Mentor
MENTOR, CONSULTANT AND GUIDE !
Dr. Professor T. S. Natarajan
Professor, Department of Physics & Dean (International Alumni Affairs), IIT Tirupati
Our Mentor Professor T. S. Natarajan – The importance of school education in everyone’s life need hardly to be stressed. It is not just academics that one gets exposed. In addition, a whole lot of skills, attitude, interpersonal relations, good social behavior etc are all learnt in these formative years. This only shapes the whole personality of the individual during the rest of their life.
However the kind of education and value system that is imparted at the present day schools leave a lot to be desired. Everyone learns the rhyme, “Twinkle twinkle little start, How I wonder what you are!”, at an early age. This ‘wonder’ aspect is just the significant step towards bringing out the real scientist among the young children. However, unfortunately this is missing throughout the schooling. If we look at science teaching, the less said the better. One should always remember that Newton did not discover ‘gravity’ inside classrooms or laboratories in elite school, college or university. The children in our schools are forced through a routine textbook syllabus driven classroom lecturing, exams and grading system attempting to compare and rank students.
Many skills in our life right from our childhood are learnt by actually doing and experiencing. This essential aspect of hands on ‘learning by doing‘ unfortunately is completely missing in the formal school education in schools. Thus the ‘fun and wonder’ part of education is completely missing as everyone in education is chasing results, marks and grades – be it students, parents, teachers or school management. Any laboratory sessions are far and few between.
In this context, we propose here a breath of fresh air by way of teaching science and mathematics with fun filled demonstrations with the help Do It Yourself (DIY) kits. This will help in filling the vast gap in the school science and technology education. In this lab, we carefully avoid any explicit grading or marking pattern except for internal feedback and course correction. Students can observe, explore and learn a variety of skills and expertise to identify the core competence and attitudes towards science, mathematics, technology etc.
Any such ambitious effort cannot succeed unless the education planners, the Government and teachers desire such a change. This synergy among education planners, school and the governance seems conducive in the current scenario.
This started as a small exercise of getting subject matter experts to periodically interact and involve students in exciting science demos and hands-on experiments in one of the private schools at Chennai. The feedback received on such sessions from students as well as teachers and more importantly parents has been overwhelming.
This is envisaged as a tool of motivation to acquire knowledge, almost without any grading, but without losing the ‘wonder’ and ‘fun’ part. This will ensure the students getting ample time in ‘peer learning’ and an opportunity to learn with the formal curriculum in most cases! After all they learn to handle modern devices such as mobile phone and laptops much more comfortably than their teachers and elders without any formal training on the use of these wonder gadgets!
The kind of activities that are proposed include, science demos and activities, model building with low cost everyday materials, electronics, aspects of Robotics et all focusing on ‘hands-on’ and ‘fun’ aspects of learning!
Sustaining such an effort is a challenge within the framework of present day overburdened syllabus and marks driven competitive education scenario! We have thought of several initiatives in this direction.
Dr. Professor T. S. Natarajan,
Professor, Department of Physics & Dean (International Alumni Affairs), IIT Tirupati
