The Education Problem: Raj Reddy (Part 5)

Tuesday, March 13, 2007 | 4 comments

The new educational model proposed by Raj is based on capability and performance, and negates the advantages that some students have in terms of better access to quality schools and a better support system at home.

SM: Children raised in cities have an advantage as well becuase they have environmental nurturing which the village kid does not have. RR: Exactly, and the net result of this is that we are leaving kids behind in India, and even in the USA. I would say 80% of the children in India and maybe 20% of the people in the US are being left behind.

These are students who are equally bright, but for all kinds of environmental reasons never recieve the same opportunities. The question I am asking is how would we find and nurture them and bring them up to speed? Curriculum is one attempt, a minor attempt, and even there we are only starting with post graduate education. These are students who have already gone to college and graduated. The best I can do is say it doesn’t matter what degree they recieved; it does not matter if they have a BA, or even if they graduated first in their class - I don’t care. If they happen to be the best in their village, or the best in their group of 50,000, then I will select them.

The second issue is the reservation system; 1/3 of the seats are guaranteed for rural students and 22% of the seats are guaranteed for scheduled cast. When you select people this way your entering class is very disparate. Some students know more, and other students know a lot less. In this situation you cannot use a conventional education system, you cannot just throw them into a class with a teacher lecturing them.

SM: You have to do a skill gap analysis to identify where they should begin? RR: Not only that, but the learning by doing approach is beautiful for that task. The way we do skill gap analysis is we assume they know nothing. We start with grade 1; English, mathematics, etc… I know they have a degree, but they might have passed with 50%. To pass our course you must pass with 95%, otherwise you cannot go to the next module.

SM: People come up the ranks with a lot of foundational gaps, so more advanced concepts would be unfathomable. RR: Exactly. We go back to the beginning and re-teach everything, and students only go to the next module if they get 95%. That is not an A+, but at least it is an A. If it takes them two months, three months, or five months to get up to speed, that is OK. Even if it takes them five years, that is OK, because we know that they are the best of their cohorts, and once they get up to speed they will take off.

We have to be patient to that point. It has to be individualized learning in a self paced mode. We need to have mentors so that if there are ten people in ten different places of learning, they can advise students no matter what. That is where having a knowledge base, and establishing learning by example and learning by doing, are ideally suited.

As a student I can be looking at my example, trying to do the next problem. If I get stuck I can request a just in time lesson from the computer. If for some reason I forgot how to do a square root, I can take a refresher it immediately. If I was never taught how to do a square root, then I can take a longer lesson which might take me two hours. Years of curriculum can be broken down into small four hour segments of learning units and accomplished one unit at a time until the student has demonstrated they have really mastered the unit.

This segment is part 5 in a 15 part series Segment 6 →
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