Archive for June, 2011

Nobel Laureate Herbert Simon remarked “Knowing is not about remembering and repeating information but it is about finding and using information”. Even a serious onlooker of education would agree with this statement. As technology and human competence acquires new levels of proficiency every passing hour; the monotony of repeated information and its casual storage becomes meaningless. Survival in this era is more aligned to the abilities of finding and using the relevant information more accurately and with enhanced speed. Has the transition from the old phase of storage and retrieval to the new phase of search and usage been completed? For that matter has it even started in many of our educational institutions? Why we fail to see the eventuality is a serious concern that needs to be addressed. In the earlier days education was a luxury and for many it was not something that decided the survival of the individual. But today the story is different education becomes a mandatory tool for survival. How much have we managed to move away from the earlier days and innovated to address the challenges of today? We still follow the age old methods of assessment wherein we just test the individual about her/his memory retrieval. The technique does not change according to the times. We don’t test the individual about her/his capacity to find information. The Science of Learning is providing knowledge to improve significantly people’s abilities to become active learners who seek to understand complex subject matter and are better prepared to transfer what they have learned to new problems and settings. This transfer of knowledge to address any new challenge and the subsequent application of the acquired knowledge in any setting is the real purpose of education in today’s world. Why we fail to do this is the dilemma being faced by the stakeholders of education.

In the earlier days education was less about technology and had more to do with language and its applications. Memorizing and retrieving the same from the memory was stressed more. The mode of transmission of knowledge and the methods of assessment were invariably focused on memory enhancing techniques and the repeat of information already gathered. The survival of the individual was more focused on instincts than on learning or its applications. The modern era has thrown up a much complex living landscape with greater stress on technology and its usage for the betterment of humanity. Mere memorizing and retrieval won’t help the individual to survive in this complicated landscape. We still get away with the ‘A’ for Apple kind of learning. Why can’t we let our children search for words with the ‘A’ sound instead? When our children are encouraged to perform such activities, they get an idea about using the information that they receive in their day to day existence. Any information gathered is to be fine tuned, processed and made use of. This also invokes in the children a sense of curiosity and a hunger to know more which is really essential in making learning fun and challenging. Children are by nature curious and it is only our monotonous and rugged ways of imparting knowledge that really puts cold water on their curiosity and curbs their natural instinct to learn. We as facilitators of knowledge are supposed to listen to each child, help her/him test the validity of information gathered by them, and in necessary situations guide them towards the factual correctness of the information gathered by them at each point of their activities. The most important aspect of learning is that whatever information the child gathers is to be used at appropriate circumstances, and knowledge acquisition is not a robotic process that is to be directed only towards the examination end.
Our learning environments need more zest and the focus should shift from testing memory to interpretation and application of the information transferred by the system and gathered from the environment. The human mind is constantly searching for information, and this quest for knowledge is part of the survival techniques adopted by humans. The child is so fascinated by the amount of information surrounding her/him in various forms. We as teachers and parents are entrusted with the responsibility of letting the child explore and use this information in a meaningful way. The current system only focus on giving them packaged information and the contents of this package has been designed is such fashion that the information provided are stereotyped and redundant. We never let our children roam outside the strict boundaries of these packaged information. Each child is blessed with her/his unique abilities-the idea of imparting knowledge is to identify these unique abilities of our children and to let them explore it further. Then learning becomes a fascinating and rewarding experience. The creation of such a learning environment will infuse in our children the belief that knowing is about finding and using information.

Do emotions affect learning? And does learning affect one’s emotions? Are these two terms inter related? If so; what is the relation and how it can be defined? Let us try knowing what emotions are….

Emotions are one factor that defines humanity from the rest of the species.  We experience a multitude of emotions every day, every hour and every instant of our lives. They decide how we react to persons, incidents, and objects and design the complexity of human relations. By now brain research has proved that there is a specific area in the human brain that is related to emotions – namely the limbic system and specifically the amygdala. So emotions are conscious experiences and not just illusions. These conscious experiences are always triggered by something- an object, a person, an incident, any sensory stimulations or even a thought process. There can be both positive and negative emotions. Positive emotions are the ones that give us more energy, make us more confident and we feel more vibrant and enthusiastic both in the body and the mind. Negative emotions are the ones that zap our energy, make us less confident and we feel dull and lethargic both in the body and the mind. Emotions are both simple and complex. Simple emotions are the ones that is easy to identify and can be easily explained. The complex ones are those which we find very difficult to explain and these are normally a combination of two or more emotions. The simple emotions are the basic emotions and from early childhood onwards we start experiencing these emotions. The basic emotions are namely happiness, pleasure, sadness, anger, fear and disgust.

What is learning? Learning is a conscious experience whereby we assimilate new experiences and information and also apply already acquired sum of all the experiences and information towards the achievement of a desired outcome. Learning is continuous and ever changing. It is a womb to grave process. Learning can be both formal and informal Formal learning is a structured and precise form of learning which has a set of rules and happens inside a disciplined and previously designed environment and knowledge is being supplied by either trained manpower or elders. Formal learning happens only for a very short span of time in our lives when you consider learning as a womb to grave process. Informal learning starts soon after conception and goes on till the grave. Informal learning is an unstructured and loose form of learning which is happening 24*7 in any kind of environment and new knowledge is being assimilated from the different experiences and conscious processes that one goes through in one’s life time. Informal learning does not need a setting and in this scenario knowledge acquisition is mostly done by the self as the self goes through a multitude of experiences every second. The informal learning can be corrected and tested under the formal learning process. Children who are encouraged to learn from their life’s experiences and who are provided more awareness about informal learning tend to ask more questions in the formal learning setting of the classroom. This is because the informal acquisition of knowledge leads them to raise more questions.

It is evident that emotions are learned. The multitude of emotions that a person experience in his/her lifetime is another form of learning only. The emotions invoke physiological changes, personal experiences and expressive behaviours – thus the emotional environment that one lives in has got a significant impact on learning. In the initial period of childhood the home environment does play a vital role in learning, filling the child’s environment with positive emotions are vital in maintaining a stimulating learning experience. A child who is emotionally deprived by the parents and the immediate family tend to assimilate more negative emotions then the learning experience tends to be more awkward dull and fearsome. Similarly the emotional environment at school also has to be a positive one for the child to take learning as a challenging and rewarding task. A teacher who generates fear and demands obedience can really harm the learning experience of the child. When the emotional environment in the classroom is positive coupled with a home environment which offers the nurturing of positive emotions the children tend to be more open to the experience of learning. For these children learning becomes a challenging and rewarding experience.