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Kids learning to forget in schools
Published on Mon, Aug 28, 2006 at 07:56, Updated on Mon, Aug 28, 2006 at 15:44 in India section
Tags: Learning To Forget, School
The common perception is that the best education in India is imparted in English-medium private schools.
But that could well be a myth. A recent study has shown that though Indian children are going to school, but they are simply not learning. And whatever they manage to learn and grasp through rote or cramming, they tend to forget in three months.
Mathematics still remains a crisis area for many students while the levels of general knowledge are abysmally low and more and more children are turning out to be educated but functionally illiterate.
In a special series Learning to Forget, CNN-IBN explores the reasons.
New Delhi/Ahmedabad: What is the chemical composition of steam? This is a simple question most children in Class V should be able to answer since it's a part of their curriculum.
However, when CNN-IBN decided to quiz some children, the answers ranged from 'Don't know' to 'it's out of course' to bizarre ones like 'it's a mixture.' 'It doesn't have a chemical formula.'
Out of 4,235 students across 600 schools in India, only 15.6 per cent gave the right answer to the question - H2O.
A majority – 69 per cent - said steam 'is a mixture and doesn't have a chemical formula'.
"The reason why this happens is that kids are so attuned to rote-learning that they don't know how to apply that knowledge. If you asked them the chemical composition of water, they'll tell you it's H20, because they've learnt it that way. But they haven't made the connection between water and steam," says education analyst Sudhir Ghodke.
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Kids learning to forget in schools !%22training teachers more imaginatively and making the curriculum more relevant to a child's surrounding%22
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Very true!!!!! A serious issue to be looked upon by the education ministry......It’s not just the curriculum or the teachers
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i totally agree with this - more and more children are turning out to be educated but functionally illiterate.
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Thanks. In a public school in ghaziabad class I students are told to read out a story from book. How
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Hello, Stop this kind of testing the students. It will not be a good thing to judge our kids like
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