Our visit to the US gave my wife and me some insights into the education system over there and I want to share them with the readers.
It seems the schools in the US encourage latent talents of their students by providing a platform to show their potential. Students from different age groups are encouraged to hone their writing skills by submitting essays, exhibit their artistic inclinations by submitting their work. In these tasks, the school teacher and parents work as partners to ensure the child gets the support he or she needs including out-of -school help.
A regional jury then picks up the best from the short listed works by the school, honours them in public, awards the gold or silver keys to the winners and pick up those who are deserving of national recognition. The same procedure is followed at the national level. The idea clearly is to catch them young and provide them the context to flower. This is what the young need, encouragement and the right platform to excel. Many hidden seeds of talents remain just that, the seeds, because the right type of garden and the right type of manure are not provided to our youngsters. A good idea for our schools to kick off with.
What else do they do that we could learn from the US? You are a student who wants to go to a school or college but is not sure whether you have made the right choice.. You could taste the experience before you make up your mind. This, you could do, by applying to the school, living there in the boarding schools, interacting with others and the teachers, getting a feel of the place and then saying to yourself - Hey! this is exactly what I was looking for or no this model does not suit me. I thought it was a great idea instead of rotting through the years, having made a wrong choice. These happen in a country or academic institutions where the belief is this: The student is the very rationale of our institution's existence. That is the space the schools and the teachers occupy unlike here where we believe that by teaching children we are giving them a gift and they had better be grateful. It is a student centred education system.
Third and more importantly was the encouragement an inquisitive student receives. The spirit of inquiry is not dampened. Why this is so or not so is a normal issue.
When we visited some of the schools, we found that each student had a locker to keep his things in but these were lockless lockers. An honour code existed. Defaulters know that if the honour code was broken the entire peer group would have to bear the consequences.
They say there is nothing wrong with aping the best practices. In the corporate sector, we encourage aping the best. Our education system could benefit from these examples.
For any change to take place, you need just the critical mass through some schools starting some of these practices and soon it becomes an idea for which schools will begin to compete.
