A visit to a govt. school in Odisha near my village……
Today I went to a
govt. school to discuss about my Idea of Innovate4DigitalIndia. Click Here
First let me
describe what are the good things I found in the school:---
1) School uniform:
Students specially the higher class students were wearing decent
school uniforms and was clean.
2) Food provided to
the students: As today was Wednesday, students were given boiled egg
and peas -potato curry with rice. I had my lunch there. The food was
eatable and nearly nice. Only the peas curry was little watery.
3) Building was a
bit good. Not that horrible. It was colored and many thoughts of
scientists were written.
4) Teachers were
also very co-operative and ready to listen to my ideas heartfully. I
had also a discussion with the teachers for about 3 an hour. The
discussion was about students and teachers and their problems.
Now let me describe
what I didn't like in the school, although its many but I will
describe some of the fundamental necessities of the school and their
solutions.
1) First, and most
important is quality of teaching and motivated teachers to teach.
Teachers are not
motivated enough to do their work efficiently. Also they follow the
old and ineffective methodology of teaching. They also don't behave
with students properly. They just shout at the students (especially
children of smaller age group) to make them study or listen. Love and
affection between teachers and students were completely missing. For
this I would blame to our culture and also attitude of the teachers.
Teachers think that, if they will be soft, than students will not
listen to them and obey them.
2) Toilets: This is
perhaps one the fundamental problem and our PM has raised the issue
many times and also trying to address it. The construction of the
toilet was half and no work has been done since one year. When I
discussed the issue, teachers said the toilet was incomplete because
of corruption.
For quality of
teaching and motivation to teacher, I think following solution will
be most effective.
But for that govt.
have to spent something. I have tried to make it least possible
expenditure.
1) Electricity
problem: We need inverter for it. Even though the school is situated
near the national highway, power supply is not continuous.
2) Computer: At
phase one, we can provide computers to each teacher. Computer I mean
Raspberry Pi 2 which costs 2999 in Amazon.in and a monitor with will
cost 3800, but if govt supplies it or Indian company like Micromax
start manufacturing it, the cost will reduce to 3000. It also
requires accessories like memory card (Rs. 300), keyboard (Rs. 200),
mouse (Rs. 100). So total expenditure for a computer will be about
Rs. 7400. Also an external hard disk per school can be provided to
them, so that they can transfer the data.
3) A broadband
connection: If only teacher uses it, it will cost Rs 499 (railtel
broadband)
Here is how the
computer will solve the problem.
First we need to
motivate our teacher to teach and learn. A teacher will transfer its
knowledge to students only if, he is educated enough and motivated
enough. I would say that motivation is required daily.
So for it, we need a
daily 40 min lecture (MOOCs) from our best professors. It should be
available live online. Also the lecture can be downloaded. Teachers
should also appear the tests daily. Test can by of 20 min length to
know whether teachers have understood the concepts of lectures or
not.
Lectures can be
about subject knowledge and about teaching techniques and psychology.
Psychology and teaching technique courses should be given more
importance and should be based upon proved research. I think if this
is done, our education system will change drastically.
I also found the
language problem of teachers. There are primary teachers, who don't
understand even English properly. So for them, state level lectures
should be also given in their native or Hindi languages. In case of
north India, Hindi is not a problem, but in south it could be a
problem.
Also teachers should
discuss or ask questions directly about the subject, which my Idea is
based on.
And then, when the
condition or knowledge of teachers improves (i.e. teachers are used
to computers and motivated enough), we can start the phase 2, where
students will be provided Raspberry Pi 2 and start flipped education
in our schools.
Here are some of the
other big issues which need to be addressed.
1) Students don't
come to school regularly. They skip classes. This is a very big
problem. So I would advise that a child's friend or a student who is
staying near him/her can be asked to bring the child who is not
coming to school. There friends can motivate him/her, if he/she is
not coming to school regularly.
2) Student don't
bring books and notebooks to school. For that, I would say that keep
their (who is not bringing) books and notebooks in school itself and
give them when he/she comes to school.
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