Some thoughts on ICT and Education

These are just some thoughts that came to my mind on reading the new draft policy on ICT and Education of the Government of India.

1. Our education system attempts to provide the same kind of education throughout the country through institutions such as the CBSE and ICSE, while, in the states, every child studies the same material irrespective of his/her immediate society. Thus, a tribal child studies the same things as the urban child and a fisherman's child. While this is certainly desirable to a certain extent, the child acquires few skills needed to live in its surroundings and can get easily alienated from its immediate society. In fact, the curricula is biased towards the needs of the urban child, thus even alienating the rural child from the school curriculum. This is an issue that has occasionally been discussed by our education experts. To an extent, it has been rather difficult to tailor the curriculum to suit the needs of the children in different parts of the country.

Now ICT provides a means of providing appropriate curricula to children in each corner of the country. While there has to be a common curriculum for the entire country, a part can be common just to each state and another part can be customised for each part of the state. For example, while there can be a common curriculum in, say, English, Science and Mathematics for the whole country, the local language varies from state to state, history should have a certain amount of local content (say, 20%), and there can be some material of local relevance in each region (say, 5% overall) apart from history that may be decided in consultation with local people. With ICT, it is possible to plan, create and deliver such diverse curricula and evaluate the students on their achievements too without much difficulty. The national policy should have such goals as its ultimate targets.

2. Any education system is naturally aimed at the average student. As a result, students who have much lower learning abilities and those who are exceptionally brilliant suffer. Students who find it difficult to cope with the curriculum are often helped by providing separate, and sometimes personalised, tuitions. But exceptionally bright students often suffer boredom, eventually lose interest in studies and perform badly in their examinations. This is particularly sad because society loses its brightest brains. Perhaps, this is one of the reasons for India not producing as many outstanding scholars and innovators as it should have considering the high number of scientists and researchers it is producing.

Here again, ICT can provide a way out by offering students opportunities to explore the subjects beyond what their curricula demand, thus satisfying the needs of the exceptionally bright children. By providing a way for them to satisfy their curiosity and explore avenues for knowledge beyond their text books, their minds are kept busy and free of ennui, and they feel a sense of achievement that could drive them to achieve more. With the help of ICT, all this can be done and even the evaluation process can be personalised, providing a "flat" playing ground for all students and making them most useful for society.

3. Another area where ICT should be roped in is in helping children with learning and physical disabilities. Conditions like Dyslexia and Autism are supposed to affect 5 to 10 percent of children in any population. As a nation, we have not been paying much attention to the needs of such children. ICT can be of help in the education of such children. Interestingly, there are people in India who have been working to develop this technology for the education of people with such disabilities. A large fraction of our people, including school teachers, is still unaware of such conditions and tend to punish the children for not performing well. This is a tragedy. They are individuals who can contribute much to society, as much or more than other "normal" individuals. It is time for the Government of India, and the governments in the states, to start paying attention to such issues, educating teachers and parents about learning disabilities and educating them on how to handle such children.

Similarly, ICT can help children with physical disabilities (including blindness and malformed or absence of hands) to lead a more normal life and learn like other students. Again, pieces of Free Software such as Orca (screen reader) are extremely useful not only because they are available free of cost but also they allow us to customise them for the number of different languages and dialects in the country. The proprietary equivalents are not only extremely expensive but also do not allow customisation for our languages. It is time that the Ministry for Human Resource Development looked into these matters and adopted a policy that will be of relevance to them.

Ignorance of Science

Perhaps because I had always been interested in science, and was a researcher till recently, I find it astonishing that many apparently well educated people have a lot of misunderstanding about natural phenomena that have been more or less understood by science. Interestingly, some of these things are taught at school level, and some at college level. Somehow, they don't seem to realise that these facts that they studied are really related to the world around us.

I remember a classmate in M.Sc. whom I met again after about three years or so. Learning that I was doing research in atmospheric physics, he asked me a question about the atmosphere (something like why the sky is blue). I told him that he should know because we had studied this in our M.Sc. class. After listening to my answer, he gazed at the sky for a few seconds and said, "Oh, so all that is real?" I was shocked to say the least. Apparently, many students think that what is taught is just for the examination. I hope things have improved now.

I have had the experience several times, while speaking to school students, that they say that thunder and lightning are caused by two clouds colliding. Some of them have even told me that their teachers told them this. Of course, a couple of school teachers too have told me this. In these situations, I have asked them about their concept of a cloud, and also how they think that there can be two winds from opposite directions that cause the clouds to collide. These have generally led to doubts in their minds.

Now let me explain briefly, for those who do not know, what we believe causes lightning and thunder. There is a type of cloud that stretches from close to the ground up to what is called the tropopause of the atmosphere. (The tropopause is at a height of about 18 km at the tropics and comes down to about 6 km at the poles.) This type of cloud is called cumulonimbus by meteorologists and is popularly known as thunderstorm. Because of its nature, it has strong circulation inside and is therefore avoided even by large aircraft. Since temperature decreases as one goes up, ice crystals exist in these clouds above some height. Though the process is not exactly understood, these ice crystals help to generate electric charges inside the cloud. The top of the cloud is generally positively charged and the bottom negatively charged. As the charge builds up, the voltage increases and eventually it becomes possible for the charge to flow and neutralise. This can happen either from the bottom of the cloud to the ground, between charge centres within the cloud or, if two clouds happen to form close together, from one cloud to the other. This is just like an electric spark that forms when the positive and negative terminals of a battery accidentally get short-circuited or power lines sometimes come close together in strong winds. Thus, a lightning discharge is a huge electric spark and thunder is a huge crackle that is produced in an electric discharge. As electric current passes through air, it heats the air suddenly. This leads to the sudden expansion of the air, which creates a wave that we call thunder.

Recently, I met a well-educated elderly person, with degree in science, and employed in a senior position. He told me that he had always been wondering about how clouds can cause such a huge sound and recently found the explanation in a general knowledge book. He told me that the sound is caused when two clouds collide because there are millions of ice crystals in them. I told him what I know but I am not sure that he was convinced. But then he came out with an astonishing observation. He said that if we go to some height, there is no gravitation, and therefore we can float in the air! He had apparently seen visuals of skydiving and thought that the people were actually floating! Again, I tried to tell him that they were not floating but were actually falling. But again, I am not sure he believed me. He asked whether it is not true that there is no gravitation on the Moon. He had seen people leaping over long distances on the Moon in Apollo videos. I tried to tell him that the gravitational force on the Moon was one sixth that on the Earth, but again I doubt that he believed me.

It is unfortunate that our education system fails to convey scientific facts to the students. This makes people easy targets of charlatans who make a living out of cheating such gullible people.