I returned to India in 1968 after graduating from Cambridge and 11 years of teaching physics at Gordonstoun — the well-known British public school. I was immediately struck by the glaring lack of hands-on learning in India’s best schools. Science is an observational subject, and doing, observing and interpreting are integral to the scientific process. Memorising laws and formulae is secondary. Yet more than 40 years later, reports of several official commissions chaired by well-known educationists indicate that teaching of science in India’s schools remains as textbooks-bound as before. Rather, dependence on memorised formulae to solve problems form the core of science teaching in the country today. It’s particularly wasteful to stuff and clutter children’s brains with potentially defunct knowledge because we have little idea of what knowledge and skills will be required five years from now. Did we have the slightest inkling at the turn of the century that within 15 years the smartphone would be so essential for contemporary living that nearly a billion people, poor and rich, would own one? The unlikeliest of people use smartphones today and when questioned, they all say it has helped them increase their business, whether it’s a thelawala talking to a supplier who wants to know when he’s available, or a ragpicker calling for help as she has located a large dump of plastic bags! It’s incontrovertible that Indian children are very bright — even those who have limited access to knowledge. Today with the ubiquity of television and mobile phones, children are more aware of their world than we were. Information is flowing at unimaginable speeds and children are keeping up. They learn very quickly about which button to press on the remote! They seem to be genetically hardwired. I have given a computer and an internet connection to my housemaid’s children without teaching them anything except how to switch it on and off and connect with the internet. But they’ve promptly learned to download songs and games. At this point in their lives, they don’t need to learn more. I’m confident that as time goes by, they will learn to use Google and other search engines to acquire information and enhance their knowledge. In this rapidly changing world, the role of the teacher has also changed. This is a particularly critical and important issue. Since information is now available at an instant click, dispensing it through textbooks has become less important than how information is used. So children have to be taught how to access information and how to use it. To learn this, I believe there are five qualities that need to be developed in children to make them genuine learners. I describe them as the 5 Cs — curiosity, creativity, critical thinking, communication and learning to make choices. In fact, human progress through the ages has depended on these five attributes of the human mind. It is curiosity that led to each and every discovery but no good would have come of it but for inherent creativity,…
