The Teacher and the Parent

INTRODUCTION

It is very rarely that the teacher in India knows the parents of his pupils. Even when he knows them, it is very rarely that he takes up the problems of his pupils for discussion with them. Still it cannot be denied that mutual understanding and cooperation between the teacher and the parent can go a long way in helping education in schools and developing the personality of the pupil. The teacher has his own view of the child in his care. The child is one of so many students in a class. But to the parent the child is a part of his own self, his future hope. Both these views are partial and one-sided and to some extent blurred. It is only when there is cooperation between the parent and the teacher that the education and development of the child can be understood in their correct perspective.

While in many advanced countries the home and the school are getting closer together and inter-acting for the benefit of children, here in our country no serious attempt has so far been made to get the home and the school influence each other for the advantage of the child. The school and the home in India are separate worlds in themselves. In some cases, however, the teacher is employed by the parents as private tutor for their children. But this does not result in active parent-teacher cooperation. The private tutor is regarded as an appendage, as a part of the staff employed by the home.

The chances of parent-teacher cooperation in the education of children in the hundreds of thousands of elementary and secondary schools in our villages and towns are very slight mainly because of economic factors and the general backwardness of our people. In an overwhelming majority of our schools children receive their education mechanically and regard school-going as part of an established routine, the purpose of which they are unaware. The parent, on the other hand, hardly makes his influence felt in the education of the child. If, however, there is a rare case of a parent trying to take interest in the education of his child and finding out what goes on in the school, the help that he gets from the school is very little.

In the changed circumstances of today, when the character of education has undergone great transformation, parent-teacher cooperation has become essential. Time was when the home itself was the school and the parents and relations of the child were the teachers. In ancient India, on the contrary, the Gurukula was the home of the student. Later on when education became more broad-based, the home and the school became separate entities with very little in common between them. The content of education that was imparted was the be-all and end-all of everything and parents could either take it or leave it. They had no say in the education of the child. All that was aimed at was the gaining of the matriculation certificate by the pupil.

Attempts are now being made to make education more and more child-centred. It has been accepted on all hands that an education which does not encourage the individuality of the child and its development into a well-integrated person is not worth its name. Co-curricular activities, physical education and training in leadership have begun to assume greater importance than mere book-learning. Besides, both parents and teachers have recognised the need to suit instruction to the varied abilities and aptitudes of the children in their charge.

Parents have come to realise in an increasing measure that education is something more than the passing of examinations. Society has become more and more complex. Political emancipation and growing industrialisation have thrown open avenues for leadership and employment. Viewed in this context, the important role that the Indian teacher has to play in society cannot be over-estimated. It is only in very selected schools that he comes across parents who understand the significance and importance of parent-teacher cooperation.

The average Indian parent is yet to realise fully the value of parent-teacher consultations in-the education of the child.
It is in the hands of the teachers to bring the parent round and enlist his active cooperation. In the following pages an attempt is made to explain how the teacher can fulfi his role in this sacred undertaking.

Chapter 1 SCHOOLS AS PARENTS SEE THEM

It is common experience that childhood memories are long-lasting. It would be strange indeed if they did not colour the parent’s approach to those who teach their children. Parents, however successful materially and prominent socially, adopt, in the main, a defensive attitude when they face their children’s teacher. This is not merely true of parents who in their days had been only average students. Even those parents who habitually take pride in their past achievements at school, put on, when they face the teachers of their children, an air of faint aggressiveness, easily detectable as springing from a sense of being on trial. They tend to be over-critical of schools and teachers, which widens the gulf that already exists between the home and the school.

The initiative in bridging this gulf rests with the teacher. He has, so to speak, to break the ice. To do so he has to be understanding; he has to realise that parents see themselves in their children. The teacher has to reassure them and win their confidence. He should be objective, sympathetic and discerning. He should make the school attractive to the child and open the eyes of the parents to the fact that his school has an air of freedom and freshness, which in their own school days they did not experience. If the school is made an interesting place for the child and the teacher adopts the right approach, diffident or defensive or over-critical parents can be brought round to take an active interest in the school in which their children are taught and pay. due heed to the person who teaches them. It is important for the child’s growth that a harmonious relationship is established between its school and its parents, the two component factors that largely determine the character of its world.

It is common experience of teachers that when parents visit schools, one of the oft-heard remarks is that things were very different in their days. Spelling and handwriting and recitation were more conscientiously insisted upon. History and geography were taught with greater precision. In short, what they convey is not very complimentary to the school in which their child is receiving instruction. Normally, the teacher’s reply is not effective; he uses terms like co-curricular activities, progressive education, child-centred teaching, vocational bias, creative expression and so on. All these mean nothing in the absence of a mutual psychological appreciation on the part of the parent and the teacher.

Much of the present dissatisfaction of parents in regard to schools and the reaction of despair in the mind of the teacher can disappear if the teacher, aware of the parent’s picture of the school, tries to change it and paint a new and a truer one in its place. What is happening in our country in the field of education, as in all other fields of national effort, is that both qualitatively and quantitatively, the character of the institutions is changing rapidly.
It is evident that Basic schools, secondary schools, polytechnics and colleges in our country are growing in number with a large intake of students. They are also changing in character and in the objectives they place before themselves. These changes are not, by any means, unwelcome to parents.

On the contrary they are glad, and their reaction is an increased anxiety that their children should benefit in an ever-increasing measure from these changes. It has been the experience of most teachers in the last few years that more parents insist on their children getting technical rather than academic training. Parents wait anxiously to be toid that their children have been chosen for science courses rather than for studies in arts, and the children chosen for the latter very often consider themselves relegated to an inferior intellectual status.

The increasing prominence given to science subjects is a measure of the great change that is taking place in our social outlook. Both parents and teachers understand and recognise the growing importance of Science subjects as natural and inevitable in the circumstances of today. Parents are interested in getting their children admitted to courses in technical studies but they do not concern themselves-and here is the point-with the methods by which instruction is imparted The teacher should take it upon himself to apprise the parent of the content of the courses, the method by which the subjects are taught, the facilities at the disposal of his school, and the potentialities and fitness of the pupils in his charge. He has to convince the parent that the school has the atmosphere and the apparatus to enable him to give the child an all-round instruction, make his life at school a profitable period, and fit him for life after school in the context of the social objectives of the day. He has to make the parent a partner in the adventure which is what educating a growing child is, particularly in these times of change and social progress.

The Indian teacher has it in him to effect a transformation in the attitude of parent to the school. With all the disadvantages he suffers from-and these are not peculiar to this country, and one hopes they will decrease until they cease to be-he has sincerity of purpose and willingness to work.
Therefore, he is more than qualified to address himself to the task of ensuring parent-teacher cooperation.

The amount of such cooperation will vary from institution to institution, school to school, depending upon the peculiar conditions of each institution or school. Whatever the conditions, it is absolutely essential that parents and teachers should find opportunities of meeting each other.
They should meet with a desire to understand each other, to obtain a proper appraisal of each other’s problems and to thrash out ways and means of countering them in a manner that will be salutary for the growth of the child in their care. When the parent sees in the teacher a true guiding spirit intent on drawing out the best in the child notwithstanding the inadequacies that beset his task, his attitude becomes friendly. He sets great store by the contact between such a teacher and the child and the benefits that will accrue by the former’s influence on the mind of the child. It is a worthwhile task, an important pre-requisite to the education of the child, which the Indian teacher is fully competent to perform. The move should come from him.

 

CHAPTER 2 WHAT PARENTS OUGHT TO KNOW

In such Indian schools where parent-teacher cooperation is practicable, the obsession with the immediate and mechanical academic achievement of the student very often bedevils the relationship between parents and teachers. Here the teacher is less responsible than the parents. Schools which can afford the luxury of some kind of individual attention to each student are usually patronised by parents belonging to the more fortunate classes of society. Parents who send their children to such schools can, if they make an effort, understand that social and economic conditions in the country
are so shaping that leadership in professions, success in industrial management or in the administration of institutions will not hereafter depend so exclusively, as they have done so far, on the narrow mechanical achievements at examinations. In proportion to their capacity for such understanding, the demands of parents on the teachers will change.

The teacher can do very little in creating this understanding. It can be created only by those people who are at the helm, who shape the economic and social policies of the country. It is their task to explain to the public as often and as clearly as possible that the value of education in the future will be judged more and more by the kind of citizens it helps to produce. Education should help to create socially useful men and women, alive to their social responsibilities in a Welfare State. This would mean that in order to be a useful citizen in the context of today a person should be both a specialist in some branch of knowledge and at the same time possess a wide general knowledge and strength of character. If this is impressed upon parents by leaders of thought and action, parents will be able to understand what teachers are up against and what is in the interest of their own children.

Understanding of the social factors will have the way for parent-teacher cooperation. Parents should at least have some idea about what learning stands for. There have been many divergent and conflicting views on learning. According to one school of pedagogy, learning is the development of the capacity in the child to respond in the most advantageous manner to the given stimuli. This school of thought assumes that the capacity in the child to respond can be most effectively developed if the act of response gives a sense of satisfaction. There is another school of thought which holds-mainly among those who are experts on education-that learning depends a great deal on the environment of the learner. They hold that whatever is taught to the child should be related to its environment.

 

The idea is that a child will perceive quicker and make the knowledge that it obtains its own if what is taught has intimate relationship with the actual living conditions that surround it. If competitive habits are to be learnt, the student must be placed in such a group that he feels he also has a chance to win. There is another concept which lays importance on motivation in the learner. The desire to excel is inherent in every individual. This desire for distinction should be promoted, as frustration of this desire will result in the withering away of learning. At the same time too easy satisfaction of any desire is likely to kill initiative.

All these concepts have elements of fundamental truths in them. In the final analysis the worth of all these concepts lies in their practical application. The teacher in the course of his professional training becomes familiar with these concepts and if he is loyal to his vocation and tries to do his best to provide such situations and offer such encouragement as will result in the drawing out of the will to learn from the students in his charge, he will have done his job. But he has certain limitations. He is not the master of the entire time and environment of his students. The real master of the student’s time and environment is the parent. The parent will be able to influence, the capacity of his child to respond to stimuli, to use his environment and to exercise initiative only if he is familiar with the fundamental truths about learning. This is not to say that the parent also should be a teacher in the strictly technical sense of the term.

In any case, very few parents have the time to usurp, so to speak, the functions of the professional teacher. What is important is the parent should be aware and confident that he can get advice from the teacher in regard to how best he can arrange the home for the maximum advantage of the child. He can help from the home side in establishing a harmonious relationship between the child’s home life and its life at school. Thus begins parent-teacher cooperation. The most that the teacher can do here in so far as parents are concerned is to be ready to otter advice. Beyond that he will naturally be wary. It is a delicate matter for him. Even to offer advice sometimes is not easy. But it is clear that if the education of the child is to be worthwhile at all, parents should be knowledgeable and understanding and teachers devoted to their work and their charge.

 

Parents’ Notions of Intelligence

Parents form their own notions about the intelligence of their children. Very often we hear parents referring to one of their children as the ‘dud of the family’. ‘Intelligence quotient’ and the letters ‘I.Q.’, though not properly understood have gained common currency in our day. Teachers too use these terms loosely, in place and out of place. “Lacking in intelligence” and “an intelligent student” are stock remarks that teachers write on the progress cards. Let us now attempt to find out what “intelligence” really and truly connotes.

We know only too well that the property termed as intelligence cannot be separated from the child for a correct definition. It is an all-inclusive word, denoting ability, capacity, power and adaptability. A recent definition of intelligence is that it is the ability to undertake activities that are characterised by difficulty, complexity, abstractness, economy, adaptiveness to a goal, social value and the emergence of originals, and to maintain such activities under conditions that demand concentration of energy and a resistance to emotional forces.

The above definition by George D. Stoddard in his book, “The Meaning of Intelligence”, should help both parents and teachers not to use the word so lightly as they do it today.

Both heredity and environment play prominent roles in the acquiring of intelligence. To a large extent, intelligence is an inherited capacity. Through this capacity, it is possible for one to adapt oneself to a suitable environment. In schools, we are more concerned with the role that environment has to play in the possibility of increasing a child’s intelligence. It is environment that provides opportunity and stimulus for
inherited intelligence to develop and function. Both the home and the school do provide such environments. The intelligence of the parents, the intelligence of the teachers, the economic status of the home and of the school, the educational levels of parents and teachers, and situations of the home and the school, all contribute to the environment of the child.

The remark that a particular child has a low I.Q. means almost nothing and it might also mean that the person making the remark is incapable of providing an intelligent environment. The questions whether heredity or environment is the major factor in intelligence remains
as yet unanswered. Parents can justifiably claim that it is environment and teachers will have ample justification too to argue that the child is not intelligent because that is not its family trait. Such a state of affairs can only damage parent-teacher cooperation. So, it is best to believe that intelligence is the product of heredity and environment, each making equal and significant contributions.

As teachers it is our duty to work towards increasing the effective intelligence of the children placed under our care, and this we can do only if we place before them, and surround them with the best possible environmental stimulation. Such conditions, if provided, help also in building up the personality of the children and their emotional stability. Parents should particularly note how the school environment helps to motivate a richer vocabulary, and more correct understanding. If such motivation is not provided, we teachers and our schools are guilty of wasting childhood, and we shall be failing in a sacred social duty.

CHAPTER 3 PARENTS AND CHILDREN

The basis on which parent-teacher relationship should be promoted and the gulf between the home and the school should be bridged is the bond of love which unites parents and children.

Parental love can fill the teacher with confidence in his attempts at cooperation. The teacher knows in advance that the help that he is seeking is only in the interests of the object of the parent’s love. Only in rare cases, parental response will not be forthcoming. The parent cannot but be interested in the teacher who, in turn, is interested in the child. Many of us who see boys and girls in classrooms are not generally conscious of the bond between them and their parents. Each student has his parents at home and incidents that happen at school, trivial or important, get reported at home. If what they hear from their children about their doings at school convinces them that the school has attractions for their chil-dren, they will take some friendly interest in the school. To many of us a student is just a student. The fact that behind the student are his parents who toil for his welfare escapes us.

It is indeed very easy for a teacher to score away a whole line in a student’s notebook with red ink and finally award two marks out of ten for the work done. The teacher might feel irritated at the lack of intelligence shown by the student, but the matter should not end here. He should try and know the sort of home the student comes from, the influences that surround him outside his school. The teacher’s progress reports should not be a routine statement which points out just the bare facts of the student’s performance in a particular paper in an examination. While marks should be given and recorded, the progress report should be based on an observation of the student’s home life, his surroundings, his ability in class and should indicate in what way he has progressed or failed and what he requires if he is to show progress.

It is not selfishness on the part of a parent to want the very best for his child. So teachers who want to break the barrier and bring the home into the school should appreciate the love that binds parents to their children and shape their attitude accordingly. The average parent in India, rich or poor, big or small, is keen to know from the child about happenings in the school. It may be that there are some parents, utterly and selfishly, engrossed in themselves. The large majority are keen to know. how their children are getting on at school, during their most formative years. Though most parents are amateurs in educational methods, they know much more of their own children than we teachers do. We teachers know of their children only as students.

A teacher forms a very good opinion of a class, and it is quite possible that another teacher handling a different subject has a very different opinion of the same class. It may be that teachers have their own opinions about the various students in the same class. But parent’s knowledge of their children as individuals will be far more accurate and dependable than even that of the best teacher. While the teacher can study only one phase of a child’s development, the parent has intimate knowledge of its past life, its likes and dislikes and its innate abilities.

Though the parent alone is in possession of all these details regarding his child, it does not at all mean that he or she alone is the ideal teacher for the child. In many cases we come across parents who do not live up to their responsibilities. Parenthood alone cannot confer on them the rights which they may claim for themselves. There are as many different and difficult types of parents as there are adults in this world. This fast, the teacher has specially to bear in mind in his task of helping the student with the cooperation of his parents.

Students cannot do well in a class if the teacher does not understand them well. Many children are backward in certain subjects due mainly to the fact that the teacher has failed to understand them and their difficulties. The same is the case with parents. The teacher will naturally find it more difficult to understand the parents and their difficulties. The child is young and can be changed, but the adult parent has set convictions.

Once some kind of understanding is established between the teacher and the parent, it becomes simpler for both to discuss the education of the child. Parents should be apprised of the changes that have taken place in educational outlook. Parents should know that ideas on child-care and home management, on elementary and secondary education have undergone a great transformation. Several theories have been welcomed and dismissed like, for instance, Rousseau’s Emile, theories on faculty psychology and the doctrine of formal discipline. All these changes have bewildered the parent and put him at a great disadvantage. Besides, when teachers fail in their task at school, the fashion is to lay the blame on the home without making any attempt to fuse the home and the school. This situation has made even cooperative parents wonder from time to time whether they are doing the right thing for their children. Well-intentioned parents in a state of doubt about their children’s education should be enabled to have experienced advice from responsible teachers.

Parents as Rulers and Inspirers

Of late, as we have seen before, education in India is becoming increasingly child-centred. The first vision of the child is the vision of its parents. Indeed, there are many pro verbs to the effect that parents are the earliest visible manifestations of God. But as the child grows, parents become absolute rulers of the child. There is no doubt that parental control is necessary for a growing child, but the intelligent parent allows free scope for the child’s individuality and growing personality. No rigid rule-of-thumb can be set down as to what extent parents can go in punishing an erring child.
But if there is coordination between the child’s school life and home life, the necessary guidance in the matter of meeting out the correct treatment to the growing child will be available to the parents.

Here we are really up against a problem. There have been many views on the merits and demerits of parental authority. Pestalozzi, for instance, was not very certain where he was to draw the line between freedom and obedience in the education of his own son. This problem of division is not confined to parents alone. It is a problem relating to human life itself and educators both at home and at school have to give it due weight. Much depends on the one hand on the particular child one is dealing with, and on the other on the ability of the teacher and the parent to judge objectively and determine the extent to which they could exercise authority and encourage liberty. There are parents who are natural tyrants and there are also parents who are naturally easy-going.

However, the modern parent will not, it is certain, agree with Rousseau who had this to say of his Emile: “Speak to him of duty, of obedience, he makes nothing of what you say; command him in anything, he will take no notice; but say to him ‘if you will oblige me in this, I will return the favour some other time’, he will immediately hasten to do as you ask, for he likes nothing better than to extend his domination and to acquire rights over you which he knows you will esteem as sacred.” If there be a parent who puts this into practice, he will come in for universal criticism of having utterly spoiled his child. How far then can we accept the suggestion that interference and authority are unwholesome for the child’s developing personality and as such are to be avoided? How far can an average parent go in making everything agreeable to the child? The intelligent parent, in his role as an educator, does, sooner or later, come to understand that if the family atmosphere is one of affectionate trust, all types of control tend to soften themselves into friendly suggestions and children readily respond to them. If care is taken to train the child to proper obedience, to shape its impulses to healthy reactions, duty will become something pleasant to perform. The mixture of parental authority and the child’s liberty should be judicious. This problem that parents face in particular has to be appreciated with discernment and sympathy by the teacher.

The teacher should not scoff at the parent when he puts on an air of authority. The parent knows all about the school from the child which has given the picture as it sees it. The teacher’s feelings about the child and the school should also be made known to the parent. This only the teacher can do. If the parent is in full possession of the facts about the school, both from the point of view of his child and the point of view of the teacher, he will be in a position to cooperate better with the teacher. If there is lack of harmony between what the child is taught at school and the experiences it has in the home, the sufferer will be the child and both the parent and the teacher will have abdicated their duties.

In setting up standards for discipline both the parent and the teacher have a great part to play and they cannot fulfil their role if they part ways and go in opposite directions.

CHAPTER 4 TOWARDS BETTER UNDERSTANDING

Parent-teacher cooperation is based on a, bilateral understanding of a triangular relationship. The parties concerned are the parent, the teacher and the child. The understanding has to centre round the growing personality of the child. It is wrong to assume that the child has no inner conflicts. The youngster at school has deep feelings about many matters. It is dangerous to take a casual view of these feelings. It is the duty of the parent and the teacher to view the feelings of the child discerningly, grasp the emotional upheavals in its mind and help the child in its troubles. If parent-teacher cooperation has to be of value to the child, it is very essential to find out what the child thinks of itself. This may prove to be a difficult task because the child may not be in a position to give cogent expression to its innermost thoughts and feelings.

But an intelligent diagnosis will reveal the psychology of the child. Once the psychological condition of the child is grasp-ed, an intelligent teacher or parent can mould the child on the basis of his understanding. The necessary encouragement or corrective can be given so that the child is able to grow.
A peep into the child’s world will show its thoughts about school, its thoughts about home, its thoughts about teachers and its thoughts about parents, among many other things.

Normally the child thinks very highly of its parents and tries to imitate them in all possible ways. A stage follows when the child begins to criticise parental actions. In between there are also occasions when parents create feelings of irritation, anger and resentment in children. The child is not in a position to know what is good for its growth and what is harmful. Then there is the school about which child has its opinions. It compares conditions at school with the conditions at home. It compares its own home with the home of a class-mate. The ever-widening circle of friends gives rise to social problems and the relative affluence or poverty of its companions, their energies and failings, their ability at school or their backwardness, all these factors influence the child’s mind. The teacher in the course of his instruction should be aware of these factors and in his guidance should take care to give the place of honour to the child’s own home.

Not the least important is the teacher’s attitude to the child’s attitude to him. It should be a matter of great interest to him to know what the child thinks of him and in the event of the child having a bad opinion of him or harbouring some feelings of ill-will towards him, he should try and set the matter right. Nothing is too trivial and if the teacher slurs over these factors thinking that they are of no consequence, it is the child who will suffer. The teacher himself should be on his guard as to how he behaves in the presence of his students.

He may make a casual remark, which the child may take to heart and form, on the basis of that remark, a coloured view of the teacher. It is true that the teacher has to regard the class as a unit and not attach any over importance to any particular individual; but to the extent that each child under his care should receive the fullest benefit of his instruction, it is essential that he should have the growth of each child in mind when he takes the whole class with him. He should have a gift of sympathy and without this sympathy his influence on the growing child will be practically nil and his capacity for cooperation with the parent negligible.

There are different types of parents, although one may say that the average parent in the country is generally a very-accommodating man. But whether a parent is accommodating or otherwise, he still likes some individual attention to be paid to his child. This is natural and the teacher who retorts that he has other children to look after also does not adopt the correct approach. He should expect parents to say that individual attention should be given to their children and point out to them that if his individual attention is to be of any value, parents also should lend a hand and supplement his own efforts. Given that the teacher has the requisite personality and the ability to bring home to the children their responsibility, there will be no difficulty at all in obtaining the cooperation of a majority of parents.

It may be said that in the matter of parent-teacher cooperation extra burden is laid on the teacher as if the teacher does not have his own problems. Economically, professionally and socially, he encounters problems. Besides, even if he is willing not to let these problems worry him unduly and visit parents in their homes with the intention of giving his best attention to the children under his care, things are not too simple for him. It is very likely that the parents in question will take the view that the teacher is angling for some private tuition. On top of all these problems, the periods of teaching work he needs must do, the frightening quantity of correction work to be completed, and the absence of sympathetic understanding on the part of authorities, all these do not make the teacher’s position very enviable.

But conditions are fast changing and the teacher in India is bound to receive better recognition in the years to come. Society is already giving him a nook in its corner. Class-teaching is gradually receding into background as better textbooks and other means of effective teaching and learning are taking the field. The teacher, instead of being the old pedagogue, has begun to assume the role of a director of studies.

For the good of their own children, it is imperative that parents should be aware of this situation. They should view the changes that are now being brought about with hope, and cooperate with the teachers instead of taking up cudgels against them and subjecting the schools to unconstructive
condemnation.

CHAPTER 5 DIVISION OF LABOUR

There is no doubt that in parent-teacher cooperation there is plenty of room for discussion. The discussion should bring out the individual characteristics of the children in a class. Individual differences as in the case of intelligence are the results of heredity and environment. When the teacher takes heredity into consideration, he should be on his guard, for children may be either better or worse than either of the parents, and children of the same parents may vary in their capacities. Instances of an elder brother faring very poorly in a class and the younger one distinguishing himself are very common and teachers have experience of this phenomenon.

Coming to the individual child himself, he may be very good, say, in mathematics, while he may not have the skill to write even a simple composition in English. How far do environments affect individual difference? It is quite possible that children coming from affluent homes are more intelligent than those from poor homes. Very often it is contradicted by the fact that the poor students do much better work through added motivation. If parents are brought together and are made to understand the differences among themselves and the conditions prevailing in their different homes, the resultant comprehension of the situation in so far as individual children are concerned, will lead to beneficial results.

It only conditions were ideal, our classes should not be divided as they are divided now according to differences in age. Individual differences in achievement should be the criterion and classes should be divided into bright, average and backward pupils. In the matter of individual instruction in accordance with. the varied abilities of each pupil, the home has a lot to contribute. The work done at school should be related to the guidance given at home, and the child’s programme both at school and at home should interact and be regulated. Parents. are capable of realising the difficulties that teachers have to face as a result of individual differences in children, if these differences are correctly brought to their attention. Students. who have exceptional ability and show special aptitudes can be encouraged to proceed farther than the limited syllabus of the particular class to which they belong. The slow progress. of the rest of the class need not in any marked degree stultify them. In the same way children who are slow to make progress, in spite of being condemned as dullards, can be, with patience on the part of the teacher and understanding on the part of the parents, rehabilitated till they become confident.

These are the days of planned production and planning for plenty. We have come to realise that there is no work, however stupendous or intricate, that cannot be divided according to a plan. In schools where the aim is to afford opportunities for the pupils to develop a wholesome personality,. the task of education is divided among various teachers who-each in his own way conforming, of course, to a general set pattern-teach various subjects.

The subjects taught, though they may have come to us from the trivium and quadrivium: prescribed by the Greeks of old, do even now have functions. other than their mere content. But the fact remains that as. years advance both teachers and parents tend to belittle the doctrine of formal discipline and greater and ever greater emphasis is being laid on the content. No doubt, we do pay lip-service to the formation of character and discipline. Such an unhealthy trend should not be allowed to continue un-checked. Teachers of languages, arithmetic, science, social studies and art now-a-days undertake to educate children, and such a division of labour, rather than competing with each other, is helping to achieve harmony in the child. When such a division of labour is already in existence, the parent too can be brought into it.

A great educationist once said that the family was like a burning glass which concentrated human sympathies on a point, which was the child. The love of the family stands for human sympathy, and to everyone who comes across it, the budding nature of a child is a matter of deep and tender interest. Parental sympathy and love are the very seeds of morality and among those related by blood, in the narrow circle of family life, due to common aims, common hope and common fears, there springs up a unity and sympathy, based upon affection. In well-regulated families, the individuality of a child finds room for play; but where family life is dis-harmonious, it leaves evil effects on the child. The attitude and outlook of the family, its sense of values-these shape the mental world of the child.

When a family gets a child, the State gets a citizen., The birth of a child, therefore, marks the beginning of parental responsibility as well as the responsibility of the teacher on whom will fall the lot of educating the child. In cases where parental responsibilities have been neglected and as a consequence the child pays the price by developing into an antisocial being, the society does not deny the right of the State to sentence the child to a term in a Borstal school. The conclusion, therefore, is inescapable that mere schooling alone is mot education. The home is the real educator. Schools should open home fronts, in them and parents must be induced, if not compelled, to shoulder their responsibilities as co-educators.

CHAPTER 6 INTERVIEWING PARENTS

To the average teacher, the parent is not generally a very attractive person. The parent’s function, to many a teacher, is to harass the schoolmaster by various means. This is due to the fact that this type of teacher is an isolated person who-does not see even his own headmaster, or meet any of his. colleagues and is unable, in any case, to see himself as a parent. He forgets too that the trustees running the school, the local authority in charge of the school and the inspectorate under which the school functions, are all made up of parents. If parent-teacher cooperation is insisted upon, this type of teacher will necessarily have to alter his views and bring himself into constant touch with the parents of the children who are in his care.
While we stress the importance of the influence of the home in the bringing up of the child, we have got to be careful at the same time about attributing undue importance to it. There are bound to be certain homes where such desirable factors as can help the child’s growth may be totally absent, in which case it becomes the teacher’s duty to devise methods on his own and protect his pupils from harm. There are pupils who are naturally anti-social in their behaviour.

Then there are children who are good at studies and in their general behaviour, but have a congenital knack for flouting authority. The teacher, when he comes across these situations, must be prepared to contend with unfavourable home environments. The task is not easy. Nay, it is beset with great difficulties. There have been instances of young, idealistic but inexperienced teachers-whose motives in reforming then pupils cannot be questioned-having unsatisfactory interviews with the parents and frustrated in their attempts, give up the teaching profession altogether. To cite a recent experience, a boy of 14 was suspected of stealing a fountain pen in the class.

His teacher, anxious not to give too much publicity to the incident, went straight to the parent to apprise him of his strong suspicion of the child’s guilt, thereby ignoring the normal practice of bringing the incident to the attention of the headmaster. The parent’s reaction was one of indignation. He was offensive to the teacher, who felt humiliated and made an announcement in the class that he had decided to fast for three days in order to purify the mind of the boy who had stolen the pen. Five minutes later the guilty boy admitted that he had stolen the pen and proceeded forthwith to produce it from his pocket. When this reached the ears of the parent in question, he asserted that his boy had been bamboozled and coerced to do what he did.

To mention another incident, an eleven-year old student, was observed to be in the habit of skipping his classes in the afternoons. The popular belief was that he was frequently to be seen at a nearby cinema. Twice he was punished in the class, with extra detentions, but to no effect. Whenever asked for an explanation, he pleaded indisposition. The matter was brought to the attention of the boy’s parent. Here again the reaction of the parent was not helpful. In fact, the parent upheld his boy’s interest in films and quoted from his own life as a student. He said that he had become a prosperous business man because in his life, as a student, he had realised that there was no point in being a goody-goody boy and had taken upon himself to acquire a thorough knowledge of the world. So it came as no surprise to him that his son had also followed his steps. The teacher who had gone to report was dumb-founded and returned to the school tongue-tied.

A teacher knows only too well that he cannot understand a child’s action until he comes to know the causes behind it.
In the same way while dealing with parents the teacher ought to try and find out the root causes of their reaction to them.
Considerable patience and tact is required on the part of the teacher. He should not mind facing a rebuff or two.

It should also be understood that parents do not necessarily resent the teacher’s good intentions. But whatever be the failings of their children, they are apt to blame someone else for them. This is not unpardonable and is indeed so common that blaming someone else for any unsatisfactory state of affairs covers other aspects of day-to-day life as well, so much so that it will not be possible for the teacher to resolve emotional tensions in a very short time. But the teacher should be able to suggest several practical remedies and capture the understanding attention of the parents.

There is yet another type of parent who neither resents the interference of the teacher nor lays the blame on others for his child’s failings, but simply promises to do whatever necessary himself. He will even express his gratitude to the teacher for his timely intercession-but there his cooperation will end. In such cases the parent’s reluctance to take the proferred help of the teacher is usually due to two possible states.

One is that the parent has already gained experience in dealing with his child’s problems in the home itself and secondly it may be his defence mechanism asserting itself and impelling him not to feel obliged to another person. In this situation, if the teacher is in possession of a thorough analysis of the child’s behaviour and its complexes and difficulties, he will be able to provide opportunities for the parent also to obtain a true insight into the working of the child’s mind.

To sum up, in parent-teacher cooperation, the teacher should bear in mind the following:-

  1. Realisation and understanding of the parent’s point of view. This entails an insight into the conditions prevailing in the home and the parent’s behaviour.
  2. A thorough study of the child’s problems and its abilities and individual differences.
  3. When such necessity arises, the teacher’s willingness and ability to guide the parent and help him emotionally to overcome his sense of inadequacy that has been the result of a series of failures.

To enable such conditions to prevail, there should be many committees of teachers functioning under the guidance of the headmaster or the principal, so that some of the predominant behaviour problems of students may be discussed and solved. Each school should have a set programme of group discussion among parents and at the same time have facilities for individual counselling. Finally, if teachers make available their special abilities and resources ungrudgingly so that the community can utilise them to enhance the personalities not only of the students but also of the parents, then the basic needs of true education can be met and the reward gained in the noble endeavour will be the growth of wholesome personality in children.

CHAPTER 7 PARENTS’ EXPECTATIONS

The average parent in India pays fees for his children and expects the teacher to do the rest. Very often he grumbles that he is not getting his money’s worth. He has only himself to blame, for the remedy lies in his own hands. It is his duty to his children that he should have some idea of the happenings in the school. He can be, if only he would care to be, the most respected inspecting authority.

Idealism and theories apart, the parent wants that his child should be able to make a comfortable living. When the parent expresses such an aim, which the teacher may consider to be purely utilitarian, there is bound to be a conflict. It is up to the teacher not to be led away by doctrinaire and professional educational philosophy.

If a parent is asked why he does not actively participate in discussions on school curriculum and methods of teaching, his answer is that he finds that teachers are not free agents, and that they are the slaves of time-tables and syllabus imposed upon them by some unknown authority. But today progressive schools, and particularly our Basic schools, do have latitude enough for teachers to show their initiative, and this should be brought to the notice of parents, and to some extent, parents’ wishes and suggestions will have to be put into prac-tice. Modern methods in education do enable us to fit in the parents’ requirements concerning utility.

Many parents now believe that education at the Secondary level, that is, after the children have mastered their “three R’s”, is generally inclined to be chaotic. And they know too that they are finally responsible for the later careers of their sons. The advice of teachers at this stage is most likely to be idealistic. At such a juncture, it is not at all difficult to understand why parents tend to consider a teacher’s expert advice to be anything but merely formal, for the parent is anxious about the utilitarian aspect of education.

In this connection, we cannot but recognise a fact. In the various types of schools in India, and particularly in the field of Elementary and State-aided Secondary education, the curricula and methods of teaching are drawn up by people of high academic experience, who unfortunately are not in touch with the common people. The only remedy for such a state of affairs is for the common people, through their spokesmen, the parents, to make their voice heard and this can be done if every school has a Home Front functioning actively in it. Perhaps it is a fact, and a genuine fact too, that many parents fail to get what they have a right to expect from our present sys. tem of Secondary education. We, teachers, have every justification to claim that such a state of affairs is not entirely our fault. Except perhaps in some progressive schools, our hands are tied by too rigid and regimented a system. The parent has every right to protest that efficiency has suffered due to various experiments in education that have been and are being conducted in recent years. There again, rather than protesting from far away, he should make his voice felt inside the citadel, inside the school. Protestations can be most effective, if there is active and purposive parent-teacher cooperation.

Perhaps parents whom we have to deal with cannot be expected to play their role so effectively in the larger context.
Let us meet them, fully realising their status as co-educators when they approach us on minor details. The majority of them are invariably worried about the poor progress recorded by their children at studies. Such parental visits will go a long way in teachers giving greater personal attention to children needing it, and in imbuing a greater sense of self-confidence in the children.

Parents visit schools with the complaint that children are loaded with such an amount of home work that they feel every vestige of initiative in the young ones is knocked out or irreparably damaged. They claim, and sometimes very logically too, that five or six hours at school should be made to devote to books, and at home scope should be found for them to prosecute interests that the children have adopted as hob-bies. Such parents usually are affluent and the children concerned are invariably intelligent. Teachers should not find it difficult, with the cooperation of the authorities concerned, to find a solution for such complaints.

At the same time, there is the parent who points out that present-day schools do not assign enough home work. He is keen that his children should be at work all the time, and it will be seen that his economy is such that it does not allow him to spend anything appreciable for the entertainment of his children. A resourceful teacher can easily put such a youngster into the habit of wider reading, or he may encourage the student to do some experiments in the physical or chemical laboratory of the school. Such a measure, while satisfying the parent, will go a long way in the true education of the child too.

There are parents-but their number is small-who wisely consider it a necessity to let the teacher know of some special conditions prevailing in the home. The father may be an officer who has to tour extensively and as such, there is not much of adult male guidance at home. The teacher is requested to let the student know that he is aware of it. Or it may be that either the father or the mother is a permanent invalid and the student has to play the part of a nurse at home. The teacher in such a case is requested to excuse the student for not being able to devote enough time for home work. Such cases can easily be understood by a teacher and all possible tensions obviated in the child’s mind.

Sometimes there is the parent who has made a study of educational psychology and considers himself to be an expert in the education of his child. These are usually difficult customers to deal with. They have to be patiently tolerated, and it may also be that the teacher can learn something from him.
Among such, there are those who claim that methods of teaching practised today, even including the principle of sparing the rod, only help to make children into good-for-nothing milk sops. They proudly proclaim the various instances when they themselves had experienced the slashes of a cane from a great disciplinarian and refer to them as the turning point of their lives. When confronted with such parents, if the teacher is not trained in the art of interviewing parents, there is the likelihood of tempers getting frayed. Such parents like to hear their own talk, and the clever teacher ought not to grudge them the pleasure.

Let us round off this chapter with some important tips to young teachers. In parent-teacher consultation and coopera-tion, the following points have to be carefully observed if it is to be of benefit to the child:

  1. Allow the parent to talk voluntarily.
  2. Do not be too doctrinaire in your own idealism.
  3. Don’t let the parent have the idea that you know more of the child than he does.
  4. When you have a suggestion to make, see that there is more than one way open to the parent for the suggestion to be carried out or the advice adhered to.

The home can become a co-educator only if the school sympathises and realises the difficulties that the home has to contend with.

 

CHAPTER 8 OPEN DOORS TO PARENTS

In the preceding chapters, we have discussed the difficulties and hurdles that have prevented parents from actively participating in the education of their children in schools. Parent-teacher cooperation can be brought into being in all schools in India whether they be village schools or public schools.
Neither will such a cooperation unduly tell upon the difficult financial situation in the country. There will have to be more teachers in schools, for, if teachers are required to participate meaningfully in getting to know of the difficulties of parents, and thereby be of help and guidance to individual students under their care, the present work-load on teachers will have to be reduced. Teachers should have only four teaching periods per day, and on the computation that he will have correction work for an hour, he should have one hour everyday to be devoted entirely to interviewing parents by appointment and going into the individual cases of his students.

The second essential would be that our teacher-training schools and colleges should have parent-teacher cooperation as a compulsory subject in their courses of studies. The Government and other local authorities should recognise parent-teacher associations and give due weight to the decisions arrived at by such bodies. Such associations should have the right to utilise the school building for their discussions and entertainments connected with furthering parental interest in the education of their children.

The fear that may be expressed by many that such rights conferred on parents may develop into naked and bare-faced interference in the day-to-day running of the school is unfounded. Local factions in the community and the misunderstanding and ill feelings among members of the staff may often culminate in the undoing of a school, but the active cooperation of parents in the welfare of their children can bring about only good to the institution.
The following are some methods of putting parent-teacher cooperation into active practice:-

  1. Progress reports of students at the end of every month indicating not only the child’s achievements in the studies but also bearing upon his cleanliness, sociality, willingness to work in cooperation with other children and other such traits of character, to be sent to the parents; and at the same time inviting suggestions from parents if they have anything to say on the matter.
  2. Inviting parents to witness physical training displays by children and tournaments in various games. Proficiency gained by a child at a particular game, or special aptitude shown at a particular co-curricular activity, to be brought to the notice of the parent.
  3. Sufficient notice given to the parent regarding the weaknesses of particular branches of learning, so that the annual promotion or detention card will not be sprung on the parent as a surprise. When the weakness of a child is being indicated to the parent, steps taken by the school to remedy the weakness should be clearly mentioned and the parent advised to do what is expected of him.
  4. Parents requested to come over and discuss specific issues regarding their children.
  5. Parents of children of one particular class at a time, invited to have general discussions with the teachers in charge of various subjects in that class. Discussion may centre round textbooks, curricula, medical examination, progress of children, projects undertaken by the class, examinations and various other matters directly pertaining to the welfare of the children.
  6. Talks by parents. These can develop either into forum discussions or panel discussions. In these, if teachers too take part, the exchange of views may be beneficial to both.
  7. Celebration of House Days. As the very name implies, it is an attempt to bring the spirit of the home into the school, where the housemaster plays the role of the senior member of the family. The optimum number of students in a house is twenty-five to thirty. It has been very often noticed that inter-house rivalry in school built up on perfectly healthy lines very soon spreads into the home and parents get to know of the doings of almost every house in the school.

The suggestions enumerated above constitute only a drop in the ocean. As civic consciousness and education spread in India, parent-teacher cooperation is bound to come to the fore. But now, the Indian teacher has not only to initiate the beginnings of such a cooperation, but he or she will have to canvass support and encouragement from the co-educators in the homes. The Indian teacher can and will do it.

 

The Teacher and the Parent by Rabindra Menon
Ministry of Education, Government of India.
1959.

The Quantum Quarrel

The Quantum Quarrel

Characters:

  • Niels Bohr: A physicist of profound thought, firm in his interpretation of the quantum realm.
  • Albert Einstein: A physicist of equal renown, resolute in his belief that the cosmos is orderly and deterministic.
  • Narrator: Sets the scene.

Setting: A dimly lit chamber adorned with celestial globes, chalkboards scribbled with equations, and shelves of dusty tomes. A fire flickers in the hearth.

ACT I, SCENE I

Narrator:
In times when science sought to find its way,
Two minds of genius met to spar and say
Their truths of nature, veiled in mystery deep,
Where particles like shadows dance and leap.
Attend, dear audience, this fateful night,
When Bohr and Einstein clashed in fiery light.

(Enter Niels Bohr and Albert Einstein, pacing the room.)

Einstein:
Good Niels, thy quantum world is but a dream,
A realm where dice are thrown by hands unseen.
Canst thou truly believe in such a jest,
That nature’s laws bend to chaotic jest?

Bohr:
Ah, Albert, dost thou grasp not what I say?
The atom’s heart obeys no mortal sway.
‘Tis not a dice but probabilities,
That rule the quantum realm and set us free.

Einstein:
Free, thou say’st? Nay, bound in shadows thick!
What freedom lies in chaos so oblique?
The moon, my friend, doth surely shine above,
Though none observe her glow with watchful love.

Bohr:
Yet dost thou not perceive the truth I preach?
Reality is shaped by what we reach.
The moon’s bright face, unseen, is but a guess,
Till instruments confirm its bright success.

Einstein:
And thus, to thee, the cosmos doth depend
On fickle minds of men, and their intent?
Shall nature bow before our gaze so frail,
And truths eternal flicker, shift, and pale?

Bohr:
Not frail, dear Einstein, but wondrously vast!
The world’s deep truths in paradox are cast.
The wave becomes a particle when seen;
Before, ‘tis but potential, soft, serene.

Einstein:
(aside)
A puzzle great, and yet my soul rebels.
How canst thou claim that chaos order quells?
(gesturing to the heavens)
If God should play with dice, then all is lost!
What meaning lies in chance, at such a cost?

Bohr:
God’s dice, perhaps, dost roll with subtle grace,
And randomness conceals a hidden face.
Seek not to tame the quantum’s wily dance,
For beauty lies in mystery’s advance.

Einstein:
(grasping Bohr by the shoulder)
Yet beauty, Niels, must in logic stay,
For chaos leads the mind astray.
Deterministic paths must still exist,
Else reason’s light shall fade into the mist.

Bohr:
(stepping back, arms outstretched)
Oh, Albert, dost thou cling to Newton’s frame,
When nature whispers secrets not the same?
The atom sings a song of prob’listic might,
And not all truths must fit thy steadfast sight.

Einstein:
(softening)
Perhaps, dear friend, in this we both agree:
The cosmos vast exceeds what eyes can see.
Yet still I long for laws that ever hold,
For truths unmarred by chance, both clear and bold.

Bohr:
And I, in turn, admire thy steadfast quest,
For order in the chaos manifest.
Mayhap one day, a deeper truth shall rise,
To merge thy vision with my quantum skies.

Einstein:
Till then, dear Niels, we spar as brothers true,
Seeking the nature of the cosmic hue.

Bohr:
A worthy fight, and noble minds engaged.
Come, let us ponder further, though we’ve aged.

(They exit, arm in arm, deep in thought.)

Narrator:
Thus ends the quarrel of these mighty men,
Yet still their words inspire ink and pen.
For quantum truths remain a riddle vast,
And science seeks to solve them to the last.

Curtain falls.

On reducing the science and maths pass marks

Recently Government of Maharashtra introduced a new idea of reducing the passing marks mathematics and science. It is no secret that mathematics is the most hated and dreaded subject in school learning for many students. Over the decades this idea has been reinforced. Only a few “bright” students in the class seem to “enjoy” mathematics in the classroom. And even getting good marks is no guarantee that the students are enjoying or understanding mathematics. They might be just rote learning entire problems and proofs as is and are able to reproduce them in the examinations. Same is true for sciences also. Students will rote learn and reproduce from memory pages and pages of information about a topic, but if you ask them any conceptual questions they are seen lacking. And this is true for teachers as well. Many teachers, even ones with decades of experience, lack much conceptual clarity or depth in the topics they are teaching. They are able to explain(?) how to solve particular problems or flow of process, but an overarching perspective about the subject matter is often found missing.

Me being a science and mathematics educator finds this state of affairs very saddening. There are some hard facts that the science and mathematics education community in India needs to look at. So far they have been conveniently ignoring the proverbial gorilla in the room, or putting a carpet over it. In this post I want to give my perspective on how the science and mathematics education community has largely failed in addressing some fundamental concerns and are rather interested in problems which do not matter for most of the stakeholders and most importantly for the learners who in the end face the burden of their mistakes.

Now of course doing research is a specialisation. I do not want to sound dismissive of the entire enterprise by saying the act of doing research itself is trivial. That is not the case. Though I have my reservations about how educational research is conducted, that will be topic of another post which I have titled Two Dogmas of Educational Research. The research is done with all the necessary precautions and agendas. Proper citations are made, statistical procedures are applied and it is published in prestigious journals in the field. Year after year conferences are held, attended, latest research presented in them and applauded. The conferences are a celebration of of slides no one reads, jargon no one understands, post-presentation questions that never seem to end and networking. All this, when seen from a non-participating third person perspective somehow feels like both work and a party but achieves neither. I mean of course people do benefit from these, but it is more like I scratch your back you scratch mine.

But way most research articles are written they are jargonified to an extent that they will appear jibberish to anyone who is not trained in understanding the jargon. Articles on teacher education, which want to emphasise importance of teacher education, if given to ordinary school teachers to read (who imho are the stakeholders), will most probably go over their heads. From what little I have understood lot of research in education happens for sake of doing research and not for improving the conditions of stakeholders. The only people who generally benefit from this are researchers who get grants and tenures based on this. How this research actually translates to those stakeholders on whose behalf/improvement they do this is not a matter of concern to them. Another way to say this is that in most cases this research has no value outside of the journals they are intended for.

A lot of Indian educational researchers, when they get a chance to abroad choose to do comparative studies between Indian and other classrooms. This I think is the lowest hanging fruit that one can opt for. I mean if qualitative research teaches you anything it is that context is everything. Of course there are going to be differences in the two classrooms, I will be damned if I don’t find any. But is it worth to do such a research? When countless other times it has been done? Its like comparing apples to oranges literally and then elaborating on how apples are red and oranges are well orange in colour. This fetishisation needs to stop. I will come back to this point later.

Now there is something called as the streetlight effect, or the drunkard’s search principle, is a type of observational bias that occurs when people only search for something where it is easiest to look. This is exactly that has been happening in case of science and mathematics education research at least in India. And yet even after several decades of research they can’t find way to teach fractions correctly to children. Researchers continue to find “new” problems flogging this zombie horse to churn out papers. I am not calling the horse dead, because it, like a true zombie, is resurrected as a “problem” by researchers in each paper and proposing for each research grant. If the horse is dead so will be their research and those grants that they want. So it is in a way self-sustaining problem in educational research. The researchers are in ivory towers and don’t want to get their things dirty with murky things in the actual classroom.

And this is happening because they are choosing the wrong problem to target. Simply because some leaders in the West chose to do so. Most Indian researchers are just following their lead, as they have to submit research in these prestigious journals to be part of the community. We need researchers who will identify problems in Indian context and provide solutions within these contexts. A simple example will suffice. While all effort has been on introducing “constructivism in the classroom” with enormous number of researchers engaged in this one way or other. But how do we actually teach our teachers who are supposed to implement this idea at the grassroots level? Are the student-teacher’s classrooms constructivist in nature? NO. They are just ordinary classrooms who are using behaviourist methods to teach them and then we expect these same teachers to be experts in implementing constructivism in the classroom when they had no experience of it during their own training as teachers or otherwise. This is the same pattern that you will see in all educational research. Researchers and curriculum developers in ivory towers (research institutes and universities) have some lofty normative  ideas which they shove down the throats of teachers and ultimately those of the learners without understanding the context in which they will be implemented.

Another day I was talking to a math educator who seemed to be convinced that mathematics needs to be taught for support of “mathematical thinking” to students. And for this it was to be divorced from all other subjects and should be taught for itself. In principle (that is on a curricular document) this seems good, but how does this translate to practice? It might be one of the reasons that mathematics is one the most hated subjects in the school. Learners actually fear mathematics. There is a term specifically coined for this mathophobia. Papert talks about it. But was this of concern to that person, apparently not. They were adamant that mathematics does not need support from other subjects. I was instead arguing for a well founded teaching of mathematics in which mathematics and science go hand in hand.  More often that not the mathematics and science follow completely different pathways introducing mathematical concepts to learners (as I found during my PhD work), as if they are teaching completely different people, even for the textbooks of the same classroom.  Well, historically mathematics developed for solving problems that our ancestors faced, whether it be about business or science. Why can’t we use the same manner to teach mathematics to our children?

A Parable

Once upon a time, in a far away country, there was a community that had a wonderful machine. The machine had been built by most inventive of their people … generation after generation of men and women toiling to construct its parts… experimenting with individual components until each was perfected… fitting them together until the whole mechanism ran smoothly. They had built its outer casing of burnished metal and on one side, they had attached a complex control panel. The name of the machine, KNOWLEDGE, was engraved on a plaque  set in the centre of the control panel.
The community used the machine in their efforts to understand the world and to solve all kinds of problems. But the leaders of the community were not satisfied. It was a competitive world… they wanted more problems solved and they wanted them solved faster.
The main limitation for the use of machine was the rate at which data could be prepared for input. Specialist machine operators called ‘predictors’, carried out this exacting and time consuming task… naturally the number of problems solved each year depended directly on the number and skill of the predictors.
The community leaders focussed on the problem of training predictors. The traditional method, whereby promising girls and boys were taken into long-term apprenticeship, was deemed too slow and too expensive. Surely, they reasoned, we can find more efficient approach. So saying,  they called the elders together and asked them to think about the matter.
After a few months, the elders reported that they had devised an approach that showed promise. In summary, they suggested that the machine be disassembled. Then each component could be studied and understood with ease… the operation of machine would become an open book to all who cared to look.
Their plan was greeted with enthusiasm. So, the burnished covers were pulled off, and the major mechanisms of the machine fell out… they had plaques with labels like HISTORY and GEOGRAPHY and PHYSICS and MATHEMATICS. These mechanisms were pulled apart in their turn… of course, care was taken to keep all the pieces in separate piles. Eventually, the technicians had reduced the machine to little heaps of metal plates and rods and nuts and bolts and springs and gear wheels. Each heap was put in a box, carefully labelled with the name of the mechanism whose part it contained, and the boxes were lined up for the community to inspect.
The members of the community were delighted. Their leaders were ecstatic. They ‘oohed’ and ‘aahed’ over the quality of components, the obvious skill that had gone in their construction, the beauty of designs. Here, displayed for all, were the inner workings of KNOWLEDGE.
In his exuberance, one man plunged his hand into a box and scooped up a handful of tiny, jewel-like  gear wheels and springs. He held them out to his daughter and glancing, at the label on the box, said:
“Look, my child! Look! Mathematics! ”
From: Turtle Speaks Mathematics by Barry Newell
You can get the book (and another nice little book Turtle Confusion) here.

 

If the researchers and curriculum developers were ever serious about implementing “constructivism in the classroom” first they would start by reforming teacher education programmes to reflect the pedagogy they want to implement. The second important step would be to reform assessments. Its funny and ironic to see researchers and curriculum developers trying to implement constructivist pedagogies in classrooms with behaviorist assessments and then be dismayed over the results from both students and teachers about their understanding of the subject matter. These strategies are just cosmetic ways to cover fundamental issues that plague the educational system. No reform will be possible with such strategies, but who cares as long as their tenures and grants are justified and their names adorn research reports, textbooks and curricula. They are just repeating the mistakes of the past and expect the results to be different, well it is different in each case and reported in a jargonised framework supported by statistical scaffolding but doesn’t lead to any actual changes on the ground. But that is okay for them as they don’t have any skin in the game, whether learners (both teachers and students) don’t change is not going to do them any harm but keep the zombie alive.

 

So that the point of all this ranting? The point is that the decision to reduce marks for “passing” is the outcome of such ill-visioned policies and agendas by those who were in position to challenge and change status quo. But instead they choose to go the easier way by keeping the problem alive

 

Illustrations for Alice in Wonderland – Part 3 – Peter Newell

Peter Newell was a prolific American illustrator and author. The books with his illustrations for Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through The Looking Glass were published circa 1901. These are paintings rather than line drawings. The books were printed in black and white/grayscale so are the illustrations. But there must be a set of fully colour versions of these paintings. Some of them you can see here and there on the interwebs, but a complete collection I could not find. If you know of colour versions of these paintings please let me know.

 

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

Down she came upon a heap of dry leaves.

 

The poor little thing sat down and cried.

“Now I’m opening out like the largest telescope that ever was!”

 

The Rabbit started violently.

 

The Mouse gave a sudden leap out of the water.

The Caucus-Race.

 

The Dod solemnly presented the thimble.

“Mine is a long and a sad tale,” said the Mouse.

On various pretexts they all moved off.

“Why, Mary Ann, what are you doing here?”

“What’s that in the window?”

“Catch him, you by the hedge.”

The poor little Lizard Bill was in the middle being held up.

The Puppy jumped into the air.

 

T

The Caterpillar and Alice looked at each other.

Old Father William standing on his head.

 

Old Father William balancing an Eel on the end of his nose.

Old Father William turning a back somersault in at the door.

“Serpent!” screamed the Pigeon.

Then they both bowed low and their curls got entangled.

 

Singing a sort of lullaby.

 

Sp she set the little creature down.

This time it vanished quite slowly.

He dipped it into his cup of tea and looked at it again.

They lived at the bottom of a well.

 

Don’t go splashing paint over me.

 

“Off with her head!”

It would twist itself round and look up in her face.

“Don’t look at me like that.”

The Hedge-hog was engaged in a fight with another Hedge-hog.

 

“Tut, tut, child!” said the Duchess.

 

They began solemnly dancing round and round Alice.

“Will you walk a little faster,” said a Whitling to a Snail.

Alice began telling them her adventures.

“Come on!” cried the Gryphon.

How big is the shadow of the Earth?


The Sun is our ultimate light source on Earth. The side of the Earth facing the Sun is bathed in sunlight, due to our rotation this side changes continuously. The side which faces the Sun has the day, and the other side is the night, in the shadow of the entire Earth. The sun being an extended source (and not a point source), the Earth’s shadow had both umbra and penumbra. Umbra is the region where no light falls, while penumbra is a region where some light falls. In case of an extended source like the Sun, this would mean that light from some part of the Sun does fall in the penumbra.  Occasionally, when the Moon falls in this shadow we get the lunar eclipse. Sometimes it is total lunar eclipse, while many other times it is partial lunar eclipse. Total lunar eclipse occurs when the Moon falls in the umbra, while partial one occurs when it is in penumbra. On the other hand, when the Moon is between the Earth and the Sun, we get a solar eclipse. The places where the umbra of the Moon’s shadow falls, we get total solar eclipse, which is a narrow path on the surface of the Earth, and places where the penumbra falls a partial solar eclipse is visible. But how big is this shadow? How long is it? How big is the umbra and how big is the penumbra? We will do some rough calculations, to estimate these answers and some more to understand the phenomena of eclipses.

We will start with a reasonable assumption that both the Sun and the Earth as spheres. The radii of the Sun, the Earth and the Moon, and the respective distances between them are known. The Sun-Earth-Moon system being a dynamic one, the distances change depending on the configurations, but we can assume average distances for our purpose.

[The image above is interactive, move the points to see the changes. This construction is not to scale!. The simulation was created with Cinderella ]

 

The diameter of the Earth is approximately 12,742 kilometers, and the diameter of the Sun is about 1,391,000 kilometers, hence the ratio is about 109, while the distance between the Sun and the Earth is about 149 million kilometers. A couple of illustrations depicting it on the correct scale.

 

 

The Sun’s (with center A) diameter is represented by DF, while EG represents Earth’s (with center C) diameter. We connect the centers of Earth and Sun. The umbra will be limited in extent in the cone with base EG and height HC, while the penumbra is infinite in extent expanding from EG to infinity. The region from umbra to penumbra changes in intensity gradually. If we take a projection of the system on a plane bisecting the spheres, we get two similar triangles HDF and HEG. We have made an assumption that our properties of similar triangles from Euclidean geometry are valid here.

In the schematic diagram above (not to scale) the umbra of the Earth terminates at point H. Point H is the point which when extended gives tangents to both the circles. (How do we find a point which gives tangents to both the circles? Is this point unique?). Now by simple ratio of similar triangles, we get

$$
\frac{DF}{EG} = \frac{HA}{HC}  = \frac{HC+AC}{HC}
$$

Therefore,

$$
HC = \frac{AC}{DF/EG -1}
$$

Now, $DF/EG = 109$, and $AC$ = 149 million km,  substituting the values we get the length of the umbra $HC \approx$  1.37 million km. The Moon, which is at an average distance of 384,400 kilometers,  sometimes falls in this umbra, we get a total lunar eclipse. The composite image of different phases of a total lunar eclipse below depicts this beautifully. One can “see” the round shape of Earth’s umbra in the central three images of the Moon (red coloured) when it is completely in the umbra of the Earth (Why is it red?).

When only a part of umbra falls on the moon we get a partial lunar eclipse as shown below. Only a part of Earth’s umbra is on the Moon.

So if the moon was a bit further away, lets say at 500,000 km, we would not get a total solar eclipse. Due to a tilt in Moon’s orbit not every new moon is an eclipse meaning that the Moon is outside both the umbra and the penumbra.

The observations of the lunar eclipse can also help us estimate the diameter of the Moon.

Similar principle applies (though the numbers change) for solar eclipses, when the Moon is between the Earth and the Sun. In case of the Moon, ratio of diameter of the Sun and the Moon is about 400. With the distance between them approximately equal to the distance between Earth and the Sun. Hence the length of the umbra using the above formula is 0.37 million km or about 370,000 km. This makes the total eclipse visible on a small region of Earth and is not extended, even the penumbra is not large (How wide is the umbra and the penumbra of the moon on the surface of the Earth?).

When only penumbra is falling on a given region, we get the partial solar eclipse.

You can explore when solar eclipse will occur in your area (or has occurred) using the Solar Eclipse Explorer.

This is how the umbra of the Moon looks like from space.

And same thing would happen to a globe held in sunlight, its shadow would be given by the same ratio.

Thus we see that the numbers are almost matched to give us total solar eclipse, sometimes when the moon is a bit further away we may also get what is called the annular solar eclipse, in which the Sun is not covered completely by the Moon. Though the total lunar eclipses are relatively common (average twice a year) as compared to total solar eclipses (once 18 months to 2 years). Another coincidence is that the angular diameters of the Moon and the Sun are almost matched in the sky, both are about half a degree (distance/diameter ratio is about 1/110). Combined with the ratio of distances we are fortunate to get total solar eclipses.

Seeing and experiencing a total solar eclipse is an overwhelming experience even when we have an understanding about why and how it happens. More so in the past, when the Sun considered a god, went out in broad daylight. This was considered (and is still considered by many) as a bad omen. But how did the ancient people understand eclipses?  There is a certain periodicity in the eclipses, which can be found out by collecting large number of observations and finding patterns in them. This was done by ancient Babylonians, who had continuous data about eclipses from several centuries. Of course sometimes the eclipse will happen in some other part of the Earth and not be visible in the given region, still it could be predicted.   To be able to predict eclipses was a great power, and people who could do that became the priestly class. But the Babylonians did not have a model to explain such observations. Next stage that came up was in ancient Greece where models were developed to explain (and predict) the observations. This continues to our present age.

The discussion we have had applies in the case when the light source (in this case the Sun) is larger than the opaque object (in this case the Earth). If the the light source is smaller than the object what will happen to the umbra? It turns out that the umbra is infinite in extent. You see this effect when you get your hand close to a flame of candle and the shadow of your hand becomes ridiculously large! See what happens in the interactive simulation above.

References

James Southhall Mirrors, Prisms and Lenses (1918) Macmillan Company

Eric Rogers Physics for the Inquiring Mind (1969) Princeton

 

Remarkable Curves 1: The Straight Line and the Circle

 

 

 

 

The Straight Line and the circle

(Note: All the images are interactive, move the points around to see. Dynamic mathematics interactive web page with Cinderella )

A moving point describes a straight line when it passes from one
position to another along the shortest possible path. A straight line
can be drawn with the help of a ruler; when a pencil runs along the
edge of a ruler it leaves a trace on the paper in the form of a
straight line.

When a point moves on a surface at a constant distance from another
fixed point on the same surface it describes a circle. Because of this
property of the circle we are able to draw a circle with the help of
compasses.

The straight line and the circle are the simplest and at the same time
the most remarkable curves as far as their properties are concerned.

You are no doubt more familiar with these two curves than with
others. But you should not imagine that you know all of the most
important properties of straight lines and curves. For example, you
may not know that if the vertices of the triangles $ABC$ and $AB’C’$
lie on three straight lines intersecting at the point $S$ (Fig. 1),
the three points of intersection $M$, $K$, $L$ of the corresponding
sides of the triangles, the sides $AB$ and $A’B’$, $BC$ and $B’C’$,
and $AC$ and $A’C’$, must be collinear, that is, they lie on a single
straight line.

(Note: this image below is interactive, move the points to see the dynamic change!)

You are sure to know that a point $M$ moving in a plane equidistantly
from two fixed points, say $F_1$, and $F_2$, of the same plane, that
is, so that $MF_{1}= MF_{2}$, describes a straight line (Fig. 2).

But you might find it difficult to answer the question:

What type of curve will point $M$ describe if the distance of $M$ from
$F_1$, is a certain number of times greater than that from $F_2$ (for
instance, in Fig. 3 it is twice as great)?

The curve turns out to be a circle. Hence if the point $M$ moves in a
plane so that the distance of $M$ from one of the fixed
points. $F_{1}$ or $F_{2}$, in the same plane is always proportional
to the distance from the other fixed point, that is

$$
MF_{1} = k \times MF_{2}
$$

then $M$ describes either a straight line (when the factor of
proportionality is unity) or a circle (when the factor of
proportionality is other than unity).

 

This is a post to create interactive mathematics elements using Cinderella a Free Software alternative to GeoGebra which is no longer a Free Software. The files have been exported from Cinderella at html interactives)

Preternatural Photographs

A red bloom from Indian summer. This photo has flowers from the Canonball tree, Gulmohar and African Tulip taken by keeping them on a notebook Taken with one of the most basic cameras the Canon A800.

I got my first camera c. 2005. It was the Canon S2 with 12x optical zoom and 5 MP sensor and could support a 1 GB memory card. By today’s standards these specs look very primitive, but this is almost 18 years ago. I have taken several thousand pictures with that camera, resetting the image counter two times. About 2015 the camera sensor gave up, and they could not repair it. The camera, had super zoom for those days, but its macro function was excellent in terms of focusing very well on the macro subjects. Then I got my hands on DSLRs the Sony Alpha 350 and then finally a Nikon D300 with excellent selection of prime lenses. But this post is not about the cameras per se, but the photographs.

The magnificent flower of Epiphyllum oxypetallum (mistaken popularly as bramhakamal), taken with Canon S2.

Among all the photos that I have taken some just stand out from the rest. The light, the focus, the exposure and the framing is just perfect. I don’t know how to explain this aesthetic appeal of these photographs. But in these photos, even amongst a batch of hundreds taken in the same setting or with same subjects, some photos just come out extraordinary as compared to the rest. As a photographer you might have experienced this too.

Sophia College, Mumbai corridor, taken with Nikon D300

I am a very visual oriented person. Ever since I remember from my childhood, I have been always attracted to images and visual depictions. This is what led to me reading comics. The visual impact. Also, in my house there were always art projects my mother did such as embroidery, paintings among other things. And I was fascinated by colours and drawings. Though I am not very good at drawing, I can certainly appreciate good ones.

Water lily fields submerged near the origin of Mooi river (Taken with Motorola E6). This is one my favourite photos that I have taken.

But coming to photos, some photos make a connection with your very being, inner-self of you. I cannot explain it. But you can experience the photo at some deeper level than the perceptual one. From what I have gathered talking to other people “seeing” the same image, but this experience might be unique, as not every one feels this special connection. You have your favourite photographs, they are really powerful when they speak to you directly transcending the boundaries of space and time.

A poppy flower in a poppy field (Taken with Canon EOS 80D)

I don’t know if there is a cognitive theory that will explain this in terms of our earlier experiences with images or social interactions with media. But this connection that you feel is real and I can’t put it in exact words…

I asked ChatGPT to give the Turing Test

Turing Test is a test first conceptualised by Alan Turing, a mathematician and a computer pioneer. Alan Turing made many ground breaking discoveries, in computer science including the architecture of  computing devices which can run any computer programme known after him as Turing Machines. The other type of well known computing device architecture is the von Neumann Machine.

The Turing Test put simply is the ability for a computer programme to have an conversation with a human in a human manner. A programme which can pass a Turing test would mean that it can mimic the human conversation.

The Turing test, originally called the imitation game by Alan Turing in 1950,is a test of a machine’s ability to exhibit intelligent behaviour equivalent to, or indistinguishable from, that of a human. Turing proposed that a human evaluator would judge natural language conversations between a human and a machine designed to generate human-like responses. The evaluator would be aware that one of the two partners in conversation was a machine, and all participants would be separated from one another. The conversation would be limited to a text-only channel, such as a computer keyboard and screen, so the result would not depend on the machine’s ability to render words as speech. If the evaluator could not reliably tell the machine from the human, the machine would be said to have passed the test. The test results would not depend on the machine’s ability to give correct answers to questions, only on how closely its answers resembled those a human would give. (Wikipedia Entry on Turing Test)

 

Now some of the earlier programmes tried to pass the Turing test included chatting programmes such as Joseph Weizenbaum created Eliza  in the mid 1960s. So the Turing tests remained the gold standard for computer programmes to achieve the “human like” thinking. With the latest ChatGPT programme from Open AI Labs, I thought of giving it a try. These are the questions and their responses :

Can you pass the Turing test?

As an AI language model, my primary purpose is to assist and provide useful responses to users based on the input given to me. However, passing the Turing test, which involves convincing a human evaluator that I am a human myself, is not my main goal.

While I am designed to generate human-like responses and engage in natural language conversations, there may be instances where I might not be able to accurately interpret or respond to certain queries. Nonetheless, I will strive to provide the best possible response based on the input given to me.

What questions should I ask in a Turing test?

In a Turing test, the purpose is for the evaluator to determine whether they are interacting with a machine or a human based on the responses they receive. The questions asked should be designed to assess the machine’s ability to engage in natural language conversation, understand the context and nuances of human language, and generate appropriate responses.

Here are some examples of questions that can be asked in a Turing test:

1. What is your favorite book/movie/TV show?
2. Can you tell me a little about yourself?
3. What is your opinion on [a recent news event]?
4. What is the capital city of [a country]?
5. What is the weather like today?
6. Can you recommend a good restaurant in [a city]?
7. What do you think of [a philosophical question]?
8. Can you explain [a complex scientific concept] in simple terms?
9. Have you ever traveled to [a country or city]? If so, what did you like about it?
10. Can you tell me a joke or a funny story?

These questions are designed to test the machine’s ability to engage in natural language conversation, answer questions based on personal experience, provide opinions, and demonstrate knowledge in different areas. However, the specific questions used in a Turing test will depend on the context and purpose of the test.

How would you answer questions listed in the previous chat?

Sure, I can provide sample responses to the questions listed in the previous chat:

  1. What is your favorite book/movie/TV show?
  • As an AI language model, I don’t have the ability to have personal preferences or emotions. However, I can provide recommendations based on popularity or ratings.
  1. Can you tell me a little about yourself?
  • I am ChatGPT, a large language model trained by OpenAI. My primary purpose is to assist and provide useful responses to users based on the input given to me.
  1. What is your opinion on [a recent news event]?
  • I don’t have personal opinions as I am a machine learning model, but I can provide you with information and perspectives on the topic.
  1. What is the capital city of [a country]?
  • The capital city of a country depends on which country you are asking about. Can you specify which country you are referring to?
  1. What is the weather like today?
  • I’m sorry, but as an AI language model, I don’t have access to live weather data. However, I can provide general information on weather conditions in different regions.
  1. Can you recommend a good restaurant in [a city]?
  • Certainly, I can recommend popular or highly rated restaurants in the city you specify. Can you please let me know which city you are interested in?
  1. What do you think of [a philosophical question]?
  • As an AI language model, I don’t have personal beliefs or thoughts. However, I can provide information and different perspectives on philosophical topics.
  1. Can you explain [a complex scientific concept] in simple terms?
  • I can certainly try to explain complex scientific concepts in simpler terms. Please let me know which concept you would like me to explain.
  1. Have you ever traveled to [a country or city]? If so, what did you like about it?
  • As an AI language model, I don’t have the ability to travel. However, I can provide information on different countries and cities, and their attractions or points of interest.
  1. Can you tell me a joke or a funny story?
  • Sure, here’s a joke for you: Why was the math book sad? Because it had too many problems.

How would you rate yourself in the questions that you just now answered?

As an AI language model, I don’t have the ability to rate myself or evaluate my own performance. However, I always strive to provide the best possible responses based on the input given to me, and I am constantly learning and improving through feedback and updates to my training data.

 

As you can see some of the responses are good, while for other its vague and noncommittal. How would you rate the Turing test given by open ai?

Why is it difficult to copy edit your own work?

When I was writing my PhD thesis, as with anyone else it involved multiple drats going back and forth. As far I am concerned writing is never a linear process. At times one cannot even write a single line in a day, and at other times you may finish a couple of sections in a a few hours. Writing is difficult as it involves third level thinking (Dix 2006). You may have several ideas with you, you can also explicate while talking to others. But when it comes to writing it down we find it is not easy. But when we are in the”zone” the writing task becomes a natural thing. Your creative juices flow, the elusive ideas seem to express themselves in words. I usually experience such zone when l am at the end of the world task. The disparate looking ideas are bound together in a coherent whole. The feeling is close to an epiphany of a strange kind. You lose track of time and experience oneness with your work, as of the concrete form of ideas is a physical extension of your self. The feeling can be deeply satisfying to see your ideas on a concrete form. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi uses the term “flow” to describe such an experience.

I experience the similar thing while reading a book. There are times when even reading a couple of sentences feels like a chore. While at other times when I am in the flow a hundred pages are finished in a couple of hours. The result send effortless. Words just seen to read themselves or to you. Of course it also depends on the kind of book one is reading. Technical books will take a longer to read.

When you are reading easily, you actually don’t read the entire words, letter by letter. Rather there is some sort of guess work or pre-processing that happens. Typically by looking at the starting letter and the end letter and also estimating the size of the word, we can actually guess the word before we can read it correctly. That is our cognitive system can fill in the gaps when we are dealing with familiar information. This makes the reading fast for experienced learners. A full use is made is of the repertoire of words that we know, and also rules of grammar. We expect certain words to follow certain words. And at times our system will fill in the gaps by itself when it finds some. This way the reading becomes effortless and we can make name out of it easily. Such fast refund comes with experience and knowing the language. When your children have difficulty in reading they have both problems. Their prediction system is not strong so they have to read each word and each letter in the word individually and only then they are angle to make sense. This then boils to be able to recognise the symbols as quickly as possible.

But how do we recognise the symbols that we see? There are several theories that attempt to explain our recognition of the symbols. The template theory posits that there are as many templates in our long term memory as many symbols we can detect. But this assumption of the theory puts severe demand on the long term memory and also on the processes which would the pattern recognition. A simple example which puts the template theory into spot is that we can recognise a letter in its various forms. The sheer number of fonts and handwriting, some of it bordering on illegible, we can recognise with little efforts lots severe strain on the template theory. The fact that we can also recognise the shape of fonts we have never seen before also poses a challenge.

The feature theory on the other hand posits that the long term memory has a set of features of the symbols which are essential in the symbol. For example, to recognise letter “w”, the feature set might include two lines slanting to the left and two lines slanting to right such as \ / \ /. This as soon as our sensory register gets this input of such lines we immediately pre process such input to a “w”. The feature theory posits three steps in pattern recognition which are collectively called as Analysis-by-Synthesis. In this process the pattern is broken down into its features, then these features are matched with LTM and finally a decision about the pattern is taken. Thus with this theory we require much less number of items in our long term memory. The analysis-by-synthesis is completely driven by the data that impinges on the sensory organs. 

Some of the challenges that this theory faces include ambiguity of how we deal with ambiguity in recognition of the patterns especially when the data is similar. In particular it does not answer our ability to consider importance of context in which the patterns appear and the sensory data itself is not good enough discriminator. In many cases turns out that we rely on other knowledge and information also to make sense of the patterns, in which case the feature theory alone cannot provide good explanations. For example, consider the Greek letter $\Delta$. Though we can identify it as such, the meaning it conveys can be heavily dependent on the context. We take three such examples.

  • If it is seen in a sentence in Greek it will be interpreted as a sound “de” Το Δελχί είναι η πρωτεύουσα της Ινδίας (Delhi is India’s capital.).
  • Now if the same letter $\Delta$ is seen in a mathematical context such as $\Delta ABC \cong \Delta PQR$, it represents a triangle and the sentence is read as “Triangle ABC is congruent to triangle PQR”.
  • Finally, if the symbol $\Delta$ appears in a physics formula, lets say $\Delta E = E_{2} – E_{1}$, it represents a difference in the two values of $E$.

Or consider the two sentences below

In the first sentence we will probably read it as “The number of participants was 190 (one hundred and ninety)” while in the second sentence we would read it as “I go there often”. Note here that the visual pattern is the same in both the sentences. Yet the context of the sentence makes all the difference in how we interpret the pattern. From such experiences we must conclude that context affects the pattern recognition by activating some conceptual information from LTM or pre-synthesising the pattern. Thus our cognitive system adds more information based on the contexts to the perceptual data to make sense of the patterns and context establishes what to expect in the incoming patterns. 

Now this adaptive feature of the our cognitive system can be very useful and allows us to be much faster than just being dependent on the perceptual information. But at times it can be maladaptive also. This notion brings us back to the title of this post. As I completed my first draft of the thesis, and gave it for comments, I discovered to my extreme horror and embarrassment that it was full of elementary grammatical mistakes. In the flow of writing down my ideas, I chose to just go with them. Though I did review what I had written, I did not find any obvious faults in it. This is something that you might have also experienced. It is difficult to see “obvious” break in ideas or abrupt endings in your own writing, and this of course also includes “trivial” grammar rules of punctuation and articles as such.  But when you are proof-reading work of someone else both “obvious” and  “trivial” errors are markedly visible. I can say this as I have copy-edited and proof-read several long and short works, where I did found out the very same errors in other works which I could not in my own work. Thankfully, in my thesis most of the issues were of “trivial” grammar and no “obvious” conceptual or fundamental issues were pointed. I then furiously began correcting the “trivial” grammar issues in my work. 

 

Why is this so? Seen in the framework of analysis-by-synthesis model, we know what we have written or wanted to write and our pre-synthesising cognitive system fills in the obvious gaps and creates the required and expected patterns contextually where they are found missing. We tend to “skip” over our writing as we read it in a flow, with background and context of why the text was written and what it wants to say. All the “obvious” and  “trivial” errors and gaps are ironed out with the additional contextual information that we have about our own work. So we have to be extra-careful while proof-reading our own work. When we are reading work written by someone else, all this background information is not available to us, hence pre-synthesising of patterns happens at a lower level. This leads us to find “obvious” and  “trivial” errors and gaps much easily.

I found out that though I can do a good job of proof-reading other persons work on a computer (using the record changes/comments on a word processor) , for proof-reading my own work I usually take a printout and work on it with a pen. The concrete form of my work perhaps helps me in minimising the pre-synthesising that happens.  I usually take red ink for proof-reading, perhaps reminiscing of how teachers in schools grade assignments. 

 

References

Chapter 2 Hunt, R. R., & Ellis, H. C. (1999). Fundamentals of cognitive psychology. McGraw-Hill.

A. Dix (2006). writing as third order experience Interfaces, 68, pp. 19-20. Autumn 2006.