E-Paper
Is it time for ed-tech to reorient their focus?
The great thing about new-age parents is that more and more understand the linkage between helping their children discover their passion and the resultant happiness in life.
In my experience of running global corporations, individual excellence comes from three things. First, it is about discovering your passion. Then, it is about learning the skills to become the best in that field and finally, it is about pursuing it with relentless hard work.
The great thing about new-age parents is that more and more understand the linkage between helping their children discover their passion and the resultant happiness in life. I am fortunate to be working with many children today and I ask them to close their eyes and tell me what they see themselves doing when they are 25. I help them visualize a day in their life at 25 and finally ask them - are you smiling or frowning, happy or sad at 25? We repeat this a couple of times till they learn the skill of visualizing a tomorrow and find that missing key to their passion.
An increasing number of children know what they are passionate about; however it is the subsequent two steps of learning the skills to be the best in it and working hard to get to it , that haven’t been developed at all well.
A bit of history
Public education as we know it today was institutionalized after the industrial revolution, when knowledge dissemination was the biggest priority. Before this, knowledge had been the preserve of the top elite – just the fact that it was being freely distributed among the less- privileged classes was a big deal. This is why schooling came to be defined by rote- learning, something that served the needs of the 19th century well.
Wrong- stepping learning
As we left industrialization behind and moved into a globalized world and economy, other forms of learning started receiving better rewards in the markets.
Divergent and innovative thinking led to the proliferation of innovation-led disruptive models of growth. Our education system, however, remained firmly stuck in the 18th and 19th centuries.
The problem with current ed-tech interventions
Sadly enough, ed-tech interventions – even very popular ones – fail to see the problem for what it is and continue to function as knowledge-givers. What ready-to-eat foods have done to the fine art of fresh cooking, ready-to-eat ed-tech is doing to the skill of discovering and learn something the hard way.
The child learns in half the time, but misses out on the process of learning – say, by reading different books and asking others. I have no problems with learning in this manner, however I wish we used the time saved to teach other skills. When that child comes into the real world, we ask them to solve problems that they can’t find easy answers to on Google!
Education to make children future-ready
This is why it is time for both classroom interactions as well as ed-tech interventions to start focusing on building the skills that the current pedagogy doesn’t address at all.
Skills such as problem solving, design thinking, creativity and learning agility that will gain currency as Artificial Intelligence takes care of mechanical, repetitive jobs. Robots will solve knowledge problems at a fraction of the time it takes a human being, and so humans have to learn the art of applying knowledge to solve real-world problems that they are passionate about.
If you are a parent and reading this, stop and think how you will make your child future-ready, rather than give in to the temptations of the easy-to-teach ways. They may be necessary but definitely not sufficient for your child’s success. You have a crucial role to play till someone in the ed-tech industry decides to focus on what matters most: the child!
(The author is Founder Chairman, Sampark Foundation. Views expressed are personal)
