Teaching – content v/s methodology ?

Going by the comments on my earlier post on education standards, I have some more thoughts : where we seem to getting it right is in content. And where we are goofing up is in teaching methodology….

I used to see kids in UK schools being encouraged to draw and paint and write stories at an age where children in India were being taught multiple fractions… Will those kids grow up to be creative thinkers but poor spellers ? And in that case, can it be said that their education system was good for them ?

While kids in India grow up with their ‘fundas’ strong, they also grow up in to a strait-laced, low creative thinking mode…..

What we teach in schools must be good stuff….. going by the way people who have schooled in India tend to do well in the West, even when compared to their peers there….. Sure, we learn from an ‘inside the box’ format, but along the way, we also learn to be inquisitive, efficient and creative…..

Satya has posted an article from The Tribune on how conventional schooling stifles curiousity….

While I agree with this, I am not so sure if we are not making much ado about nothing….. Story telling and painting, even mimickry and buffooning (as the article suggests) is all fine, but we need to think about it practically…. This is a country with an acute shortage of trained teachers….. Where more than 75% of all teachers in rural areas provide multi-grade teaching, which means that they are handling more than one (and sometimes as many as 3-4) classes at the same time…. with an average of seventy students in each class…..

Given this, I should think that our current methodology is doing very well….

Also if we agree with the reasoning that conventional methodology stifles curiousity and motivation, we need to think : is the reverse true then? Does unconventional teaching kindle curiousity by default ? Do kids in the West come with high motivation levels to learn merely because they have a lot more fun in school ? I am not so sure…..

While we certainly need to think of ways to make learning more fun and joyful for children, I think it is time we stopped our favourite sport of teacher-bashing…..