The Future of The University in India

USA: Is a Bachelor's degree the new IQ test?

People like to point to IQ as a predictor of success (often based on studies done in the US military)  often failing to note that the IQ test serves as the filter at the very entry into the career.

Now, it seems that the Bachelor's Degree is serving a similar role, per my reading of this article in The Atlantic.

The employers who can’t seem to fill the United States’s roughly 6 million vacant jobs are at a loss for what to do. Qualified candidates are seemingly nowhere to be found.

How India Made Britain More Literate

Aravindan Neelakandan: How India Made Britain More Literate: The ‘Beautiful Tree’ Beyond Dharampal

Dharampal’s book ‘The Beautiful Tree’ contains a 1823 report by Ballari district collector. The collector mentions a curious fact:

The economy with which children are taught to write in the native schools, and the system by which the more advanced scholars are caused to teach the less advanced and at the same time to confirm their own knowledge is certainly admirable, and well deserved the imitation it has received in England.

Rev. Bell was in India to work in the asylum for the progeny of British soldiers through native Indian women, whom of course the soldiers abandoned. The imported teachers for these children were not exactly enthusiastic. One day as he was riding along Madras beach he noticed a native school session. He saw “little children writing with their fingers on sand, which after the fashion of such schools, had been strewn before them for that purpose” and he also saw “peer teaching - children learning from one another.”

Bell had his Eureka moment. He experimented successfully with this method and in 1797 published the description of his “Madras method” in England. Tooley discovered that the new National Society for the Education for the Poor in 1811 adapted this Madras method and by 1821, 300,000 children were being educated by Bell’s principles .

Meanwhile Jospeh Lancaster has launched his famous Lancastrian schools for furthering education in England. Bell and Lancaster entered into a bitter controversy as to the intellectual property of the particular system of education. But Tooley points out that “it wasn’t invented by either Bell or Lancaster. It was based precisely on what the Rev.Dr.Andrew Bell had observed in India”.

The meaning and purpose of higher education

Balu's paper: "Rethinking a Humboldtian vision for the 21st century". (PDF file)

The teacher does not presuppose a pre-existent motivation in the student; in fact, s/he is indifferent to the multiple motives present among the students. The teacher provides a goal for the student, induces the student to search for truth, and instils in that student a capacity to reach that goal as well. The teacher does not merely provide ‘information’ for the student to choose and pick but actively participates in the learning process by convincing the student that pursuing the goal of seeking truth is the ultimate goal of higher education. Far from being a mere (pre)condition for learning, the teacher becomes an equal partner in the educational process of the student. Pedagogy, in this new Humboldtian vision, is not subordinated to psychology, but becomes as crucial to the learning process as the presence of the learner.

The student learns autonomously, but this autonomy is taught by the teacher and is acquired by the student at the end of a particular phase in the learning process. Through the active intervention of the teacher in the learning process, the student slowly acquires the ability to learn autonomously. Autonomy, then, is the end-product of higher education and not its presupposition. The teacher becomes an exemplar for the student to follow because the former embodies the unity of facts and values, namely, knowledge.

Consequently, the University does not merely become an institution that functions as a reservoir of information. It becomes that social institution which builds bonds between two generations.

If one accepts this as a mission of the University and the Teacher, then

Pedagogical innovations become interesting only to the extent they succeed in the goal of inculcating the value of searching for truth in the student.

IMO, that is the answer to MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses).

A formula for a successful school

This National Public Radio story on Brimley Elementary School in Brimley, Michigan should be listened to; but at least read the transcript.

Salient points below:

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Brimley Elementary serves two groups that often struggle academically. Of the 300 students, more than half are Native American. Many come from low-income families.
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At this school, American Indian students are outperforming other Natives in the state. The school as a whole performs above the statewide average for all schools, and on some tests, the low-income students are performing at the same level as kids from wealthier families.
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First-graders who are having a tough time with reading and writing get one-on-one time with a specialist. There's an intervention teacher for kids in fourth, fifth and sixth grades — they mostly focus on math. There are teachers' aids to help out in all the kindergarten, first- and second-grade classrooms. And class sizes are small, averaging 22 kids.
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There's one more thing. The teachers are constantly assessing their students to make sure they're where they need to be.
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And based on the assessments, the bottom one-third of students get a lot of extra help and support.