My views on the RTE

The Right To Education (RTE) Act that got passed in India has been in the news lately. Most recently, I watched an "interview" of Kapil Sibal, the Union HRD Minister on Barkha Dutt's "We the People".

Based on the information I have, here are some of the issues I see.

Cost
The 25% reservation that government mandates in private schools is going to be funded "by the money spent by government on each child". That is Rs 13,000 according to Mr Sibal. I will pay close to Rs 80,000 this academic year for my son, excluding bus, cafetaria, and uniform costs. Who will bridge the gap?

According to Mr Sibal, school fee is a state subject and 90% of the states do not regulate it in any way. So what does this mean? The remaining 75% of parents will have to bear the difference for the 25% reserved seats. This is *completely* unfair -- a triple whammy. I pay taxes, I pay education cess on taxes and THEN I pay to subsidize 25% of the reserved seats in school!

Overturning Capitalism?
Mr Sibal did mention that private schools are for-profit enterprises (they are -- they make money on everything including a pair of school socks), and they should "use that profit" fund the 25% reserved seats.

My first response to that is "yeah right". A more considered response is this: why single the for-profit education sector? Why not mandate that ALL for-profit enterprises should put aside "x"% of their profits for education? But hey, isn't this ALREADY happening when we pay taxes and education cess?

Impact on the child
This one applies to private schools where the medium of instruction is English. By class 1, children are expected to be able to read and write English fairly fluently. I don't see any plan of pre-tutoring the children coming into the reserved seats, so they can cope with the medium of instruction. Or is this simply going to be fodder for the local governments to convert the medium of instruction of ALL schools to the local language? (I live in Bangalore where there was a huge ruckus over this issue a few years ago.)

Private School Infrastructure
Are the reserved seats going to come at the expense of "regular" seats or will they be additional seats? The former will impact "non-economically weak" parent; the latter raises the question: who will bear the infrastructure costs of additional classrooms, labs and so on?

To quote Mr Sibal again, 7% of schools in India are private and the rest of the "expenditure" on education is done by the government. These 7% schools cater to ~20% of school going children. This is already disproportionate. and additional seats will mean that 7% of schools will now cater to over 25% of school going children.

Yeh Hai India Meri Jaan
Let's face it -- we live in a country where bribes, sifaarish based on money changing hands, favors and the like rule the roost. I don't see safeguards in place to prevent the 25% reservation from becoming a hotbed of corruption. Mr Sibal did mention "neighbourhood committees" in "catchment areas" but they don't seem adequate to me.


Passing the Buck
It seems to me that reservation of seats in private schools is a fantastic way for the government to pass the buck on building a really solid public school infrastructure -- which is what we really need. My fear is that as with most government schemes, a couple of schools will be built, a few ribbons cut and then the rest of the money will either get squandered or siphoned off.

Conclusion
IMO, RTE is next-gen Garibi Hatao for the Congress and its allies. It will surely win elections. Provide education for all? Remains to be seen.

Summer breaks are far too long

It's that dreaded time of the year again when school will be out for *two* months. Summer.

Most parents scramble around at this time of the year to find summer "camps" for children. Places that will keep children out of the house for atleast 3 hours, if not more, preferably with transport provided.


Why? A number of reasons. First, a lot of moms work, and no corporate job gives you two months off in summer. Even school teacher moms in private schools get just one month off, and have to plan for the second month for their own children. Second, even if mom stays home, people now mostly live in nuclear families in apartments. It's hard to keep a child busy at home without him gravitating to the television or PC. Invariably mom and child will spend some time EACH day negotiating time for one or both. Third, most families have fewer children (or just one), and it's hard to keep planning playdates (particularly if mom works). Children need the company of their own age group and summer camps are seen as a way of achieving that.

Summer camps exist by the dozen, so it should just be a matter of choosing the one with activities that appeal to your child, right? In practice, however, it rarely works out that way. Summer camps are rarely run by people who do it for the love of children or their trade/craft. More often than not, organizers see camps as a way to make a quick buck from working parents who really have little choice. Rates per week can be as high as Rs 1500 for a child for a few hours away from home. Most often, at best they are summer nannies, at worst, they could even turn out to hurt your child (physically or otherwise).

Summer camps exist to solve a problem. The problem is that of a two month school vacation. Why, in today's day and age, do schools need to break for two months in summer? Do children really need two months of "unwinding"? From what? Their air conditioned classrooms?

My experience with summer break has been that it totally kills routines, apart from making the child "forget" what he has worked so hard to learn the entire school year. So there is the usual mom-child tug of war of doing *some* "holiday homework" just to reinforce lessons learnt. Some educators also feel that long summer breaks hamper learning.

There is another (weird) fall-out of such long vacations. Schools these days have a packed curriculum in order to appeal to today's "go-getter" parents. Now, the curriculum is *so* packed, and given that summer break is *so* sacrosanct, children end up going to school on Saturdays in order to "complete". Even in grade 1.

Don't get me wrong. I absolutely believe that children *need* unstructured time to potter around, get bored, find ways to amuse themselves. But *two* months is totally excessive.


Isn't this a completely solvable problem?

Here's my solution. Shorten summer break to three weeks. Add two of those five weeks left over to the school year to ensure that there is no school on Saturday. That leaves us with three weeks. Use those three weeks for activities that parents normally look for in summer camps. Puppetry, woodwork, speech, drama, skating, swimming, basketball, cricket, ... the list is endless.

This, IMO, would make for a truly well-rounded school curriculum and also make a world of difference to working parents.

Views?

Green is the new Red

When I was growing up and in  school -- the teacher's red pen was a weapon to be feared. The ticks, the crosses and even worse, the angular parallel lines below spelling mistakes struck fear in the bravest of hearts!

Then ... came the revolution. People decided -- no point scaring little children with red lines. Instead, let's hand over a benign green pen to teachers.

My sons work is corrected with a green pen. The same way. There are green ticks, green crosses, and green angular parallel lines below spelling mistakes.

What does he think about it? "Ma, it's wrong, no? It's a mistake, right?" He doesn't like the green crosses and angular parallel lines below spelling mistakes any more than I liked the red ones!

Metrics drive behavior!

My 6.5 year old son was routinely losing stationery at school. I tried the usual mommy tricks to get him to be more careful -- coaxing, cajoling, encouraging, scolding, denying, making him manage with less, giving him a free hand with ALL stationery in the house, but nothing worked.

Finally, in desperation, I instituted a reward. I said that if he managed to get all his stationery back home *25* times (no, not necessarily in a row), I would take him to a toy shop and let HIM choose whatever he wanted. The first few days I would diligently check his stationery and give him smileys or sad faces on a tracker, depending on whether everything came back.

After a few days of adjusting the the new "structure", he became fairly enthusiastic and his stationery started coming back regularly (to the extent that he now even has eraser "crumbs").

So far, so good.

BUT... he was SO focused on making good on the stationery metric that he started losing other things -- things he had NEVER lost before like his water bottle and snack boxes!

This completely brought home for me the oft-repeated but seldom fully-understood point of "metrics drive behavior". Here was a smart, intelligent 6.5 year old focusing so keenly on the incentive structure I had set up, that other (more important?) things began to fall through the cracks.

As Paul Graham says, "Merely measuring something has an uncanny tendency to improve it. ... Corollary: be careful what you measure."

Metric driven behavior in action!

:-|

Don't catch 'em young

As part of learning about weather, season and climate, my son was taken for a field trip to the Met Dept. (Of course, *he* had a blast walking around the place instead of sitting is school doing "work".)

When I spoke to the teacher, she had a different story to tell. She was disappointed by the level of interest showed by the folks at the Dept. Apparently they first asked which class the children belonged to, and then on learning that they were surrounded by first graders, zoned out and were not too interested in talking to them or showing them around.

This is a trend I see all around me. My son learns karate, music and yoga, and the impression I get at ALL these classes is that they are waiting for him to "grow up" before they can really teach him stuff.

Which is so sad. Children are supposed to be learning sponges when they are small -- that ability diminishes as they grow older. And yet, irrespective of discipline (atleast where I live), we are waiting for them to "grow up".

Is this why when people really do "grow up" and get into the job market they are mostly such blinkered, unable-to-think-for-themselves souls?

I wish I was 6!

How education has changed over the years.

My six and a half year old gets to answer "comprehension" questions based on "The Cat in the Hat" by Dr. Seuss, a "composition" about himself (with questions that he needs to answer), and best of all, a book review where HE gets to choose the book.

The chosen book this time is "Great Snakes", whose "characters" are "snakes, lizards, and eggs". The "setting" is "deserts, seas, mountains, and trees".

The teacher is going to get some creepy submissions this week!

The Cat Report

Here's some interesting homework that came home last week.

A list of cats (siamese, lion, etc.), from which my son had to select one. The next step was to find a book about the chosen cat, read it and then come up with a "Cat Report".

He selected "Slinky Malinki" by Lynley Dodd, and so his report was about a "thieving Siamese cat", complete with a hand-drawn picture!

Karate, Tennis, Music, Dance or something else?

I have a bright 6 year old who, apart from being at school from 8 am to 3.30 pm, periodically expresses desires to learn other stuff.

Last (academic) year, he learnt tennis, vocal music and went for a weekly "Success" camp. This academic year, we already have on our plate karate, a weekly "Success" camp and (intermittently) vocal music. He wants to add tennis and dancing.

Karate takes away 3 afternoons a week. Camp is on Saturday morning. Tennis if added is another 3 afternoons and dancing will be 2 evenings. When I do the math I wonder how I am going to fit all this in.

Oh and did I mention skating, yoga and Western vocal music that gets learnt in school?

I sometimes wonder, is it useful to be sending him to so many different activities? How will he ever get in the practice needed to excel at ANY of them? Or is this exposure time -- let him dip his feet into many different things for a few years and then select a couple to pursue?