Skip to main content

Education without distortions



One of the pedagogical models that fascinated me while doing B.Ed. was Benjamin Bloom’s taxonomy. The model presents three domains all of which should get due attention from the education system. They are cognitive, affective and psychomotor domains of learning and refer respectively to mental skills, development of right attitudes and creation of a value system, and physical skills.

The present education system in India is heavily loaded in favour of the first. A lot of knowledge is imparted to students. Certain skills are developed too in the laboratories and playgrounds. When it comes to the affective domain, a lot more remains to be done. This is the most major drawback of the system, I think.

If due attention is paid to the affective domain, our students will move out of the schools with a well-developed value system of their own. The way hatred is spread through the social media and other platforms is a clear indication of failure in this regard. Anyone with a clear value system of his own will not be swayed by the false information that is bombarding us from every corner today.

A well-developed affective domain enables one to discriminate between good and evil, to choose the good and act on it, and enhance the welfare of humanity in general.

India is passing through a historical phase when much of the past history is being rewritten with motives that are often suspect. There is a clear political agenda which attracts a sizeable section of the country’s population. The greatest irony, perhaps, is that such a large number of people – a very large number indeed – are supposedly feeling insecure in the country on account of considerably smaller communities.

Obviously there is something seriously wrong with the system if such large numbers of people are feeling insecure which in turn gives rise to violence and strife. We cannot expect the system to correct itself in the given environment because the very creators of the system are responsible for the distortions of truths as well as minds. I think teachers can play a vital role here. Let there be more noble teachers who will help form healthy attitudes and values in their students.

PS. Written for In(di)spire Edition 235: #EducationSystem


Top post on IndiBlogger, the biggest community of Indian Bloggers

Comments

  1. You are absolutely right 👍 Tomichan. Teachers play vital role in building the required foundation including healthy attitudes and values in their students.

    ReplyDelete
  2. At the present time there is a lot of emphasis on left brain oriented activities. People with right brain emphasis are considered weak. A balance is needed between both sides for a balanced human being. It is true, we in India need job oriented education to employ youth. At the same time, the value of honesty and integrity over pure monetary gain should be emphasised.

    ReplyDelete
  3. well said -absolutely --much depends on what the teachers instill

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...

Two Women and Their Frustrations

Illustration by Gemini AI Nora and Millie are two unforgettable women in literature. Both are frustrated with their married life, though Nora’s frustration is a late experience. How they deal with their personal situations is worth a deep study. One redeems herself while the other destroys herself as well as her husband. Nora is the protagonist of Henrik Ibsen’s play, A Doll’s House , and Millie is her counterpart in Terence Rattigan’s play, The Browning Version . [The links take you to the respective text.] Personal frustration leads one to growth into an enlightened selfhood while it embitters the other. Nora’s story is emancipatory and Millie’s is destructive. Nora questions patriarchal oppression and liberates herself from it with equanimity, while Millie is trapped in a meaningless relationship. Since I have summarised these plays in earlier posts, now I’m moving on to a discussion on the enlightening contrasts between these two characters. If you’re interested in the plot ...

India in Modi-Trap

That’s like harnessing a telescope to a Vedic chant and expecting the stars to spin closer. Illustration by Gemini AI A friend forwarded a WhatsApp message written by K Sahadevan, Malayalam writer and social activist. The central theme is a concern for science education and research in India. The writer bemoans the fact that in India science is in a prison conjured up by Narendra Modi. The message shocked me. I hadn’t been aware of many things mentioned therein. Modi is making use of Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan’s Centre for Study and Research in Indology for his nefarious purposes projected as efforts to “preserve and promote classical Indian knowledge systems [IKS]” which include Sanskrit, Ayurveda, Jyotisha (astrology), literature, philosophy, and ancient sciences and technology. The objective is to integrate science with spirituality and cultural values. That’s like harnessing a telescope to a Vedic chant and expecting the stars to spin closer. The IKS curricula have made umpteen r...

Hindutva’s Contradictions

The book I’m reading now is Whose Rama? [in Malayalam] by Sanskrit scholar and professor T S Syamkumar. I had mentioned this book in an earlier post . The basic premise of the book, as I understand from the initial pages, is that Hindutva is a Brahminical ideology that keeps the lower caste people outside its terrain. Non-Aryans are portrayed as monsters in ancient Hindu literature. The Shudras, the lowest caste, and the casteless others, are not even granted the status of humans.  Whose Rama? The August issue of The Caravan carries an article related to the inhuman treatment that the Brahmins of Etawah in Uttar Pradesh meted out to a Yadav “preacher” in the last week of June 2025. “Yadavs are traditionally ranked as a Shudra community,” says the article. They are not supposed to recite the holy texts. Mukut Mani Singh Yadav was reciting verses from the Bhagavad Gita. That was his crime. The Brahmins of the locality got the man’s head tonsured, forced him to rub his nose at t...