Many parents don’t realize the importance of active participation in their children’s education. Some see their main role as “providers” – their primary responsibility being to ensure that their children have a roof over their heads, to put food on the table and to see their kids are enrolled in a good school. However, some parents seem baffled when, after taking care to provide for the essentials, their children return from school with report cards that indicate poor academic performance, and worse, poor behaviour.

Often, the immediate reaction is to blame the teacher or school for being negligent, as parents don’t want to feel that their laborious efforts are inadequate. After all, if they are paying tuition (either directly through fees or indirectly through taxes), shouldn’t it be the school’s responsibility to ensure that their children learn properly? However, when parents confront teachers with the problem, the teachers typically shrug off the blame, pointing out that other children in the class are doing fine.

The downward spiral
Here’s where the problem arises: when the parents and teachers deflect the blame, fingers then point to the student as the culprit. Accusations fly, “She must be lazy,” or “Maybe she has a learning disability.” In a desperate attempt to remedy the problem, parents try externally motivating steps such as instituting punishments or offering their children bribes for good marks and behaviour. The downward spiral begins.

It is true that students have a significant role to play in their own learning process. After all, they are the ones who have to “do” it. However, there is a growing body of evidence that indicates that external motivators don’t work, and that children’s success in learning and behaviour is strongly linked to the involvement of their parents. And by involvement, I do not mean an emotionally charged concern twice or thrice a year at the time of test results and report cards. What I mean is a small amount of consistent participation throughout the year.

What parents can do
Parents’ involvement in their children’s education can include:

• Helping them establish a daily routine.
• Ensuring accountability (checking to see that kids have completed their homework).
• Helping them set study schedules and learning goals.
• Showing them learning techniques.
• Providing timely feedback.
• Helping kids see links between what they are learning in school and the world around them.
• Taking interest in what their kids are learning and talking about it with them.

There are also some parents who realize they must play a greater role in their children’s lives, however, due to certain circumstances (e.g., single parents or parents who work late), they are unable to do so. My response is that these activities do not necessarily take a lot of time. In fact, they could take as little as 15-20 minutes per day, although they do require commitment and regular, conscious attention.

A personal experience
Let me share an example with you: A father recently came to me regarding his son who was performing poorly in school and whose teachers reported he was constantly disrupting the other students in his class. Full of anger, he unleashed a flurry of attacks on the school and his son’s teachers claiming they weren’t teaching properly. I heard him out fully. Then, I asked about his role in his son’s education – was anyone checking on him regularly at home to monitor him or to participate in his learning process? His tone changed almost instantly, as he apologetically admitted that his wife didn’t take any interest in her son’s studies, and that he himself came home too late from work to check. I then convinced him to get home a little earlier every day, and to spend just 15 minutes with his son each night to check his homework diary and at least take a cursory look at the homework. The result: In just two months, his son’s academic performance improved by as much as 30% in some subjects, and his behaviour problems virtually came to an end.

(Note: I can clearly see how this small change in parental involvement caused an immediate effect, however, the father will need to keep up this effort continuously if he wants to see the results maintained.)

The upward spiral
When children see that their parents or other family members take active interest in their education, they feel motivated – they internalize the values they will need in order to become mature, successful individuals. In the short term, their academic skills and behaviour improve. They also learn that their parents, no matter how busy, are prepared to make sacrifices – financial or otherwise – for their child’s benefit. As a result, when they become parents, they’ll likely support their children in the same manner.

The author is an American educator, TV personality, public speaker and bestselling author based in India. He can be reached at steve@jiva.com.

When I was 15-years old, I had the privilege of spending four weeks in the Caribbean at a summer sailing camp for teens. It was 1982, and windsurfing was slowly emerging from obscurity – from a few avant garde aquatic circles in California and Sweden, to the mainstream culture of water sports. (It became an official Olympic event in 1984.) Standing on the pristine beach of St. Barts, I gazed out across the bay, witnessing for the first time people on surfboards with sails attached, zipping along the ocean surface at breakneck speeds. I imagined what a thrill it must be to harness the wind and move at such a velocity, and decided right then and there that I was going to learn how to windsurf.

I must admit that my initial attempts were anything but a success. In fact, I would hardly manage to stand up and balance myself on the board before I’d tumble back into the water, scraping my elbows and knees on the way down (with the salt water adding insult to injury). However, everything changed when I met Peter Hart, a professional athlete in his early 20s – one of few people in the world who at the time could call himself a world champion of the sport. Much to my great fortune, Pete happened to have been “hanging around” the Leeward Islands preparing for an upcoming competition. And because I showed so much enthusiasm (and probably because there were so few others who shared his interest in this virtually unknown sport), he generously offered to teach me how to windsurf.

Joining Pete in the water, I expected him to demo some of the basics that I would later try to emulate. However, I was surprised when he got on his windsurfer and signaled for me to swim out and get on his board with him. I eagerly paddled out to where he was floating, climbed aboard and found a place toward the front where I could sit cross-legged and out of his way. Pete then stood up behind me and started shuffling around, gaining his balance and positioning the board in the direction he wanted. He lifted the mast of the water and got a firm grip on the boom (the handle that controls the sail). Within a few seconds, he caught the wind in the sail and we began streaming forward. We continued to gain momentum until we reached a hefty clip – a speed that seemed almost impossible without a motor. As water and wind thrashed about, I could feel Pete shifting his weight and the tilt of the mast to maneuver around waves, yachts and other surfers. He was very much in control. And I can recall feeling as if I intuitively knew what he was doing – as if I too knew how to windsurf.

It was a priceless moment, a rare lesson of my life: being taught how to windsurf directly on the board of Pete Hart, world windsurfing champion. That experience alone might have been enough. However, Pete was just getting started. “Now it’s your turn to drive,” he said as he directed me to get up and stand between him and the sail. Perplexed (though excited) by the invitation, I wobbled to my feet, and cautiously grabbed onto the boom, with Pete right behind me much like a father holding onto the back of his son’s bicycle as he learns how to ride. But despite being directed by such an able guru, my profound lack of balance caused us to capsize, dumping both of us in the water. Not once, but twice. I felt like a complete idiot. Here is this world champion, ready to reveal the secrets of windsurfing to me, and all I can do is dump him in the water. Luckily, though, Pete was a saint, and didn’t express even a hint of impatience, encouraging me to get back up on the horse and try again.

On my third attempt, however, something happened. As I gripped the boom tightly the sail began to billow and the board started to quiver. I clenched my fists and forearms and taking a clue from Pete, bent my knee and leaned back deeply countering the pull of the wind. The board instantly surged forward and we were flying again. But this time I was in control (or mostly in control!). All I can remember was this marvelous sensation of being connected – my body, the board, the wind, the water…it was as if everything in life was in sync.

Pete was not only a true master of his craft. He was a consummate teacher. He did not just instruct me how to windsurf. Rather, he brought me into the flow of windsurfing by positioning me on the point of equilibrium, giving me a view into another dimension. He enabled me to sense what windsurfing felt like – to experience the exhilaration of being situated on the edge where challenge and ability meet. Once I had a taste of that flow state, you can be sure that I was out there practicing every day trying to get back into “the zone” on my own. By the end of the four weeks, I was an accomplished windsurfer – perhaps not ready to compete, but capable enough to push my skills to the limit and truly enjoy the sport. Had I never met Pete, I don’t know how long it would have taken for me to be able to windsurf, or even if I would have managed to learn to do it at all.

Catching on the academic flow
Years later as an educator, I find myself reflecting on my windsurfing experience. I do so as I see children struggling in their studies, helplessly drifting in open waters with little direction, unable to surf sine waves or catch the wind of William Shakespeare. Parents, in their confusion and inability to provide sufficient help, try all sorts of strategies to get their kids into academic flow. Some dangle rewards in front of them to bribe them into doing better, or frighten them with dire consequences if they fail. Others send their kids to tuition classes with the belief that additional evening sessions will enable the information to register in their brains. The superstitious turn to astrologers, who charge a healthy sum to provide gemstones or suggestions on the right times of day to study that are ‘guaranteed’ to enhance retention. And when all else fails, there is the ultimate threat of sending them to boarding school.

I believe that what most parents fail to recognize is that every domain has a flow – whether it is academic subjects like chemistry, maths, or language or an extra-curricular area such as art, music, dance, or acting. And that the concepts can easily be unlocked by those who are masters of their field. You might recall such teachers you encountered in your own life – the ones with a real passion for their subject. The ones who were so immersed in their areas that they painted 3-dimensional animated pictures with their words and body language, and who could enthuse even the most indifferent learners.

What kids need is a taste of that pleasurable feeling in the different domains they are studying – where they become immersed in the current of the experience, where there is a merging of action and awareness, where they get into the flow of reading, writing, solving problems, dancing or acting. And I believe that one of the best ways to lead children to that experience is by exposing them to individuals who are experts in those areas – who know what it means to be in flow.

Unfortunately, many teachers I have met qualify as teachers by title only. They are not masters of their subjects, nor do they show much interest in their field. They might have selected the teaching line because it was an easy job with lots of free time and holidays. And I would venture a guess that most have never actually entered into a state of flow in their domain. That being so, how can parents expect such teachers to lead their children to achieve their potential?

Find a master
A majority of the time people owe it to their kismet when they encounter an enlightened mentor who dramatically shapes their lives – be it a gifted professor, a knowledgeable neighbour, or a windsurfing wizard they run into on a Caribbean island. But listen closely, because here is your opportunity to cheat fate and to help your children get a leg up in life. My simple advice to parents is this: Do not wait for chance to randomly bring experts across your children’s paths. Make deliberate attempts to find champions and expose your kids to them. They need not be ‘champions’ in the literal, competition-winning sense, but need only be people who have mastery on their subjects. So for instance, you can find out who the best teachers are in your kids’ school and then work like mad to get them into their classes. Or you can identify friends and relatives who can spin a yarn with words or who have a fascination for physics, and request them to spare some time to share their wisdom and passion with your kids. It doesn’t matter where you find them – just find them and get them in front of your kids!

So the next time your children display signs of apathy toward their studies, remember that even a single session with a genuine guru can open doors much wider and much faster than the promise of a new video game, the warning of suspending pocket money or holing them up after school every day in a cram class that bores them to tears. For once they have savoured the taste of flow, they will hanker to sample that flavour again and again. There is no need to tempt them with chocolate to improve their maths or English scores when the sweetness is already there within the numbers and letters themselves. All they require is someone who can tickle their brain buds and turn on their natural appetite for learning.

The author is an American educator, TV personality, public speaker and bestselling author based in India. He can be reached at steve@jiva.com.

An important aspect of learning relates to feedback. While we are in the process of learning, our brain looks for indications that what we are absorbing or performing is correct. This could be someone’s words of praise (“That’s correct. Nice work!”) or a word of caution (“Not exactly. You’re going off track.”). Feedback can also come from claps, cheers, buzzes and boos. But no matter how it comes, what’s important is that it comes and that it comes quickly.

As we learn, our brains are constantly in a process of self-correction. If we don’t receive feedback, the brain does not realize it is making a mistake and it fails to learn properly. Worse, if we are making a mistake, the brain can learn something wrongly. Then we have to ‘unlearn’, which can be very troublesome.

One of the problems in today’s classrooms is that children don’t get enough feedback, and they don’t get it quickly enough. Teachers complain that class sizes are too big to give individual feedback. Therefore, they often resort to going over things with the whole class. For instance, consider a teacher who wants to review the answers to a test. She typically stands at the front of the room, and quickly reads off the answers one by one, sometimes writing a few of the answers on the board. While some students are inclined to ask questions, others are afraid to do so, as they want to avoid appearing foolish that they don’t understand.

Here’s a solution: the teacher can create cards with the answers on them. She can put the students in groups. Then the students can take an answer card one at a time, and check their answers against the cards. This gives the students time to focus on the problems. Self-checking also puts the students at the center of the feedback process rather than making them feel like a faceless mass receiving generic feedback from the teacher. Another benefit of the group-checking method is that the students who got the answer correct can give guidance to the ones who made mistakes, thus providing them with personalized feedback. In the case of subjective marking, such as essays, the teacher can provide a set of rubrics/criteria that the student can look for while checking (e.g., Is all punctuation correct? Do all sentences begin with a capital letter?)

So the next time you want to give feedback, try the self-check method. At Jiva Public School, our teachers have used this technique with all subjects and they have even tried it out successfully with pre-primary students! You find that students will take much greater interest in checking their answers and correcting their own errors. Feed them with feedback and they’ll be hungry for learning more!

The author is an American educator, TV personality, public speaker and bestselling author based in India. He can be reached at steve@jiva.com.

As the Multiple Natures (MN) Theory enters its third year, I spent some time reflecting today on what life was like before it existed. Doing so was like imagining what life was like before the advent of mobile phones or the Internet-tools that have become indispensable and that have reshaped the way we live and work. We accept these technologies as part of our everyday lives, and despite their occasional drawbacks, we recognize how much they have helped us by connecting us to our families, friends, customers, and colleagues, as well as to important information of every kind. The emergence of Multiple Natures is very much the same for me – an indispensable tool that helps me help people understand themselves better, enter the right career paths, and get along effectively in whatever work environments they encounter.

To begin, I recall how we at Jiva used to counsel children for careers: it was an extremely random and inaccurate process, where everyone – parents, teachers, and students – was lost guessing about the child’s future. We grasped at straws – perhaps looking for a sign or interest that the child displayed or for an area where they showed some aptitude. Yet in most cases, parents ultimately took the safe route, encouraging the child to follow in their footsteps. In the end, we would just pray that the child would work hard and succeed.

When it came to hiring people for our institute, there was never any type of assurance that the candidate would work out. Even if the person interviewed perfectly, it would still take three months for us to know if he was going to turn out to be well-suited for the position or would become a liability, leaving us with the difficulty of having to fire him – as well as with the strain of having to go through the process again to find his replacement – for whom there was also no guarantee.

And with our existing staff members, when they faced problems with work or became resistant due to one reason or another, we typically blamed it on the employee’s attitude. For instance, if there was a teacher assigned to manage a particular event and she took no interest, it was because she was lazy and unmotivated.

Now we know better. When it comes to guiding our students and staff, we are equipped with a powerful tool for diagnosing personalities: Multiple Natures. MN serves as an x-ray machine, or perhaps more, an MRI device. It provides us a detailed view of what’s going on inside people’s heads so we know how to guide them effectively.

On the career front, it has enabled me to understand the inherent strengths inside each child, and to systematically and scientifically determine which occupations would be ideally suited for them. So, for example, we can understand why students strong in Adventurous Nature have consistently displayed behaviour that inclined them toward doing risky things, and can point them in the direction of jobs that would harness that quality such as share market investing, working in the military, or even becoming research scientists. We have also been able to identify children with prodigious Entertaining and Educative Natures, and direct them toward professions that respectively tap into their capacities to amuse or teach others.

Next, our human resource team has been able to hire employees with a higher degree of accuracy. When each person applies for a post, he takes the MN Test, giving our team a much clearer idea of whether his nature would align with the type of work that he would be undertaking. A small 30-minute test has enabled us to filter out candidates who would have surely failed to live up to the expectations we set.

And when it comes to handling difficulties exhibited by our existing staff members, we can instantly map the causes to people’s natures rather than pin the trouble on a flaw in their character. For instance, we can now identify how problems arise due to a non-administrative person being given highly administrative tasks, or why a person low in Providing Nature becomes quickly stressed when assigned a duty requiring him to excessively tend to people’s problems.

Imagine what doctors had to do before the days of blood tests, x-rays, and MRIs. They surely had to rely more on guesswork and experimentation. And as could be expected, there was a much greater rate of failure in addressing and correcting health problems, only because doctors were not able to get the information needed to make a correct diagnosis. Once modern tools and tests were created, much of the guesswork was eliminated; they could directly see the cause of the problems and take the courses of action that would best remedy them.

Now that MN is here, I can’t imagine what I’d do without it. My only disappointment is that so many people still have no idea of its existence. They are still stuck in the dark ages; it is as if they have no access to cell phones, the Internet, X-rays, or MRIs. They are struggling in numerous contexts in their lives, without an inkling that there is a tool which could easily solve these problems. The wasted time and money – and the wasted lives of those who end up suffering in the wrong careers is, to me, a matter of tragedy.

Of course, all new ideas and new technologies take time to reach the masses. But, I am hoping that this year will see a much wider awareness of MN, and that people across the country will discover its incredible power in helping children get on the right careers, and helping their colleagues get more out of their professional activities. It is, therefore, my sincere request to all our readers to reach out this year and share the Multiple Natures concept with your students, staff and colleagues so that we can bring everyone up to the cutting edge of learning and working. Once you do so, I am sure you will also marvel at how life used to be in the days before MN.

The author is an American educator, TV personality, public speaker and bestselling author based in India. He can be reached at steve@jiva.com.

You have probably heard of the Peter Principle – a management theory that states “in a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.” It was formulated by Dr. Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull in their 1969 book The Peter Principle.

After having spent two decades in the area of education, I believe the concept should have a specific application to this field, which should be termed as “The Peter Principal” (sic) – i.e., every educator rises to his highest level of incompetence. She starts out as an excellent classroom teacher; becomes a very good coordinator, an average department head, a poor headmistress, and awful principal!

I like to use the Multiple Natures model to describe this phenomenon in this manner: The Multiple Intelligences and Multiple Natures that make someone exceptional in one type of work cannot necessarily be applied in another area. Sachin Tendulkar is an incredible batsman – but a lousy captain. That’s mainly because captaincy requires strong Interpersonal Intelligence and a strong Administrative Nature, which he must lack. The Peter Principle, as I see it, deals largely with this same issue – as one moves up the organizational hierarchy, he must use more of these two particular qualities, which correlate highly with effective management.

As such, when it comes to educational management, my advice is that both the teacher and employer should be careful when considering promotions, and should do a careful analysis to determine the strength of the teacher’s Administrative Nature and Interpersonal Intelligence. If these qualities are on the weaker side, it might be better to keep her happy and successful in her instructional role, positively affecting dozens of students on a daily basis (which is a great thing!). If they’re of medium strength, both should have realistic expectations of how much management-related responsibility should be given. And if she’s promoted, plenty of support and training should be provided to help her develop these qualities. However, if they are strong, then it would make every bit of sense to let her spread her wings and rise to the top as the head of the school.

I believe Peter would have certainly approved of this principle – and principal.

The author is an American educator, TV personality, public speaker and bestselling author based in India. He can be reached at steve@jiva.com.

In 2008, I devised the first Multiple Natures test as a tool to help students identify their natures and ideal careers. It was an exciting moment when the first version of the software started to work and began showing us accurate results, perhaps something akin to when the Wright Brothers’ plane first caught air! We immediately began running the test with children at Jiva Public School, as well as in schools all over the country. Three years and 15,000 students later, we’ve seen the MN concept take flight; it has reached students from the metros all the way to rural locations, and has brought the same delight to children as they get clarity on their path to their professions.

One of the challenges with psychometric tests has been the interpretation part. Even though the MN Test has a clear format, and represents the results in a straightforward manner, many parents and children want a more detailed, personalized analysis. Many would like input from a counsellor – someone who understands them and can help them better apply the test’s advice to their lives.

Some time back, the demand for counselling also came to us from our own students and parents. So we set out to set up our own counselling program. One option was to hire someone from outside with counselling experience, however, I noticed that there were already a few teachers who had taken on the task of counselling the kids of their own volition. I met up with one of them, Devina Nigam (who teaches science to senior students) and asked her about what she had been doing with the students – and more importantly, why she was doing it. Devina explained how counselling was something that she had always done unofficially at school, and was even a practice that she had done while she was a student herself. In her words, “People have always come to me for help and advice, and I get a lot of pleasure out of assisting them.”

Counselling was a far cry from her formal responsibility as a biology instructor, and an administrator with an untrained eye just might have missed this incredible opportunity. In order to confirm my suspicion, I got hold of Devina’s Multiple Natures report (all teachers at Jiva do the MN Test!), and to my delight, confirmed what I already knew: the results showed that she had a nature ideal for counselling. Her strong Multiple Intelligences are Interpersonal and Intrapersonal, while her strong Multiple Natures are Educative and Healing.

To practice what I had been preaching, I followed my own advice of trying to get people into roles that match their natures best. While I did not turn Devina into a full-time counsellor, I reduced some of her responsibilities, freeing up time to enable her to add career counselling to her portfolio. It ended up being a fantastic idea. I immediately saw Devina take active interest in her extra time, where she put together an entire year-long career counselling program in less than a week. There was little need for me to push or chase after her – her passion took over and she worked with a sense of purpose and with tremendous enthusiasm.

This concept of assigning roles and responsibilities to teachers is something that we have been practicing regularly at Jiva. For instance, those teachers strong in Naturalistic Intelligence are provided opportunities to develop our school garden; the teachers who exhibit a strong Providing Nature take part in our hospitality activities such as making sure the canteen service is up to the mark; those that demonstrate prodigious Protective and Adventurous Natures are assigned to our Disaster Management team, and so on. The result of this practice has seen a sea change in the attitude of teachers at Jiva, fostering a renewed sense of commitment and engagement in our school community.

In the case of counsellors, I think this practice has special value: schools can begin counselling immediately, utilizing the faculty they already have. However, I am not suggesting that there is no need to hire counsellors; each school would need to make that choice for itself. But practical realities are there. Sometimes, there is no budget for a counsellor. Other times it takes a while to find someone who will work out (keep in mind, not all people who are trained as counsellors actually have natures of counselors!). Nonetheless, by identifying the natures of its existing teachers, schools can tap the potential of their existing human resources and begin guiding children right away – with a teacher who was born to be a counsellor.

The author is an American educator, TV personality, public speaker and bestselling author based in India. He can be reached at steve@jiva.com.

Most Indian youngsters have difficulty in finding a quick, easy, and effective solution to the one problem that is so fundamental to their success – choosing the right careers. The concept of ‘Follow Your Nature’ helps them realize that the secret of making the right career decisions is simply a matter of identifying one’s particular strengths and selecting streams and jobs that are in alignment with one’s inherent abilities.

To demonstrate the importance of choosing the right careers for today’s kids, I would like to give an interesting example of ice creams. In your parents’ days, ice creams were available only in 3-4 flavours – vanilla, strawberry, butterscotch, and chocolate. Similarly, when your father was considering his future, chances were that he had only a handful of job options at his disposal – engineer, lawyer, doctor, accountant. In all likelihood, he went to college, learned all that he needed to know, then got a job in a company where he worked throughout his life, and from where he retired. Even if he was not happy, he had no other option, and obviously, back then, rozi roti was more important than job satisfaction.

But today, kids have way too many ice creams to choose from – mango supreme, tutti-frutti, choc-o-chips, fruit cream, black currant,… the list goes on. As far as the jobs are concerned, new industries have brought new opportunities and loads of money. Professions such as interior decorator, fashion designer, animator, videographer, database administrator, radio broadcast manager, etc., are considered ‘hep’ and ‘cool’ these days. Traditional jobs of engineering, medicine, and accounting are ‘boring’ for today’s kids, just as vanilla and strawberry are.

Despite all this, most kids have a hard time choosing from multiple job options. Why? Firstly, because they are overwhelmed with the number of choices around them. And secondly, their parents want them to stick to the strawberry and vanilla, because these are ‘tried and tested’ flavours.

The challenge here has more to do with parents’ comfort levels of what constitutes a ‘safe’ or ‘reputable’ job. It is logical to believe that having a traditional job, such as a doctor or engineer is safe because there will always be sick people, and there will always be a need for people who construct and connect aspects of our society as engineers do. But then, it’s time parents opened their minds to realize the reality and figure out what makes their kid happy.

Kids too need to be guided on how they can make the right choice from amongst the available options. Even though that exotic ‘Chocolate- coffee Ice Cream Torte’ looks yummy, it might not actually be suited to your taste. Similarly, when it comes to jobs, children often get lured by the ones that are glamorous or celebrated.

Here, I would like to cite the example of a girl who was quite adamant about becoming an air hostess. She felt it was her ticket to travelling the world, wearing those smart dresses, and meeting people from different walks of life. Despite protests from her parents, she went on to pursue a course from Air Hostess Academy and eventually joined an A-class carrier. On the first day of her job, all dressed up and ready to fly, she was suddenly asked to serve water to a passenger. Lo and behold! All the glamour went for a toss! She realized this was not what she wanted to do; she hated serving people. Was there anything she could do now?

There are many such stories of kids who get into certain so-called glamorous professions, but later find themselves hating their work. We know it is not easy to back track. So, what’s the solution?

It is here that parents play a very crucial role in shaping the right future for their children. First of all, they should help kids identify their strengths and weaknesses using tools like the Multiple Natures Test. Next, kids should narrow down the available career choices to pick the best ones that match their natures. Going back to the example of the air hostess, had that girl analyzed that she was not Providing by nature, she would have understood that becoming an air hostess was not the right option for her. After all, a high Providing Nature is a prerequisite for this job!

In the end, I would like to urge parents to appreciate the special abilities in their children and give them ample opportunities for leveraging their potential.

The author is an American educator, TV personality, public speaker and bestselling author based in India. He can be reached at steve@jiva.com.

When you observe people in India, you find so many examples of how accommodating they are: inviting unexpected visitors to eat at mealtimes, sliding forward or back to fit additional passengers on a scooter (three, four, or even five!) and welcoming people and ideas from all countries, cultures, and religions. However, when it comes to education, Indians have found it much harder to exercise their spirit of inclusion; educators have not been actively engaged in recognizing learners’ unique abilities and finding ways to get them to build on those qualities.

While children possess a wide variety of aptitudes, parents have dissuaded them from focusing on those that don’t help them secure marks, especially in standard academic areas such as math and science. The reason is that until recently, there has been limited scope for employment, with a greater number of higher paying jobs related to engineering or medicine. Those who achieve better results get the chance to study in better colleges, which in turn leads to better positions in better companies. Thus, there has been less reason for parents to pay much attention to, say, their child’s prodigious artistic or musical abilities, as they have little faith that alternative careers could provide a regular and significant source of income.

Schools have followed suit by catering to the demands of parents, doing their best to ensure that children are on a track of attaining higher marks in traditional academic streams and facilitating their rise up the professional value chain. With such pressure on these institutions to cater to this narrow scope of learning, is it any wonder that there has been little incentive for them to explore and cultivate the full array of children’s abilities? Neither have there been attempts to help children foster a feeling of self-esteem – that even though they may not be endowed with certain academic prowess, they possess qualities that are not just redeeming but also of tremendous value. And what of trying to enfranchise children with special needs such as those with physical or mental disabilities!

But while the last few decades have been marked by a rapid urban shift and a competitive scramble to gain a foothold in the white-collar domain, the evolution and maturation of the economy has spawned new markets and careers; the money trail has branched into sectors such as hospitality, retail, and design, and the demand and pay for competent professionals in these areas has skyrocketed. People are settling down more comfortably as they are finding gainful employment even after failing to succeed in the traditional route of schooling or failing to get into top colleges. As a result, many are beginning to wake up to the fact that their children are not cut out for standard education, but that this doesn’t preclude them from finding successful, meaningful careers.

Here’s a story to illustrate my point: About a year ago, a man came to my office with his son. “Mr. Rudolph,” he began, “I’m Mr. Kumar, and this is my son. He’s in Class X and he’s a duffer.”

Completely taken aback by this shocking beginning to our conversation, I immediately interrupted, “Sir, that’s hardly a fitting introduction. Certainly he must have some good qualities.”

He replied, “Is he your son or my son?”
“Your son, certainly,” I declared.
“That’s right, he’s my son,” he continued, “and I can tell you he has no good qualities.”
The boy, whose head was already hanging in embarrassment, sank deeper into his chair hearing these words of disparagement. In a bid to turn the situation around, I asked the man, “Does he make friends easily?”
“Well, yes,” he acknowledged. “That he’s good at. In fact, he’s got too many.”
I then asked, “How about helping others? If you or your wife requests him to assist you around the house or to serve guests, does he oblige?”
“Um, yes. In that area he’s excellent,” he admitted.
“So it seems as though your son has strong people skills and a providing nature. Did you know that these are critical for people who are Public Relations or Hospitality professionals?” I asked.

I then went on to uncover numerous qualities within the boy that the father had been either unaware of or had been overlooking. Needless to say, both father and son went back home with a new perspective of the boy’s abilities and future career opportunities.

When a child recognizes that he has qualities of value and he can see how his contribution to his family, friends, school, and community is meaningful, his confidence and self-esteem automatically begin to flourish. It is this self-confidence that is the basis for his ambition, passion, and desire to become an integral, constructive member of society. However, when nourishment does not reach his roots in the way of recognition and support for his uniqueness, malady manifests in the form of apathy, misbehaviour, stress, depression, emotional distancing, and so on.

The same holds true for students with disability. Such children also crave acceptance and a deep desire to know they are contributing meaningfully to those around them. For example, years ago in my own school, we had a student who had been stricken with polio in her childhood. One day, as students were preparing for the school foundation day, I found her sitting all alone in a classroom studying, in full view, the marching squad on the field below. When I enquired why she wasn’t outside with the rest of the students, she simply gestured to her leg. My heart nearly broke – not out of pity, but because our staff had failed to find a role for her in the festivities. After a brief meeting with the teachers, she was able to find a place – managing the event schedule as well as the props for the dramas. From that day forward, I could observe in her a new sense of dignity, purpose, and self-worth.

Inclusion is a concept that has implications for every student – disabled or not. Each one of us is unique, wanting to feel worthy for our individual contributions to the world. Thankfully, the recent favorable economic conditions have provided parents and schools with the ability to see beyond the narrow confines of outdated paradigms of learning and to see how education can finally start becoming the enfranchising process that it is supposed to be. In this sense, the field of education appears to be rediscovering one of India’s great traditions of inclusion: the concept of Vasudeva Kutumbakam, where we see the world as one big family – a family that has a place at the table for everyone.

The author is an American educator, TV personality, public speaker and bestselling author based in India. He can be reached at steve@jiva.com

Recently, I was reflecting on what it means to be a teacher, and wondered if I could distill the essence of the profession into a single expression. I sat for some time, combing through my 40-some-odd years in this world – half as learner, and half as educator/learner, in an attempt to identify an appropriate and succinct definition, when the word “locksmith” suddenly emerged. Within moments, my mind was inundated with similarities between teachers and key masters. Here’s what I discovered.

Students’ minds are like doors with locks, which when open, enable them to access the unlimited ocean of knowledge that exists in the world. However, years of exposure to factory-style education has caused many of those doors and locks to become stuck, making it difficult for teachers to get their students interested in what they are teaching. The challenge for teachers, therefore, is to figure out which key to use to open them. It’s not enough for a teacher to teach the same thing to all students in the same way, as her unique style of instruction will cater to certain types of students, just as a single key might fit certain keyholes and not others. She needs to know the unique qualities of each learner, and how to adapt her approach so that she can get each one of them to open up.

While most teachers have at least a few instructional techniques (or keys) that work with some students, they may struggle to unbolt the doors of others. In a sense, these children remain incarcerated, brimming with energy and capabilities, though unable to connect meaningfully with the curriculum. Unfortunately, teachers often abandon such learners, as they feel it requires too much time and effort to get through to them, and also because they believe their primary responsibility is to complete the syllabus. But more unfortunate than the ignored, are the ones who are forced to open up through excessive pressure, emotional abuse or physical punishment. Such methods may bring about short-term gains, but in the end, result in damaging students’ self-esteem and their love for learning. With locks broken, the doors eventually wind up getting shuttered.

So what does a teacher need to do to liberate learners of all types? She must first consider the critical elements that constitute a learner’s psychology, i.e., Multiple Intelligences and Multiple Natures, can be equated with the pins found in pin tumbler locks. Just as lock pins differ in length, a student’s MIs and MNs exist in differing degrees (e.g., some have strong Logical Intelligence or Adventurous Natures, while others are weak in those aspects). And in the same way that the ridges of the key align with the pins, the teacher must provide inputs and activities that match each learner’s MIs and MNs.

For instance, rather than deliver chalk-and-talk lectures, teachers can involve their students in cooperative learning activities that engage Interpersonal Intelligence; they can use mindmaps and graphic organizers to stimulate learners’ Visual Intelligence and Creative Natures; they can provide options for homework and projects that let students represent their understanding of a topic through creating their own songs (Linguistic and Musical Intelligence) or designing flowcharts (Logical Intelligence). They can even activate interest by delegating responsibilities that match students’ innate tendencies. For example, they can assign monitoring roles to those strong in Administrative Nature, create a hospitality team for those who possess a prodigious Providing Nature or even encourage those with strong Educative Natures to serve as in-class tutors.

It takes years of experience to develop the versatility required to tackle a wide range of students by using such methodologies. But when a teacher does so, it is as if she has forged herself a master key – the kind you find in hotels that can open hundreds of doors.

Still, there will always be those exceptionally difficult students who refuse to open up no matter what you do. Whether you use kindness, anger, jokes, sarcasm, or even call their parents, nothing seems to stimulate or engage them. In such cases, locksmiths have only one choice – to pick the lock. They must find a wire or hairpin, and through one jugaad or another, jiggle it around until it gets the pins to move and the plug to turn.

When I think of the ‘impenetrable ones’, I am reminded of a teenage girl I once taught in Japan who came to my English class every day and just sat in the back chewing gum with her mouth open. She was one of those tough types with numerous body piercings, tattoos, leather and chain outfits, and so on. Every attempt I made to get her interested in the subject ended in failure and my deep frustration. Finally, one day, I handed her a stack of blank pages on her desk and said, “I don’t care what you write on them, but you have to fill them up – and it has to be in English”.

A few days went by, and when she entered the class, she dropped the stack of papers on my desk and silently went to her seat and began chewing gum. I looked down, and to my surprise, found every page in the stack filled with colourful drawings, elaborate descriptions, and an array of photos cut and pasted from magazines. “I like tattoos,” began one page, which was passionately filled with examples of body art. Next was an exposition on motorcycles, followed by a tribute to her favourite brand of cigarettes, complete with an empty packet affixed to the sheet. Twenty pages, each bursting with vitality, scored the symphony of her life, revealed the kaleidoscope of her soul. My Lord. Click!

Since that day, I have looked at my students differently – perhaps the way locksmiths view each lock – as a unique puzzle to be solved. And I have come to understand that the main challenge of teaching does not lie in covering the syllabus (though that will always be a part of it), but more, in figuring out how to jimmy each student’s distinct internal mechanisms so every one of them gets turned on to learning.

But while it is meritorious for a teacher to acquire the skills to extricate multitudes of students, she performs a disservice if she sees students merely as “locks to be opened”. No doubt she has the duty of deciphering each student’s unique combinations and helping engage them in curricular content, however, she has the greater responsibility of getting learners to recognize their individual characteristics so they can control their own locks. In fact, I believe that is the ultimate goal of education. For once learners know how to do so, the keys to release their potential rest in their hands.

The author is an American educator, TV personality, public speaker and bestselling author based in India. He can be reached at steve@jiva.com.

Pratham’s ASER report of 2008 notes: “Among all 6-14 year olds, the proportion of children attending private schools has increased from 16.4 per cent in 2005 to 22.5 per cent in 2008. This increase in private school enrollment represents a 37.2 per cent increase over the baseline of 2005. This increase is particularly striking in Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan.”

Many organizations are spreading the word and advocating that low-fee private schools or affordable private schools are the solution to the dismal state of primary education in India. But are affordable private schools (APS) really a solution in the terms of quality and affordability of education?

Hail Adam Smith! The market economy is moving from cosmetics and cars to primary education and health. To tap the huge potential in the primary education market in India, many private investors are flocking to India with their money and pumping it into very safe and sound middle income and low-middle income private schools in India. To glorify their investment they are using the term “Affordable private schools (APS)”. In a country, where 80 per cent of the population lives below the $2/day poverty line, it is sheer mockery to call schools charging fees of Rs. 400 to Rs 800 per month “Affordable Schools”. Affordable for whom?

But if investors are happy in investing their money and the recipients are making money from this available credit, why am I so sour? What bothers me is the race, amongst investors and private schools, to embrace the “social investor” or “social entrepreneur” tag, which is artificially escalating the APS sector and further marginalizing access to “quality education” among the poor in India and taking India further away from the common schooling system.

Poor quality English medium private schools are mushrooming everywhere and luring poor illiterate parents. Whether and what children learn in such schools is a question. All parents who understand the significance of education are enthralled by the appearance put on by such schools, so government schools are left with only those children whose parents consider the school to be nothing more than a day care center, while they are out earning their daily wages.

In addition we also have some persuasive Western writers selling the APS concept to patriotic Indians in the name of Mahatma Gandhi. They say even ‘your’ Gandhiji vouched for the Indian village school system, where students used to pay fees to the teachers. I want to refresh the memories of these writers that in the absence of a robust tax collection system, that was the alternative at that time. But currently, poor parents are paying twice for their children’s education; the tax and the fees to private schools.

Even today, more than 80 per cent of the children in India, study in government primary schools. Recently, in a meeting of a District Education Department on the Right to Education (RTE), I found that not one official present was sending his child to a government school. When no one, including government officials, has any focus on government schools; when there is no one to awake sleeping teachers in government schools; when we are so shy to work with the government to channelize tax payers’ money to good use; when we are calling schools charging Rs 400 to 800 “affordable” schools; are we really serious about lifting the level of education in India?

The author works with Naandi Foundation, Hyderabad. He can be reached at shantanu@naandi.org.

*Views expressed here are the personal views of the author.