Teenagers have a difficult life. A difficult, difficult life. It’s always been like that but in the current age, the burdens dumped on their slender shoulders is incredible, while the fun parts of life have been sucked out completely.
Last year this time, I was discussing with our teenager, the relevance of bivariate data and linear equations. We were looking at the textbook and the worksheets and the examples and the online resources and … all the drivel that is passed off as educational material nowadays. After about 20 minutes, I agreed to his opinion that it was designed to kill any interest that any one may have in Math or linear equations. Any educator who thinks the Gross Domestic Product of countries or the prevalence of left and right-handed people in the world is appropriate context to get a 14 or 15-year-old to connect with data and equations, is an idiot or thinks the children and their parents are idiots.
(Now here’s one for all the English teachers out there: how many metaphors have I used so far? And how many analogies? And the million-dollar question: what is the ‘x’ that we will be solving for?)
{{/usCountry}}(Now here’s one for all the English teachers out there: how many metaphors have I used so far? And how many analogies? And the million-dollar question: what is the ‘x’ that we will be solving for?)
{{/usCountry}}We abandoned the textbook and the worksheets and opened a text editor and started writing a series of (logical) questions, which went like this:
“What is data?”
“What is univariate data?”
“What is bivariate data?”
“Wait, what is a variable?”
“Is there multivariate data as well?”
“Are variables like our moods and goals (meaning, they can change)?”
With reluctant interest, he started defining problem statements: “So I am feeling like having cold water because it’s hot. I wasn’t feeling this urge last week. So can we define those as variables and then predict when we will definitely want cold water - is that what the relationship is between variables?”
After further thought, he asked (more to himself): “What about basketball team wins and how many points the star player scores? Are those related?” Now basketball is something he loves playing. My guess is that some of his clothing habits are also influenced by basketball players. Huge sneakers, ball cap, long shorts, longer Ts, that kind of style. The ball cap is a constant for him and he prefers caps with long bills (also called visor), the part that keeps the Sun out.
We kept discussing subjects and finally settled on basketball and cold water in summer as primary research since it affects his life or is of interest to him and friends. It took us an hour of iteration (question and answer cycles) and we made several little tables of data but at the end of the hour, we had arrived at a point where we could understand the three common forms of equations for a line and how to solve them and more importantly, how they are relevant to our lives.
But the real breakthrough came a little later: Imagine a set of Maths equations and a set of ‘real-world’ situations that has nothing to do with the reality of the student. Can we establish a relationship between the material and the chances of the student going into a coma?
Absolutely.
Irrespective of the education board that a school aligns to, this is a problem with education today. The disconnect of the student from the education. One of the positive outcomes (for me) from Covid pandemic was that online schooling gave us an opportunity to monitor what the teachers were actually doing in the classroom. After observing several classes of various subjects, we realised it was a waste of money because the school was keeping parents happy by burying children under a crazy workload but destroying the child’s self-esteem, interest and ability to learn by coercive classroom communication and making it prescriptive- the exact opposite of what is expected of an international IB school education. In June 2021, we shifted the children out to a different school (Cambridge IGCSE board) which seemed more committed to engaging with the child’s specific requirements (within reasonable boundaries and within the board’s framework). It’s early days but so far so good.
After two years of being indoors, children are now getting back to physical classes and much of the initial months are really about reconnecting with friends, playing outdoors, testing social boundaries and learning to be comfortable again. As a parent, my expectation from a school is for them to focus on the health and happiness of my child rather than them getting back to peak performance. Most of what they learn in school won’t be required in day-to-day life. Results follow from an intrinsic ownership of goals and not as a predefined outcome of a series of forced processes.
What will be required in day-to-day life and what children will remember from their school days is behaviour and consequences of noncompliance. Not just their behaviour but also the behaviour of their parents, teachers and elders in society. They won’t remember the rules, prescriptions and words describing good behaviour. They will remember and follow the behaviour of their elders. Often what elders expect from children is at odds with how they themselves behave. And children pick these differences easily and if their family or teachers do not listen to their questions, they confide in friends, who are also in the same boat. One of the least understood truths about school life is that behaviour is the central mode of communication, especially for teens. The instinctive reaction of most elders and educators is to threaten consequences for undesirable behaviour and reward expected behaviour - the classical bedrock of behavioural psychology.
It’s high time we ask why a child is complying to expected behaviour or not complying to it. It is silly to assume that a child who behaves themselves all the time is well adjusted. They may simply be bottling up everything because they carry the burden of expectation and don’t want to let elders down.
Childhood is a wonderful time as is teenage. If we want children to grow up to be mature, independent and responsible individuals, we have to let them be children and teenagers and treat them with maturity, provide them with reasonable freedom and behave responsibly towards them as a first step.
Sanjay Mukherjee, author, learning-tech designer and management consultant, is founder of Mountain Walker and chief strategy advisor, Peak Pacific. He can be reached @ thebengali@icloud.com