Reflection Note -1

EDUCATIONAL
SCENARIO

Aditya Maitri
PGPGC202100377
1) How should education be defined?

'Don’t limit a child to your own learning, for he was born in another time' 
-  Rabindranath Tagore

As discussed in the classroom, the major obstacle that hinder changing of the teaching
paradigm in India is the fixed mindset with which the educational institution and the
teacher operate. They follow the basic remember-reproduce based teaching as they
themselves were taught and hence defeating the whole purpose of real education.

Good education is basically achieved when a person has a general to specific knowledge of
the things that have happened in the world, things that could happen in the future, how to
communicate with others, and how to live safely in the world today.

Concept Practice Application

Traditionally, the focus has little been on CONCEPTUAL understanding and more on
PRACTICE and nothing much on APPLICATION. Paulo Freire termed this the banking
model, where in learners are treated like objects who are to be filled up with knowledge
rather than catering for their individual needs

Education must not just focus on the hard skills. It should involve inculcating non-cognitive
competencies right from pre-school. Mindsets, Essential Skills, & Habits ( MESH) are found
to have significant impact on academics, career and well-being.

So, in short, Education must be defined as the way to inculcate both the hard skills and soft
skills necessary for the overall development.

2) How can Mihir improve the educational experiences of children in his school?

Mihir must identify that the major problem is the definition of EDUCATION for the
stakeholders mentioned in the figure. He must focus on slowly on changing the culture of
EDUCATION from remember-reproduce based teaching to real EDUCATION as
defined above.

Teachers

Students Parents

EDUCATION

Education Private
Board Tutors
 - Teachers: Not pressurising teachers to complete the syllabus as soon as possible, it
shouldn’t be considered as a metric of performance. He should ask his teachers to
spend more time on CONCEPT than practice and application. Allow Discovery
Learning at least in the pre-school classes initially

- Parents: Making parents understand the education happens beyond the walls of the
school and teachers are also present at home and not just within schooling. This
will help children develop the essential non-cognitive skills.

- Education Board: Requesting the board/government for a private-public

partnership model to get the resources needed to challenge the conventional
remember-reproduce based teaching .

3) In order to enrich the educational experience, more resources could be needed.

Hence, higher fees. But, school becomes less affordable for parents having economic
hardship. Is the idea of private education consistent with the idea of social equity and
justice?

As clearly pointed in the article “ Private Schooling Phenomenon in India” by Geeta

Gandhi, a good proportion of private schooling caters to the really poor, contrary to the
popular perception.

Most private schools in India can be considered “low fee” in the precise sense that their
fee is below the government’s per pupil expenditure in its own schools. This evidence
discredits the oft-repeated belief that much of private schooling in India is elite and
exclusive.

Value delivered by Private schooling is also considered more than that of government
schooling by the parents. Government should make policy changes to support private
unaided schools, as they operate cost-effectively and deliver more value owing to the
lesser wages paid to their teachers.

As pointed in the paper “ Does educational privatisation promote social justice?”,

although private schooling will improve overall efficiency in the education system through
pressures of market competition, the privatised system seems to undermine social justice
for certain groups in the population.

The solution is to try to obtain balance between the private goals of families in choosing
schools and the safeguarding of equity and social cohesion through the policy tools of
finance, regulation and support services.