Learning is not a race!

Parents are often seen bragging about their kid’s learning milestones – ‘my son is only 3 years, and he can already read sentences!’, or ‘my daughter knew the entire multiplication tables by the age of 6’ etc etc.

To earn these bragging rights, parents put considerable pressure on young kids to learn things quicker than other children of similar age group. However, in this case, faster is not necessarily better. There are appropriate periods in the life of a child to learn particular items. For example, children learn to count by age 4, do simple one-digit additions by age 5, learn the concept of borrowing and carrying by age 6.

In reading and writing too, there are appropriate time-periods for different milestones. While these milestones differ slightly from children to children, we would only create emotional stress and resistance towards learning if we try to push a child before he is ready to learn a concept.

There could be several harmful effects if we try to rush a child to learn something before he is ready. He may resort to memorizing, because the concept is too difficult for him to understand. In the early years, if the core concepts of language and mathematics are memorized, rather than understood – it leads to a weak foundation which may haunt him for life. But the most harmful effect is that it may kill the ‘joy of learning’ – leading to a lifetime of resistance towards education.

Our kids should eventually learn to compete – because competition is part of life. But they should never compete to learn, especially at such a young age.

Movies in classroom

People at various schools often talk about using audio-visuals in classes, but often they do not have a clear idea of what is an appropriate audio-visual to show in classrooms. We have audio-visuals in classroom is akin to saying – we use books for learning! Which books? What kind of audio-visuals? How are they selected? What is their appropriateness? How are they connected to learning? Those are the questions to ask.

Among various audio-visuals that can be used in a classroom – movies (as opposed to educational stills, documentaries, or plain lesson plans masquerading as audio-visuals) can really take learning to a different level. They generate interest, they help us empathize, they can give a holistic educational experience.

Let me first talk about more concrete subjects like history, economics or sciences. History was always thought to be such a boring subject in the schools – and that’s a pity – because history is full of stories (stories by definition should be more interesting than abstract theory). And there is clearly a lot to learn from history – whatever mistakes you are making today, have already been made many times over in the past! Similarly, Economics was also considered drab – but it is a subject that helps you explain the world around, and can solve real-life issues.

Something like history certainly can be taught much better through movies. For example – there are nice movies about American presidents (Young Mr Lincoln, JFK, Nixon), there are intensely absorbing movies about World War II (Schindler’s list, The pianist, Downfall – to name a few). For the story of Indian independence, we have Richard Attenborough’s Gandhi, and some others. We do not really need to have movies on exact topics of history – it is enough as long as they generate the learning appetite for different historical periods, so that there is a desire to learn more.

Other than concrete subjects like these, movies can be powerful tool in teaching ‘softer’ topics like leadership, communication, ethics etc. There are numerous movies which can illustrate various elements of leadership – my personal favorites are Hotel Rwanda and Gandhi. Negotiation and group dynamics can be demonstrated through 12 angry men (we have a Hindi version – Ek ruka hua faisla). Ethical issues and breaches are made much more vivid in movies like Judgment at Nuremberg or Wall Street. (or a particularly black and white demonstration of ethical slide – see the documentary on Enron). I remember we had training sessions on presentation delivery using speeches from various movies – Al Pacino’s speech in the Scent of a woman, and Michael Douglas’ “Greed is good” speech in Wall street.

We spent better part of our student days mugging Ampere’s law, the exact date for the battle of Panipat and such other nonsense – when learning could have been so much more fun.