Problem

STATEMENT

Students lack concept-based skills.

DESCRIPTION

1. The type and quality of career opportunities are limited to students who lack conceptual understanding and concept-based skills. They generally end up and find comfort in jobs, which, at best, demand only skills and generally involve monotonous routines.
2. The number of PhDs in Engineering that India produces in a year is less than what a mid-sized university produces in the US, in the same period.
3. For a country that has one-sixth of the world’s population, the number of Nobel laureates India had produced never crossed the single-digit mark.
4. A country that had invented the number zero, India is now busy playing the role of a ‘Service Provider’ to the developed world.

ANALYSIS

This section analyses the conditions that are responsible for the problem of students lacking concept-based skills.

1. Lack of a clear understanding of the distinction between skills and concept-based skills
1. A skill is what helps solve a problem efficiently and effectively under familiar conditions. A pilot managing a smooth landing under familiar conditions is an example of skill in action.
2. A concept-based skill is what helps solve a problem efficiently and effectively under unfamiliar and complex conditions. A pilot managing a smooth landing under unfamiliar and unfriendly conditions (turbulent weather, computer failures etc.) is an example of concept-based skill in action.
   
   

   Although pilot training programs involve computer simulations to simulate the environment where the pilot experiences the extreme conditions such as the ones listed above, they can, at best, teach behaviours and rote learning tasks. It is finally the responsibility of the pilot to visualise and gain a conceptual understanding of aviation. Good training coupled with flying experience may eventually help a pilot back his skills with conceptual understanding. However, the only trouble is that no one wants to afford that luxury, not even the pilot himself.

2. Obsession with numbers
   
   1. As has largely been the case with Indian education system, assessment typically rewards reproduction of textbook material.
   2. Parents as well as government consider the ‘numbers’ as the most important criterion in evaluating the performance of a student or a school.
   3. Teachers, given the environment they work in, are naturally inclined, motivated and indirectly constrained to concentrate primarily on ‘numbers’.
   4. Naturally, most hardworking students find pleasure in getting into the relentless battle to win the ‘most famous student of the class’ award and concentrate only on ‘numbers’.
   5. They lack motivation to gain an understanding of the concepts, as there is no apparent incentive for walking the extra mile.
   
   
3. Strong commitment to misinterpreted beliefs
   
   1. abhyAsam kUsu vidya: It is a common belief in India and everywhere else in the world that practice makes one gain knowledge. It does sound intuitive. However, persistent focus on abhyAsam alone results in skill-learning, which is only a tiny step by the student in the direction of becoming a true vidyArdhi, one who is after ‘Knowledge’.
   2. spardhayA vardhatE vidyA: People also believe that competition helps develop knowledge. It is true. However, the spardha among students in modern India has been for the top slot in the class and not for true vidya. It happens because of the importance society gives to the ‘number one’ position.
   
   
4. Incorrect understanding of what smartness is
   
   1. In a typical classroom, where the teacher plays the role of a knowledge dispenser, students who can naturally absorb that knowledge are considered ‘smart’. Such a classroom focuses only on linguistic and logical-mathematical intelligences, which are only two of the multiple intelligences that each student possesses, according to the theory of Multiple Intelligences. In other words, not all students are smart in the same way and each student is smart in more than one way.
   2. Students who do not have their linguistic and logical-mathematical intelligences developed sufficiently face difficulty in learning in a typical classroom where the teaching is not customised for their properly developed intelligences. This makes them view learning as an uninteresting and boring task.
   
   
5. Lack of proper infrastructure and resources
   
   1. Helping students gain conceptual understanding and develop concept-based skills requires more than a piece of chalk and a blackboard. When a major percentage of schools in India lack basic facilities like drinking water, electricity, own buildings and toilets, equipping each school with any infrastructure to help students enhance their level of understanding is only a daydream and a distant one at that.
   2. Only a teacher who believes in conceptual understanding and concept-based skills, and has such understanding and skills himself can motivate the students in that direction. Unfortunately, finding such teachers is not an easy task, particularly when the management is not specifically looking for them. Also, given their limited availability, it is generally expensive to hire such resources.
   
   
6. Inefficient teacher-training programs
   
   1. The mushrooming growth of teacher-training institutes, which always face a scarcity of qualified trainers, severely impacts the quality of training they offer. These institutes, at best, train candidates to take the ‘result-oriented’ approach to ‘complete the syllabus’ on time.
   2. Lack of motivation in candidates is another critical factor that affects their quality as teachers. Most of the aspiring teachers enter these institutes only to go out with a ‘certificate’ and, a certificate is the best they get out of the training.
   3. Resistance to change in candidates is yet another important factor. Even if an institute focuses on the importance of ‘making students learn’ and not just on ‘teaching’ it is tough for any candidate, who had ‘earned all his degrees’ in an environment that primarily focuses on numbers, to adapt to this new paradigm and internalise its significance.
   
   
7. Nature and ability of students
   
   1. By nature, people prefer going with the trend. Most students--thanks to their parents--don’t get to think beyond the trend. And, unfortunately, learning to understand has never been an apparent trend for a typical student.
   2. When a student is genuinely of low ability it is really tough for the teacher to help him understand the concepts. Similarly, students who are strongly unmotivated are another strong bet.
   
   
8. Logistics
   
   1. The syllabus in Indian schools is so big that teachers hardly find time to concentrate on anything else but complete the syllabus on time.
   2. Also, the high students-to-teacher ratio adds to the problem. It is difficult for any teacher to spend time thinking about enhancing the quality of students’ learning when he finds himself spending his time away from instruction in activities like evaluating the answer sheets of his huge class.
   
   
9. Economic aspects
   
   1. Only rich and upper middle class families can afford the currently available education that teaches for understanding. The best that the low-income families, particularly those in rural areas where the monthly per capita consumption expenditure budget of a household is only Rs 625, can reach is a local private school.