It’s highly unlikely that any of the estimated 8,000 individuals who attended one or more lectures delivered by Dr. Howard Gardner — globally-renowned professor of education and developmental psychology at Harvard University and author of 25 intensively researched and insightful books including Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences (1983); Multiple Intelligences, New Horizons (1993) and Five Minds for the Future (2007) — during his recently concluded Howard Gardner India Tour 2012, will ever view education through the conventional prism again.
During their first visit to India in January-February, Dr. Gardner together with his wife and collaborator, Dr. Ellen Winner, professor and chair of psychology at Boston College and an expert on gifted education, delivered mind-bending lectures to enthusiastic audiences in India’s major metros (Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Bombay and Delhi). They interacted with a large number of policy formulators, educationists, school principals, teachers and students, sharing valuable insights into the human brain and cognitive sciences. Moreover, the historic visit of the highly acclaimed education seer and savant attracted widespread press coverage.
However media coverage of Dr. Gardner’s tour was restricted to cursory reportage of his 90-minute lectures and set-piece question-answer interviews. A detailed biography tracing the history and development of Dr. Gardner into arguably the most influential education and mind development guru of the contemporary world, and the impact of his lectures on Indian educators was conspicuously missing. This is the lacuna the cover story in this month’s issue of EducationWorld attempts to fill. It is recommended to all educationists, trustees, principals, teachers, parents and well-wishers of the world’s largest, and most educationally short-changed population. My hope is it will focus the minds and stimulate the hearts of educators and the public to press for the teaching-learning revolution which is urgently needed to reform 21st century India’s moribund education system.
While interacting with, and writing about the Gardners was a mind-expanding experience, the special report feature filed by managing editor Summiya Yasmeen reporting on an unprecedented, ambitious initiative to introduce the joys of learning the sciences — physics, chemistry, maths and ecology — experientially, is perhaps no less so. The story of Ramji Raghavan who threw up a promising London-based career in banking and returned to India to establish the Agastya International Foundation which comprises a state-of-the-art sciences learning centre in the rural backwater of Kuppam on the Andhra-Karnataka border, is equally inspirational. Every day 500 children and 40 teachers from neighbouring village schools are bussed in — and conversely mobile science vans traverse lonely roads to reach far-flung rural schools — to give poor and neglected rural children opportunities to conduct live experiments and learn the sciences joyfully. It’s an extraordinary effort in resources mobilisation, management and commitment.
