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#6 Transforming Schools using Behaviour Science & Small Sample Studies

George Land's observations on the need for school reform.

Picture demonstrates children with  their parents and books and stationary in the background.

Most thinking individuals across the globe, when asked to reflect on school education and its problems are inclined to express a degree of pessimism in their views. It is a matter of great disappointment that schools even in this day and age, generally tend to inflict a child with learning systems that are not renowned for their imaginative and creative content. The oft-repeated quote of Mark Twain “I did not allow my schooling to interfere with my education remains relevant even after a century has gone by since his assertion. To bolster my point, it would be pertinent to cite the 1968 study by George Land in which he followed 1600 children from the age of five onwards right through their years of schooling and beyond. Land had devised and administered a creativity test to these children at the age of five. He deemed 98 per cent of these children to be in the genius category. At age 10, in the same group, he found that the number of geniuses had diminished to 30 per cent. At the age of 15 this same group had only 12 per cent creative members. By the time this group had turned 25, only 2 percent were deemed to be creative individuals. This is a telling comment on what formal education does to young and creative minds. There have been other studies after Land that have essentially come up with the same sort of conclusions.


Schools need to conduct activities and experiments that are aimed at providing a practical but well-thought-out roadmap toward ensuring highly creative, productive and rewarding activities in school education. Under a creative and innovative curriculum schools should be able to draw a balance between creating theoretical insights from practice and practical insights from theory. In other words, a well-thought-out curriculum should really facilitate a two-way process of knowledge and skills working hand in hand. The emphasis should be on putting knowledge into action. It is possible to use the tenets of behavioural sciences to transform the schools into agents for change. If we allow the following:

Training Teachers to be Mentors
The very process of creating the features of such a certifying board shall call for and should engender the training and reorientation of teachers into truly creative mentors who shall in turn produce students who are well and truly on the paths of enlightened learning and self-fulfilment. Teachers shall be encouraged to make use of various tools and pedagogical practices that go well beyond the blackboard, the classroom and textbooks.

Generate Insights Through Experimentation For Theoretical Frameworks
The idea should be to create a two-way process between experimentation for the creation of the right features of good practices in school education. Here are two possible behavioural studies we can start to test out they can be small sample studies instead of long drawn out experiments.

Studies on Impact of Environmental Conditions on Learning Outcomes. Very little has been done by teachers and educators on the impact of various environments on the learning outcomes of school children in our country across the spectrum, we can start by testing it out to see what is working where, and perhaps even come up with a protocol which is decentralised.
Studies on the Impact of Comic Books, Cartoons, Computer Games and TV/Internet
Shows on Learning Outcomes and for Education. Such activities are generally considered as counterproductive to learning and to education in India and perhaps in many parts of the world. However, there is a great deal of anecdotal evidence that indicates that very young children have taught themselves to read, write and count just so they can start playing games and follow them. The question we have to ask is, are we harnessing the power of the internet for good, or is it to put it statistically regressing to the mean?


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