Solve Interesting Problems

Seth Godin says in his book "Linchpin": "School expects that our best students will graduate to become trained trigonometricians. They'll be hired by people to compute the length of the hypotenuse of a certain right triangle. What a waste.  The only reason to learn trigonometry is because of a momentarily interesting question, one worth sorting out. But then we should move on, relentlessly seeking out new problems, ones even more interesting than that one. The idea of doing it by rote, of relentlessly driving the method home, is a total waste of time."

I completely agree that schools (and colleges) are way off the mark to create trained trigonometricians. This why there is so much angst when these "trained trigonometricians" reach the industry.

Using trigonometry as a place holder for varied kinds of school learning, it should be learnt not as an end in itself but as a technique, a way of approaching a certain kind of problem. School should be able to make clear that neither is trigonometry the only problem, nor the only solution. In other words, the job of a school is NOT to teach subject matter, but to equip a child with solution-discovery tools. As the child grows older and faces the world, s/he will encounter problems that school cannot realistically even BEGIN to anticipate -- therefore it becomes vitally important to equip the child to be able to find solutions to such  issues. The real success of a school is if it manages to teach the child "how to learn" to solve -- any given problem, i.e., the purpose of education is NOT subject matter but "learning/problem solving/solution finding techniques". This is a much broader mandate than even the most loaded curriculum today aims to fulfill.

Having said that, there is also some merit in solving lots and lots of "trigonometry" problems. This gives children the confidence that after having discovered a problem solving method or a solution, it *is* possible to master it by practice. In fact, the ONLY way to master *any* skill is to relentlessly practice it till it becomes a way of life -- whether the skill is finding the length of a hypotenuse or playing an instrument. This may at times be repetitive or boring -- but it is absolutely true that success is 99% perspiration.

In my opinion, the issue is not repetition but the way subject matter is introduced in the first place. I am not an educator, but in my experience as a student, I learnt to "learn" only when I was doing a post graduate course in a reputed institute with teachers who were knowledgeable and passionate about the subject enough to be able to encourage inquiry-based learning and a fantastically equipped library to enable research was about 15 steps away from the classroom.

My experience as a parent tells me that children are born with the spirit of inquiry and logical thinking. They are amazingly good at being able to reason through even extremely complex scenarios, leading to questions that sometimes stump us adults because WE have not taken the logical thought process as far as them.

All that school needs to do is design a curriculum that makes use of this innate childhood ability. Easier said than done?

Simplicity, where are you?

It's THAT time of the year -- tax season. After several rounds of information hunts spanning a few weeks between the accountant and me, we finally had my tax return prepared on the penultimate day of filing.

The accountant declared that I needed to pay self-assessed tax. No problem, I replied, I've seen the option on Netbanking, and dutifully logged in. Within a matter of minutes the whopping sum had been debited from my account, an email confirming the same had been forwarded to the accountant and I put my feet up.

Then the phone rang. It was the accountant again. Madam, he said, I need the challan number. Yes, yes, I replied, I've sent you the email from the bank. Of course, he had seen it and there wasn't a challan number on it. I scanned it and found that there was a 7-digit Reference Id but no challan number. Then I remembered that the LAST time I used Netbanking for paying tax, the challan number had been sent to me the NEXT day, and told him as much.

The NEXT day  there was still no email from the bank, so I called Phone Banking. The CSR assured me that I could go ahead and use the Reference Id to file my return, because the challan number takes 48 hours to generate (and of course we were at the last day of filing returns already).

Another call the to the accountant. Use the Reference Id, I told him. But madam, said the accountant, the Reference Id has 7 digits and the e-tax filing system only takes 5 digits in the challan number field.

Duh?

Finally we figured that the government had received the monIES anyway and so we would go ahead and use the first 5 digits of the Reference Id in the challan number field and then update it later when we had a challan number.

Now here's my question. Why can't we just have ONE number? Of the SAME length? In the SAME format? That the bank and the tax authorities can use and understand? What value is being added in ANYBODY's life by having to track the 7 digit Reference ID which will eventually get linked to the 5 digit challan number?

Simplicity, where are you?

Update: so here's why there is no "challan number" upfront. The bank in question is not a nationalized bank and is not authorized to collect taxes in the first place (strange how they forgot to mention this on the website?). So apparently they piggy back on other nationalized banks to actually remit the money to the government. The Reference Id (all 7 digits of it) is a piece of junk as far as the government is concerned. Now waiting for the needful to happen so I can get the CHALLAN NUMBER.

Economically non-productive?

The Indian census clubbed housewives with prostitutes, beggars and prisoners. All of them -- "economically non-productive workers".

The women who put together home-cooked meals early each morning so that their families eat healthy. The women (many of whom willingly cut back on careers) who give birth to and raise children -- the famed "demographic dividend" of the nation. The women who play childish games for the umpteenth time because their children love it. The women who work all day, seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year because housework truly never ends. Basically the women who convert houses to homes.

Of course it is hard to put an economic value to all that a home-maker does -- simply because it is priceless. So why then, does the government think that if something cannot be measured in rupees, it is automatically worthless?

I will *never* be a Tata Indicom customer

I will never *ever* be a customer of Tata Indicom. No matter *how* fantastic their products are. Here's why.

My nephew bought a Tata Indicom Photon+ data card, and he gave *my* cell number as the emergency contact number. (Without informing me but quality of one's relatives is quite another story!) Thus began my problems. Every single night, starting at 9.30 pm, and going on till 5.30 am, I get Photon+ status messages on unused bandwidth. Is *this* what Tata Indicom calls customer service? Having the cell phone of hapless "emergency contacts" ring through the night?

I visited the website that was given in the message and left a comment asking for SMS to be turned off for the data card (I gave the number of the data card). Nothing happened.

I happen to be an avid user of text messages and I don't have incoming messages set to silent. It is torture to be woken up repeatedly, night after night to find out what the unused balance on someone else's data card is.

To give the owner of the data card a wee bit of credit, when he found out about the issue, he tried setting it right by calling the customer "care" number. He never got through. When he went to the store this Saturday, he was told the issue could only be resolved on Monday -- Saturday being the beginning of the weekend and all.

Now here's my question. What kind of moron designed the Tata Indicom customer "care" system? Does Tata Indicom really believe that Photon+ data card customers (or their emergency contacts) want to know the  balance on the card (even if unchanged) *4* times every NIGHT, night after night? Who is their target customer -- insomniacs?

Which brings me to my point. Photon may be a great data card, but I will *never* buy it (or any other Tata Indicom product, for that matter), because I don't want to be stuck with a product that has shoddily designed support systems and inaccessible customer service.

Update: The messages have been turned off from my cell number. Tata Indicom called yesterday and I've gotten my cell number removed from that particular data card.

My view on TED talks

Down with a viral, I spent a part of the day watching TED Talks.

The first one I saw was by Sheena Iyengar, who strikes me as being completely in the Malcolm Gladwell mould. I forwarded it to a friend who promptly sent me an awesome talk by VS Ramachandran -- he spoke about his path-breaking work on understanding the human brain.

I spent some more time on the TED website and watched talks by:

• Nandan Nilekani -- He summarized his book in the TED Talk. Thanks, saves me the trouble of reading it :-)
• Aditi Shankardass -- She talks about developmental disorders in children diagnosed by observing behavior, instead of looking directly at their brains, leading to misdiagnoses (60% of autism diagnoses made by observing behavior are incorrect). Inspiring.
• Jane Chen -- She is building $25 incubators to save babies in the developing world. A noble pursuit, but while $25 may look like a huge saving from the $20,000 incubator that hospitals in the Western world have, it is STILL hugely expensive for her target customer -- the rural poor in India who cannot afford a bus ride to the free government hospital 4 hours away. This also came in for some criticism in the comments section for not having mentioned Kangaroo Mother Care which is available (freely and for free) atleast until the $25 incubator can be built and shipped.
• Ellen Gustafson -- This was a TED talk completely devoid of substance. So you get called to talk at TED just because of a marketing campaign you designed over bags?
• Nalini Nadkarni -- She spoke about her experience with trees and prisons. Mildly interesting.
• VS Ramachandran -- Yes, another one about mirror neurons. A must-watch. Behavioral research findings say children exposed to violence in cartoons and computer games get de-sensitized to violence. This talk probably holds the scientific key to the underlying reasons -- mirror neurons firing without the feedback from the sensory skin receptors.

My conclusion based on this completely random selection of TED talks: TED has some awesome nuggets buried amid talks that range from mildly interesting to complete "fluff".

Co-ed Classrooms work in India

Mark Parkinson wrote an interesting blog post about whether children should study in same-sex classrooms. While the Newsweek article underlying the blog post is about the US, some years ago I made the decision to send my (now) 7 year old son to a co-ed school in India.

My reasons:

• In India, it is considered quite ok to be rough with boys, with a smack now and again being fair game. More so in a boys-only environment where everyone is expected to be rough and tough and take it "like a man", irrespective of age. However, little boys are also people with feelings!
• Boys-only schools still tend to have corporal punishment (although this may change due to recent tragic events)
• Boys should see girls as "normal people" of the opposite sex and not aliens (and vice versa). Much easier to buy in to gender stereotypes if you don't actually have peers of the opposite sex.

On another note, it isn't as if boys-only schools in India offer education customized to boys' "needs" as is being done in the US. The classrooms, the syllabus and even the teachers are the same, irrespective of whether the school is for girls, boys, or both.

So far, my faith in the coed classroom remains unshaken. My son does well in school, is good at math., a voracious reader and has friends of both sexes. He gets along (and also fights) equally with boys AND girls. In fact, his school has semi-free seating and he sits next to girls as normally as he sits next to boys, with no eyebrows being raised, or, as far as I can see, learning being compromised!

More Good Books Please

My 7 year old and I went to a bookstore today and to my great joy, I found a pile of Pratham books! I am a HUGE fan of these hard-to-find, high-quality childrens' books (published in multiple Indian languages). Top authors and illustrators donate their work to Pratham, helping them to publish well written, beautifully illustrated, extremely affordable books. We ended up buying a book on the river Cauvery.

So why am I blogging about this?

There were two (yes just TWO) measly piles of < 50 English-only titles, hidden in a corner of a three-storey bookstore. I found them quite by accident. In an even more sorry state were books by yet another not-for-profit publisher -- CBT (two piles in an even more obscure corner). On the other hand, the store was FULL of similarly priced but terrible quality books that have flooded the market in recent years. Books designed to fit budgets with average stories penned in poor English. Books picked up by school libraries because multiple copies are freely available within their budget. Books freely given as birthday gifts because the child can get *6* new books within the gift budget.

Why does this happen? Could it be that Pratham and CBT being not-for-profit aren't able to lure bookstores the way crappy book publishers do? Lower/no margins? But what about corporate philanthropy? Wouldn't giving publishers like Pratham and CBT a decent display be the most value-for-money kind of philanthropy for a bookstore?

How else can Pratham and CBT reach a wider audience? One publisher of quality books has a non-conventional way -- Scholastic always sets up a book fair at the school PTM (3-4 times a year) and then donates a percentage of proceeds in the form of books to the school library. Win-win.

What else can Pratham and CBT do to join Scholastic books (and replace "budget" books) on bookshelves at school and home?