Sunday, September 20, 2009

School drop-outs rate is very high in Rural India. Why?

School-drop out is a serious problem in Rural India (even in urban areas but just the magnitude). If we try to analyze why is this so, the first reason appears to be the supply issue. Government controls education sector in such a manner that the schools operating margins hit badly. Apart from the license/quota issue there seems to be 3 major issues:

  1. Teaching styles
  2. English
  3. Mathematics

1. Teaching styles: Most of the teachers (and coupled by the parents in home) impose learning processes on child. The teachers/parents themselves are badly taught and so they viciously follow the cycle.

Learning is a joy. The children should feel that it is like a roller-caster ride. To get to that level, children should be taught how to learn. For example, they should be told as many as stories. Exercise to the kids on this would be to tell many more stories to other children. Children must be formed into a group of 5-10 and then teacher must guide each group. This is basically a process of peer review. They can source the new stories from parents, neighborhood, friends, relatives etc. And in fact, children are natural at creating their own stories. Songs and dance are very natural to them and TV, mobiles, competitions, etc can help in this regard.

2. English: Children are exceptionally talented to learn multiple languages at their very early ages. Most children in rural India struggle with the grammar rules and in turn they start to hate the language itself. The trick is to make them learn spoken language first and then to turn to Grammar but not the other way around.

3. Mathematics: Maths is a very critical subject and children are very natural at it. However the astounding ability to learn the subject by the children is eclipsed by the incompetency of the teachers in turn to result that Maths is regarded as the most hated subject by a minimum of 1/3 of the all children. I think children should learn it through games. Classes 1-6 should only consist of a variety of games. All exercises should be again to play at home with other kids at neighborhood areas.