Insightful compendium

What Did You Ask in School Today? A Handbook on Child Learning by Kamala Mukunda; Harper Collins; Price: Rs.199; 304 pp

“Why do i need to remember that, if I can just Google it?” How often do parents hear this query? Let’s face it: the world — and education — has changed; schools, teachers and parents need to address the changed world. The Indian schooling system still places considerable emphasis on learning by rote. I wonder how long parents and students will put up with this.

Peter Drucker, the celebrated business management guru, observed that the currency of the 21st century is ‘ideas’. The ability to think conceptually, and smartly manage data, ideas and change is the mantra of success in the new millennium. In the present educational discourse, the vital question parents need to ask is whether schools are preparing their children for this future. Too few students today emerge from high school with the dexterity, sovereignty and critical thinking skills that are needed to succeed in the future.

Children are not born with a manual. They learn by observing and by doing. Their observations evolve into beliefs. Therefore it’s crucial to know more about child psychology, development and learning. That’s the valuable content and insight of Dr. Kamala Mukunda’s book What Did You Ask in School Today?(WDYA). Currently a teacher at Bangalore’s Centre for Learning, the highly qualified Mukunda has a wealth of practical teaching experience. WDYA is a compilation of empirical studies on child psychology and learning and development, and as such, an important text on this subject for teachers and parents.

An educator’s encyclopaedia on academic research and theories of child development and learning in the past 20 years, it is based on the experiences of the author with teachers, parents, children and researchers. It guides readers through how these ideas could help a teacher (or parent) engage with children and facilitate learning in the Indian context. The author succinctly highlights the mismatch between how academics think children learn and develop, and how and why schools are still enamoured with and addicted to rote learning. Although in this collection of essays Mukunda has not included her own research work, it’s difficult not to be inspired after reading this thought-provoking book.

Liberally utilising examples and a modular approach, WDYA provides perspicacious insights into learning, memory, intelligence, child development and emotional health. Among the questions it discusses and revitalises include: Is there a mismatch between brain development and what a typical school expects from students? Whether a critical period for brain development exists; to what extent can childhood experiences influence adult personalities; whether children should be occupied full time with academics; is nature more important than nurture; the importance of developing emotions in education; whether questions of how and why are more important than who, what and where; how do children understand the difference between right and wrong; does violence on TV or video games replicate itself in the real world; are exams the best way to measure learning outcomes, and so on. All subjects are smartly arranged into chapters encompassing child development, nature and nurture, moral development, intelligence, motivation, emotions, measuring learning, and so on.

Written by a practising teacher, this book contributes enormously to our understanding of child psychology from an educator’s perspective. However, be warned: WDYA is not a manual on how to raise and educate children. It cogently summarises new thinking in child psychology as an essential discipline of education.

WDYA is a compendium — stimulating, persuasive and challenging — for teachers and parents. The use of quirky cartoons illustrate and heighten the points Mukunda makes in every chapter. It is, however, not easy to read and perhaps a bit too ‘academic’. Educators and parents wishing the best for their students and progeny would be advised to read this book one chapter at a time, and pause and reflect frequently. It invites teachers to experiment with the suggestions made, and slowly integrate what makes sense into the curriculum.

It’s a well established truism that if you don’t ask the right questions, you won’t get the right answers. The title of the book is inspired by the great physicist Richard Feynman’s mother, who used to ask him every day after school: “What did you ask at school today?” Likewise the famous American coach Tony Robbins emphasises that successful people ask questions, get the right answers and therefore great results. Ergo persuade, motivate and teach children to ask questions rather than memorise standard answers, to empower and enhance the educational experience. This should be the aim and ideal of school education, says the author.

Although the subjects discussed have been deeply researched, they are mostly confined to academic papers which intimidate rather than enlighten lay people. This book is an ambitious effort of summarised research papers, enlarging our sense of how and why children learn. Yet the question remains whether teachers will make the time to read it, and whether parents have the attention span needed to read and understand this insightful book.

Nevertheless, WDYA is highly recommended to parents, social workers, psychologists and counselors. Hopefully it will also serve as the much needed wake-up call to the vogons in schooling.

Neeraj Mandhana

Seeker’s quest

In God We Doubt — Confessions of a Failed Atheist by John Humphrys; Hodder & Stoughton; Price: Rs.656; 356 pp

For centuries, human societies lived fairly comfortably with deeply-rooted religious beliefs. Though constantly warring among themselves with rival claims about which religion was better or true, most pre-moderns rarely challenged the fundamental premises of their own faiths. However, in modern times religious creeds are confronted with a ballooning crisis from within. An increasingly growing number of people are becoming sceptical about religious dogma and traditions. Modernity, based on science and rationalism, has raised critical questions about both the veracity and relevance of traditional-style religions, and, in particular, about an omniscient God.

Out of this crisis has emerged what John Humphrys, award-winning journalist who has worked with the BBC for almost half a century, categorises as three broad responses: atheism, which completely denies the existence of supra-human beings, and therefore, religion altogether; religious fundamentalism, which insists that religion, only a single one at that (and a particular interpretation thereof), represents the ultimate truth; and agnosticism, which places itself between people who rejoice in their faith and those in total denial.

Humphrys speaks for millions of people and students of religion when he honestly confesses to being an agnostic — or, as the title of this absorbing book declares — a ‘failed atheist’ who doubts, without adamantly denying the existence of God and the truth claims of various God-centric religions.

This book narrates the author’s quest to understand the importance of faith in the human condition, by engaging with the claims of God-centric religionists and atheists alike. By identifying himself as belonging to neither camp, he posits that many agnostics, who find themselves wedged uncomfortably between the two, scorned and reviled by both, are perhaps more honest than their critics. Unlike the faithful and the faithless, agnostics honestly admit that they don’t know whether God exists.

Raised a Christian, and having experienced atheism at a young age, Humphrys explains why he now finds himself wrestling with the twin challenges of the need to believe and the intellectual and moral reasons for his inability to do so. As an agnostic, he envies believers and atheists for the comfort they enjoy in the surety of their respective positions. Yet he assures us that the seeker of the ultimate truth — if some such thing does indeed exist — cannot rest content with blind, untested and unproved faith in given truth-claims, which, ironically, unite both fanatic believers and militant atheists. The  agnostic, he tells us, has to suffer great torment for his scepticism, being denied the solace of belief, or disbelief.

The book raises vital questions about the agnostic’s predicament, which Humphrys shares with innumerable people today, many of whom fear to be publicly identified as such by atheists and religionists alike. Questioning norms, he elaborates as to why he cannot bring himself to believe in God — at least in the form that Semitic religionists conceive Him (God is always male in the Semitic religions).

The author is ill at ease with unscientific or patently absurd claims contained in the scriptures of God-centric religions and stories, proclaiming impossible ‘miracles’ that defy modern scientific enquiry and even the most basic canons of reason and logic. If these texts were truly the word of an all-knowing God, how do they contain such fiction? If God indeed performed or caused such miracles when these texts were written in order to convince sceptics, why cannot He do so now, under rigorously scientific testing conditions, so that people indifferent to Him might begin to believe!

Humphrys’ is not a voice in the wilderness. He echoes the anguish of millions who struggle to seek some ultimate meaning and purpose in life, and make sense of the world through religious belief. What, then, is the way out? Are agnostics condemned to hover in limbo between denial and faith, a predicament that can be painfully tormenting? Must they suffer pangs of uncertainty always? An easier option might be to simply give up questioning and blindly accept the truth-claims of either party — religionists or their atheist critics — and thus end the everlasting search for truth. But for honest agnostics like Humphrys who refuse to accept the verities of faith without personally experiencing them, this is no option at all.

Might Humphrys have been able to wriggle out of his torment by raising the possibility of understanding God from outside the framework of conventional religion? Is it possible to acquire a meaningful understanding of God based on one’s own experiences and reflections, rather than having to blindly follow what hoary religious texts proclaim as divine truth? Is it possible to re-imagine the divine in a way that accords with contemporary moral sensibilities and intellectual expectations?

Might a more acceptable solution be to re-imagine religion itself, rather than just reformulating the notion of God? Buddhists, for one, might heartily agree, for Buddhism is one of the few religions that has no room for the notion of an all-powerful, dictator-like creator-God which Humphrys finds impossible to accept.

Whatever be the case, Humphrys’ honest engagement with the most fundamental questions of life is a gripping story of a seeker’s quest. Fascinating and definitely inspiring.

Yoginder Sikand