Educational Ecology of Memorization

It was January 2000. I received my class 10 preliminary exam results. Vividly remember getting 71 marks out of 100 in science. My teacher was very disappointed. She said –“Kathan, you don’t cover all points in your responses. Also, you write very slow and don’t finish exam within time-limits. You need a lot of writing practice”.

I learnt an important lesson. Simply understanding the content was not sufficient. If I wanted to score high, I needed to memorize each and every point mentioned in the textbook and reproduce the text in my answer-sheet without spending time on thinking. I practiced just that for the following two month. As a result, I scored 98% in Science in the Board exams.    

In India, when a student is preparing for school/university exam, it is most likely that s/he is

·         preparing model responses for all possible questions across subject content

·         practicing reproduction of available “model” responses through repeatedly reading and/or writing

A lot of policymakers/educators and people who “think they are educationists” label this learning approach as “Rote-Learning” and blame students and teachers. I would like to clarify that memorization is not necessarily rote-learning, but memorization without conceptual understanding is rote-learning. Nonetheless, the blame game is widely prevalent within policy circles and in media and the broader context is ignored. In this piece, I discuss the educational ecology that encourages memorization.

Assessment Practices

With exceptions of some of the elite K-12 schools and premier higher education institutions (e.g., IITs, IIMs), educational assessment in-general is based on the questions listed in the textbooks, previous exam papers (available to students) and/or practice-books at all levels (from primary to university-level). Even the state administered board examinations that are of extremely high stake follow the same trend. (Read: Unscientific assessment practices of Educational Boards) Note that the 12^th standard board exam result serves as a criterion (in most cases, a sole criterion) for the choice of career as well as admission to the higher education institution. These exams focus excessively on knowledge and understanding levels of cognition (as per Bloom’s Taxonomy). The students rarely see test items that measure higher levels of cognition (i.e., application, analysis, synthesis, evaluation) and get opportunity to exhibit their in-depth learning. Overall, key to academic success is reproduction of “model” responses (or textbook responses) in timely manner. Now, you see why students practice reproduction of model responses.

Before discussing what teachers do, it is important to understand the context in which they function. For this, let us see the administrative setup.

State-Administrators: Educational policy is mainly a state-level issue. Undisputedly, India’s state administrative setup is highly centralized and extremely hierarchical. On a side note, the Chinese system is much more decentralized. The state administrators decide and allocate resources to all public schools. States micro-manage, for example: hire/fire school staff, develop annual-activity calendars for schools, design curriculum, print textbooks, teaching tools, administer board exams, and conduct professional development programmes. Of course, this is extremely burdensome for the state-level officers, but the system has been like this since Nehru’s time and there has been no public debate on decentralization and capacity building at lower administrative-levels. If you observe the functioning of these state-administrators, you get a feeling that India basically has only one school per state with classes spread across that entire state.  

   

District/Block/Cluster Administrators

Accordingly, the district/block/cluster level administers function as eyes and hands of the state. They have very little autonomy, and are there to execute state-orders and monitor all schools within their purview.

Principal

The principal is basically a teacher with additional administrative duties like: taking responsibility of financial accounts and resource inventories, supervising teachers, keeping up with all state mandated year-round activities and submitting an incredible amount of paper work routinely, attending meetings whenever the higher authorities call on (meetings may be called on the same day and one is expected to be present). But, s/he does not have much say in teacher recruitment, or acquiring funding or resources.

Teachers

Teachers may or may not face problems on personal level, but this profession has been the biggest loser in India’s rapid educational-infrastructural expansion. Some of the big challenges include: Extremely poor pre-service and in-service training, harsh working condition (close to 30-40 hours of lecturing per week with average class-size of 40), little access to teaching aids, and no time allocation for lesson planning, test development, or homework assessment. Average entry-level pay can be 10-15 times lesser for teachers than that for engineers. Note that there is no tenure-track and hardly any pipeline leading to professional growth. Teacher can at the most be a principal if luck favours (but that may not have any monetary benefit). No reward/recognition for good teaching, and pay increases are solely based on seniority.   

            In this educational hierarchy, teachers are at the very bottom. Bossism is very explicit and people at higher level of administration display their power unapologetically. I have seen principals sit on the floor while the state administrators sit at a dais and get an emperor like treatment. It’s difficult to imagine a government school teacher arguing on a policy issue with the state-administrators. The entire social context is set up to make teachers feel they are subservient to all higher-level administers. Accordingly, instead of catering to the students, teachers’ cater to the principal and the administrators at the level above. In fact, the entire machinery caters to people at the level above and exercises power to shut down voices coming from below. The IASs often do the same. They cater to their political masters and shut off any complaints coming from levels below.   

            In this tradition of catering to the bosses amid demoralizing social context, teachers do what it takes to keep things going. The dutiful ones cover their syllabus. It should be noted that the Indian curricula across various educational boards cover incredible breadth of subject content. To give an illustration, things that I studied in 8^th grade physics (e.g., Newtonian Mechanics) are taught at the undergraduate-level in the US. The only way this great breadth of curriculum can be covered is through the use of lecture method. Ideally, a teacher would be able to spend some time introducing a concept and then demonstrate solutions for some textbook questions before moving on to new content. There is little time for experimentation or critical classroom discussions and to go in-depth of the subject. And let’s not forget, the exams do not care for depth. It is very common for teachers to ask students to write responses for the textbook questions more than once for homework.

Parents

Parents in-general are concerned about the results and not the process. Unfortunately, the social context is set up where memorization is considered as a sign of being genius. I have an untested hypothesis that children whose parents are more involved with their studies memorize more content.  

Private Tutoring

The prime purpose of private tutoring is to get access to model responses and to drill and practice more memorization. It is very common for the tutors to share their own version of “model” responses with their students.

            Today as I look back to my 10^th standard board exam preparation, I wonder what if the exams had significant amount of test items at application level. I spent more than two months almost memorizing the entire textbook. What if I had spent that time designing some experiments, visiting museums, reading popular science magazines or watching sci-fi movies? I had this sort of question on my board exam:

What is Environmental Degradation? Mention the measures to control Environmental Degradation. (5 marks)

One definition and all eight points on ‘Measures to control Environmental Degradation’ mentioned in the textbook. Of course, I nailed it. But, what if I was asked the following question (which had no readily available model response):

Based on your knowledge of the science textbook, prepare a detailed plan of action to cope up with the Environmental Degradation in your home town/village/city. (5 marks)

What if we prepare a social context where students need to tap into their deeper levels of learning? This cannot happen overnight. It is a gradual process: increasing weightage of application level questions on exams, high quality teachers who are as professionally competent and as well-paid as any engineer, doctor, or scientist on average, more experimentation and higher order discussions in classrooms, entire administrative structure which caters to the students and not the bosses, and….

[Note: This piece sheds light on common patterns. There are always exceptions. A lot of administrators, principals, teachers and parents are putting incredible amount of efforts keeping the students at the centre; and there’s always a Rancho in every classroom.] 

I welcome your comments.

Indian Education: Macro-level Systemic Problems

After independence, India has significantly expanded its educational infrastructure. Gross enrolment rates are near universal in most states. However, the quality of education remains a major concern as many large scale educational assessments indicate overall poor academic outcomes of students (ASER 2005-14; Education Initiatives, 2010; NCERT, 2008). Most academicians, media, and people in and around policy circles acknowledge this dire state of education. However, the discussion on “the way out of this mess” only revolves around school, teacher and/or student level interventions. While micro-level (i.e., school or teacher-level) reforms are essential for qualitative improvement, there are some systematic macro-level problems which are more critical yet they remain unaddressed.  

Lack of Policy-relevant Knowledge

Suppose you are the educational secretary of a state and have to invest hundred crore rupees in primary education. What will be your investment priority? School infrastructure, hiring more teachers, performance pay for teachers, psychological support for children, improving quality of school-meal, subsidized text-books and school uniforms for the poor, celebrations of numerous festivals in schools, or organizing sports and cultural events across state? Will you distribute this money uniformly across all districts or in certain priority? What proportion should you spend on the least developed regions? All of these questions are extremely important and only empirical research can provide answers. Unfortunately, India has neglected empirical research for so long that it cannot provide answers for effective investment priority and policy formulation even for one state. There exists very little empirical work on educational issues.

Moreover, whatever little empirical studies that are conducted, are often not accessible to policymakers, fellow researchers, and practitioners. In most cases, one copy of the study is submitted to the funding agency and the other one could be lying somewhere in the college/department library. Unfortunately, universities do not even keep doctoral dissertations and theses accessible to wider audience. Intervention studies in Indian context, which are available on the internet, are mostly conducted by the researchers outside of India or funded by International agencies. Muralidharan (2013) provides a nice summary of major works in Indian education and their policy relevance, but not one study was conducted by an Indian institution. In total, one gets a feeling that the centre and state governments are not serious about generating indigenous pool of policy relevant knowledge in education sector. Accordingly, most debates and discussions around educational issues are dominated by "expert opinions" and not by empirical work. 

Arbitrary approach to Policy Formulation

Apathy for indigenous knowledge is a problem, but I am more concerned about the process of policy formulation. State officials and policymakers are not formally trained to consume research literature. Empirical research, especially field experiments and causal inference, is a highly developed field which demands technical expertise. It is highly likely that a state government does not have a single competent educational researcher in its policymaking-team. In such scenario, policy formulation is often based on a mixture of subjective factors like majoritarian view, administrative ease, and policymakers’ intuitions, world-views and/or personal-experiences. This is extremely dangerous way of policymaking given that lives and careers of future citizens are at stake.

Absence of Valid & Reliable Academic Outcomes

Another major issue pertains to the absence of standardized grade-level outcomes across various educational settings, from vernacular religious schools to elite English medium private schools. Everyone talks about poor quality, but there is no standard definition of “educational quality”. Without standardized assessment of a representative sample, a state may not be able to evaluate the effectiveness of educational interventions and policies. In other words, everyone, including the policymakers, are clueless about whether their actions are producing any good. In addition, teachers, parents and students remain unclear of the expected knowledge and skills for a particular standard.

Lack of Understanding of Human Resource Required in Educational Sector

Yes, there is a  great dearth of education specialists across the country. But, more frustratingly one gets a feeling that the policymakers only seem to understand two job profiles: teachers and teacher-trainers. There has been little attention on developing human resource for educational administration at state, district, clusters or schools, curriculum and instruction design, testing and measurement, educational research, psychological support in schools, and policy making. 

As a result of above discussion, India has not been able to establish consistency between national human-resource requirement, knowledge-base, policy design and implementation, and educational practices in the field (Figure 1). 

I present a potential mechanism for establishing these linkages in blog post entitled, Mechanism for Educational Excellence in India: Towards Solution 

Do share your thoughts...

The Indian Conundrum: Copy-paste Culture vs. Knowledge Production

In recent times, there is a lot of empty rhetoric of “moving towards knowledge economy” in policy circles. The bureaucrats, top-ranking politicians, businessmen and the elite-intellectuals often present knowledge-economy as a way forward for India. Many intellectuals and organizations all over the world have provided various definitions of knowledge-based economy (KE). The overarching idea is that in KE, the economic activity primarily depends on the knowledge (or intellectual capital). In India, there seems to be an assumption that somehow we produce (or utilize existing) knowledge which will lead to economic prosperity. So far, I have not come across any insightful public discourse that examines this assumption systematically in Indian context. The public spending on research and development (R & D) has been raised in recent years; however, there is no clear rationale for how that will create economic prosperity in India. Note that I am completely in favour of increased funding and encouraging research and knowledge production (as argued in other articles). However, there are some major hurdles for knowledge production. Until India addresses that, I am afraid, the increased public spending may not produce any public good. In this article, I will explore some of the major threats to knowledge production in India.

Copy-Paste Culture: In India, there is a culture of not recognizing intellectual property as someone’s property. People often assume that it is “OK” to copy and paste text, audio, visuals, computer programmes and any other forms of intellectual property. It is often the case that you have an idea and share it with your boss. Next thing you know that your boss has launched the product and taken all the credit. The big fish with power and money may influence the people at large and the real creative intellectual may never receive the due credit. The violation of intellectual-rights is extremely prevalent across variety of fields – arts, music, filmmaking, writing, programming, academia and possibly any field where one can innovate or create knowledge.  

            This is especially true for R & D centres. My colleagues working at various research centres (cannot disclose names for confidentiality reasons) admit that even when they come up with a research idea and conduct experiments, their bosses decide whose name is to be included in the research paper and in what order. It may happen that their supervisor gets to be the first author and their name is pushed far behind. At times, the name of the head of the department or institution is included in the author-list in almost every paper produced by that department/institution, irrespective of his/her contribution.   

            It may sound surprising to the outsiders, but this copy-paste culture is rampant in academic writing as well. During my higher education in India, I came across many text-books which were nothing but copy-paste material from books and research articles of other authors without any citation or references. It is fairly possible that an individual is pursuing PhD and have absolutely no idea of citation or acknowledging work of other researchers. Given the limited understanding of the difference between plagiarism and original work even in academia, it is unreasonable to expect that in the masses.         

No incentives for Knowledge-production: India’s research sector is primarily driven by the government run institutions. A very few research centres and elite educational institutions care for contribution of its faculty members to the scientific publications. The promotion of faculty members is often solely dependent on the personal relationships and seniority in most of the Indian universities. The tenure-track system which is based on publication of peer-reviewed papers, citations, academic presentations and teaching quality is non-existent at-large in universities. As a result, the faculty members do not have much of external motivation for contributing to their respective fields of inquiry.

            Furthermore, the leadership structure of the universities is ill-fitted for the pursuit of excellence and knowledge production. While talking on the higher education systems around the world, Prof. Stephen Heyneman made an excellent point explaining the difference between top ranking American universities and the universities in developing nations. The leadership structure in top ranking American university is very conducive for continuous pursuit of excellence. The board of visitors (mainly, donors and alumni) appoint the president of the university on contract-bases and pay them hundreds of thousands of dollars. In order to get that job, the highly-skilled candidates have to present institutional goals and action plans for the same – how the institution will achieve and maintain excellence, how will the resources be generated and how all stake-holders will be taken on board etc. Therefore, from the day one, the president has a mission and s/he is highly accountable. On the other hand, the appointment of Vice-Chancellors in most of the Indian universities is based on political loyalties and personal influences. There is no vision presented for the institutional growth; and there is hardly any accountability. As long as the system runs without much media outrage (possibly on corruption, lack of governance, or more serious criminal charges) and the political equations are in balance, the vice-chancellor can survive.

            In total, neither the institution leaders nor the faculty members face any negative consequences for not contributing to the knowledge production.

Poor Intellectual Property Rights: India has one of the weakest intellectual property protections to offer to its citizens. Although the laws exist, there is hardly any implementation. In addition, various vital definitions (e.g., plagiarism, inspiration, and original work) are not clear. This gives scope of various interpretations of plagiarism – for e.g., what if someone copies two lines from your research article, writes your codes in different programming language, or changes three scenes of your screenplay – is that plagiarism? I hope it is a ‘yes’, but I have heard varying responses.

Not valuing Creative Intellect: This is about the society in-general where masks are way more valued than creative minds. To make my point clear, let’s look at various fields. People go mad after actors, who simply follow director’s instructions; but the script writers who create brilliant stories, visualize their effects on the masses and develop characters that touch our hearts, go unnoticed. Singers, who do the same job as any other instrument players, get standing ovations, while we hardly care about the music-composures who come up with mind-blowing tunes that perturb millions of hearts. Our society over-appreciates what it sees, and fails to value the major contributions of the people behind the scene. This shows a lack of critical thinking ability of our masses. All the name, fame and money follow the mask, and not the mind. This gives a clear message – if you wish to be successful, get seen-heard and noticed. It does not matter where you get things (ideas) from, but be the first person to bring those ideas to the masses. Importance is given to the one who introduces new things to the masses, and not to the one who creates new things. 

This social scenario is very discouraging for creative intellectuals (CI), if they are unable to reach out to the masses. Eventually, they may feel – “why should I put in so much of efforts when others are beneficiary of it, and not me?” The frustration may lead them to the following routes:

·         Succumb to the copy-paste culture: Giving up sounds bad, but it is always an obvious path taken by the majority of people. A creative intellectual may start applying his/her energy in finding newer ways of copying and hiding sources. After all, even if one finds no gain in money or fame, this option reduces cognitive labour.

·         Stop sharing:  “I will keep my work undisclosed and wait for a favourable time. And if that time never comes, my creation will die with me but I won’t let any big fishes take credit for my work” – this can be their response to the society’s apathy for intellectual property.

• In Indian schools, this trend is widely prevalent. Very few students would do their assignments independently. The rest of the class would either get things done with the help of parents/tutors or copy from digests/guide-books or from the notebooks of their peers. Now, the students, who have done assignments on their own, would be very reluctant in sharing their work with their peers. This is because, like Indian society, the teacher focuses on whether the assignment is completed (or not), and not on how it was completed. The result is underscored and not the process. I have complete empathy towards those very few CIs in our classrooms.
• Find a place where CIs see appreciation: “Get settled in a place/country where your contribution is appreciated”- this is one of the biggest reasons why many CIs settle-down in the developed countries. Though intellectual property theft is prevalent across the globe, there is definitely a perception that the western world does a far better job of protecting IPs. No country can afford to lose its top intellectuals and suffer brain-drain in knowledge-era.

All three scenarios mentioned above are nightmare for not just the CIs, but for the entire nation. Especially, when the world is moving rapidly towards a ‘knowledge economy’ era, a developing country like India needs to begin valuing minds. Today, India needs an intellectual revolution. I have the following broad suggestions:

• Value for intellectual-rights must be nurtured in children at homes and schools. Programmes/courses should be designed such that creativity is encouraged in students. Every new idea should be valued and a student who generates an idea should be rewarded publicly in schools. Students should be trained to write essays/assignments with citation and references right from upper primary standards.
• Government and civil society must join hands to run nationwide campaign for spreading awareness about intellectual property rights, privacy rights and for inculcating a habit of attributing credits to the content creators.
• Clear cut procedures should be available for reporting complaints about copy-rights violations at every level. These complaints must be addressed within well defined timeframes without delay.
• The society needs to realize its greatest assets, Creative Intellectuals; and must revere their contributions.
• Lastly, the CIs themselves must raise their voice and be more assertive for securing intellectual-rights. After all only they can carve their unique place in the Indian society.

Note: A shorter version of this article has been published in Fair Observer international magazine on June 5th, 2013. It can be retrieved from: http://www.fairobserver.com/article/indian-conundrum-copy-paste-culture