"Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death."
- Albert Einstein
Abhinav: Do you think kids become learnable very quickly as compared to adults?
Divya: 80% of the brain is developed by the age of 3. At a young age itself, we should interact more with the kids, stimulate their minds, allow them to explore the world around, build their vocabulary, and help them to think in the right direction.
Abhinav: What happens to the learnability quotient as we become older?
Divya: As we grow older, it is vital to make sure that children do not lose the inherent curiosity. We should teach them to say YES to opportunities. It is the only way to expose them to newer experiences and pick up on learnability.
Also, we need to encourage critical thinking in children. They should understand what is given to them, be skeptical about it, and analyze the arguments.
Lastly, they should examine their own experiences and come out with what works for them.
Abhinav: What skills does one need to make sure that one keeps learning?
Divya: As I said before, one is curiosity, and the other is open-mindedness. Other than that, motivation and enthusiasm are some of the traits that will help one to keep learning. Questioning yourself at every step is also very important.
Abhinav: Are motivation and curiosity, something that is abundant and comes naturally? How does one become curious and motivated?
Divya: A lot has to do with the kind of environment a child has grown up in. I want to give you a very relevant example.
My daughter was not interested in doing puzzles. But during the last couple of months in this COVID period, we all have breakfast together. While having breakfast, we do this puzzle game in The Times of India (A magazine). All of us compete to finish first.
In the process, she has developed the skill and interest required to solve puzzles because she associates some element of fun with it.
It’s always about positive reinforcements that you get from a particular situation. If you can associate positive reinforcements to learning, then obviously children will get interested in what they are doing. That’s what engagement is all about.
“We should teach them (children) to say YES to opportunities”
- Prof. David Perkins
Abhinav: Where do you think learnability is factored in National Education Policy?
Divya:
- Many emphases have been put into constructional understanding, i.e. making children understand the right way instead of rote learning.
- They have altered the way of teaching. It’s going to be less of blackboard teaching; instead, it will be more of discussion, analysis, and collaborative activities for experiential learning. They don't want the children to learn things that are not relevant to life anymore, but rather reduce the set of curriculum to core skills. It’ll also make the assessment framework easier. Numerous courses like AI, coding, design thinking, etc. will be introduced in middle school.
- All through the school years, there will be an emphasis on math and computational thinking. Puzzles and number games will help build computational thinking in children.
Abhinav: Divya, you teach at Cuemath. How does Cuemath factor learnability?
Divya:
- We introduce every concept through simulations. You can look at concepts in different ways and angles. Following these, specific questions are asked based on the simulations shown. For example: “What did you observe in the above simulation?”. It’s more of discovery or inquiry-based learning, which in turn helps in building critical thinking.
- For every set of goals, the children achieve, a belt is awarded. We also have a leaderboard in the class. All these things help in motivating the students.
- The curriculum includes puzzles, mental aptitude games, etc. which enable children to think outside the box. A lot of these things are factored in, and thus, children are always motivated to learn.
Abhinav: I hope our audience would have learned a lot about learnability today. Thank you so much, Divya.
Divya: Thank you.
