education

The Mitr

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

 

The Mitr

Learning science progresses funeral by funeral

So said one of the founders quantum mechanics Max Planck. But I think this quote applies to other areas of human endeavour as well. I have been working in the area of learning for major part of my adult life. During my own learning, when computers were just getting mainstream (late 1990s and early 2000s) I experienced first-hand how learning experience can be enhanced by proper use of computers. Another aspect of proliferation of computer which are connected to the internet is that you have access to sum of almost all human knowledge available to you. Even 20 years back this was not the case. I remember when I discovered that there are accessible resources about physics on the web, it was almost a revelation. And the resources grow day-by-day, becoming more and more accessible to everyone. Even with a smartphone you can access all the information on the web. Most modern web designers are adopting a mobile first policy.

I have been musing about these impacts on learning experience ever since. But there is a strong opposition to use technology in the classroom. This mostly comes from people in two categories. One is a old lot who grew and learned in a world without accessible technology and other is a younger lot who have weird (read extremist) ideas about teaching and learning. The younger lot is a lost tribe who live on the Eastern pole. Both these two categories of people opposed to use of technology in the classroom think that they are “progressive” and are fighting against “oppressive” technology.

A note on the term “technology”: Here I am using the term “technology” in a narrow sense of computer technology. A more inclusive sense would include blackboards, printed textbooks and the classroom itself as forms of technology.

I will try to present this perspective of opposition to technology in classroom and dismantle them giving a rebuttal. In some cases, the holders of these ideas are beyond redemption, and quote of the Max Planck which is the title of the post applies to them. They will die off and their technophobia will die with them. A newer generation of pedagogues conversant and comfortable with technology will emerge in the next generation and will be in tune with the need of the time.

Let us start with the older lot. Many of the progressive pedagogues grew in India that was deprived of any computer technology. This was the era of many socialist inspired people’s movement which aspired for egalitarian approach to education, particularly the sections of society which are low in socio-economic order. The approach was to enlighten the masses inspired from the socialist ideas. Now till 90s, the computer technology was expensive and its use even in the developed countries was rather limited. And most of the people in the older lot I am talking about did spend their formative and working years in this era.

 

Now it is not to say that all of the people did not have any contact with computers at all. Some of these inspired people were highly qualified individuals who did their research work in some of the best institutions in the world. Some of them had some experience of using the computers. But computers were never a second nature to them, as they are not to many people even now. And a lot of them never used computer, because in their era it was an expensive technology and hence they didn’t have access to it. Hence it made computer technology an alien artefact for them in that era.

And when computers finally became accessible, their own years of learning new things had long gone by. Some of them did adopt newer computer technology, able to see the potential to transform both learning and dissemination of knowledge, but most didn’t. Apart from the ideological commitment to a “non-computer” approach to learning, I think their own fears and phobia of being unable to learn and use the new technology also played a role in their opposition. This was the situation in early 2000s, which was still acceptable as computer and internet penetration was not good. These pedagogues threw anything to do with computers as too Western (hence sitting on Eastern pole from where every direction is West).

But by 2010, smart phones were becoming more and more common as were the desktop computers and laptops. By 2015, the access to cheap smart phones with fast internet exploded. Now, here were are in the mid 2020s when proliferation of computer devices in the form of smartphones, tablets and laptops is increasing by the day. The dreams of last mile connectivity are not far off.

The Covid-19 pandemic forced us to shift to online classes. Of course, it did have its issues particularly for students who lacked infrastructure in terms of devices and connectivity. But it did show that even with present conditions something is still possible. Yet, people had their doubts. Now its been

Yet, the resistance from the older pedagogues continues. They cannot get away from ideas about computers that were formed 4 decades back, when computers were still primitive and expensive. And they continue to the same arguments even today. Questions like “Have computers reached everyone?” and since they have not we cannot use them.  Or they give  overarching statements like “The most downtrodden will be neglected in this”. They are like classical physicists who could not accept ideas of modern physics at the turn of the last century.

To objections like these, I have two rebuttals, one is historical-pedagogical and other is on the nature of computer technology in particular. Let us look at the first objection: “Have computers reached everyone?”, of course, they have not! But what about other technologies like the classroom and blackboard? Yes they are technologies! Have they reached everyone? Of course not! But then you don’t give the same arguments, let school reach every child (or every child reach the school) and only then we will allow/accept school as a viable mechanism for learning. And that is something they will never accept, just because they are comfortable/conversant with technology school-classroom-black-board-textbooks. That is a given for them. But even that “technology” has access issues, and comes loaded with challenges of its own for learning. I mean these are the very challenges that many of these pedagogically oriented movements addressed.

So this argument about last-mile connectivity applies to the existing technologies to teaching and learning as well. Why should it be singled out for “computer” technology? This is only because the older lot is not familiar (rather don’t want to accept) with the potential of the computer technology as it would destroy their anachronistic cherished notions of teaching and learning.

Other major assumption in this notion is that the teacher and textbook are the (sometimes the only) source of knowledge, almost an axiom in the Euclidean sense.

Is this why there was so much focus on developing text-based teaching learning materials. But this is no longer true. We now have almost entire sum of human knowledge accessible literally at fingertips to anyone with a connected device. But now with Open Education and internet this is being challenged in a serious way. Added to this is the absolutely disruptive technology of AI bots like chatGPT. Why should learning be limited to a centralised textbook which usually does not take into account the context of learners written by folks sitting in ivory towers, which is not updated for years?

Now we have the technology and appropriate legal licenses to change this by really empowering learners to bypass the filters of textbooks and teachers. But still we are hung on cherished notion of teacher in the constructivist classroom.

Now, I come to aspects of the nature of technology and young learners. The nature of “computer” technology is such that younger learners adapt to it very quickly. They are still in the phase of learning about the world. A very young child given a smartphone will try out everything and figure out how it works (or doesn’t) and start playing with it as if its any other toy. Parents often ask help from their very young children to solve technological challenges they face.

Same is true for teachers. I have seen enough examples during my field work in very rural areas. Learners when exposed to computer technology even for a very short time several were first-generation learners who were using computer for the first time, could out-pace the teacher in using the computer for the task at hand. Now in the traditional approach (even the progressive ones) the knowledge of teacher is almost never surpassed in a teaching-learning setting. The teacher is always the “more-able-peer” in the Vygotskian sense and is considered as an a priori truth. Now, I am not denying that in many senses this is correct, but if you give access to technology to young learners in many cases the need for teacher is bypassed. This is in the true sense that a child constructs knowledge with the only difference being that it is not mediated by the teacher (or even if it is teacher is exactly a mediator). Constructionist microworlds provide excellent examples of such learning by the learners on their own. By denying access to computer technology, this is what is being missed.

Of course there are examples and examples of bad use of technology in the form of PPT/click books etc which is often rightfully criticised. But that is missing forest of the trees. Another point in this regard is that educational technology abhors vacuum, if any technology is not opted by good pedagogy, it will be co-opted by a bad one. So we need to stake claim, otherwise poor pedagogical approaches which just replicate what is done without a computer to be done on a computer. To give Papert’s analogy it would be like attaching a jet engine to a horse-wagon!

Now we come to the younger lot. They typically have grown with technology in their formative years. And as reasearchers and activists they use computers and internet and are familiar with the technologies. Yet they give the same arguments of “oppression” as the older lot. I mean it doesn’t occur to them they are using the same computers for their own work because it suits them. But when it comes to use in the classroom it is not to be used. Double standards much. If they think the computers are oppressive as much, they should stop using it themselves. But then how will they post social media updates on Facebook and Twitter?

The younger generation of people who oppose technology in the classroom fits very well in the category of people without skin in the game (after Taleb). For things they think computer is useful for themselves, they will make full use of it be it data analysis, report writing or other work. But they are not ready to give same concession to children (especially in resource deprived areas) who need such scaffolding more. Instead they want to deprive the children of a learning companion because it does not work with their ideological world view centred at Eastern pole. And some of these same researchers, when it comes to their own children will provide them with computers and tablets for learning. But when it comes to the children who need it more…

I could go on and on.. But you get the point, the opposition is not based on factual aspects but ideological and there too they are on thin ice. But the opposition is waning funeral by funeral and computers are the new normal…

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Mitr

The Calculus Bottleneck

What if someone told you that learners in high-school don’t actually need calculus as a compulsory subject for a career in STEM? Surely I would disagree. After all, without calculus how will they understand many of the topics in the STEM. For example basic Newtonian mechanics? Another line of thought that might be put forth is that calculus allows learners to develop an interest in mathematics and pursue it as a career. But swell, nothing could be farther from truth. From what I have experienced there are two major categories of students who take calculus in high school. The first category would be students who are just out of wits about calculus, its purpose and meaning. They just see it as another infliction upon them without any significance. They struggle with remembering the formulae and will just barely pass the course (and many times don’t). These students hate mathematics, calculus makes it worse. Integration is opposite of differentiation: but why teach it to us?

The other major category of students is the one who take on calculus but with a caveat. They are the ones who will score in the 80s and 90s in the examination, but they have cracked the exam system per se. And might not have any foundational knowledge of calculus. But someone might ask how can one score 95/100 and still not have foundational knowledge of the subject matter? This is the way to beat the system. These learners are usually drilled in solving problems of a particular type. It is no different than chug and slug. They see a particular problem – they apply a rote learned method to solve it and bingo there is a solution. I have seen students labour “problem sets” — typically hundreds of problems of a given type — to score in the 90s in the papers. This just gives them the ability to solve typical problems which are usually asked in the examinations. Since the examination does not ask for questions based on conceptual knowledge – it never gets tested. Perhaps even their teachers if asked conceptual questions will not be able to handle them — it will be treated like a radioactive waste and thrown out — since it will be out of syllabus.
There is a third minority (a real minority, and may not be real!, this might just be wishful thinking) who will actually understand the meaning and significance of the conceptual knowledge, and they might not score in the 90s. They might take a fancy for the subject due to calculus but the way syllabus is structured it is astonishing that any students have any fascination left for mathematics. Like someone had said: the fascination for mathematics cannot be taught it must be caught. And this is exactly what MAA and NCTM have said in their statement about dropping calculus from high-school.

What the members of the mathematical community—especially those in the Mathematical Association of America (MAA) and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM)—have known for a long time is that the pump that is pushing more students into more advanced mathematics ever earlier is not just ineffective: It is counter-productive. Too many students are moving too fast through preliminary courses so that they can get calculus onto their high school transcripts. The result is that even if they are able to pass high school calculus, they have established an inadequate foundation on which to build the mathematical knowledge required for a STEM career. (emphasis added)

The problem stems from the fact that the foundational topics which are prerequisites for calculus are on shaky grounds. No wonder anything build on top of them is not solid. I remember having very rudimentary calculus in college chemistry, when it was not needed and high-flying into physical meaning of derivatives in physics which was not covered enough earlier. There is a certain mismatch between the expectations from the students and their actual knowledge of the discipline as they come to college from high-school.

Too many students are being accelerated, short-changing their preparation in and knowledge of algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and other precalculus topics. Too many students experience a secondary school calculus course that drills on the techniques and procedures that will enable them to successfully answer standard problems, but are never challenged to encounter and understand the conceptual foundations of calculus. Too many students arrive at college Calculus I and see a course that looks like a review of what they learned the year before. By the time they realize that the expectations of this course are very different from what they had previously experienced, it is often too late to get up to speed.


Though they conclude that with enough solid conceptual background in these prerequisites it might be beneficial for the students to have a calculus course in the highschool.

The Mitr

The problem with what is taught in schools

Many people have written on the problem of what is taught in schools and why children don’t like what they study. One of the major issue seems to be there is no direct relevance to what children are taught in the school and their own personal and social lives. The content in the school textbooks has been dissected of any meaningful connections that the children could make in their real lives. The school tasks are decontextualised so that they become insulated from the real world. The quote below very nicely captures what I wanted to say on this issue.

These kinds of situated-learning tasks are different from most school tasks, because school tasks are decontextualized. Imagine learning tennis by being told the rules and practicing the forehand, backhand, and serve without ever playing or seeing a tennis match. If tennis were taught that way, it would be hard to see the point of what you were learning. But in school, students are taught algebra and Shakespeare without cognitive apprenticeship being given any idea of how they might be useful in their lives. That is not how a coach would teach you to play tennis. A coach might first show you how to grip and swing the racket, but very soon you would be hitting the ball and playing games. A good coach would have you go back and forth between playing games and working on particular skills – combining global and situated learning with focused local knowledge.

– Allan Collins – Cognitive Apprenticeship (The Cambridge Handbook of the Learning Sciences)
Papert too has some nice metaphors for this, and constructionism hence includes problems or projects which are personally meaningful to the learner so that they are contextualised withing the lives of the learners..

The Mitr

Conditioning hatred for books

INFANT NURSERIES. NEO-PAVLOVIAN CONDITIONING ROOMS, announced the notice board.
The Director opened a door. They were in a large bare room, very bright and sunny; for the whole of the southern wall was a single win-dow. Half a dozen nurses, trousered and jacketed in the regulation white viscose-linen uniform, their hair aseptically hidden under white caps, were engaged in setting out bowls of roses in a long row across the floor. Big bowls, packed tight with blossom. Thousands of petals, ripe-blown and silkily smooth, like the cheeks of innumerable little cherubs, but of cherubs, in that bright light, not exclusively pink and Aryan, but also luminously Chinese, also Mexican, also apoplectic with too much blowing of celestial trumpets, also pale as death, pale with the posthumous whiteness of marble.
The nurses stiffened to attention as the D.H.C. came in.
“Set out the books,” he said curtly.
In silence the nurses obeyed his command. Between the rose bowls the books were duly set out-a row of nursery quartos opened invitingly each at some gaily coloured image of beast or fish or bird.
“Now bring in the children.”
They hurried out of the room and returned in a minute or two, each
pushing a kind of tall dumb-waiter laden, on all its four wire-netted
shelves, with eight-month-old babies, all exactly alike (a Bokanovsky
Group, it was evident) and all (since their caste was Delta) dressed in
khaki.
“Put them down on the floor.” The infants were unloaded.
“Now turn them so that they can see the flowers and books.”
Turned, the babies at once fell silent, then began to crawl towards those clusters of sleek colours, those shapes so gay and brilliant on the white pages. As they approached, the sun came out of a momentary eclipse behind a cloud. The roses flamed up as though with a sudden passion from within; a new and profound significance seemed to suffuse the shining pages of the books. From the ranks of the crawling babies came little squeals of excitement, gurgles and twitterings of pleasure.
The Director rubbed his hands. “Excellent!” he said. “It might almost have been done on purpose.”
The swiftest crawlers were already at their goal. Small hands reached out uncertainly, touched, grasped, unpetaling the transfigured roses, crumpling the illuminated pages of the books. The Director waited until all were happily busy. Then, “Watch carefully,” he said. And, lifting his hand, he gave the signal.
The Head Nurse, who was standing by a switchboard at the other end of the room, pressed down a little lever.
There was a violent explosion. Shriller and ever shriller, a siren shrieked. Alarm bells maddeningly sounded.
The children started, screamed; their faces were distorted with terror.
“And now,” the Director shouted (for the noise was deafening), “now we proceed to rub in the lesson with a mild electric shock.”
He waved his hand again, and the Head Nurse pressed a second lever. The screaming of the babies suddenly changed its tone. There was something desperate, almost insane, about the sharp spasmodic yelps to which they now gave utterance. Their little bodies twitched and stiffened; their limbs moved jerkily as if to the tug of unseen wires.
“We can electrify that whole strip of floor,” bawled the Director in explanation. “But that’s enough,” he signalled to the nurse.
The explosions ceased, the bells stopped ringing, the shriek of the siren died down from tone to tone into silence. The stiffly twitching bodies relaxed, and what had become the sob and yelp of infant maniacs broadened out once more into a normal howl of ordinary terror.
“Offer them the flowers and the books again.”
The nurses obeyed; but at the approach of the roses, at the mere sight of those gaily-coloured images of pussy and cock-a-doodle-doo and baa-baa black sheep, the infants shrank away in horror, the volume of their howling suddenly increased.
“Observe,” said the Director triumphantly, “observe.”
Books and loud noises, flowers and electric shocks-already in the infant mind these couples were compromisingly linked; and after two hundred repetitions of the same or a similar lesson would be wedded indissolubly. What man has joined, nature is powerless to put asunder.
“They’ll grow up with what the psychologists used to call an ‘instinctive’ hatred of books and flowers. Reflexes unalterably conditioned. They’ll be safe from books and botany all their lives.” The Director turned to his nurses. “Take them away again.”
Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

Though fictionalised the above passages capture what makes people hate books in general. The conditioning happens in reality in a more subtle manner. The conditioning laboratory is the school. In school children are made to engage with the books, textbooks in most cases, in the most artificial and dishonest matter. Another problem is the quality of textbooks themselves. Though the school has a “textbook culture”, not enough effort is put in by the writers and designers of the textbooks to make the best that they can offer. Instead cheap, copy-paste techniques, and a mix-and-match fashioned content is crammed and printed onto those pages glued together called as textbooks. No wonder, people when they grow up don’t like books or run away at the sight of them. Its just behaviorism at work with Pavlov portrait in the background.

The Mitr

Schooled and unschooled education

It is difficult now to challenge the school as a system because we are
so used to it. Our industrial categories tend to define results as
products of specialized institutions and instruments, Armies produce
defence for countries. Churches procure salvation in an
afterlife. Binet defined intelligence as that which his tests
test. Why not, then, conceive of education as the product of schools?
Once this tag has been accepted, unschooled education gives the
impression of something spurious, illegitimate and certainly
unaccredited.
– Ivan Illich (Celebration of Awareness)