allow anyone being laughed at while the person is making a sincere effort to learn. This can be discouraging and become an obstacle to learning. We have no right to laugh at the mistakes of others.
Learning has to be fun, an enjoyable activity and we need to support it through reinforcement-praise and encouragement.

Please offer a short description of favourite works of literature

2009-10-09T07:53:00.000-07:00

“Shakespeare's "Othello" is the tragedy of a Husband who wrongly suspects his wife and that too on being cajoled by others. He repents. Thank God! We do not need to be convinced by others, nor do we repent. For us it is a comic relief.

Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice" is the story of a single man of fortune and hence in need of a wife to spend that fortune. Pride and Prejudice do fall along the road in times of recession and who cares who elopes with whom.

" David Copperfield" by Charles Dickens is the story of "A Slum Dog" in old England.

Mathew Arnold in "Prospice" said:
"I have ever been a fighter,
one fight more,
the last and the best"

My professor taught me that Arnold was talking of struggles and his fight with death.
Wrong. Who fights death.
It is distributed as a gift in every street, Hotel and now in Schools.
This can go on. But I have some more to read and understand. So Bye for today.

What can I do to improve my presentation skills?

2009-10-09T07:50:00.000-07:00

If Presentation is a Skill, then it has to be learnt through PRACTICE. Practice, practice and practice is my first advice.
You have no problems. These are fears. Perhaps on one or two occasions the 'Murphy Monkey' jumped on to your back as soon as you started your presentation. The next time throw him off. Be confident. Tell yourself that you can do it.
Practice in front of a large looking glass.
Carry some Note Cards with you.
Write the beginning, the Main Points and the ending.
Use a Power Point Show with notes for you.
Build up your confidence.
Watch some good presenters on allied themes and topics.
Observe their body language, their voice modulations and also Read some Books on Presentation Skills.
Search for Video Clips on Presentation Skills. Some good ones are available on the YouTube also.

What did they not teach you that you wish they would've taught you?

2009-10-09T07:46:00.000-07:00

I was taught a little of every subject as per regulations of the Board or University at School and College. This was done at purely memory level and with the sole objective of passing examinations.
I was never taught about life, how to live it and how to face its complexities and enjoy it.
It came from experience, peer group and from the examples of others.

No one ever taught me to Think Critically, Creatively, Laterally and Divergently.
No one taught me Life Skills, Communication, Public Speaking, Problem Solving, Decision Making...the list is endless.

I wish I would have been taught all this. Much of it is taught now in Good Schools, Colleges and Universities.

Who Taught You?

2009-10-07T05:16:00.000-07:00

This question made me relive my past and think of those people who shaped my life. It mad me realise that this way teachers will be remembered, and I myself am a teacher.

My Mom and Dad were my first Teachers. Both had a profound influence on me, in spite of our living in a large joint family. My Mom taught me to love, to care and to be patient. My Dad taught me the need for discipline, good habits, moral courage and perseverance.

Out of my Teachers at the School: I vividly recall Mr. Kotha, who taught us English at Class V. He made me Read from Books, Text and Story Books to the whole class and even made me speak extempore at the School Assembly. The other was Mr.N.J.Miya; a gem of a person, loved and feared by all. He was multifaceted and multi-skilled. He was my Social Science Teacher at the High School. He taught me how to swim, how to row a boat, how to face difficult situations, how to tie knots as a Boy Scout. He played Hockey with us and made me represent my school, when I was only 12. He was instrumental in developing my Map Reading Skills and Spatial concepts. His Lessons have been my lessons for life.

My memories of College fade into the mist and hazy recollections of my adolescence; when I played Cricket and watched movies. But I must make mention of our Principal, Mr.Madan, who sometimes taught us English Literature. His recitation of Poetry, his subtle ways of romanticising minor details and his dramatic delivery of the dialogues of each character in Shakespearean plays... My God! How I wished I could imitate him and be a teacher like him. He left all of us spell bound and time seemed to flee. We wished he could have taught us more often. He was instrumental in creating in me a burning desire to be a teacher and my love for English Literature.

At the University, we had great luminaries and scholarly Professors. I can not forget Prof. Woodrou Wilson and the way he taught us American Literature. He was a realist, a pragmatic person and had lived and taught at Tagore's “Shanti Niketan University”, for six years. He taught me how nature could be used to teach us and he built my strength of character and conviction. In every situation, he wanted my views, my opinion and not of the critics. He was the one who taught me to think and think critically. Prof Apurab Soomnath was the one who taught us the Growth and History of Novels in English Literature. He was a man who loved his glass of wine and playing contract Bridge. He would speak for hours on end. He built in me whatever little of creative thinking there is.

I salute these and other teachers who made a difference in my life and whatever I am today is purely because of their efforts.
May God bless them all? For those who are no longer on this earth. May God grant them peace in Heaven?

• How, where and when did structured schooling start?

2009-10-07T05:05:00.000-07:00

We know that at the advent of human civilisation, the task of educating the younger generation was that of the family and especially of the parents. When we advanced to the agricultural stage, all education was imparted orally and it was experiential. Boys and girls helped their parents in their daily work and acquired the necessary skills through observation, apprenticeship and hands on learning. The family continued to be the source of folk -lore; tradition, myths, fables, legends and all this had an oral tradition; both in the east and the west.

Gradually, the parents felt that the task of educating the younger generation needed specialised skills and they were pressed for want of time. Hence the village priest- shaman- was assigned this task.

Eric Ashby regards this as the First Great Revolution in Social evolution. The responsibility of educating the young was hence passed on from the family to a so-called specialist within the community. Soon we had the invention of the written word and that brought a major shift in the process.

In ancient Vedic times, education in the ‘Patshalas’ and ‘Gurukuls’ was imparted orally. Even Buddhist education in ‘Mats’ and ‘Viharas’, and in the ‘Madrasas’ of the Muslims; continued to be given orally even after the written word was available.

The Society took upon itself the task of educating the younger generation and donated land, funds and resources to Gurus who dedicated themselves to the task of imparting education. These small centres soon grew and their fame spread far and wide. Lords, Kings and Landlords in the Feudal Society provided support. Soon the system became more and more organised and had controls, regulations and so on.

Hence it got loosely structured. Entry age was decided. Curriculum was formed. Assessment procedure was laid down. But all this had a variety of models as it varied from one tribe to another, one community to another and from one society to another. With the passage of time, the need for uniformity in certain basic practices and regulations was felt and ordered for by Kings or democratically elected Councils. It was just before the beginning of the Industrial Revolution and the invention of the Printing Press that we had a somewhat loosely structured form of Schooling existing throughout the world and each civilisation was at some stage of development.

The present day structure is one that has proved to be boring, monotonous and only helpful in establishing routine and curbing creativity. That is why, we have been trying with various models like: Non Formal Education, Open School, Home Schooling etc and even major changes are being initiated in the way the schools ought to function and the purposes for which they exist.

• What is the impact of hiring novice teachers while offering incentives for veteran teachers to retire?

2009-10-07T05:02:00.000-07:00

Veteran teachers are ‘veterans’ and retiring them is not in the interests of our students. Veteran teachers are needed badly by children, parents, schools and the society. Their age should not be a consideration, as long as they are capable of teaching effectively and the students enjoy their teaching.

One learns to teach with time and experience. The time spent by these veteran teachers in honing their skills is what matters. Such teachers should not retire or be offered incentives to retire. This is callous and detrimental to the interests of students.

Our kids are not guinea pigs to be experimented upon by novice teachers. We can not undo the damage done by novices on young minds. Such damage may be irreparable. Novice teachers are yet to know and learn through experience as to 'What is teaching?', 'How to teach children with different abilities?', 'How to manage classes effectively?', "How to assess learning?' and so many other allied things. They need time and mentoring to mature and grow professionally. The veteran teachers could work as their Buddies, Mentors and Role-models. The novice teachers need to observe veteran teachers at work and learn from their experience.

I have found that Pre-service training of teachers is inadequate and does not equip a teacher with all that the teacher is required to do. Even In-service training and PD is not taken very seriously by all. Hence, there is dire need for continuing with veteran teachers to teach our kids and to help our new teachers to grow professionally.

How does Education empower you?

2009-10-07T04:59:00.000-07:00

Education imparts knowledge, develops attitudes & dispositions and trains us in Skills.
Education transmits culture, promotes Social Progress and exercises Social Control.

Education trains the faculties of Reasoning, Imagination, Rationality, Critical Thinking and fosters Creativity.

Education enables us to discriminate between Right and Wrong and develops our values, strengthens our character and makes us socially efficient.

Education teaches us "to be", "to become", and "to live".

This is how it Empowers.

• What measures can be taken to motivate students?

2009-10-07T04:53:00.000-07:00

The best form of motivation is self-motivation. Pupils need to connect with the teachers. Teachers can motivate their pupils by meeting their needs for the three ‘As’: affiliation, agency and autonomy. They do this through the energisers that create a motivating learning climate; the flip side of the energisers is the drainers – things that teachers need to avoid doing. The energisers provide the ingredients of the classroom climate that are needed to whet pupils’ appetites for learning. The energisers effectively engage most pupils and are accessible to most teachers:
Engagement – how teachers show they are interested in and value pupils.
Structure – provides clear pathways towards the learning goals and boundaries that let pupils know what is expected of them.
Stimulation – comes from a curriculum that highlights the relevance of activities and sets achievable goals.
Feedback – provides information that lets pupils know how they are doing, guiding them from where they are to where they need to be.
Drainers expose pupils to painful and unpleasant experiences that they will want to avoid:
Engagement – showing they are disinterested in their pupils by embarrassing them, threatening them or voicing comparisons between them.
Structure – dictating the agenda and denying pupil participation by, for example, setting too many rules and refusing any choice.
Stimulation – leaving pupils confused as to the purpose and relevance of activities, setting goals that are too easy or too difficult and generally failing to create enthusiasm.
Feedback – undermining confidence through personalised blame, judgemental criticism and feedback that is generally highly evaluative and emotion-laden.

Teachers need to understand their pupils as much as possible. The pupil drivers integrate the latest thinking on emotional intelligence, self-esteem and positive psychology into an account of what motivates students. Learner needs are at the core of the pupil driver model. Personality influences, in particular, how we think and feel about ourselves, our self-emotions. When our needs have been met we enjoy self-energising emotions. When they are blocked we experience self-draining emotions. Teachers don’t need to develop different motivational strategies for each individual: pupils have more similarities than they have differences. To engage all of their pupils, teachers need to adapt the energisers to pupils’ learning stances.

There are seven learning stances that reflect how students feel about themselves as learners. The learning stances describe the fit between the learner and the learning climate. Each of the stances illustrates how learners with similar attitudes engage with the learning climate. The learning stances framework offers teachers and pupils a language with which they can discuss and make sense of motivation. It helps teachers get to know their pupils better and find ways to engage them. Motivation to learn gradually evolves into an enduring disposition. For pupils it is shaped by and reflected in the learning stances they adopt towards a specific context or activity.

• What does it mean to be "educated" in today's world?

2009-10-07T04:50:00.000-07:00

Every society educates its young as per its philosophy of life, its aspirations, needs and goals in view. Hence, education across societies and ages has undergone radical changes in its objectives and its content.
With rapid changes in society, there have been increasing demands on education and changes had to be made in its structure, transaction strategies, assessment and expectations of the society from the one’s educated. While all this changed, the perception, in an overall sense of an "Educated" person did not change much. It evolved to meet the growing needs of the times.

Being educated in any age would mean: being literate; having gone through the mill of schools etc and been certified; being capable of discriminating between right and wrong, good and evil; being creative & socially efficient; being able to communicate, empathise, contribute to social development; being capable of solving problems and taking decisions; being able to self-actualise.

We live in turbulent times. The pace of change has swept us off our feet and the explosion of knowledge, the stiffness of competition, the desire to acquire more of everything; the social demands upon individuals have made it imperative that the "Educated" person today is capable of dealing with all this with perseverance and equanimity. He has urgent need to manage his ‘Time and Resources’. He needs to understand and manage change. He has to have a vision and an understanding of Life and its purpose. He has to be a man of action and a man at peace with himself and the world. He should have a secular, humanitarian and global outlook. He should be free from prejudice and biases. He has to be pragmatic and utilitarian. He has to have Faith in God. His education ought to have taught him that ‘Character’ is ‘Destiny’.

With Love from one not so Educated.”

Do schools kill creativity?

2009-10-07T04:45:00.000-07:00

I have watched the Video of Sir Ken Robinson speaking on 'Schools killing Creativity',time and again and even shared it with my fellow educators. Sir Ken Robinson explains it all very well.
Schools do curb and kill creativity. Schools only foster monotony, routine and make our children Information-mongers.
Academic Assessment in School Subjects is such as fosters only Lower Order Thinking. No School encourages Higher Order Thinking Skills of Application, Analysis, Synthesis and Evaluation.

Creativity is Dynamic while School Teaching –Learning Process lacks that. Creativity is Originality, Fluency, Spontaneity and Elaboration. It needs Divergent Thinking, Creative Thinking (OUT OF THE BOX) and Lateral Thinking. Schools have not been doing this. This has been the reason that some Educators have been advocating ‘Alternatives to Schooling.”
‘The School is Dead’, ‘Compulsory Miss-education’, ‘Pedagogy of the Oppressed’ are some wonderful Books that deal with the damage done and being done by Schools.

Creativity needs an environment of freedom, innovation, experimentation, resourcefulness, Challenges to think, Projects, Hypothesis Formulation and Hypothesis Testing, Inferences to be tested and verified, Inductive and Deductive Approach, Brainstorming and so on.
Where do the Schools cater to this? There may be a few teachers and a few good Schools attempting all this; but these are a few oases in a ‘desert of dead habit.’

Sorry to say the Schools are no longer fostering Creativity.”

• What makes a good teacher? Name at least three attributes of what you think makes a teacher excel?

2009-10-07T04:41:00.000-07:00

A Good teacher is a 'Good Human Being' with a Passion for teaching.
He/she chooses teaching as a profession to serve and to learn.
A good teacher loves children and learning.
He/she is proactive, patient, understanding and effective in ensuring teaching.
A good teacher is resourceful and innovative, has strong moral foundations of Character and Values.

A teacher is bound to excel, if the teacher has:
1. Core Competencies of a teacher.
2. Love for the Child, and
3. Dignity coupled with Passion.

May God Bless us with many such Teachers!”

The Use of Technology in Education is a Means to an End and Not an End in Itself?

2009-04-13T23:31:00.000-07:00

The Use of Technology in Education is a Means to an End and Not an End in Itself?
Question Details:--------------------
The Use of Technology in Education is a Means to an End and Not an End in Itself?

It seems to me that we are losing sight of the basic purpose of Education; which according to me is 'man-making', learning to be' and learning to become'.
The entire process of education needs socialization with a peer group and experiencing what we are learning. We are adding Technology to Education without any consideration of the objectives and adding technology seems to have taken precedence over other major concerns.
I have seen the impact and the advantages of technology and am witnessing the disadvantages of leaving everything in Education to Technology.

Please give me your valued opinion based on your experiences.
Kindly allow me to use your answer and suggestions in my Blog.

On 3/21/09 3:50 AM, Prof Bhushan Lal Handoo added the following clarification:
I regret the spelling error in the word Technology in my question?

I am genuinely concerned about good education and sad to find a lot of gimmickry going on in the name of technology and the gullible parents and students being cheated not only of their money but also of their expectation of good education.

I am aware that proper use of Technology in education can have tremendous advantages in learning, in reaching out to more numbers, in bringing the best education to our students.

I would love to have some fearless and daring opinions from those especially, who have seen the good and bad use of technology in education.
Thanks.

Jo Aggarwal wrote:
I can see a lot of well crafted opinions in the responses so far, so I will keep my post to examples of good and bad uses of technology I have seen in education.

As someone who left eLearning for being tired of selling "snake oil" but still uses technology for specific inputs your question strikes a chord with me.

One of the best examples of technology in education I have seen is a site called mathletics - my son's school uses this site - On World Maths Day - children from schools across the world spent more than 6 hours online answering maths problems, competing with each other to do the most correctly in a minute.
They compete against others who are at exactly their skill level, and from at least 3 other continents - so each child feels challenged but also motivated at the same time. Teachers can give them exercises on the site.

I love this because it uses the two biggest technology advantages - connecting with others, and personalization to make a great instructional experience.

But all too often technology in education is introduced for the wrong reasons. I see in my work so often that technology is used to drive the cost of "teacher time" per student down by providing online lectures or elearning- working completely counter to the advantages of personalisation or learning from peers and mentors.

This also happens when you use technology to "scale" a learning solution - something I have been hearing a lot about lately. Organisations like the University of Phoenix online who have done this successfully know that you can only have about 8 students to an instructor online where you could have had 20 students to an instructor live, to create the same impact..

At the end of the day, to get great education, we need great educators - and if technology gives people an excuse to fewer, or less committed teachers, it is always counterproductive.

However, if it enables people to build motivation by creating virtual classes that are more homogenous and personalised- where people who have exactly the same style of learning or the same level in a subject can get together for a very targetted learning experience, it could be brilliant.

Links:
http://www.mathletics.com

David Rountree wrote:

Technology is an end in itself as well as an enabler, enhancer, motivator, and expansion of the classroom. The short answer is technology is both or it could end up being neither.

First, if a student is truly prepared for the workforce, then technology is a necessary part of that preparation. My view is that technology needs to be a tool that students use as well as a tool that they observe being used to enhance their education.

Second, technology can extend the teacher's reach. It allows the teacher to bring things into the classroom that have traditionally been out of reach. A french class that can actually read a current french newspaper. Or a science class that can observe an online video of an experiment performed halfway across the world. There are no limits to bringing global works to wherever. Perhaps a museum in Egypt instead of stale, outdated text photos. Maybe timely participation in a webcast. Maybe calculators to focus on problem solving and give temporary relief from the mechanics of arithmetic.

Third, technology can be used to supplement a teacher's efforts. I used to put my outlines, lecture notes, and assignments online to make them available 24/7. It released me from the drudgery of writing code on the blackboard and students scrambling to get it all down before I erased it. And I was able to demonstrate programming in action instead of well rehearsed snippets and algorithms repeated too often.

Finally, technology allows students to learn even when a traditional learning environment is unavailable. A small farm community that can still offer an AP calculus class. Or a single mom able to take accounting while watching the kids.

There is no substitute for a good teacher, but that teacher recognizes the value that technology offers and strives to bring it in. And even if technology occasionally becomes the end, students observe a professional coping with new technology and mastering it. A learning experience in and of itself.

Scott Byorum wrote:

Technology can deliver the message in various and convenient ways, but it fails to deliver the heart behind the message. It is one thing to read a book or interact with a computer program explaining a concept or premise. But it is an entirely different and richer experience to interact with a human teacher on the subject. The wealth of their heart in the matter is physically transferred into your perceptions and expands your ability to think and conceptualize.

Dr. James Brewer wrote:
When one is taught using technology as a tool, it can increase one's ability to absorb (or at least gather) information more quickly.

When one is taught the technology itself, one is learning "knowledge" that was hopelessly out of date before the teacher ever learned it. The poor student is doomed to instant obsolescence.

Education is the ultimate enabler. Generally, if one is not educated, one is not able.

Let's be forthright here; the "technology" of which we speak is computer software in most cases. All software, in my mind, falls into a few categories:

1. Smart software for smart people. This is targeted to a specific need, and helps people who are already productive and know how to think be ten times more productive. CAD programs, for example.

2. Smart software for dumb people. This is also targeted to a specific need, and helps people to do something they simply could not do without the software. A web browser or email program, for example, are software that allows people with no tech savvy to gain access to prodigious volumes of information. This serves a valuable role in "technology".

3. Dumb software for dumb people. The only result of software in this category is to allow dumb people APPEAR to be more productive. PowerPoint is an example of this category. The largest number of users of this are marginally-literate dead wood who don't know much, will never know much, and refuse to think. They can use this software to APPEAR to be churning out reams of beautifully-crafted documentation, when in fact the emperor has no clothes.

I once worked at a company where all presentations had to be made in black on a white background, with no graphics. The meetings went faster, and attendees paid attention to the speaker instead of bells and whistles.

Susan Shwartz PhD wrote:

I agree that there is a difference between using technology and being used by it. I don't like to see higher education being used to teach people expertise in specific programs, then chuck them out with degrees when they are not educated, but simply adept at a program. That used to be considered secretarial -- and while I couldn't do an executive secretary's job on a bet, you used to go to Katy Gibbs for it, rather than to College. (I have heard that Gibbs now offers a degree, but I haven't checked this.)

I am wondering if, in our rush to credentialize, we should be giving out certifications, rather than B.A.'s or B.S.'s, and requiring updates as new releases come on the market. One exception: the computer science major, whose education should exceed reading manuals and digital and visual expertise.

I think PowerPoint is a -horrible- way of communicating because it does not foster good writing and, instead, cuts to the chase without any kind of interaction aside from the person inflicting the slides reading the bullet point to his or her victims. It generates a "this is excess verbiage (usually spelled wrong)" mentality that masquerades as being efficient and businesslike, but that often takes the form of jargon-ridden, brusque phrases. Do we need "fine" language in our business communications? Possibly not: but we need clear, workable prose.

Last, however, I do need to point out one thing. "Man-making" happens in the womb, where the XY chromosomes fuse. By the time the XY has gotten to university, it's already done. The individual grows and matures. There are more female than male individuals in the population and, in the U.S., definitely more in college and university.

Please take this into account. Another aspect of education is growth and change. NOT subsuming the larger part of the world's population into the smaller part because of "natural gender" is part of this evolution toward a more thoughtful and inclusive culture to the extent that, when someone does -not- do it, I wonder what other assumptions need to be questioned.

Angela Monroe wrote:
There are actually two separate topics to discuss here. The first is utilizing technology IN the classroom; the other is using it AS the classroom. I will post in two segments.

1. Technology in the classroom: Students need to be comfortable with technology because in ‘the real world’ they will be expected to utilize, embrace, and enhance it.

People tend to be afraid of what they don’t understand, especially if it’s really expansive and can be broken—I remember trying to teach my mom how to program the VCR. Therefore, technology must be introduced in the learning process, the earlier, the better. That said, the manner in which it is introduced is key: it must be introduced as a tool—an aid in solving problems—and not the answer itself; students must understand what the technology is doing.

For example, it is absolutely necessary for students studying math to understand the theory and science behind it, and therefore every third grader must suffer through problem upon problem of long division and later geometry proofs. *bleh* However, if that same student chooses to become an engineer, he/she will be expected to get the job done quickly, efficiently, and accurately, and therefore must be well-practiced in industry-standard software and the biggest, fattest calculator money can buy. In the same vein, a college student writing a paper should know the proper use of English grammar because the auto-correct isn’t always right, but take away spell check/auto grammar from any professional and productivity would decline due to dictionary look-ups for each and every email written (even if that professional was taught spelling in school). *double bleh*

On 3/27/09 6:57 AM, Angela Monroe added the following clarification:
I think education through technology fails when it is presented as the end-all/be-all, and the concept is not taught along with it. A fifth grader working at a rummage sale should be able to count back change, without waiting for his brother to finish using the calculator. What happens when that fifth grader buys something at a store and a crooked cashier short-changes him because the kid can’t do simple math? As long as we continue to present the theories and reasoning behind concepts along with introducing how technology can make the task faster and help identify errors (key word there is ‘help’), our kids will be OK.

2. Regarding the utilization of technology for course delivery, I have strong opinions on this topic also. I was in the admissions department at the Online campus of Herzing University for several years. It was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life to watch my students, who couldn’t confirm to a traditional college schedule /experience, go through college, graduate, and score a fantastic new job, thanks to their education. Many of my students were single parents, tired of working two and three jobs to support their children, who needed the flexibility our online education provided. The difference going to college made in their lives, and their children's lives, is mind-blowing. Utilizing technology to provide access to education is definitely a good thing for society.

However, this also goes back to how that technology is utilized. As other posters have said, a PowerPoint show and simple multiple-choice exam does not constitute learning! The online student must still be engaged in the experience, discussing concepts and ideas with other classmates and the instructor; the student MUST remain challenged and stimulated.

In summary, technology in education can be very dangerous, if left in the wrong hands. If used as a crutch, society won’t move forward because no one will understand the thought process behind technology in order to enhance it. But, when used correctly, technology can help students save time performing menial tasks and allow them more time for creatively finding new solutions to problems. If the abacus or slide rule was the highest tech devices for math majors, would they still be able to solve engineering problems? Sure, but the time differential would be enormous.

(For this post, I would have had to look up the spelling of conundrum and abacus if it weren’t for spell-check. On the other hand, I overrode two grammar suggestions. I’d like to thank my teachers for utilizing technology properly.)

Allen Laudenslager wrote:
Since the true purpose of education is to improve our lives, how you deliver the instruction is secondary.

I think it was Plato who said "A school is a log with a teacher on one end and a student on the other". This theory has stood the test of time - 3000 years (aprox).

Nitesh Chandra wrote:
I find it difficult to see how one can disagree with this fact. Technology can be an enabler, a potential field-leveler for many learners from comparatively disadvantaged background. Yet, unless one is clear about objectives for using the technology/tools, it can be of no significant consequence.

Of late, having visited quite a few schools to understand the use of technology to enable students to realise their potential, one realised that it essentially is the story of the old wine in a new bottle. The approach and objectives remain highly outdated and unless there is fresh thinking on the objectives of education and using technology to achieve those objectives, things will remain as they are, despite superficial changes.

Benjamin Goh wrote:
Education, like business and other areas of our lives is human driven. Without the human factor, education will be like stale fish, never fresh enough! This means that technology like the computer is only a tool.
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Let's take the analogy of hearing and listening.
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"There is a real distinction between merely hearing the words and really listening for the message. When we listen effectively we understand what the person is thinking and/or feeling from the other person’s own perspective. It is as if we were standing in the other person’s shoes, seeing through his/her eyes and listening through the person's ears. Our own viewpoint may be different and we may not necessarily agree with the person, but as we listen, we understand from the other's perspective. To listen effectively, we must be actively involved in the communication process, and not just listening passively."
- extracted from the article, Tips on Effective Listening by Larry Alan Nadig, Ph.D., Clinical Psychologist and Marriage & Family Therapist (http://www.drnadig.com/listening.htm)
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As in the above analogy, "education" as the equivalent of listening while "technology" is merely hearing. An effective education can be achieved with or without technology but technology may not be able to effectively deliver a good education. This is how I see the relationship between education and technology.
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Let's use technology the way it was intended by its inventors..that is, to make this world a better place to live in and embrace education as the means of acquiring knowledge and skills and more so, wisdom, with or without the help of technology!

Donald Philip wrote:
I would agree with you to a certain extent. Too many teachers are using technology without really knowing why or how. It's better to have a theoretical basis for the pedagogical use of technology. This supplies the rationale for why and hints at how.

To this end, I would recommend two books:
1. Jonassen (1996). Computers in the Classroom. Mind tools for critical thinking. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.
The title pretty much tells it all here. Jonassen focuses on technologies that support critical thinking and deep learning.
2. diSessa (2000). Changing Minds. Computers, Learning, and Literacy. Cambridge, MA.: The MIT Press.
diSessa introduces his theory of the pillars of literacy: material (signs, symbols, depictions or representations), cognitive (what we think and how we think in the presence of inscriptions), computational (new computer-based inscription systems, etc), and social (the basis in community for enhanced literacies).

From diSessa: "... an average ninth-grade mathematics student plus a particular inscription system [algebra] yields a material intelligence that surpasses Galileo's intelligence, at least in this domain of writing and "reasoning about" simple quantitative relationships" (p. 16). Why does he say this? Galileo did not have algebra–it hadn't been invented yet, and it limited his ability to communicate his mathematical ideas. The computational pillar is rapidly producing new representational systems that change the very way we think and learn. This is what teachers need to understand better. Jonassen's book provides a practical guide as to which software types are best for this.

Stephen Cottle wrote:

The different responses to this post reflect the various uses of technology in education. I don't think there's any one right answer.

My viewpoint is based on being a graduate of a real brick-and-mortar university (FSU) from an on-line program. Clearly, on-line programs make extensive use of technology. I've heard it said that graduates of on-line programs don't receive all of the benefits of full-time students on-site, and that may be true. They get the additional advantage of flexibility however. Even among full-time students, many are taking on-line courses because the in-person courses do not meet their needs or fit their schedule.

The key is the extent to which the use of technology is thought through. My professors used a variety of approaches to lectures, from delivering straight readings to slick presentations with voice-overs. They key was not the format so much as the content. I did the same group projects as my on-site peers, but had the advantage of working with classmates from different geographic regions and with wildly different experiences. I made friends that I'll have for life.

The exams that I took are the same ones that on-site students take. Some of them were administered on-line. Others were proctored.

There will always be a place for brick-and-mortar schools, but denying a role for distance learning is denying the future of adult education.

Alexandre Silva wrote:
The future of education is the same of others sciences and studys, whatever will happened depends of Technology. Paulo Blikstein, a visionary brazilian engineer, now Professor in Stanford, make a wonderful job in the impact tech pro education.

Links:
http://www.blikstein.com/paulo/

shubhranshu agarwal wrote:

I think 'man-making', l'earning to be' and l'earning to become' like mottos of education are not going to be affected by the use of technology but instead students are going to get benefit in many ways.

Adele Madelo wrote:

Technology is not the be-all and end-all answer. What matters above all is (1) a student's ability to read and comprehend different kinds of texts (inc. perspectives). Another useful skill is (2) critical thinking. Without the ability to look beyond surface level no technology will be able to rescue this child. **It still requires human-driven instruction.**

Here's one tech application: I have often used PowerPoints in the classroom because it allows my students (7th & 8th graders) to focus on something, not just my voice. The lights are also dimmed during this time, which as I've found, has lessened their anxiety.

While they like the PowerPoints, students in their evaluations emphatically said that discussion was the best way for them to learn and retain information. For them, that format made it meaningful.

In looking at technology in the classroom, it is important to put the application above all else. What do we want to achieve in our lesson? Students still need the scaffolding to give their projects life. So, they'll need the information, a teacher model, a rubric, and organizational skills to complete successful projects.

It is also important that faculty enter a workplace with basic tech skills. The knowledge to use them correctly is equally important. This includes etiquette--when to send e-mail, how to write effective e-mail messages--to the bigger question--how can technology be used to effectively deliver a lesson?

Like students, teachers must always be aware of how well they're using one of the oldest technologies: speech. This technology, when used correctly and followed through with diligent and mindful action, can cultivate an institution that holds clear and transparent communication at its highest. It should also ensure that our systems of communication and modeling for children do not break down as often. It will also serve as an example for our students, who, whether you know it or not, are always looking to teachers to do the right thing. Plus, like students, we've used discussions to find ongoing solutions for our hardest cases and for everyday practices.

Jay Mehta wrote:
Technology is certainly a means to an end and NOT the end itself. Primary purpose of education is to deliver knowledge/information from one person to another. While the knowledge remains the asset with human beings, it is only the way in which it is transfered from one person to another which has changed.

Time has evolved from the era when classroom (face to face) teaching was the only means to get the knowledge. In the internet age, various other channels have open up to deliver knowledge. Distance learning programs are the best examples. Besides that online education tools and online mentoring is the market that is rapidly evolving. With the kind of scarce resources India and perhaps many other nations as well are facing in terms of teaching staff vis-a-vis the number of students, use of technology has become imperative.

Even the classroom teaching itself has been so much revolutionized with faculty using audio-visual techniques and other technological tools to help in better understanding of the topic.

On the flip side I also agree that over-dependence on technology has relived the human brain from much of the work and thus to some extent lethargic as well. For example, a person today does not make much effort to remember any information since he knows that he can anytime google it when needed (at the time when internet is omnipresent). Why a student will make efforts to remember tables or percentages when he has calculator (not only stand alone but also in cell phones and watches). Spell-check and synonyms "Suggestions" by MS-Word has made people less concerned about their English grammar, vocabulary and accuracy in spellings. People prefer to peep into Wikipedia rather then looking for learned men in the concerned subject and get the right knowledge. Google has replaced the library for students community.

Thus, technology does have flips and flops. It depends on how we use it.

Subhas C Biswas wrote:

A teacher or a trainer is expected to transfer the learning to their audience. He must be a designer of the process. Technology often forms a part of the design or delivery or evaluation sub-process and should serve the purpose it is intended for, as designed by the teacher or trainer.

Teaching and training aids are now technology based. Technology also offers convenience and large population may be addressed by one or a few teachers and trainers using technology.

Trainees and learners often hate or dislike excessive use of aids and absence of personal touch or learning process facilitation.

Learning objective is not to show, impress people by using technology.

As a professional, we must use technology.
But use of technology does not make us a professional

“Are we in the 'Business of Education' or is 'Education a Business' for us?”

2009-04-13T23:26:00.000-07:00

“Are we in the 'Business of Education' or is 'Education a Business' for us?”
I am addressing this question to all those who are in Education. I want honest views. Asked by- Prof.B.L.Handoo

Vinod Kad wrote:

If you are charging your students for educating them then you are in 'business' of education like any other business.

But if you are educating your students as a hobby or as a collective effort then you are in 'education' and not in 'business'.

A 'collective effort' means when you pool resources of your students collectively (not individually) to educate them.

The best example of 'collective effort' is the centuries old tradition of 'langar' prevalent even today in most of the Gurudwaras of the Sikh community.

They pool resources of individual devotees/ donors together and then serve them back in the form of 'langar'. So nobody pays 'individually' or 'separately' for the food (like in a hotel) yet everybody gets food including those who could donate much more and those who could not donate even a rupee.

Same was the system of education in Ancient India when a Guru was running an Ashram / School from collective donations/offerings from their students and imparting them education collectively and not charging them individually. Thus even a poor student was getting same education opportunity as a rich one because he need not pay individually for his education.

I hope you got my point. If not I can explain more.

Vinod

Natalia Fernanda Tieso wrote:

To what extent education is a business depends on your own personal motivation, I mean... in most LA countries, professionals working on education do not choose working in the field just because of money or income - salaries are quite low - and most teachers do it because of an inner feeling of (job) satisfaction and development.
On the other hand, I believe that education does not only deal with teaching itself, take policy-making for instance or even implementation of national curricula or courses of studies... people who are in charge of taking decisions related to education rarely think about education as a business, but rather as a social service, even to improve communities or societies in general.
Hope these points’ help!
Nat

Katina Faulk wrote:
Sadly, I think it is more of a business for the U.S.

Sanjay Goel wrote:

These are not mutually exclusive categories and there is sufficient space for doing the 1st while also complying with the constraints of 2nd.

Rajesh Shenoy wrote:
I think the whole idea of having educational institutions as non profit organizations in today’s world is not feasible. It should be viewed as a business model and this form of education as business hopefully would bring in better infrastructure and quality of teaching which is lacking in many institutions today. Whatever said and done even though most of the institutions are run by trusts or societies the funds are siphoned off in a systematic manner using the loopholes available in the law else how are we to explain certain Medical Colleges charging corers for postgraduate seats and you do not see this amount being ploughed back into development of these colleges but the members of the management team grow richer year by year.

Kevin Harville wrote:

It varies. The point is to empower the students. That should always be the primary goal. In the process we have to make a living or stay in business. I don't see primary education as a for-profit venture. Perhaps college shouldn't be either. Of course people should be free to choose their option.

Dan McCoy wrote:
That all depends on the intention of the administration.

I teach part time at a community college, and they have taken the stance that they are a "learning college." Instructors associate Profs and Profs have professional development programs available, and everything is build around enabling the student to learn and retain information. This is the business of education.

Then you have your universities where TAs are doing all the teaching and grading so Profs can write papers, and get grants for the university. Certainly not to say that TAs can't be good teachers. These doe-eyed individuals have such a zeal for it that the excitement can be contagious. However, this isn't even the business of education. This is the business of research.

Finally, your diploma mills. The administration wants it's profs to consider a C their lowest grade so that people can pay their tuition and get their grades. No concern about retention or teaching methods. Not even research or classes being taught by doe-eyed idealistic TAS This the education as a business.

Andrew Scharf wrote:

Excellent question and one which is often discussed but not generally in public forums.

Let's all be clear: Education is a business. When you regard the fees being charged to file an application, fees to sit standardized exams, the tuition, let alone all the additional tag-ons, you come away with the conception that this sector generates big revenues.

There is nothing wrong with making money. However, many people in education find themselves in a twist over this 'philosophical issue'. Why? Because this is 'education' and the notion of education as a right, privilege, necessity, and at a certain level, a moral and social obligation on behalf of government and business leaders.

There is a strong argument that national education, country here is irrelevant, should be 'free' and open to all interested parties. We know for example that higher education in particular relies on resources both human and financial, and that this is not possible. Where does the funding come from? Who should pay? How much is education worth?

People start asking themselves how can a school such as Harvard or any other top institution consider themselves as a non-profit organization considering the enormous fees to run effectively and efficiently these academic powerhouses. People both inside and outside academia should drop this complex. It is fruitless and a dead end discussion. Let's just accept the fact that any organization should be cost effective, efficient, and provide a seamless service. The education sector is no exception. If you examine the best schools and look at the management, you will see that they are run like machines, but in the best sense of the term.

The answer lies in legal registration sanctioned by governments and regulatory bodies. We accept that academic institutions should have a special legal status for tax reasons because of the activity in question.

There are certain institutions when they are created have themselves set up as 'for profit' legal entities. This path is uncommon because its statute becomes a moral and social question, and we the public look at such places with a different set of eyes.

Another problem inherent in the question is the fact that unlike finance to cite everyone's favourite bug bear due to the recent and continuing uproar on greed, is that education is supposed to be a noble pursuit.

At its best, it is a noble pursuit. Education is a mission.

The sector is supposed to train, educate by broadening people's minds at all levels, by giving us a set of skills, values, code of behaviour, standards, and even friendships across disciplines and fields of interest so that we become active and positive contributors to our communities at large.

Think of the slogan carved out on many facades of the schools:

'Know thy Self'.

This in essence is the true value of education. Mentors across all fields at some level should be showing students how we can accomplish this in addition to gaining technical expertise.

How many of us can truly say, 'I know my Self'? Not many, I am afraid.

For those of us involved with education at whatever level or position, we know that to enter this realm that to work in education must be a passion. Just ask someone who is a teacher, the subject matter is inconsequential as is the level, doctorate or primary school. The response you will receive is 'I love my work. I love sharing my expertise; I love being able to help someone become all that they are capable of being.

Such dedication is admirable and should be fostered. Receiving or delivering 'this' type of education leaves an indelible footprint for the teacher and the student. Education has been and will always be an exchange. The best teachers also act as mentors. Many of us have been influenced by such professionalism, and in turn, when the moment is right used this inspiration to 'teach' someone else, even in business or technical environments.

from Andrew Scharf

Links:
http://www.whitefieldconsulting.com
http://www.mba4success.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewscharf

Twyla Pumroy wrote:

I believe serving the needs of the students is the only business an educator has. However, having said that, having gone to free public school where I was basically left to fend for myself and never mentored in anyway I would rather send my children to a school where I might have to pay for them to get the attention and encouragement they deserve. As a graduate of a state college I maintain the same ideology.... my student loans are only just behind me and I feel very strongly I would have fared better had I attended a school I felt was out of my price range but which I could have gotten into. I think schools have to be able to stay viable in terms of money - but the student has to be certain they are getting their money's worth. It's a complicated question and probably can be answered only individually. I do believe that there are a lot of perks associated even with going to a good career college. If your options open up by attending school, does it really matter if the school is a for profit institution? As long as they are ethical and providing what they promise the school is still improving the quality of life of the student/ graduate.

As for the cost: I paid a great deal of money, much of which I had to borrow, for my State University degree. I did this with a clear plan to get a PhD. When the time came to go to graduate school I could not afford to do so. This was an unfortunate setback for me and my loans were not forgiven because I was not able to go into the profession I had originally intended.

I do think the entire standardized testing issue in public schools has gotten past the point of ridiculous. It is as though the schools are teaching to the tests.

Even at this very basic level the stagnant system has caused education to be a business: everyone is so afraid to just teach. They have to teach to make sure the benchmarks are met in a way that is measurable and any student who can't pass the exams is excluded - one way or another. A public school should not need to sink to the level of running school like a business and fearing the performance reviews of students.
All schools above the regular level of high school in the US are indeed businesses. The only thing I have issues with are those private schools that take the student loan funds of students without providing them with a realistic set of skills to earn a better future. The only thing that comes to mind in this regard are those schools that fall into the realm of beauty academy without a preliminary measure of if the student has what it might take to "make it" in the real world. Of course I have a counter argument for that as well - my hairdresser, who I see more often than I see my doctor, earns more per visit than my very gifted physician does. I do not have insurance and I know what he charges me - and I know all too well what she charges me. There is something to be said for the "business of education" that got her to where she is today.
There is nothing wrong with Education as a Business as long as it is an ethical business with a high standard of performance.

Francis Laleman wrote:
Hello Bushan-ji, Namaskar!

What a perfect gem of a question this is! Thank you so much for inviting us to ponder upon this most exquisite of pahelis.

Or is it a dosukhna? - In which case it brings to mind Amir Khusrau's:

Pandit kyom na nahaayaa?
Dhoban kyom maari gayi?
Dhoti na thi!

Or, one could reformulate the question in a mockery of a kah mukarni:

"It was his business from morning till eve,
it took him the best of himself without leave,
it made him handsomely poor and occasionally rich
was it labour? well nay, it was educational buzz."

It should be quite evident that any truly committed educationist has education as his life's business. By the same token, to be accredited with the title of guru-ji, or acharya-ji, or master-ji or whatever the address may be, is a gift and an honour, bestowed by others, much rather than a self-assigned title on a business card.

The true and effective educationist, therefore, cannot exist unless he has the concept of "sharing" running through his each and every vein - and in order to be able to commit oneself to sharing, there needs to be something to be shared in the first place. For this reason, the true educationist is a continuous seeker, and his business is in the acquisition of skills, competences and attitudes as much as in the sharing of the same.
In this regard, I am thinking of the Buddhist concept of a teacher as a "tathagata", literally "one who has gone there".

Now, depending on the cultural environment in which he lives, the educationist will be esteemed, valued and compensated for his efforts in a variety of ways, ranging from simple feedback and warmly conveyed thanks, to getting a salary, a stipend, or even the settlement of purely invoicable services.
The variety of ways in which the educationist might be compensated, is exquisitely illustrated in the pan-Indian concept of "gurudakshina" - which can be something as simple as touching the guru's feet or offering him a garland of flowers, or an act as extreme and debatable as Ekalavya's, in payment of Dronacharya's unsollicited educational services.

But either way, and however much the educationist, by his very nature, is 'in the business of education', the educationist needs to earn a living, if only in order to be able to keep being an educationist. And responsible for providing the educationist with this means, are first and foremost those who have found profit in whatever it was that the educationist has shared with them. Interestingly, and to illustrate this point, in Satyajit Ray's Mahanagar (1963), the pennyless retired schoolmaster Priyogopal Mazumdar-Da visits his former students on a begging tour, and insists that the money they are asked to give him should not be considered 'financial help', but rather 'payment for done services'.

It goes without saying that those at the receiving end of the educational transaction are responsible for compensation only to the degree of their possibilities and at par with their profits gained from the educational process.

Therefore, ideally, an educationist, who is "in the business of education", should treat "education a business” only on basis of measurable (tangible or intangible, either or both) results, and taking into consideration the degree of prosperity of his clients.

Warm regards,

Francis Laleman
Business Consultant/Trainer/Coach

Links:
http://www.alif-india.com/index.html
http://caravanbpl.sulekha.com/blog/post/2008/06/the-eklavya-syndrome.htm
http://www.satyajitray.org/films/mahanag.htm

Brian Curry wrote:
I don't see much difference in the world of private education.

The problem, as I see it, is that the vast majority of people in this world can't afford to be customers / clients.

Dennis Gannon wrote:

I personally feel we are in the business of education because if it is only a business for us then we won't be putting as much of ourselves into it. With some it may be different but that is to each individual.

Celia Baula, PMP wrote:
First of all, education is not obtained only through institutions...

Education came from the word "educere", to lead forth or bring out. I believe that education comes in different forms hence the question about it is a bit misleading. For me, education is the acquisition of knowledge and it is up to the individual whether or not to use the knowledge acquired.

We all go to school/universities to get our degrees/diplomas in the hopes of landing a good-paying job or perhaps to start a business. Whatever the reason, education is the means with which we arm ourselves with information. I know people who went to the top 5 schools in the US and yet end up living with their parents for the rest of their adult lives. Conversely, I have met successful men and women because of their education. I have also met self-education successful people who struggled but in the end succeeded because of their determination to make it to the top.

Is education a business or are we in the business of education? It all depends on how you look at it...

On 3/29/09 5:21 PM, Celia Baula, PMP added the following clarification:
*self-educated

Prikshit Dhanda wrote:
1. Who sweat it out in the classrooms, seminar halls, labs, playgrounds
and give their all to nurture others.
2. Who themselves are not educated but have the means to open
so called Institutions of learning and accumulate wealth.

David Linus wrote:
Good question professor -

lets ask ourselves what education are we looking for -

is it valuable education - or is it education
either of the case you have to have pay for what you receive -

in what proportion you justify; what you pay to what you receive is really the point when the question arises that education is expensive and it is a business -

take the old days -

if you were under the tutelage of a renowned guru your dakhshina too was heavy and lower for lesser known gurus -

it has been a business of exchanging knowledge for something in return - be it money or kind (value of the exchange is what keeps us restless when we have to make that payment :) )

Lincoln said - education is priceless yet free -

it depends how you look at it -

cheers, David
david_linus@hotmail.com
www.successcollege.co.in

Private Note:
Good question professor -

lets ask ourselves what education are we looking for -

is it valuable education - or is it education
either of the case you have to have pay for what you receive -

in what proportion you justify; what you pay to what you receive is really the point when the question arises that education is expensive and it is a business -

take the old days -

if you were under the tutelage of a renowned guru your dakhshina too was heavy and lower for lesser known gurus -

it has been a business of exchanging knowledge for something in return - be it money or kind (value of the exchange is what keeps us restless when we have to make that payment :) )

Lincoln said - education is priceless yet free -

it depends how you look at it -

cheers,

David
david_linus@hotmail.com
www.successcollege.co.in

Daniel Suciu wrote:
I'm not in target ... but I'd ask if would not be (a lot) more relevant to ask the other part... the customers about theirs perception.

I would also suggest that another question could be more relevant "Education is JUST a business for you?" That's the worst case and I feel it's not so far from truth in many cases (With all my apologies for those which are not in this category. I really appreciate the true educators... in any area and at all levels)

Brijesh Shukla wrote:
Dear Prof. Handoo,
I came back to linked discussions after a long time as was busy setting up my operations. When I was going through discussions and came across your questions I had to stop and think and honestly I felt that the answer lies in our approach. For those among us who looks are into education just for a social cause and are not financially inclined might feel that for other education is a business and will try to work for those who cannot afford the education tagged with heavy fee structure whereas the other segment who are charging for their services but providing the best in that fee structure will see themselves as they are in business of education. What will be disturbing is the last category for whom Education is business as they might be the one to maximize profits and charging whatever they can and offer as less as possible and this set of mind frame is the most dangerous for the society. They are the one who are dangerous for not only current but for next generation as well. Till we are in business of Education, people are still being educated but the moment education becomes business for us, the noble intentions and objectives are lost.

Your vast experience ensures me that you will correct me if in case I am wrong in my approach anywhere.

Cheers
Brij

Bahare` Sabeti wrote:
I am not in education in any way, but I am a big critic of what I see in USA as pre college education ( i.e high school, middle school, etc) as someone who has experienced schooling in many countries as well as in US. I think it is a tragedy for a nation with many top universities to bear such horrible schooling system with lack of sufficient mandatory science and math for all in a more nationalized way, just like other nations around a world. Discipline does not exist anywhere in schools of this country and good luck with science and math levels I see my cousins are exposed to, more like what we had in kindergarten, I had finished 6 yrs of intense math ( all kinds), chemistry ( both inorganic and organic), biology ( of all kinds), geology, etc before I moved to US at age 17 already and all of these took place in several countries just to give an example.

shubhranshu agarwal wrote:
As a professional I don’t see nay fault in the business of education but it becomes our duty to impart quality education in return. For the students, education is a business as they build their career in return of working hard while studying.

Salman Khan.....Rocking wrote:
Let us be practical.As far as the scenario in India is concerned Education has become a business & given the current economic situation it is the hottest sector & has not been hit by recession.That is good in one way.But there is a problem.The very basis for which a person pursues education has been lost to commercialisation.So many private institutes have sprung up without any check on the quality or content of the curriculum,unapproved by any regualtory body,with the sole purpose of making money.They are least bothered whether it adds up to the the talent pool of the country or would help the person himself whether in increasing his knowledge or in career advancement.Im appalled by the current situation

John E. Smith wrote:

Hi, Professor Handoo - interesting question.

I believe that my answer to your question has to be "Both".

Those of us who choose to spend our lives teaching and facilitating learning in others should ideally feel a calling to this mission. In that sense, our business is Education. It becomes our reason for working and putting effort into that activity.

However, Education is a business. This means that clear-eyed decisions must be made using proven decision-making models, employees need to be developed and evaluated using clear performance standards, budgets need to be developed and adminstered, and all the rest of what constitutes running a business.

I worked in the non-profit world for a number of years. My organization did very good things for people who needed help and were unable to take care of themselves. This was our business and we felt good about doing it.

However, we also recognized the importance of running our organization as a business. Had we not done so, the organization would not have been able to provide the services. We had a saying "A Christian Heart and A Business Head", which served us well as a reminder that what we did was both a calling and a business - both elements are needed.

John

Permission to use wherever you want, with accreditation

Jay Mehta wrote:

I believe both. General public tend to think idealistically when it comes to education. However, for those who take up the service of imparting education to others as a full time activity, populist thinking defies practicality. Yes, those who are in the "Business of Education" have the right to think of "Education as a Business" as well and that's what most of the private schools and colleges in India all about.

No doubt, while education is a kind of social service, those who are into the business of it have to think in business terms rather then social service since its the question of their survival as well as sustainability. However, the line has to be drawn where there comes a question of making a trade-off between profits and social responsibility an educational organization carries.

While profits are important in the business, thinking only in terms of profits widens the gap between the two sections of the society where the children from the underprivileged section are equally deserving to receive that quality education. While government is responsible to bridge the gap as much as possible, putting the entire burden of bridging the gap on government is also unfair. I believe the concept of education cess of welcome (assuming the money is going in the right direction), it should be implemented at the corporate levels as well with greater cess levied on high profit making institutions especially those who are in the domain of K-12 education.

Subhas C Biswas wrote: When the responsible authorities in Government and society failed to provide education and necessary regulations to control the process, it has been given to the people who are keen to do either of these two

We have both the situations at different places, and luckily they do not co-exist in one place.

One must check the credibility of the institution, faculty, infrastructure, certification/accreditation, performance and feedback of past students for identifying their true intention.

Labels are often fables and claims in advertisements are not always credible enough.

“Can there be Teaching without Learning?”

2009-04-13T06:14:00.000-07:00

“Can there be Teaching without Learning?”
Teaching is regarded as 'a set of actions' meant to induce Learning.
If Learning does not take place, how can we say that Teaching was going on?

I have instances of Class Theatres where as per normal parlance Teaching was going on but the students were not learning and did not learn. I said to such Teachers," Dear friend, you were doing everything except Teaching.".
My contention is that if a desired activity fails to achieve the objective for which it is meant, how can we say that the activity was going on?

Please give me your valued inputs asked by: Prof. B. L .Handoo.
Ken Robertson wrote:

Teaching as a generic activity can take place without any learning accompanying it. I have seen this many times at the university level over my career, but have no recent experience in high schools and the like.

Much of the ineffective teaching I have seen has involved the delivery of new concepts and material to classes ranging from a few to several hundred (my biggest first year class was 924). However, the material was delivered by people who are predominantly researchers, with few interpersonal skills, in a manner that did not engage the students.

Often the material was presented in the same form the research results to students whose learning has not reached anywhere near this level. There was no common point of communication. If there were post grad students in the same class, this material would have been suitable for them, and thus learning could occur.

Learning is about bringing together the needs and abilities of the audience, the material and a method of delivery appropriate to that audience. Teaching is getting this combination correct.

Subbaraman (Subba) Iyer wrote:

The teaching - learning interlocks are indeed complex. Based on my own student days and even now, I learn better outside the classroom than inside. Some responsibility for this has to be borne by the teachers, but nonetheless there's always a better way that teachers can do the job.

More often than not, the teacher stands on the stage like a sage with a bowl of knowledge in his head and is often insensitive to the student's background and learning approaches. I would rather have a teacher who's a guide by the side than having a sage on the stage.

I have blogged about the disconnect between the education approaches and the learning approaches. You are free to use this response and also my blog post after appropriate attribution.

Links:
http://subbaiyer.wordpress.com/2007/01/14/the-education-and-learning-approaches/
http://subbaiyer.wordpress.com/2008/04/29/indian-education/
http://subbaiyer.wordpress.com/2007/01/14/questions-the-key-to-learning/

Hesham Metwalli wrote:
I believe the right way to ask this question is "can learning be EFFECTIVE if the learner is not involved?"
teaching and learning are two sides of one coin. you can not separate them or judge them separately.
All educators nowadays agree that the learner is the target of the teaching, so if teaching is not engaging the learner it is pointless.

if you are talking about what happens at most of the universities where you have 900 people sitting in a big hall with one gentleman in the front talking to himself, this is not called teaching this would either be delivering a speech or a lecture. of course in this case learning might still happen but it is the least effective type of learning as it will be random and unplanned because the learner was not involved in exploring or discussing the concepts.

there are agreed criteria for effective teaching and learning. I can pass to you if like so

Eugene Rembor, MBA wrote:
Of course! If you ever tought, you sure have had a number of students who learnt nothing despite your best efforts. May it because they don't have any interest or learning difficulties, there are many reasons why some people never learn.

Links:
http://www.remborpartners.com

Allen Laudenslager wrote:
I used to teach technical information to a non-technical audience. The burden to "teach" was always on me as the instructor. That is I must engage the student. The student's job is to show up and pay attention. If they are not learning it's always the teacher's fault.

I write tech manuals and if the information is not clear it's always the writer's fault.

So, no there can not be teaching without learning (in my not so humble opinion)

Rick Sharrard wrote:
I received a great quote yesterday from LI member Allen Dudley Brown, PhD who said, "When I pretend to teach, students pretend to learn". I think that really hits the mark! The point is that finding a creative way to facilitate learning a particular subject is a challenge. There is no one right way, but there are certainly wrong ways.

Michael Medlock wrote: A teacher's ability is assessed by the learning results he or she achieves. If there are no learning outcomes then there is no teaching going on. So however beautiful or "technically" correct a teacher's method is if the students are not learning then everyone is wasting their time.

Caroline Cole wrote:

There are many reasons students do not learn, even with the best instructors. Certainly we can point to overcrowded classrooms with increasingly fewer resources. We can cite the current “edutainment” view of education, where teachers in today’s attention-deficit world are evaluated according to how “fun” they are or how much teachers can entertain students with classroom bells and whistles. There’s also the consumer view of education, where the student-consumers (and their so-called “helicopter parents”) insist that, because they’re paying for their education, they are always right and, thus, entitled to the exceptions, exemptions, and other special treatments a classroom or educational system might afford. Or, we can attribute problems to myriad systems in our society that reward children (and adults) for every endeavour, regardless of success, making it harder to genuinely engage, motivate, and inspire those in our classroom.

Perhaps, however, many of these reasons come together in the fact that classrooms increasingly represent a range of students with different learning preferences. In such contexts, teachers who tap into some learning strategies rather than (or at the expense of) other strategies, encourage some students may learn while others do not; moreover, among the students who learn, students may take different things from any given lesson.

Efforts to track students into more homogenous classroom populations aim to address this challenge; specifically, the more common ground there is in a classroom, the more likely a teacher can "teach to the masses" and efficiently achieve target results. Such efforts, however, have been deemed separatist, classist, racist, sexist, and politically incorrect all around.

Yet, as more diversity enters a classroom, teachers struggle to address--much less accommodate--the increasingly divergent learning strategies today’s students represent, forcing teachers to either focus on the largest common denominator of student abilities or address the less common learning strategies in haphazard, unsustained ways. Whatever the choice, the result are the same: some students will learn, and others will not.

Aiming to be the best teacher I can be, I have learned that I cannot be all things to all students. I teach to my strengths (e.g., subject matter, teaching style), and help students who prefer other systems as best as I am able. But I have come to realize that some students are better served by colleagues who have different strengths, approaches, ways of presenting materials; therefore, as much as possible, I try to help students identify those resources so students can achieve their goals in the most efficient and effective way.

As a university faculty member, however, I recognize that I am in a privileged position, because higher-education students have some options about the courses they take or the sections in which they enrol; my views, therefore, are informed by luxuries many K-12 teachers do not have. But, even when students do not have choices (as in the case of some mandatory courses I teach), there is a Buddhist proverb that both explain the teaching/learning connection: "When the student it ready, the master [teacher] appears."

Education is a reciprocal process, and there’s comfort in knowing that sometimes we are the teacher a student is ready to receive, and sometimes we are not.

Shaheen Salam wrote:
Teaching and learning are reciprocal and it is a situational scenario. In a class or any teaching session it is not that teacher teaches and learner learns. At times the teacher picks a learning point from the students. It is also not true that any teaching could be 100% failure because in a class, learning takes place at different levels and every student has his/her own pace of receiving knowledge and then applying it. Nevertheless, good learning always comes out of an interactive teaching session.

Indira Chaudhry wrote:
One cannot teach if one has not learnt.....and to learn one must have a teacher or learn on own...

But if there is no aptitude then the teacher is helpless....as the student has not made effort to learn...

On the other hand if the teacher is not appropriate or has no interest in teaching then the student is at a loss...

For the desired effect...ie activity to go on Teaching and Learning have to be performed by the respective teacher and student(s)

Brian Curry wrote:

Dear Bhushan,

My understanding is that teaching is the work of teachers. Therefore, if their work is bad, there will be no learning, except of course if the students learn in spite of the teacher.

Regards,
Brian

Prikshit Dhanda wrote:
Why is there a need to teach ?
Just present the subject as a sumptuous meal to starving souls and guess what.....the students will devour the same.

Coy Lee wrote: Prof, Handoo

Learning is a Requisite
You must be Master of your Learning
When Learning is thrown away,
All that is left is pure Motion without Thought

Hope it helps,
Coy

Larissa Wowk wrote:

If there has been no learning then neither has teaching taken place. This is not the fault of the student but in how the "teaching" was delivered.

In order to teach someone you need to be able to connect to and reach your audience. If you are not doing so then it is a waste of your time and theirs. The teacher needs to come down to the level of the student and work up from there. The teacher needs to ensure knowledge and competence is acquired in one lesson before teaching the next. Knowledge builds on knowledge. This is true in all areas of teaching across all ages.

Patrick Fitzgerald wrote:

Well 'Teaching without Learning' can in fact occur. The idea of teaching is it is meant to impart knowledge and enhance learning. In order to learn you have to have an audience that is willing to listen.

1) The students (generally) cannot know more than the teacher. If they do then a majority of the time is wasted.

I know this for a fact because I was one of those students who knew more than the teacher. I took a high-school level HTML/Web Design class and basically did not learn a single thing (thankfully the college level class I got into had stuff to learn like JavaScript, SQL and PHP and usually took a good period of time to complete). I finished all the tasks in about 5-15 minutes depending on complexity and how nice I wanted it to look and spent the remaining time of the 2 hours helping other classmates with their understanding of the lesson.

2) The teacher has to be able to effectively communicate their knowledge to the students. If they cannot do this then I think you can claim that no teaching is really happening.

I had a professor in my first semester of college who was responsible for the Ana log Electronics course and it was blatantly obvious that he KNEW what he was talking about but he just could not get it into words that would help YOU understand. There was also a language barrier I believe as well as it seemed like English was not his first language.

Peter Arno Coppen wrote:
This seems to me a matter of definition. If you define teaching as a "set of actions meant to induce learning" (and not "a set of actions inducing learning"), then the intentions of the teacher suffice to call such a set of actions teaching. It may be teaching that does not work as intended, but that doesn't change the word.

Apparently, your contention is that your definition of the word 'teaching' is different from what you state in the beginning. You seem to include the intended result in the definition.

The question can be posed for all words denoting intentional actions. An analoguous example would be: if you are sending a message to someone and it never arrives, would you still call it a message?

LaRue Williams wrote:
--Can there be "teaching" without learning? In my humble opinion "no". The objective and purpose of "teaching" is learning. The two are intrinsically bound. Teaching is not being achieved without learning. If there is no learning taking place then some sort of activity is definitely going on in the environment, but that activity, whatever it is, cannot be called teaching. percentage of learning is the metric for teaching. If a person does not measure teaching by the learning taking place that person does not understand the concept of "teaching" at all. The reluctance to measure teaching with metrics of learning is the reluctance to be held accountable for results. This discussion goes to the very fiber of why educational standards drop.

Private Note:
Prof. Bhushan Lal: I'm very glad you asked this question. It goes to the very fiber of problems in the educational system. The desire for tenure and organization supercedes that of being sure our youngsters learn. I was in the public school system for 7 years as a secondary teacher and too often the concern was job-security; organization of neat lesson plans; and short hours with summers off rather than focus on the students, their needs, and the skill sets that taught them with the result of learning.

Alice de Sturler wrote:

You can only tell whether teaching took place once the students start to write papers and display how much they know/have learned, through discussion they have with fellow students on a subject matter discussed in class, their interaction during class is another meter and of course, whether they recommend your class to fellow students.

I guess you need to separate the traditional style of teaching with the "as of yet unknown outcome."

shubhranshu agarwal wrote:

Teaching without learning is as impossible as the cooking without water. Today, teaching has become multi task activity instead of just guiding the students about one or two aspects.

Manoranjan Mishra wrote:
dear prof Bhushan

i think i partly agree with your point of view in indian context. Our tearchers are not helping in learning activity. teachers are kind of programmed to teach certain subject with limited exposure/knowledge.

the problem is not the knowledge but the creative process in teaching that encourage to learn/discover new things is not at all happening .

there is a kind of risk-averse nature in teaching process to new things. So whatever a teacher teaches it has only little effect on students.
theachers should encourage experimentation and should be a part of that to accelerate the learning process.

Salman Khan.....Rocking wrote:
I will give you a practical example.I joined a part time course to enhance my skills as i am a firm believer in continuous education.The teacher came in 15 mins late-talk about discipline-& finished the lecture in 1 hr without even bothering whether anyone understood what she had taught.For once i thought that i had missed some previous lectures due to which I could not understand.I was in dire straits.After the lecture I came to know that half the class was in the same position like me.So we formed a group & gave her the feedback.Her response was shocking.I just have to follow my schedule which is really tight & what else do you expect in part time classes.You have to try to learn yourself.
It reminded me of my father who was a gold medallist & an educationist himself.He used to say howmany ever times a teacher teaches & if the student doesnt understand it is the teacher's fault but once the student says he has understood but then doesnt know then it is the students fault.I wonder howmany teachers follow this today.
The motive of teachers today is exam preparation.They will teach you how to pass in the exam with flying colours.They are not bothered whether you learn or not

Caroline Pinto wrote:
How much time do teachers spend on helping students to ground their learning within their experience base? A good teacher in my mind focuses on providing opportunities for students to make sense of that which is presented within their own context. So, the process of facilitating learning is as important as the content that is being taught. The onus goes back to the teacher to reflect on how content can be made relevant to students.

Cheers
Caroline

Nasir Tajuddin wrote: I would have to agree with Peter Arno Coppen's answer.
If our focus is entirely on words, then teaching is just a set of observable actions, as you have mentioned.

However, from practice, I would like to define teaching as the intention and subsequent action of delivering meaningful concepts / messages to others while simultaneously reinforcing these concepts within the self.

Hence, we learn before we teach, and we learn further as we teach through a process of further elucidation and self-expression. Teaching without learning is, hence, an irrational contention. Even if the entire class completely refuses to learn at the end (which is an extremist assumption), the teacher's intention to teach, and opportunity to express herself is what would matter.

The problem you have identified seems more dependent on context rather than how we define certain actions through the limitations of the English vocabulary. People, at times, do not wish to learn no matter how hard a teacher may try (evening classes, for example, which professional attend half asleep). Such contextual variances would not change the nature of the teaching process, at least

Sigrid Steinschaden wrote:

Let me ask one short question: when do I know that I have not learned anything? Some things I have learned I realised and recognised even only some years later.

Was it the teacher who was bad or was I a bad learner?
Did I focus too much on myself and too less on the teacher or was it the other way round?

Especially with arts there is so much to learn and according to ones own capabilities (that need to have a broad basis) some things might be expressed / lived later than others. It is a permanent exchange and reflection of ones own personality!

Every single learning needs time as it is a process - such a time is needed by students... and teachers!
Tools (for both sides) are:
- self reflection
- mentoring
- deepening ones own knowledge in various fields (permanently).

Usually there are always similar experiences made by others who even did / do some research about it!

Sigrid Steinschaden wrote:
Thank you very much for your question!

For me the basic question is the definition of education and its intentions.

One can educate oneself / become educated in so many fields that looking for the specifically needed and appropriate technique is more important than asking whether technology has gained too much influence on education itself.

Technology therefore can be one tool of many others to educate - sometimes it might be the (situationally) best tool than other media, other times it might be the worst tool in comparison with other media.

Furthermore technology can be an additional tool to other tools chosen (such as face to face education, reading,...), as one needs to separate education as well in 'teachers' and learners.
It is the learner who needs to go into details of the things learned by face to face teaching. Teachers only can give some input, gaining and deepening knowledge to ones own needs is propbably one of the most important obligations people do have towards themselves and towards others.

Teachers can introduce technology in a balanced way without using it because one needs to do so - this is the decision-taking responsability of the teacher!

I really do hope that this discussion goes on (even though it might be one of the main discussions in didactics already for centuries)!

Subhas C Biswas wrote: Teaching is teacher-centered. Learning is learner-centered.

When there is mis-alignment of the objective as perceived by the teacher or learner, it is a possibility.

Situation can be corrected through effective evaluation of the people and process.