Benjamin Bloom’s model (known
as Bloom’s Taxonomy) is an ideal approach to the educational process. It classifies educational learning objectives
into three domains: cognitive, affective and psychomotor.
While the cognitive domain is knowledge-based and
deals with processes such as memorising, comprehending, applying, analysing,
synthesising and evaluating, the affective domain deals with the child’s
emotions and attitudes. The psychomotor
domain handles the practical side like making use of tools effectively.
The education process
largely focuses on the cognitive domain and fills the students with theoretical
knowledge. Certain subjects like
physics, chemistry and biology have practical classes which take care of the
psychomotor domain to some extent, though in a very limited way.
Acquisition of abstract
knowledge for the sake of passing written examinations is almost the only
purpose of education today. Even that
does not reach the higher levels proposed by Bloom. A student should be able to make use of his
knowledge in order to create something new, to “build abstract knowledge” of
his own, at the highest level in the cognitive domain. For example, learning a poem should lead to
the composition of a new poem by the student.
Or a student should be able to take a mathematical theorem beyond
comprehension to application: create a new theorem, for example, or apply the
theorem to solving some new problem.
The affective domain is ignored by and large in today’s educational
system. CBSE introduced something called
Value Education in order to work on the affective domain. But it has failed to achieve the
purpose. In fact, it has become just
like the cognitive domain: a value based question is asked in the examination
and that’s all. There is no way of
checking the values and principles, attitudes and outlooks of the student, let
alone shaping them.
If we can take care of
the affective domain, our education system will become much more effective in
creating better citizens.
As Ivan Illich argued in
his book, Deschooling Society, our
education system creates psychological
impotence. Our schools create or
seek to create professionals who will serve the existing socio-political system
which revolves round wealth and little else.
You become a doctor or an engineer or anything else in order to earn a
good income and attain a certain status in society, and not for serving the
people with your skills. Thus we have
coaching centres in addition to schools for helping students gain admission to
best institutions. Or else parents can
pay heavy capitation fees and buy admission in such institutions. It’s mostly about buying the seat, buying the
skills and then selling those skills.
This should change. That calls
for what Thomas Kuhn called ‘paradigm
shift.’
Our educational system
should change the focus from creating professionals to unfolding the unique
individual in each student.
Unfolding the Unique Individual....this really needs a lot.
ReplyDeleteThough we blame our education system most of the time but the very truth is...how many parents ask for such teachings? most of them are focused on marks and ranks.
Most parents want the present system simply because that is what works in the given socio-political system. That's why I suggest that the socio-political system should change.
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