Do we really need to change the syllabus ?

In an earlier post I wrote

This is also primarily a factor of the way we teach/educate our kids. We don’t really help them get educate – we enable them to recite facts. How often have you heard that ? Too often. What is the alternative ? Changing the education system is a big task. How about changing the way that the fundamentals can be taught ?

There is also a niggling worry and a trend that I see – the lack of students exerting themselves in multi-disciplinary approach or, taking up studies across disciplines. When I was growing up it was fairly common to bump into students and elders who had a bewildering array of studies and expertise across disciplines and subjects. And sometimes the selection of the subjects themselves were mind boggling. I don’t see that often. Even if you discount the fact that I don’t bump into students as much as I’d like to, the trend is fairly obvious. Multi-disciplinary studies seem to be on the wane.

In a set of conversations at Kolkata I bumped around loads of reasons to arrive at a conclusion that would satisfactorily explain the phenomenon. And, it eluded me. However, one thing is becoming fairly clear though – the revisionist zeal that surges across various forums with the objective of ‘cleaning up’ or, ‘tuning’ the curricula is totally misplaced. The curricula should and does actually do a good job (note that I did not write adequate job) of covering the first principles of any subject. The problem lies in the fact that using the syllabus as a base and thereafter doing extended reading to build up from the first principles is something that is clearly lacking in the way graduate and post graduate classes are taught. In fact why go that far ? Even earlier in the 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th standards the encouragement to build up knowledge based on the syllabus is replaced by mug up content limited to the syllabus. It doesn’t help that the system which verifies the learning is geared more towards validating how precisely the concepts have been embedded rather than how elaborately they have been understood.

Take this random test – pick any subject of your liking and go through the syllabus beginning at the 9th standard and progress onward till the 12th. Irrespective of the board you’d find that the structure of the syllabus is aimed at imparting knowledge. Now, if you have time, pick up the corresponding examination question (if they are available publicly) and check the framing and construction of the questions. You’d see what I am getting at. The graduate and post-graduate courses have it marginally better. For various small values of ‘marginally’.

However, at the end of the day, the other factor that does need to be considered is when we lament and berate the system of examinations we actually lament about the teachers who are in the schools and colleges. Given that successive surveys by both public/government and private sectors have revealed the anomaly in the number, quality and availability of the teaching staff at school and college levels isn’t it a given that various parts of the system would be under stress ?

What bothers me however is what can be done to bring about change ? More importantly, how can an individual bring about positive change within the system that can be adopted and emulated incrementally. Tilting at windmills and attempting to change the system have a disturbing similarity in actions. Making smaller efforts to bring about gradual change might just be the way out.

How can we change the way we teach fundamentals ? One student at a time ?