Experience was the only teacher
to our ancestors. Human kind progressed from days of hunter gatherer by
experiential learning. Inherent to it was the guiding force of evolution, which
helped those groups, which had better collective memory. There were no formal sessions and students. Individuals used to pick up requisite skills needed to feed and protect his/her life.
The medieval systems of the
Indian Gurukul system evolved to
incorporate a formal ambience, which was extended to experiential realm at the
home of the teacher and tailored to enable each individual pick up predetermined skills needed to earn and feed. It is imperative to note
the distinction here. The purpose of education, apart from moral development
was to enable a man to earn. Responsibility of protection got delegated to a separate
entity.
Over time, formal education (the
English system) replaced experience with printed textbooks. It provided only a
formal ambience. The knowledge or skills picked up were used to secure jobs,
thereby earn and feed an individual’s family. The
different avatars of technology enhance pedagogy; all are variants of the
formal system.
There is a huge difference between the earnings derived from Gurukal and
formal systems. The former taught a student a skill or set of skills that he
used to practice upon graduation to earn, whilst there is hardly any relation
between the formal knowledge acquired and the nature of job in the contemporary
educational system
In less than three decades,
technological revolution has made the teacher ‘one of the sources’ from ‘the principal
source’ of knowledge for a student. Youngsters today are more comfortable
learning from interactive gadgets they possess. If continuous lecturing was the
challenge for a teacher earlier, today it is to reintroduce the experiential
learning environment. Left alone, a good majority of students are smart enough
to pick up knowledge by themselves. A teacher needs to remain as a beacon to
guide them over a band (syllabus or learning objectives) and clarify occasional
doubts.
Provision of experiential learning facility will determine the efficiency
of achieving the pre-stated learning objectives. This calls for a paradigm reorientation
of the thrust in higher education during the next couple of decades. It necessitates
teachers to be innovative experimenters.
Provision of experiential
learning facility is neither rocket technology nor an expensive affair. As an
academician, I plan to employ this mode in the ecological physics and landscape
ecology module within the ecological informatics program at the Indian
institute of Information Technology and Management – Kerala.
Interested
academicians may feel free to either join or contribute.
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A few words on basic education:
I personally believe, the number
of students who ‘preferentially’ opt
for language and cultural studies and go on to become acknowledged literary
figures is a robust indicator of the success of primary education.
If international efforts in education for sustainable development were
focused in this direction, we would certainly stand a chance to have doubled
our achievements in sustainability sector.
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Dr. R. Jaishanker
Associate Professor (Ecological Informatics)
IIITM-K, Trivandrum
India
