Kids learning to forget in schools

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.

Ghodke’s organisation conducts research and diagnostic tests for schools to understand where the teaching process is going wrong.

The trend is clear - rote-learning is killing learning.

While students are prepared to take examination and even get good marks, they barely remember anything three months down the line.

It’s got a little to do with the kind of school the children go to. When Class I students were shown a picture of a square, only 22 per cent gave the right answer.

Of the urban public school kids, 37.2 per cent got it right and among rural kids, the number was even lower at 22.2 per cent.

"It's a worry. It's a big worry. Look at how unimaginatively kids are taught in school. Can something like science ever be learnt in a classroom? The NCERT makes a lot of noise about practical hands-on learning, but go to schools and see does it happen?" says Poonam Batra, a professor at the Education Department of Delhi University.

The skewed education system may look like a complex problem, but the solution can be as simple as training teachers more imaginatively and making the curriculum more relevant to a child's surrounding.

(With inputs from Meghdoot Sharon)

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