What reflects me...?

A tree may not represent me as I am now, but it is something that I want to represent me.  A tree represent life to me, never giving up, staying firmly rooted to the ground at all time and serve its environment.  And, finally, if your ever cut a branch of a tree, it sprout back another branch, and if you scar it, it would heal and continue to grow!

Connecting SMS, Blogging and Education

Most of us, if not addicted already, are pretty adept in text messaging (SMS).  There used to be days when I used-up the 200 sms per day limit set by the TRAI.  When writing sms, we often used abbreviation or shortened form of words which some people might think have murdered the language.

But as far as blogging is concerned, I have been doing it for sometime now, and have used it as a separate platform, totally different from SMS and treated it very formally.

Now as someone working in the field of education - I should be concerned about writing and spelling and not murdering the language. Am I really a practitioner of what I preach in my everyday life when it comes to spelling? We might say that writing (in any form) got nothing to do with language, but the truth is, without writing, we would not be able to read that language.

Eversince the day we did our session on education, we often argue about how insignificant spelling mistake are as long as we can understand them, but try telling that to some middle school students -if they do believe you, they might start telling you how different their teacher is, and that he will not allow such thing...

By the way, how do you feel when you notice some spelling mistake while reading an article from a respectable publisher? It bugs me, and I think everyone would feel the same way.  What I want to say is, we might said that spelling is not important part of our learning, but being able to construct, and being able to use the proper and appropriate spelling is also learning.

I know that english spelling is terrible, still I think it should be integral part of our education because spelling mistake can make a big differences in the world we live.

JOKE:

To illustrate the weirdness of English spelling, George Bernard Shaw once said we might as well spell the word "FISH" as "GHOTI" His reason being -

'GH' pronounced as 'F' in 'LAUGH'

'O' pronounced as 'I' in 'WOMEN'

'TI' pronounced as 'SH' in 'NATION'

so, FISH = GHOTI!!!

Article Review/Reading

READING: Maertens, Annemie (2011); “Does Education Pay Off? Subjective Expectations on Education in Rural India”; Economic & Political Weekly, VOL XLVI NO 9, February 26, 2011, pp. 58 - 63

Based on my reading of the above article, I want to extract a few of the findings which I think are relevant to my field of practice, and area of interest, and also raise a few questions and add my thought and views on various findings put forth by the paper.

I’m not going to analyze the research, nor question her methodologies.  I’m aware that primary data are always based on perceptions of one member of the family, her primary research was about the economic aspect of BT Cotton (which used to be rather controversial in India), and that her funding came from, besides other, some American Agriculture Research Institute.  But no matter what, her findings were as important and as relevant as they truly existed in our society that we can see from our everyday life.

Given below are some points and finding mentioned in the article which I took liberty on presenting in my own words and in my own way.

Reasons cited for sending children to school are:

• Parental education
• Social and eco background of parent
• Work opportunities
• Village and regional development,
• School quality
• Cost
•  Educational subsidies

1. The parents of a child is more likely to let their children complete their education if

• Awareness level among parents is high (via media, school)If the parents know more educated people

2. The ideal age of marriage is 18 years of age, and among boys, it is about 23

• The implication is, parents will not want to invest in a girl child education because at age 18, they will not have the time to graduate and get a good job and the return from their education will not be benefitted by the investor.

3. Lack of awareness of the prospect of education 

• Among the decision maker at home, majority doesn’t know the future prospect (how much they can earn in term of money) of their child that education can lead to, the situation is especially bad among primary student, and among 8th grade student, the only exception is, in one village out of three, about 40% had some idea...

4. There is major gender discrimination.

•  Girls are expected to earn lesser than boys even after graduation
• Financial support and physical care are expected from the male child

Few thoughts and reflection:

Do we really see education as an investment, or do we send children to school for the sake of sending, or because of some pressure from authorities, or because it is made a compulsory right for every child?

To say or view education as a future investment might not go down very well with many parents or easy to digest, but if we analyze the final motives, it truly is an investment.

• We sent our children to school in expectation that they would learn something; achieve something and make a life out of that education.
• We sent our children to school in expectation that they would earn money and start supporting the family.
• We sent our children to school in expectation that they would not have to face the kind of hardship that the parents’ faced.We sent our children to school in expectation that they would overcome the various social problems that we faced.
• We sent our children to school because we have certain perception about educated people, and their enhanced capabilities.
• We sent our children to school because something or someone inspired us and changed our perception
• We sent our children to school because we can afford to send them to school.

Viewing from the perspective of a practitioner, there are nothing new about the findings, except that she put percentage after every claim.    But as a practitioner of education, what did we do about parents’ awareness level about education and the prospects opened-up by education and most popular, about gender discrimination?

If parents are not aware of the future prospect that education can opened up for the children that they sent to school from their hard earned money, then can we really expect them to question what is being taught at school, or how it is being taught?  We said that assessments are also a feedback towards the parents about their wards’ performance and the teachers’ teaching, now can we really expect the parents to make any sense out of that feedback?

My friend Lam has reflected that some of the reason behind the high rate of drop out in the country cannot always be solved within the school boundary alone. As such, it is important that we look into problem from a larger perspective to tackle these issues that primarily include a change in society's attitude, economic development, etc.

Teaching, Learning and Assessment

This evening, we were asked to do a little activity in group and define the relation and role of teaching, learning and assessment.  Most groups came out with a similar concept with ours' which is quite a relief.  Given below is the relationship among the three elements that my group decided.

 Learning, teaching and assessment are mutual and go three ways.

From a learning perspective

• Learning and Teaching are mutual because teaching is done for the purpose of learning, and when teaching is done in the classroom, whatever the teacher teaches and whatever the student learned, and the lesson plans, and the syllabus are based on the on the teacher’s assessment of the learning.
• Learning and Assessment are mutual because Learning is something that can be measured because teaching has certain objectives, and in order to find out if the objectives of teaching are achieved or not, it can be known only through assessment.

From a Teaching perspective:

• Teaching and Learning are mutual because whatever the teacher teaches, they are not something random or based on the whims of the teacher. What is being taught in the class is based on the teacher’s assessment of the learning which come in the form of feedback as well as curriculum and syllabus.
• Teaching and Assessment are mutual because teaching cannot be done randomly, it has to have objectives, and only through the assessment of the learning, the objectives of learning can be identified.  In other word, assessment is needed to design and plan a lesson for learning, and to prepare and design syllabus and curriculum.

From an Assessment Perspective:

• Assessment and Learning are mutual because without assessment, learning cannot happen.  The assessment can tell what the child learnt, what they cannot learn and as such, it is the learning what decide what is being including in the curriculum.
• Assessment and Teaching are mutual because without assessment, the teacher will not know what to taught, how much the students comprehend, and if the methodology of teaching is helpful for the student or not.

We cannot part learning, teaching and assessment at all, they have to form a cycle for the learning process to be complete and that without each other, it will not be complete.  Without teacher there cannot be learning, and without learning, we cannot assess.  Since teaching has certain objectives, if the teaching is successful (learning happened) or not can be known only through assessment. And, if the objectives of the teaching are successful, we can only call it learning.