Article: Indian Express

'Make kids creative by changing the way they are taught'

Thu, Sep 30 05:52 AM

"If we want our children to be creative, there is an immediate need to change the way we are teaching them," said Kerala-based educationist K B Jinan. He was in the city recently to talk about why the present education system needs a paradigm shift to retain the creativity of children.

Jinan has been documenting the behaviour of children in rural as well as urban settings in places like Nagaland, Bihar, Orissa and now Kerala. He has been studying the differences in the behavourial patterns in these different settings and has reached the conclusion that teaching children through strictly structured curriculum makes a child lose his natural creative ability.

"I have interacted with children in the slums of Hyderabad and have found the astonishing fact that most of the children there can fluently speak at least four languages such as Kannada, Tamil, Telegu and Hindi. However, they do not have any teacher to teach languages. It is simply their ability to grasp what they are watching and hearing. It is such a cognitive process and there is so much of natural learning taking place here," said Jinan.

He said learning is a more biological realm whereas teaching is psychological, thus both the processes belong to two completely different paradigms. "We impose set rules on children, thereby disturbing their natural learning process. What I feel is children are more innocent, open and humble who do not know anything about the vices of that it is we who should learn from them," he said.

Jinan is an engineer and did a course from National Institute of Design (NID). He says his outlook towards education changed when he was at the NID. "NID is a place where students are not taught. They are just left to be and that is where they come up with the most amazing designs. You take responsibility for what you learn. You think, you read, with no external pressure. We need to have similar teaching processes for children. Our system needs flexibility."

Jinan also said since after parents, a child spends maximum time with teachers. "Children are being taught skills of reasoning and memory in schools, which are useful for analysing what is known. But what about the unknown? A child's creativity is getting killed with the old methods of teaching. The brain is getting used to static memorised information. What we need to do is to let them learn naturally. That is the only way how their creativity can be retained."

Trying out Layouts.

I was just having fun with the layout wanted it to be like a journal.

Having fun!!

Session 17+18: Combined classes!!

It was the first time that both class 4 and class 3 were together in our sessions. We were to work towards the performance now. The kids are extremely excited and enthusiastic about the performance. We have started taking longer sessions also. We divided them into groups of air water and earth and one group called humans, sticking with their earlier narrative idea. We got MUSIC and percussion in for the first time. The idea is that there is going to be no dialogue and the kids will make their own music. We also brought the other materials in that we have been working with in previous session like, newspaper, cloth, drawings. They are beginning to realise the importance of the past sessions and have started to combine all their leanings.
According to the element we divided the instruments. We asked them to choose what instrument would compliment their movement and feeling of their element. The school has a bunch of extremely unusual and interesting instruments that we are working with. One of the exercises we did in the beginning to get them comfortable with these instruments was conversing with themselves as an element group with no dialogue. Music being their words and expressions. If they wanted they could add a body movement to enhance their conversation they could feel free to do so. We also told them to fell free to pop up and give an opinion or an idea which comes to their minds. One keen idea they have is to draw on stage and to hang paper birds to build up the feeling of a forest.
Only the elements will have instruments, Humans will use their movements and voices to make music and express. Their bodies have become so comfortable to response and move freely. They are not inhibited or scared to say the strangest things because they know we will listen and they are "allowed" to voice out what they think in class. One thing that was amazing to see was how both the classes fed off each other without the discrimination of age or class. The kids enjoy themselves and love to play loud music and get over excited. They are not getting bored because there isn't a structure or a particular tune to what they are playing but the experiment and feed off each others instrument. Even int he middle of the performance they can exchange instruments if they like. There are no fixed instruments allotted to a child so every time they get new ones to play.
On the first day when we introduced music first we made them express with their bodies like the other session and then with music but we didn't ask them to moved. We asked them to freeze in a position of the element and play responding to each other. We told them there are no dialogues in this performance so if u have to say anything to each other either mime it or say it with your instrument. When you don't have your voice then your expression on your face and body language get enhanced because you are trying to convey what u mean in the best way possible so that another person understands. We depend on our voices a lot and when its taken away from us we explore other methods of expressing. The kids were so amazed to see that Beatrice and me could understand exactly what they mean.

Just Drawings!!!!

This exercise was done in their EVS class with their EVS teacher to highlight the difference in the child when you break out of the classroom mode and book learning. From their drawings, children came up with concepts that surprised the teacher. These were not talked about in class or taught to them. The children had a lot of fun doing this and they felt proud of their work. I wanted to highlight to the teacher the difference between the child when hes relaxed and enjoying himself and when he is in a formal environment like class and with books. It was a successful exercise, we will have an exhibition of the child's work by the end of this project.

Session 15: Class |V D

This session was great!! This was the first time i felt that the kids were free and responding well with body and sounds. They have begun to explore their space and levels and even body parts and movement and how each part of their body moves and expresses. We made them together do situations and comparisons between scenarios and locations. They adapted well to the change and the pace of the session and the understood the difference well which you could see in their movement. The are understanding the difference between freedom and rigidness of both expression and movement through the elements. After that we divided them into groups to come up with possible ideas keeping in mind all the sessions we have done and come up with an idea for what they want to present as a performance. It was a hard thing for them to do. Kids take time to adjust to things and i feel after so long they have become comfortable with their bodies and expressions because it depends on a lot of things, moods, weather, focus, fun. So making them come up with stories or narratives is a little tough because they are still stuck in the "moral mode," because they write like that in their classes and have been tough to do so, since they were younger. After the session we asked them how they felt and they said " When we were in the forest we felt free and fresh and in the city we felt cramped and heavy." We encourage then to think like an element, feel like and element rather than feeling like a human.
But in all there is a difference between the first day and today!!! Little difference but still-a difference!

:)

A girl from class 3C was very excited about her character Mrs Rosy. She wrote a story on her. You can read the story here:

"Mrs Rosy was a good person. She had seven friends. She always miss her friends. She always be happy. One day she was having a race with the sun. But the sun won. Next day she was very sad. She decided to race with Venus. Then also Venus won. Again she was sad. She was sad because she couldn't race fastly. Now, she went to the doctor. She told him all her story, he said "What you have is good." She didn't realise her mistake. Then also she was again sad. One day she was running so fastly then she fall. A lot of blood came.
Moral- We should be happy with what you have. "

Ideation

Session 13: Class |V D

The session with class 4 D was really similar to the one I did with class 3 C. We divided them into groups and asked them to come up with a story on the elements either using all the three or just one or two. They worked in teams. We realised that they suddenly became rigid in the exercise when the dialogue was brought in. Beatrice then made them do a freeing exercise. One thing i noticed is that all the stories had a moral to it. They were doing acts that they thought we wanted to see. I kept telling them to express rather than have a moral behind everything. It was extremely hard for them as they have been conditioned to have a moral behind everything since they were a child. Being able to express what they feel is a new concept to them and it is very hard to break out of a structure. This is one thing we need to work on!

User Research

I decided to give 10 parents and 10 teachers a questionnaire to gain insights about how children learn best and the differences in a child when he is playing as compared to when the child is in class.

Session 12 : Class ||| C

This was the first session I was conducting alone without Beatrice. I was extremely nervous. We had decided earlier to start moving these kids towards story and narrative building based on their characters.
We started the session by a sentence game each person had to say one word for the completion of the sentence related to the elements. "Once upon a time there was a good air, good water and good earth who lived together in a big house in a forest." This was the sentence the class came up with. We closed our eyes and then imagined a forest and a big house, and your element in the forest. They began to move.
It was interesting to see how they moved trying to be an element in a given space. They were trying to express the freedom of the elements. While they were moving i secretly choose two humans from the elements and just asked them "What happens to the elements and the forest when we humans come in?"
I left it open enough for them to move and create a situation. The humans started cutting down all the trees and polluting the air with smoke and throwing garbage in the water. The elements became angry.
I then put out another question to the elements, "What happens when air water and earth become angry?"
Like this we build a narrative. The air water and earth against the humans have a tiff and ultimately the two humans won destroying all the elements and the trees.

Then I changed the location from the forest to the city. "How are the elements different in the city as compared to the forest?"
They started acknowledging these questions and they started thinking differently. But in the city i made more humans and less elements. They clearly understood the difference between the two scenarios and acted accordingly. They really enjoyed being the humans!!!

Observation

In the school there is something called the DR(Discovery room), which is their practical lab. Through this lab they try and do hands on learning and field trips. One of the games they play is A journey to green land. This game is very simply put, its aim is to teach the child good deeds and bad deeds about the environment. You start at the stalk of the leaf and as you go if you fall on a good deed square you go forward 2 steps and if you fall on a bad deed square you go back two steps. This game requires a dice and a counter for each player.

The good deeds include: e.g:
- Played music on low volume.
- Collected rain water to wash your bicycle.
- Used slate and chalk to do home work.

The bad deeds include: e.g:
- You threw left over food.
- You burnt garbage.
- Plucked flowers.
- Wrote your name on a monument.
- Threw stones at a stray dog.