Our students have been told time and again that ‘India is an ancient land’ with a ‘rich history’. In fact, they have heard these phrases so often that their eyes glaze over and they simply stop listening. Apart from occasional visits to monuments (usually in the hot summer sun with a large group of relatives they barely know), most children rarely look at their surroundings as sites for learning history. To tell the truth, many of us teachers rarely look outside the history book, or the museum, or the conventional historical monument, for traces of living history around us.

History, as we know, is not just about learning about people and events and memorising long lists of names and dates. It’s also about learning how we study the past, and different ways of understanding the past and its relation to the present. The value of historiography goes beyond the study of history itself. It provides students with skills that come into use in other subjects as well, as it fosters a creative yet analytical approach to dealing with evidence of various kinds – narrative, documentary, archaeological, architectural, etc. Beyond dealing with evidence, it shows students how an argument can be built up in a logical and systematic fashion, through language, to convince readers that something is, indeed, a record of the past.

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These pages have, for the past decade and more, carried a variety of projects on a wide range of topics. We at Teacher Plus thought it was time we stepped back a bit from the subject of the project and took a look at the project itself – why it is important, how should it be used, and what is the best way to approach it.

They are supposed to be fun; they are supposed to be stimulating and interesting; and they are supposed to lead to a multitude of learning opportunities. But more often than not, they turn out to be too much work for the teacher, precious time away from regular lessons, and a lot of extra work for parents and children who end up gaining little more than pretty scrapbooks out of the exercise. The project has been a much-misunderstood and, for the most part, poorly implemented educational tool. Parents complain about the amount of time spent on an activity they do not see as having any direct academic benefit, and teachers end up feeling tired, disillusioned, and with little motivation to begin the whole exercise all over again.

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Children, especially those within seven or eight years of age, do not generally travel alone and are, therefore, unaware of things required on such occasions. They depend almost wholly upon adults. This article intends to provide children with some ‘travel education’ of sorts and instill in them a sense of responsibility. This may sound like a Herculean task, but it can be done using playthings as the means. Stuffed toys (teddy bears may be convenient) that carry immense appeal for children can be used to make them conscious of what goes into “travelling”. Here are some steps that can be taken by the teacher to impart travel education to a child.

To begin with, the teacher can divide the children in the class into small groups. Each group has to have its own Toy Pack consisting of a stuffed toy, a backpack, story books, night clothes and toothbrush. Each child of every group can be asked to take the Teddy home for a night and take care of it, e.g. feed him, take him on visits, wash his paws and face, brush his teeth, etc. The teacher can also send a note to the child’s parents/guardians asking them to encourage and supervise the child’s activities with the Teddy at home and outside.

Extracted from Teacher Plus (May-June 1999)

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What are the expectations of teachers in this scenario?

• “How relevant is the BEd to your teaching practice?”
• What language should children learn in?
• How do teachers cope with teaching in turbulent times?

Assessing situations, making judgments of different kinds, identifying, analyzing and solving problems, getting along with people, managing resources…these are the skills we need to be developing as human beings, skills that are applicable across all spheres of activity. This issue of Teacher Plus features three articles that deal with the teaching/learning of life skills. While the first looks at theatre as a modality through which life skills can be acquired, another argues for the centrality of life skills in all school curricula, and the third brings in a creative way to inculcate problem solving skills through chemistry lessons. Of course, the discussion on life skills cannot end here; it only begins. Every class potentially is a theatre of opportunity within which life skills can be learnt. It’s about sensitive and “opportunistic” teaching, making those lessons happen whenever the space permits, and about finding opportunities to create such learning spaces.

I read with great interest the cover story “Mother tongue to many tongues” which appeared in your January 2010 issue. I did my high school (what was then called SSLC) in the year 1954. We had three languages to study and they were all compulsory – Telugu, Telugu Special (we could take any foreign language or Sanskrit in lieu), English and Hindi. After having studied in the Telugu medium, when I joined college in Bangalore I did not find it difficult to cope with the English medium. But then we did not have distractions like cinema, TV or the magazine culture that exists now.

Captain HK Rajagopal.

Schools and bandhs

I would like to compliment “Teacher Plus” for taking up the important issue of how educational institutions have become the prime target whenever there is a disruption or the so called bandh. It’s an important national issue and ideally should have been highlighted by both the national print and electronic media. Unfortunately, this aspect of educational development does not find space or time in the mass media. On the one hand, we consider children as the future citizens of India, but when there is unrest in the society, educational institutions are forced to close down for the safety of its children. Why don’t we demand the inclusion of educational institutes under the Essential Services Act and allow them to function normally like the other essential services. What is the use of Right to Education when educational institutions have to close under threat or otherwise. If we can spend crores of rupees to provide security to sundry politicians who are behind such disruptions, why can’t money also be spent on safety of our future citizens?

N Nagarajan, Hyderabad.

Teaching and learning languages

Your January 2010 cover story was interesting to read. However I don’t agree with the author when he says children in India have to learn “too many languages too soon” for if the delivery and assessment are age appropriate and pedagogically sound there is no question of ‘too many languages too soon’.

A child is born with a hundred expressive and communicative languages (Loris Malaguzzi), learning a few more is not an issue… it is the teaching that needs to be tackled before the learning can happen.

Payal (via email)

Sometimes we make incorrect judgments about people because of wrong assumptions and expectations. When we expect something and don’t get it, we find it difficult to accept and as a result, direct our anger at people who don’t have anything to do with these expectations. This happens to many of us in our homes, workplaces or elsewhere and causes psychological and sociological problems affecting individuals and communities. We can help our children in averting such problems later on in their lives, if we teach science more carefully than we are currently doing.

One of the most important aims of teaching Science is to inculcate a scientific attitude in children so that children can approach real-life problems with ease and try to work out solutions. Any research on good practices in the field of education will show that children who develop a scientific attitude during their student years approach any situation or process objectively and make decisions carefully by considering all possibilities and develop into good members of the community. An important ingredient of scientific attitude is the willingness to accept the `unexpected’. It is important that we train our children to have an open mind. How can we achieve this? This article gives one solution.

It was the year 1990. Although I was a Physics teacher, I had to teach middle school biology (as part of the integrated science course), due to a shortage of qualified science teachers in Botswana, at that time. (I remember Zabine Feezer, a colleague, needing my assistance when she had to teach Ohm’s law or my requiring her help when teaching the Nitrogen Cycle. In fact, that was the first time that I realized what `team teaching’ was all about, although I had studied it during my B.Ed course years before). Although I found it a bit difficult to teach biology for the first time in a classroom, I could easily overcome the pressure, by going back to the high school textbooks I had used in my school days, trying out the textbook activities myself and referring to contemporary material. Besides, thanks to the British Council Library, I could borrow very good curricular videos and sci-fi films such as `Fantastic Voyage’ for use in my classroom.

I developed almost all science activities in such a manner that they included the skill of `predicting’. My students identified this as an important skill that would help them become scientists who make hypotheses or effective people who can approach problems in real life situations in a pragmatic manner.

Once I had to teach “Transportation of Water in Plants” to my middle school science students. I developed my lesson material to include a hands-on activity written like a worksheet as follows:

1. Take a transparent plastic cup or container (plastic is better than glass as the latter can cause injury if it breaks).
2. Pour some water and mix some food coloring to it.
3. Dip a leafy stalk of spinach into the water.
4. Leave it for about 4 hours.
5. Soon after dipping the stalk into the water, study the following statements and put a √ mark to show your choice:
• At the end of 4 hours, there will not be any change in the color of the stalk or the leaves.
• At the end of 4 hours, there will be a change in the color of the stalk or the leaves.
6. At the end of 4 hours, observe the stalk and leaves of the plant.
7. What do you observe?
8. Take the stalk out and cut it across. Observe the cross-section of the stalk.
9. What do you observe?
10. Explain the reason.

Emotional problems in children can be prevented if schools use textbooks that enable teachers to develop pedagogically sound classroom processes that will train children to think in the right direction. This means that textbooks should be written accordingly. I place emphasis on textbooks here, because in countries like India, almost all classroom processes are based on what textbooks say. Teachers very seldom have the time to make children think beyond the textbooks (for reasons such as substitution work and administrative responsibilities). Besides, they are under pressure to `cover’ the `portions’ by the most influential stakeholders in the system: parents, school managements and examinations boards. In India, textbook contents are written in accordance with syllabus frameworks prescribed by government agencies and by private agencies such as The Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations. Well-defined syllabi and carefully developed textbooks can prevent a cascade of problems.

But, as our syllabi do not adequately emphasize precise skills, the lessons in our textbooks reflect this deficiency clearly. (For example see box, pg.15).

As a professional who has worked in textbook publishing in the private sector, I have found the same situation there as well. There are exceptions in both cases, but they are very marginal.

Science activities that include the `prediction’ component encourage children to be pragmatic in problem solving approaches and train them to be creative individuals who can accept the unexpected, and are flexible enough to adapt themselves as good members of the community. Textbook publishers have an important role to play in this direction. Well-developed textbooks can do well in the global playing field.

“Research on student learning indicates that a cycle of prediction, observation and then explanation promotes student learning” – Tobin K, Tippins T J and Gallard A J: Handbook of Research in School Teaching and Learning: Macmillan, New York: 1994.

What does the stem do?

In India, the central government and state governments run their own schools. It is mandatory for government schools to use textbooks developed by their respective government agencies. National Council of Educational Research and Training develops textbooks for use in central schools all over the country (and abroad) and The Tamilnadu Textbook Corporation, a Unit of the state government of Tamilnadu, develops textbooks for use in government schools in Tamilnadu. Similarly there are agencies associated with each state government to bring out textbooks for use in their schools.

Transportation of water in plants is taught in grade 6 in central schools. What follows is an excerpt from the grade 6 NCERT textbook (http://www.ncert.nic.in/textbooks/testing/Index.htm).

“We would require a glass, water, red ink, a herb, and a blade for this activity. Pour water to fill one-third of the glass. Add a few drops of red ink to the water. Cut the base of the stem of the herb and put it in the glass as shown in the figure.

Observe it the next day. Do any of the parts of the herb appear to have red colour? If yes, how do you think the colour reached there? You can cut the stem across and look for the red colour inside the stem.

From this activity we see that water moves up the stem. In other words, stem conducts water. Just like the red ink, minerals dissolved in water also move up in the stem, along with the water”.

The same concept is taught in grade 4 in the Tamilnadu government schools. As the textbook contents are available only in Tamil and other regional languages, they could not be excerpted for this article. However, you may view the contents at
http://www.textbooksonline.tn.nic.in/Books/04/Std04-ESSc-TM.pdf. In neither lesson is there an option for children to `predict’.

The author is currently a freelance writer and has formerly been the Technical Advisor to the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports, Government of Cambodia. He can be reached at panamalairguruprasad@gmail.com.

One thing that all parents and teachers are in universal agreement with is that children should memorize the multiplication tables. But we also know that memorizing the tables is something that all children hate.

Following the ideas of the math educationist, late P K Srinivasan, I tried out some ideas to help my class three children realize that learning the tables could actually be fun. Srinivasan had said, “Do not force children to memorize but help them remember by repeated practice”.

I felt instead of getting children to memorize the tables, they could be taught to “construct” the tables and use them repeatedly. This could be an interesting exercise, which would also help them remember most of the multiplication facts.

I had already taught my children the meaning of 2 X 3, 3 X 4 by grouping tokens and by using plastic tongue cleaners. I had also shown them how these multiplication facts could be put in a table.

The author is a Mathematics teacher at the Kokilaben Dhirubhai Ambani Vidyamandir, Reliance Township, Jamnagar. She can be reached at sheela.iyer@ril.com.

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