Lessons?

Sleep was elusive. But daybreak was still some way off. And counting sheep has never worked for me. So, I let my mind wander. And as it flitted from thing to thing, I found myself wondering “have I learnt anything this year.” And then, I drifted off into Somnus’ embrace once more.

In the morning, I found myself returning to the question: “What have I learnt this year.” My instinctive response was “not much.” But the more I thought about it, the more I realised that I had learnt — relearnt rather — a few things this year. Most of these are rather mundane, the sort of mental and physical housekeeping that fills our lives. Two ideas stand out though because they were reinforced this year. There’s nothing original about them, but they are my top lessons of the year.

Know where you are: It’s important to know where we are. And it’s desirable to know where we’d like to be. And I don’t mean this in a cartographic or geographical sense alone. This is not to say we should keep evaluating ourselves or our lives every moment. But it is useful to take stock once in a while. And if we find that where we are is where we’d like to be, I guess that would be as close to heaven as we can get on earth.

Change doesn’t have to be sweeping: Change may be the only constant in life. And occasionally, drastic change may be required. Much of the time though, the aggregation of marginal gains can be just as revolutionary. Small continuous improvements or changes can achieve much — often unnoticed — without the trauma and uncertainty that typically accompany a forced, sweeping move. The key is to keep responding to our environment, making the tweaks required to make things better.

Finally, learning is not a destination but a process, a journey. As is relearning. 

Changing learning

There are many things that India needs to do. On top of my to-do list for India, though, is a complete overhaul of our approach to education. We simply have to move to a system that hinges on learning rather than on passing exams.

So it was wonderful to discover the work that the Agastya International Foundation has been doing to transform learning, especially science education, across India. While the foundation’s emphasis seems to be on taking hands-on science education to government-run schools in rural India, its appeal is universal. In fact, I know of teachers from urban schools who have been blown away by the foundation’s work, especially the experiences at its centre in Kuppam, Andhra Pradesh. Equally important, I know of young urban Indians who’ve been through the foundation’s programmes and find them cool. Which is really cool, because it’s not often that you find teachers and students agreeing on something.

Of course what I have is second-hand information since I’ve not actually been to any of the Agastya International Foundation’s programmes or visited its centre. I plan to do some time soon, though.

However, from what I’ve been able to gather, its model is both scalable and replicable and, of course, transformational. Just the sort of thing we need to change education in India.

Staying with scalable, replicable and transformative learning models, it’s been almost a year since I first wrote about Salman Khan. Since then, the hedge fund manager turned online tutor has done a fair bit to change, at least partially, the way we learn.

Khan Academy, his free online library of short video lectures on all sorts of topics has evolved in various ways. Over the past 12 months the number of videos it hosts has grown from 1,800 to around 2,800. The lectures now cover more subjects, including sections devoted to specific examinations such as GMAT and India’s IIT-JEE. The team running the repository has also grown from one to about 18, including a couple of art history professors. This piece in the FT has pretty much the full story on the evolution of the Khan Academy, including the substantial funding it has drummed-up.

The Khan Academy’s value lies in its potential to transform learning in several ways. For one, you pay nothing to access the videos in the repository and, according to the FT piece, Khan intends to keep it that way. The videos themselves are easy to understand. And the concept can be replicated and improved by anyone who’s interested. Again, the sort of thing that should find a place in the Indian approach to education.

Khan’s calling

Salman Khan’s found a new calling: teaching.

I am, of course, talking about Salman Khan the hedge fund manager turned online tutor and not about the muscle-bound Indian actor. This Salman Khan is the founder of Khan Academy, an online library of short, free lectures on a handful of subjects including algebra, economics, history and science.

The 1,800-plus videos on the site — on YouTube actually — are between 10 and 20 minutes long and lean towards quantitative-oriented subjects. Each clip breaks a specific topic down into easily understandable bits. Khan plays teacher, explaining things orally, while also using an electronic blackboard with doodles and pictures to illustrate what he’s talking about. Not very hi-tech, but interesting and effective.

Do check out the Khan Academy. Oh, and Sal Khan is touted as ‘Bill Gates’ Favourite Teacher’.