Taking the Plunge

Book excerpt Pg 35-37

In April 1999, Bangalore was only just gaining recognition as an IT hub. The new Information Technology Park Limited (ITPL) was a gleaming symbol of the city’s seriousness about garnering an international reputation that would propel it into the next century. Its mirrored exterior drew parallels with buildings in New York or London, and having office space there was a status symbol to which many companies were eager to subscribe.

Ramji managed to persuade Goh Kok-Hat, the young Singaporean head of ITPL, to let them use a conference room at no charge. This small act of generosity by the head of ITPL played a part in facilitating the beginning of important ideas that would shape the thinking and prospects of thousands of poor children and school-teachers across India.

Gathered in the room were a disparate group cobbled together from the contacts of the founders and the three wise men. They comprised two professors (Dr Khincha of the Indian Institute of Science and Mr Prasad, the principal of Daly College), a college student, the head of a non-profit organization, two schoolteachers, a businessman and Ramji’s wife, Monica. With them, as always, were K.V. Raghavan, P.K. Iyengar and S. Balasundaram. It was an intentionally unstructured group bringing together different personalities, viewpoints, and perspectives.

‘I began the meeting with a question: “What makes a person creative, innovative or a great problem-solver?”’ says Ramji. ‘The question provoked Iyengar to describe the harmful effects of a lack of cause-and-effect thinking on society, saying that the school system did little to promote such thinking among its students. Schools needed to proactively create opportunities for children to learn cause-and-effect thinking. Prasad spoke about the importance of language and the arts, which led to a friendly debate on the relative importance of science and the arts in education.’

‘Rather than starting with preconceived thoughts and premises, the brainstorming’s unique and transformative value lay in its reliance on a series of fundamental and cascading questions, to build Agastya’s mission statement. This emphasis on questioning vs. “answerism” was to be a feature of future Agastya meetings leading to many surprising and unexpected ideas and innovations.’

Stemming from the discussion were provocative questions: What is creativity? Is it something innate, or can one acquire the skill? Can you raise the speed limit of creativity in a nation like India? How effective are teacher training programmes and why has teaching become a profession of last resort in India? Can teacher and student mindsets be evolved? In so many schools, why is there an absence of joy in learning and how can this be reversed?

K.V. Raghavan made an astute observation. Taking inspiration from his own experience in training managers, he opined that teacher training programmes were ineffective because they were disconnected from the school classroom. Teacher training needed to inculcate interactive, hands-on and real-time learning methods to transform the process. Using an analogy, he described the symbiosis between a medical college and hospital to explain how more interactive and practical teacher training methods with direct links to the school classroom could raise retention, improve teachers’ ability to learn and positively impact children’s performance. At some point during the discussions, Iyengar—the consummate scientist—explained to Ramji: ‘If I give you a 100 counterintuitive science experiments to do, I guarantee that in a few weeks a non-science guy like you will look at the world very differently.’

The intense, full-day session was concluded around four crucial observations. First, infusing a spirit of enquiry and a creative mindset in children would require a shift from rote-based, chalk-and-talk teaching methods to more hands-on experiential learning. Second, creativity could be nurtured by building learning environments that encouraged children and teachers to question, observe and experiment. Third, hands-on science, if aligned with the school curriculum, might be an effective way to spark curiosity in children and fill an important gap in education. Fourth, teacher training in experiential teaching-learning methods is essential to create a multiplier effect wherein each teacher goes on to train many more, thereby spreading the techniques exponentially. To do this effectively, teacher training centres would need to be co- located with schools.