Science and Technology Minister Jitendra Singh unveiled the “VAIBHAV Fellowship,” which aims to enhance the research ecosystem of India’s higher educational institutions by facilitating academic and research partnerships with the best institutions worldwide through the mobility of researchers from abroad institutions to India.

The scholarship will be open to researchers from institutions that rank among the top 500 universities worldwide. The call for applications for ‘VAIBHAV Fellowship’ will be notified through the Department of Science and Technology’s website.

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SPEA noted that the decision was made after measures were taken to provide a healthy and safe environment for all participants, including the vaccination of most school staff.

SPEA said it has studied how to enable schools to receive students after applying necessary precautionary measures.

SPEA also carried out more than 2,000 monitoring visits since last September, launched an electronic platform to monitor infections in schools, and formed a committee to follow up on all infections. It  trained school administrators on guidelines for reopening schools and receiving students. It also held  workshops and training courses for schools regarding the distance learning system. Public awareness campaigns about the pandemic were launched through the Sharjah Education Academy.

SPEA also organised numerous courses and a health awareness campaign that receivved the participation of over 23,000 people.

Dr Muhadditha Al Hashimi, Chairperson of SPEA, said the pandemic strengthened the bonds of cooperation and unleashed qualitative ideas and initiatives, which contributed to the success of the education system that SPEA adopted. These efforts reinforced the need to return to the face-to-face education system.

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Based in Thiruvananthapuram, Chempaka Kindergarten was founded in 1984 by Vernon and Daphne Gomez with the objective of developing a holistic approach to pre-school education. With 11 branches in Thiruvananthapuram, Chempaka has grown to become a reputed quality education provider. Proven highly successful with numerous little preschoolers over the years, the ‘Chempaka Way’ has now been extended to include all levels of schooling.

In 2019, the group was acquired by UAE-based Athena Education which found it more in line with its own philosophy of educating the young generation. What sets the schools apart is its stress-free learning pedagogy or as they call it The Chempaka Way.

L’école Chempaka “Silver Rocks”, L’ècole Chempaka “Serene Valley,” ICSE curriculum Schools and L’ècole Chempaka International, a Cambridge Pathway School are the schools run by the society. With wide recognition from higher educational institutions in India and across the world, the Cambridge IGCSE and AS & A Level Courses offer pupils from the Chempaka a wide range of opportunities.

A new kindergarten was opened at Venjaramodu near Thiruvananthapuram recently, making it the 11the kindergarten of the group. A new campus of L’école Chempakan International was inaugurated at Jawahar Nagar A-Street in Thiruvananthapuram by Ms. Sheeja, Director of L’école Chempaka Society for Educare, on January 14, 2021.

L’ecole Chempaka is a premier higher secondary educational institution based at Edavacode, Sreekariyam, Thiruvanthapuram and L’école Chempaka Serene Valley, Kallayam, opened on June 1 2015. A branch of L’ecole Chempaka, Serene Valley, Kallayam for Grades I and II only (for the academic year 2020-21) has been opened at Udarasirmony Road, Vellayambalam offering a choice of location to children of Grades I and II. With wide recognition from higher educational institutions in India and across the world, the Cambridge IGCSE and AS & A Level Courses offer our students a wide range of opportunities.

The Cambridge IGCSE programme is offered in Grades VIII – X and AS & A Level Courses in grades XI-XII.

For the past five years Chemapka has also started IGCSE and A Levels. The school has good results and their students are placed in best foreign universities for their education.

Based in Dubai, Athena Education is a dynamic education group dedicated to delivering quality learning for all students. The company is committed to developing students as outstanding, independent learners both online and in the classroom. It aims to ensure that all learners become self-confident, are secure and achieve at the highest level they can.
V.N.P. Raj, a banker-turned-educationalist, is the founder and Managing Director of Athena Education. Mr. Raj believes that, “Learning is to liberate oneself from the fear of the self. Knowledge without confidence is like a filled balloon with a hole. What mankind needs is the confidence to observe, think and execute what he or she has learned and experienced.”

The company’s vision is to enable all students to develop strong literacy, academic, innovation and social skills which enable them to become self-confident and significant contributors to the local and global communities, who have full confidence in their abilities.

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China remained the largest source of international students in the US with the number of Chinese students in the country increasing for the 16th consecutive year. There were over 3,72,000 Chinese students in the US during 2019-20 year, revealed in the report titled “Open Doors 2020” released by the US Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and the Institute of International Education (IIE).

India remained the second largest source of international students, despite 4.4 percent decline to 1,93,124, it said.

The report said that for the fifth consecutive year the United States hosted more than one million international students (10,75,496 ) in an academic year.

According to the US Department of Commerce, international students contributed USD 44 billion to the US economy in 2019, including USD 7,69 billion from Indian students.

We are encouraged to see a fifth year of more than 1 million international students in the United States before the pandemic, said Marie Royce, Assistant Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs.

International student mobility is as important today as ever, and we believe the United States is the best destination for students to study and earn their degrees. Education is a pathway to a greater future and international educational exchange has the power to transform students’ trajectories, Royce said.

Among the top 20 places of origin, the largest percentage increases were students from Bangladesh (+ seven per cent), Brazil (+ four per cent) and Nigeria (+ three per cent).

Saudi Arabia saw the largest percentage decrease (- 17 per cent) primarily due to changes in its government’s scholarship program.

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The Sharjah Private Education Authority (SPEA) and Sharjah Emergency Crisis and Disasters Management Team have announced the gradual return of students to schools on September 27, following all precautionary and preventive measures to ensure the safety and health of students. This will apply in the case of both direct and hybrid education systems.

The decision comes after ensuring the readiness of all educational facilities to adhere to all precautionary measures prescribed by the SPEA. Instructions to be taken by school staff, parents and students had been issued earlier.

SPEA staff conducted field visits to check the preparations of schools to safely receive their students. The inspection campaigns were made in cooperation with the Ministry of Health and Prevention, Sharjah Educational Council, Sharjah Prevention and Safety Authority (SPSA), Sharjah Municipality and Sharjah Municipalities and Agriculture Affairs Department (SMAAD).

Students have been asked by respective schools to undertake a mandatory and free COVID test before they return to school. Parents also need to fill in a consent form to enlist their willingness or otherwise about sending their wards back to school. The preference among parents is largely for online learning, this correspondent has learnt from an Indian school in Sharjah.

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I think the biggest challenges the present generation will encounter when they become the youth of tomorrow shall be the excessive use of machines in the ordinary life. The second challenge shall be the high pressure of working conditions with more machines and less people. What we lose is the happiness of being in eye-to-eye relationship. So, when an eye-to-eye relationship is lost, what could engulf our minds shall be quick anger, impatience, feeling of loneliness, and the demand for everything to happen in no time. The achievement results into anger, frustration, and hatred.

So, 25 years later the best I can predict is a young society working with different kinds of machines and the highest IT technology with a desire to achieve comfortable living immediately, wanting to have satisfaction of needs immediately, driven for money aggressively, and distancing human beings far away. Human beings are electronically available as I repeatedly say, eye-to-eye contacts shall be far way. So this is a very, very difficult situation. Fragmented minds – how people will react nobody knows, when a person will be happy or unhappy, when a person will like you or dislike you, and what a person will do against you in the slightest provocations. Hurtful reactions,mental torture, physical torture, and blackmailing will be very frequent because relationship of one-to-one, eye-to-eye, and self-respect shall be challenged in an emerging society. I am sure that in such a society people will not listen to understand, to ask questions, and to clarify what the other person is speaking. Instead, people will be very anxious to react and reply quickly.

Quick reactions, quick communications, and most of the present-day jobs may be taken over by machines replacing man. Man can either be machine operators or ‘yes or no’ communicators.Only a few would be needed to think and take actions.
In the Indian mythology it is said that in the Kaliyuga — where anger, hatred, and greediness shall prevail over everything — man will tend to do anything for the sake of money, comfort, and personal happiness. And, values shall take a back seat. If these thoughts and predictions are true, then the modern education needs a lot of modification to raise children’s mind to levels in order to safeguard humanity’s peaceful existence.

What are those requirements of education that should build a futuristic society?
The basic values of education which is a non-discriminated way of school learning can never change. In other words, all children are treated alike, in the school, in the classroom, and in the heart of teachers. What binds a non-discriminated learning and teaching is basically love and respect. Give love, give respect, and build self-respect.Love binds children together and the children with the teacher. This aspect of learning shall not be sacrificed for acquiring knowledge.When children are tested or evaluated,they should not be discriminated. Multiple talents and multiple capabilities together can help form a futuristic society. The love of self-respect, patience, understanding, and answering should not be taken out of learning at any cost.

The second factor is collaboration. Collaborating is the only way forward where children work together, learn together, help each other, and are able to share and care. Future relationships will be lost if children do not have the ability to tolerate each other and work together.

Tolerating each other and working together is a serious subject. Today, as the machine related independence come to man, he doesn’t need the help of others. He can manage many things himself. But working with each other is inevitable. As collaboration is necessary, schools should not promote collaboration without individual freedom. So, every child would learn to respect himself/herself, own his/her freedom, understand that his/her freedom has to be united with the freedom of his/her friend as they have to work together.

However, how much of this can be imbibed into a child to be self-independent and learn to collaborate? If this is not taken care of, healthy relationship will be lost, and people will fail to tolerate another person even for an hour. So, the collaboration methodology needs a lot of improvement and schools should always focus on collaboration.

The third thing is critical thinking which should bind learning freedom and learning in collaboration. Critical thinking allows children to explore further. One cannot think unless one has a sharp vision,so schools should always focus in building sharpness of observation.

The next generation children may have to observe and identify problems. A minor issue can lead people to lose money and/orto lose life. So, micro observations on a macro platform should be the basis of critical thinking to save people, their values, and their money.

Let us hope that the next generation is emotionally balanced on impatience, frustrations, and relationship.

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However, a child finds examinations tough, when the questions maybe application questions or which were not expected by the child. An examiner can question a child from any aspect and application of a subject. Children must be prepared for them. But when are children ready to answer any question?

The answer is simple: Children are ready for any questions when they have a total and clear understanding of the subject. Or in other words, when children know the elephant better and beyond its eyes, ears, nose, trunk, and tail. It is only when a child learns about an elephant in total and connects each part to its functionality as an elephant, will his/her learning be complete. But, when can that happen?

The first condition of total learning is when children do not learn to answer questions. If children are taught to answer questions, they will learn about the eyes, the ears, the trunk, and the tail. But they will forget about the elephant. There should be no attempt, by a teacher to teach towards answering a question. Instead, the teacher should teach into the deepest conceptual knowledge and to connect it to the whole subject. The teacher should not give homework to retest the child working on the same questions based on what he/she learned in the classroom or in a tuition centre. Whereas, what would have been much better was allowing the child to test by himself/herself what he/she had learned in a classroom. And, where he can test? It can be anywhere- in a lab, in a workshop, in a life situation, or even while playing. So, learning plus doing and then applying to the life is the ideal way of learning. If children learn without doing, then they can never know applicability of what they have learned. So, what is the purpose of homework?

Homework, if given, needs to be restricted to 10 to 20 minutes. And what is that 20 minutes homework? Anything the child has learned needs to be experimented. Then, the child needs to write it down – write what he/she did, and how he/she felt. Writing is very critical. Scribble it first. Children can scribble down the important points with pen or pencil or even on an I-Pad you notice while they are doing or practicing what they have learned.

Later, children need to convert the scribbling into a script or a story. When children write down their own stories of what they have learned, I believe that learning becomes more perfect. After you have written down the story, the child needs to act on it wherever he/she gets the opportunity to present it either by writing, by acting, or by speaking. Thus, learning becomes even more perfect. The child learns how to explore what has been learned. This is the way I presume good learning and question the relevance of homework as long as homework is something that the child can practice by himself/herself by observing, creating scribblings, drafting scripts, and then presenting. If not, then homework is boring and monotonous which kills the brain power of a child.

Now questions like: “What about mathematics? What about theories? What about drawings?” can arise. “Shouldn’t children practice on it?”

Every mathematical equation can be taken to a workshop and can be practiced there. Isn’t that how it happens in the real world? And, after it is practiced, the child needs to prepare a script on the equations. On doing so, he/she will remember what he/she has learned forever. Thus, unless he/she has not practiced mathematics in a workshop, in a real life, even in a kitchen; then, all those theories and equations he/she has learned will be forgotten soon.

Therefore, I come back to the question, do we need examinations? Yes, we need examinations. But a child should not study for questions or to find answers for questions. On the contrary, a child should always study a subject in depth, connect it to its practicable applicability by doing it, create his/her own scripts, and present it.

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A teacher needs to be the owner of a very creative mind. If the teacher doesn’t have a creative mind, it is as good as cooking food without knowing whom to serve.

The guru or teacher reflects two things, the creativity of a teacher, and the freedom or the learning independence that the teacher gives to the children. If you examine the Indian epics, guru Dhrona is an example of a good teacher. He was an expert teacher on warfare. However, he never asked any of his children, the children of the Pandava family or the Kaurava family, to learn what he wished to teach them. All that he did was to talk to them and show them the various warfare. After which he asked them to select what they wanted to learn. This is the creative thinking of a teacher, to give the freedom to children.
How can children be given the choice to learn? This is the biggest challenge. And how can children find their choice?
The Pandavas and Kauravas learnt warfare. And they learnt different types of warfare and each focused into one specialty in which they were more prominent and comfortable. The learning destination was war.

Similarly, when children come to a classroom, the learning destination is the attainment of knowledge and skills along with a language to express it, a character to benefit out of it, and an ability to support a community later. This should be the goal of any classroom.

How can a teacher become a creative person in the classroom? A teacher is like a movie director who creates a movie for. These millions of people with different mind-set focusing on one story. They are taught and entertained through the movie. Just like movie directors, teachers need to convey messages to children. For which teachers need to connect to the real life.

It is from touch to the real life.

When children are able to connect to the real life, the urge to learn will be evoked in them. So how can the teacher connect to the real life? If a teacher has the experience of connecting herself to the real life, then bringing a concept of learning from a curriculum and connecting it to the real life is easy, because the teacher has experienced and experimented it. A teacher cannot teach a theory to any child because he/she has not experimented and experienced it, and has not applied it in real life.
Imagine, if you are going to teach something and if you have applied it in the real life, you are connected to the real world. Even great actors like Mohanlal or Mammotty cannot act unless they have really experimented and taken a feel of the characters in the real world.

Having said that a teacher has experimented and experienced real-world connection of a concept, how can a teacher build that real life situation in the classroom?

Real life situation can be built in a classroom through what is called an environment of learning. For instance, to learn about animals if the teacher can take the children to the zoo it would be fantastic. The child will learn more about an elephant than from what the teacher describes and from pictures. There would be no difficulty a child is asked to identify the eyes and the trunk of an elephant because in real life, the child has connected with it.

After the child has connected, it is now time for formative questioning. The child is asked:
“Why does the elephant need eyes?”
“Why does it need a trunk?”
“Is its height and inability to raise hands is compensated by its trunk to take food to its mouth?”

Finally, in the real-life exploration, the child will understand how much an animal has adapted to its life by its creator. So, rather than just learning to draw an elephant or what its weight is and what its height is, the child will learn why the elephant is created like this and how it adapts.

The learning environment has to be created or connected, otherwise the real life connection is lost and the classroom becomes a very boring place. Either take the child to a zoo if it is an animal world, or hundreds of digital platforms are available today to bring real life connection.

History is a very important subject and every child should know history and politics. And the subjects need to be taught by creating the learning environment.

Man’s life from BC to AD is history and it will show humanity has grown over the years, from the brute to the modern sophistication. By learning history one learns how the ancestors lived, the activities they carried on, and how they were known in the communities. This teaches what we can do, what we should not do, and what we should modify.

If a child doesn’t know the history of mankind, history of continents, history of countries, history of the religions of the world, how they progressed to the modern way of living, then whatever he/she learns cannot be complimented well.

Politics needs to be taught in the similar manner. Children need to be told how humanity progressed from tribes and how tribe leaders turned into the most modern governments. So, understanding an environment in the real world and connecting to nature through a digitalised world requires a teacher to be very creative.

There are hundreds of ways for creating an environment of learning. You don’t need to have the best facilities in a school because the best facility is the environment. Everything is there. Nothing comes beyond environment, nothing shall happen without environment, and everything shall end in an environment.

Connecting to a real world through an environment is the core requirement of a good learning but it also needs something more. What is that? It is current news.

How much is the teacher aware after the current news? Because of modern communication media – televisions, news channels, newspapers – every child gets updated with the world news in one way or the other. So, the teacher needs to be updated with the current affairs in order to blend it with. Such a blended learning gets children to think in a formative way. Children will have their choice to think but will reach one destination. This is exactly what guru Dhrona did. He gave the child the choice who reached the single destination of fighting.

Accordingly, an important quality of good teaching is real life connection through creating learning environments and the teacher needs to be aligned with the current affairs of the world. The blending of all these is a good starting point for an excellent teaching.

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The core of our life as a student, employee, employer or political leader, is independence. We cannot live as slaves, we cannot be slaves to our job, slaves at home, slaves of our friendship, or slaves of a society. Humanity will never accept this.
Independence

Imagine the day we are born, we came with a cry. Our mother suckled us, gave the warmth of her heart, and sang a lullaby to lull us into sleep. The first touch of sound, love, food and everything was given by one lady and that lady becomes an inseparable part of our life, our mother. She is the embodiment of love, care, knowledge and excitement for us. This is an inseparable relationship. And that happened because of the love, care and support through which we gained happiness.

As a child our life was filled in happiness. Father, mother, relatives, friends, whoever came to our home brought something for us. They hugged us, kissed us and everyone was trying their level best to keep us warm and happy. So we enjoyed the most important period of our life when we were at home as a child.

Then one fine morning, our parents took us to a place called school where they said your happiness is going to multiply. We believed it. We were so proud and happy on the first day we went to school. We made new met friends and teachers. But we soon realised the freedom we had, the happiness we had, is reduced or lost or differentiated. How was that lost and how were you differentiated against?

We have challenges and we have to learn something that doesn’t give us happiness. We are also tested on the ability to remember, reproduce and tested with the ability of our friends. That made you hate schooling and you waited for a holiday. This happened because the freedom to learn which belongs to the child was denied.

You can take the horse to the water, but you can’t make it drink the water. It is the freedom and choice of the horse to drink or not. Similarly, a child should be given the freedom to learn in his/her own way. I advise every teacher to bring a real life touch to your teaching.

As a child, had I been allowed to do that I would have gone out and explored the world. I could have learned context wise and I myself would have learnt the concept. There is no need to teach a child the concept in a classroom. And, this should be well known to the teacher that learning is the job of a child and he/she should be given that freedom through real life and finally he/she can acquire a skill in real life and how to manage the real life. If these two things are ignored, and the freedom of learning is curtailed, learning would become a burden for everyone.

Inner Sense of Discipline

If a child is taught to be disciplined in a certain way, he/she will remain disciplined only as long as he/she is under observation. The moment he/she believes that he/she is not under observation he/she will start behaving in his/her own way. A child should have an inner sense of discipline that would mould his/her character and he/she should be allowed the freedom to do that.

So, inner sense of discipline has to happen through happiness of doing it oneself, behaving oneself, experiencing oneself, connecting oneself and building his/her own character and outlook and attitudes of life.
Moral education must be linked through real life experience and the child will build an inner sense of discipline. Allow the child to commit mistakes and he/she will never forget it.

Cycle of Excitement

Happiness and excitement go hand-in-hand. If there is no excitement we will sleep. If watching television excites us, we will watch it more. If going to a particular restaurant excites us, we go there again and again as long as the food excites us.
How can learning be made exciting? If you let a child explore, it will kindle excitement in him/her. A child will start exploring and if his/her excitement is ignited he/she will go exploring into all deepest areas of things.

When a student says, ‘Don’t take over my freedom,’ that is learning independence.
When a student says, ‘Don’t take my right to experiment and improve,’ that’s inner sense of feeling.
When a student says, ‘Don’t take my right to explore and feel things,’ that is cycle of excitement.

These are the three core values of learning and are fundamentals that a teacher should know. If these three fundamentals are not there, then talent will go unnoticed like an imbalanced chair that would fall and get destroyed.

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In society we come into contact with people with various attitudes every day. There are some people who are very proactive, smiling, innovative, talking, and makes everyone happy. They won’t insult others and respect everyone. We also come across people who are very serious, do not smile and talk to the point. There are also some others (the fault finders) who always criticise others, and yet others who are silent listeners.

What happens when you recruit the different kinds of people into a job? What type of working atmosphere are they going to create?

Subject to their intellectual levels, people love to work with positive people who respect others, are always supportive and kind. The second set of people who are very serious, subject to their intellectual level, might execute a job but you will not feel any warmth of an employee, colleague working with you because they have nothing to speak to you.

The third type of people, who are sharp criticisers subject to their intellectual levels might do a job well but they will be more focused on finding the fault of the boss, colleagues, the system and even with material things such as chairs, tables, and air-conditioners. Their focus will be mostly on the negative side of a given situation.

One thing that binds all these categories is their intellectual level. If intellectual skills intellectual things are missing, life with our colleagues will be miserable. Intellectual level is the ability of a person to respond, to respect, and to obey public regulations, and to use intellectual skills while doing a job. Such individuals become very important people in society.

Intellectual skill is about application of knowledge in a given situation. Classrooms should teach children more about life speaking skills, behaving skills, respecting skills, and accepting skills. It helps child to become a useful youth for tomorrow.

A person becomes very important to a society when three integral forces merge in a person: Vikara, Vijara, and Viveka Vikshobham. Vichara is thinking and vikara is feeling. Both have a strong connection. There cannot be one without the other. But if these two need to unite a third ingredient is needed and that is viveka (wisdom).

When feeling and thinking are blended with wisdom what comes out is a new river from the triveni sangama. If the teacher knows how to blend the talents of every child in the classroom, he or she will be a wonderful youth for the country tomorrow. If this doesn’t happen, what would be the end result of that classroom? Children may memorise things but do not understand what they learn. So, even if the child is talented, the purpose is taken away. It is like cooking food that nobody can eat.

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My last article was on critical thinking which we sometimes interpret as the ability to discover something and the ability to think in a different way to think from the bottom up. All these are critical thinking.

One of the main things of thinking backwards is something very important in our life. In fact, if I refer to my personal life, when I organised the engagement of my daughter. I did everything but I failed miserable. At the culmination of the event, many things failed. I learned from the mistakes I made when I organised the engagement. I was very careful in organising my daughter’s wedding. Everything went on so well.

Why did the function we organise fail to finish the way we wanted? We did everything but failed. We had teams, sub teams, groups, and we held meetings. Despite doing everything we fail at the culmination point.

How many times the Indian cricket team failed? Individual batsman played very well, but the fielding was bad. Or during other occasions, the team fielded very well but they didn’t bat well. At the culmination point the other team took the game away even though India was well-prepared. So why does this happen in our lives?
The answer is simple. An organisation fails due to the lack of critical thinking. And what is critical thinking? Critical thinking is where we take the ownership of a thought. Even though it was passed on to us by someone else, maybe a leader, the boss or the parent, or a friend, but we own that thought. That’s called thinking critically. This means you were disconnected to this thought early, but now you have connected it, you own it, you interpret it. Now you do it in your own way. In such a situation you don’t need somebody to order you. Somebody to tell you do this, do that, because you know. You have taken the thought to yourselves. This is the way I think about critical thinking and this should start from a school where the teacher transfers the thought to the children. Then collaborate to share the thought. Together they own the thought, together they know how to do it. Individually he/she owns the thought and does it independently. If that habit is cultivated, then later in our life we will become productive people.

Critical thinking also has another aspect. It cultivates the ability to organise events in later life as well as in my present day life. Every event is an organisation for me, even the breakfast in the morning is the net result of the ability to organise. The way I get ready for office is the net result of the ability to organise. Was I planned with the dress to wear, With my dressing style? Did I plan my time for doing different things, such as the time for commute?
Many times I was not planned for anything. If I start thinking of going to office 20 minutes before I have to go, I will be in a mess. Because I don’t know where the dress or other things are. Then I grab everything, have a quick breakfast and I run to my car. Out on the road, I am faced with a traffic snarl. Somehow I reach office late, put on a blushed smile and enter the office and I start the day. Half the day is gone and my mind is 70 per cent disturbed.
Isn’t this an organisational inefficiency?
Critical thinking is the path to how to organise ourselves. The biggest thing a teacher should do in a classroom is to give the child an answer. Please give the child an answer. Let him find out the question.

Why should this be done? Is it to understand a concept? No. Understanding a concept, a context, connecting to the real world, connecting to the real skill of life, all these are necessary. But when all these are done, why give the answer and ask the child to find out the question? To understand it? No. The teacher should know that this child in tomorrow’s world should be an efficient planner of time. He/she should be good at organising his/her daily events.

How is it possible for a child to organise the events in his/her personal life in the future? The child has to develop the skill of thinking backwards from the finishing point. From the end to the beginning. There are many things you plan from the beginning to the end as it happens in many projects. If you have to run from the beginning to the end of a project, of an event, then you should always know how to run backwards in your mind. This is the answer. What could be the question? If you have to think this is the answer, what types of questions should we address to reach this answer?

This is what we learn in a classroom when we do a project work, when we do a collaborated work, when the teacher gives you a question. In an examination, you give a question and ask the child to find an answer. That could be to address the child’s level of knowledge. But there should be innumerable formative question. For the answer is, for example, plants make food. Now ask the child, ‘why do plants make food?’ That’s a thinking challenge. To give the answer the child has to think backwards from the formation of a seed to roots to stems to leaves to flowers to fruits.

Critical thinking should become embedded in one’s life. One should have critical thinking and planning abilities which in effect is thinking ahead from the finishing point backwards. When you have both these organised well, you will have a 360 degree understanding of the whole thing. And you become an efficient person wherever you are in the world.
A teacher should teach his/her students how to own a thought as well as forward and backward thinking because the teacher creates the next generation. Teachers create the personalities of the future world. If anything in today’s world is not happy and good for us, it is because teachers failed to focus on developing critical thinking in children. If teachers understand the huge role they play and try to develop critical thinking in the children, then the future generation will have a fair chance at a good life.

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If education is for my benefit, if education is for my career building, if education is to help me to find a job, like my parents who lived before me, then why doesn’t education give happiness to me? This is a big question. Being a grown up person today, if I understand the problem associated with this issue at least it will help the next generation of children to be happy to go to school.

We are happy to be at home. We meet and interact with our mom, dad, brothers, sisters, relatives and friends at home and we are happy. May be we have a slight fear of father as he may be unhappy if we do something he doesn’t like and he may scold us. But otherwise home is called a home because it is a place of bonding and bonded by happiness. It is love. We know that everything that happens around us build happiness in the mind. Home also shapes our character and our behaviour.

Whatever happens at home is engraved in our mind as we copy it subconsciously. If the environment at home is not good, you would not be imbibing good values from there. The behaviour of your father and mother, how they talk and how they treat each other, how your relatives behave with each other, how they express their emotions, anger and happiness; how they smile, the language they use, their facial expressions; all these are easily picked up by a child. If a child is not using good language while interacting with others outside the home, if he does not behave well, he or she steals, is selfish, fighting for things, taking away other’s toys and so on, where do you think the child learned all these?
Certainly, such behaviour has less binding on his birth but more on the home environment where the people close to him behaved and showed him the way. This should be well borne by every parent that ‘Use good seeds and those seeds will grow to a big, healthy tree before your eyes’.

What is the difference between a school and a home? The moment we go to school, something happens there. We are very happy until the first bell rings. The moment that happens, we have to go inside the classroom and sit on a bench. And we wait for the teacher to come. In those days, the way teacher comes to the class itself was often a problem. The teacher would come with a cane and some books. What catches the student’s eye first is the stick that’s brought by the teacher.

So what is the connection between our mind and the cane? We know that if we are not going to follow what the teacher says, there is going to be a punishment. Why is that warning necessary? The very sight of the cane pulls the mind down. You may think that the cane is the reason why we behaved well in school. Maybe and may not be. But I still believe there is no need for a cane in a classroom. If a cane is required for punishment it can come later. But I don’t think we really need a cane. And if I need to be caned, what I learned at home does not fit well in a public place or in a group.

When the teacher enters a class, there are going to be lessons to be learnt. But why doesn’t learning give me happiness? Every learning is new knowledge. And every knowledge should be a new feel. If my mind is not feeling what I learnt, then it is definitely going to be boring, it is definitely not going to give me any excitement. If learning is an excitement, a new knowledge, a new feeling, then I would have been so happy to enjoy that feeling.

If at home every day mom makes dosa, and another day she makes idli, and yet another day she makes puttu, I am so happy because I have a new excitement, a new taste of my palate. So is education and learning. Learning gives me a new feel of the mind. Learning happens to me mostly through two of my senses. Through my eyes or through my ears; either I will learn through hearing or I will learn through seeing. So, anything connected to the feel of my mind, happens through my ears or through my eyes. And whatever happens through my eyes in the modern language is spatial ability, the ability to picturise, have a feel through a picture. And ability to listen and create a feel is called numerical skill or cognitive skill.

If a teacher comes to the class, teaches something that don’t give me a feel either through my ears or eyes, then that teaching is simply by hearting. It is knowledge that I don’t know what feel it creates, a knowledge I don’t know why I should know it. Don’t you think this is the first reason of unhappiness? It is boring and then we are just being there in the class. Or in between the classes we do a lot of funny things, with friends, hanging umbrellas on others’ collars, or throwing papers at each other. Why do we do that? It is because whatever happens in the front of the class gives you the feel of excitement. Isn’t it true?

It is the way the teacher imparts knowledge, which has no excitement or feeling, which has no motivation of a new feeling, is the cause of our first misery in the classroom. And the moment we are excited we will go in search of it. In the educational language it is called formative assessment feedback system. What is that? If the teacher knows that I got a feel, the teacher comes and asks me a few questions. That I feel, ‘Okay teacher’, how good that can be? Okay how does that happen? I start searching for it. Then the teacher asks me to go to the nature outside the classroom. Maybe it is a botany class.

You have seen the beauty of a flower; the teacher can show me the flower. The teacher can ask, “How this flower is born? Early morning, who makes it wake up?” And have you ever asked a child, how the fragrance comes? How honey comes? Who makes it? Why the plant has made it? From where it made it? A million surprises to me. Now, I don’t need even a teacher. Because the teacher is born inside my mind, as my inquisitiveness to learn. I don’t need anybody now. I will run, I will search, until I find answers. I will come back to my teacher with a feedback. “Teacher I find this, but still I have a problem.” The teacher gives me another challenge.

So what is teaching and what is happiness? It is an excitement and exploring by a child. It is nothing but exciting the mind with the new feel of knowledge and then taking the child to nature and showing him/her what happens in nature and telling the child why this has happened. And ask me ‘Can you go and find out and then come back with feedbacks?

If classrooms miss formative systems and feedbacks, and teachers fail to ignite young minds and bring feelings to the mind of excitement, then children would start feeling ‘I am bored, I am unhappy. I will continue to be unhappy’, This is the starting point. There are a million things that happen in a classroom that add no new knowledge to me, that don’t ignite my mind, that don’t excite me more, that don’t allow me to dive down into the depths of my mind, and that don’t make me more excited and happy in a classroom. It is only the beginning of my unhappiness. As I continue the story I will discuss how schools and classrooms became my problem and why I hesitated to go to a school.

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