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Category: Post Covid 19 Education
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by Rizwana Khan

 

Its 21st century, and the new learning structure has arrived. The authoritarian way of learning has become obsolete. It might be so. Some say, “Then there is Donald Trump.”  Well, then there are the huge rallies against him, too, i.e. Women Rights, Black Lives Matter, Climate Change, Greta Thurnberg and Malala. The population has become more reflective, creative and engaging.

Authoritarian practices were the norm in the previous centuries. It was important to toe the line. In the military forces the soldiers killed and were killed at a General’s command. In Middle ages religion was the authority. Crusaders led by the Christian kings took over the whole Middle East and Europe on the bases of God.

It all started when King of Prussia, later Germany, tried to make his own army, and discovered that the farmers he recruited dropped their guns and left the battle fields whenever they felt like.  Because of these actions he decided to train them in schools. Consequently the schools were instilled discipline, punctuality, respecting authority and sitting or standing for long hours.

The authoritarian system became the hallmark of all the schools. As the world progressed into Artificial Intelligence and video games, acquiring knowledge becomes more creative and reflective. The job skills for menial, administrative, and clerical jobs that were easy to assess and grade became obsolete as these jobs were done mechanically. All the companies that have survived and stocks gone up after Covid 19 are Google, Amazon and Ali Baba. In order to survive in the present times the learning has to be creative.

There are different ways of defining creativity. Basically it is a quality that is mostly not measured by tests. Creativity can be anything as follows: resourcefulness, curiosity, resilience, self-discipline and civic mindedness.

In the schools, in order, to teach relevant and creativity in the curriculum the students have to engage with the concepts that are not otherwise taught in the curriculum. For example, scientific concepts are taught with real life resources, where student’s curiosity and resourcefulness create something new.  Creativity and reflective practices are not something new.

In Turkey, the Rumi engage in their learning “made claims for a ‘religion of love’ that went beyond all organized faiths.” What can get lost in such readings is the extent to which Rumi’s Muslim teaching shaped even those ideas. As Mojadeddi notes, the Koran acknowledges Christians and Jews as “people of the book,” offering a starting point toward universalism.

Learning, also, means to develop a collaborative culture. Different kinds of backgrounds help the people to learn from each other unlike the ‘modern’ education. In the classrooms all the students are developed to form into new, and a better mold.

The Prussian kind of education system was figured to be the modern learning and served well the military dictators. The teachers in the class became a replica of a despot. He knew all the answers, implemented the rules and lectured the masses. There was no need to develop collaborative culture. The teacher instead of empowering the students gives the power to himself. The standardized curriculum leads to hegemony. Every student is graded to a rubric set up to a specific family literacy. Any diversity is discouraged and, further on, expelled.

For instance, in Pakistan, education institutions cater to different socio economic classes. The students the universities don’t know how to coexist. The universities become a battlefield.

Thus creativity is not encouraged as it requires student centered learning and develops diversity that socio economic class based system can’t handle. Considering the requirements of future, the country will have to change the education system by opening up their classrooms to diverse population and engage a creative curriculum. Imparting knowledge means engaging the children to discover the world on their own terms.

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Category: Post Covid 19 Education
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Working Hard Improves Children’s Self Esteem

By Rizwana Khan

Credential Multiple Subject from CSUN

In Pakistan students two decades ago would play outside and go the local shops. But nowadays because of the overcrowding and Corona pandemic children are not allowed to go out unaccompanied because of insecurities and not enough open spaces.

Hakim played card games with his friends. He counted numbers and developed interest in manipulative. Further his mother sent him daily to the local store around the corner with some money to buy things for her. Thus he was confidently able to calculate the numbers in the transaction, easily. He lived in a joint family with grandparents. As his both parents worked the grandparents were able to help him with his assignments as needed.

On the other hand Hakim’s friend stayed in the house watching television and a tutor came in to teach him.  He was not let out of the house because of a very busy street in front of their house. He never played games because his mother said that it was waste of time and had no friends he could visit after school. As he was seven years old yet he couldn’t count the numbers.

At school, the irritated teachers dictated the answers to the students, especially the slow learners who would take a long time to solve the solutions and the time was of essence. As the curriculum was packed with too many subjects but not with enough time, the teachers were under the pressure to finish their chapters assigned by their syllabus. So when the students who took too long, the teachers gave them a good student’s notes to copy.

The students, especially the ones with slower speed learnt this constant state of helplessness. Their self-belief being very low they, always, waited for their teacher to tell them what to do at every step or a class fellow to finish their work so that they could copy their work.

As we have seen, many self-beliefs are reciprocally related to achievement—each affects the other (Eccles, Wigfield, & Schiefele, 1998;Pinxten et al., 2010).

A good example of the work assessed by the teachers In the Covid 19 pandemic shows the discrepancy between the checking of the Cambridge and the actual assessment of the schools.  The students in UK protested and other parts of the world also participated. The teachers had aggregated the scores over the year of Covid 19. The final exams were basically the teacher’s assessment. Thus the schools assessment differed from the Cambridge in A and O levels exams and the students didn’t like their teachers’ assessments.

When the tests were taken, the students who never completed their assignments themselves without the help of the tutors, tend to have low self esteem. Always they copied the work or the tutors gave them the answers. The self-esteem can be instilled by getting better in what they do independently. If they get a good score in the weekly tests they felt a positive attitude toward themselves. Their h self-belief improves with hard work and achieves success in the class.

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Category: Post Covid 19 Education
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Who takes responsibility for student’s success or failure?

It’s a teacher who takes responsibility for student success or failure (rather than assigning that responsibility to student ability or to external barriers).

The teacher in the low income schools where the failure rate is the highest correlates with the low self-efficacy. With low literacy in their homes, the children in the classrooms need extra help, motivation and self-discipline. Unfortunately that‘s not the case. The teachers are harsh and intolerant and predict dire future for them.

In Pakistan the schools have the highest dropout rates. ‘According to a NGO advocating the rights of children, 35,000 high school pupils in Pakistan drop out of the education system each year due to corporal punishment. Such beatings at schools are also responsible for one of the highest dropout rates in the world, which stands at 50 percent during the first five years of education.’

One of the main reasons for the low standards of schools is the teacher’s sense of low efficacy. A major goal of formal education is to equip students with the intellectual tools, self-beliefs, and self-regulatory capabilities to educate themselves throughout their lifetime. The rapid pace of technological change and accelerated growth of knowledge are placing a premium on capability for self-directed learning. (Bandura, 2007, p. 10)

There is no effort being made to reach children at their homes or find out the obstacles that are stopping the students from achieving their goals. For example in Baluchistan the students who were sent back home from their universities due to Covid 19 were expected to fend for them. Without any means to buy computers or install Wi-Fi towers in the vicinity, most of the students were not able to participate in their lessons. It results in their low efficacy and thus they predict their own failure.

The systems fail and fall apart when the teachers stand in front of the class and declare that if all the children are not able to follow the lesson they can get help from somewhere else. This presupposition by the teachers is a sense of efficacy, defined as a teacher’s belief. The teacher’s attitude that that he or she can reach even difficult students to help them learn is important attitude that is missing in our schools.

Nowadays, while our teachers give up on the students that are different socio-economic backgrounds, minority or handicapped,  the Western world doesn’t. But it was not always like that in our culture where you give up on the students. The poets like Allama Iqbal, Haneef Shareef Balauch etecetras encouraged and motivated the weak and the needy to work hard and be inspired to get knowledge. Various cultures have spewed inspirational stories of knowledge, motivation, and self-discipline or volition. The corporate product advertisements like Nike promotes products with slogan ‘Just do it.’

The students aren’t encouraged to think for themselves and, so are the teachers. Although HEC was instituted to make sure the universities are accredited and scholarships are given to the deserving, the teachers are still penalized for differentiating the lessons for minority students. There seems to be low efficacy in the HEC or the school system run by the government.

The departments in the universities lag behind in their knowledge. The Punjab school text book publishers censored almost one hundred books and are constantly limiting what is being taught in the private schools. Imagine all the pig, witch stories and Shakespeare and Manto plays and Valentines poems censored from the curriculum. Even the words ham, pig, pork and dog will be called sacrilegious by certain segments of the population. Thus the knowledge fed to the students will be censored and limited.  

The knowledge from the decades old notes besides reflecting bad quality of education reduces the students’ chances of success in global economy. The teachers who try to develop students independent are laid off from the universities. Two renowned University professors, and Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy) have both been fired from the Forman Christian College. These are just the few who were penalized for developing self-efficacy in the students.

Further the knowledge is never absolute as the facts never stay the same. The new curriculum emphasizing the religion as the core source creates confusion and stalls innovation.

In the Western world support the students at every stage of learning. The teaching strategies, computers, as well as, lunches are provided to the children to make sure that they are better able to learn. The first level of the Maslow Pyramid emphasizes that the physiological level of the person has to be met before they can reach the top level of self-actualization.

Consequently this confident belief that teachers c­­­­an help their students develop knowledge, self-regulation and self-discipline is discouraged. As the self-efficacy lowers and the children, already, weak in the studies, fail. There are no strategies that will help them self-regulate with a differentiated syllabus, and a motivation to work hard. Further, ignored and punished for their failure, students drop out. 

Instead of predicting student failure, the teachers should learn to predict student achievement. In most of the Pakistan universities, teachers don’t take upon themselves to update their classroom lectures, motivate the students or help them get independent by providing them with individualized lessons.

The low achievement feeds into the pessimism inherent in the culture resulting from war, refugees, overcrowding, unemployment and poverty. In the culture where all the news is considered to be bad news, pessimism feeds into all the institutions. The education is mired with low efficacy. The three factors i.e. knowledge, self-regulation and self-discipline or volition are at its lowest levels.

Also, the investment in developing self-efficacy is important for the future of the country. The students working independently without the rote learning are motivated and self-disciplined to achieve success in their lives.

For example, nowadays in the army undercover activity in Waziristan, the minority students from out of there  are scrutinized by the authorities. If they seek more knowledge outside the classrooms the professors are help responsible. So the professors afraid that they’ll be penalized ignore them and don’t give them the educational tools from which they can get knowledge. Further on when they go back to their villages, in Corona times its impossible to reach these students. The Smartphones cost more then their monthly salaries that they can ill afford.

Pakistan isn’t intentional in their approaches to reaching their students. The children are left to their own resources which is basically a neighborhood tutor as both their parents are working or illiterate. In every street and in neighborhood an afterschool tutor helps the children finish their homework. There are no special visuals, talking computers, presentations, or manipulative for the children. The answers are dictated and solved by the teachers themselves. In the tests and exams, also, there has to be only one way to be solved. There are different ways of thinking as the different modes of learning are not encouraged by the system.  

In conclusion, Khan Academy is a good example of how the teaching can be personalized. Students use their exercises, quizzes, and instructional videos to learn and master skills. Further, they get immediate feedback and encouragement.

Unlike in Pakistani education system, the results are given out after a few months and thus dampening their motivation. Like the successful Khan Academy, if the teachers personalize their teaching and figure out what kind of strategies work for each child they can focus on their learning needs and it will result in overall higher self-efficacy.

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Category: Post Covid 19 Education
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Students' Self Concept Helps Them Succeed

by Rizwana Khan

California State University Northridge

Credential Multiple Subject

In a government school situated in a small village, Mustafa was taught in English medium as was required by the law. As their mother tongue was Punjabi, nobody spoke in English, he had hard time understanding most of the assignments let alone solve them. So the teachers from the preschool found an acceptable technique of delivering their lessons. It was called rote learning. The schools didn’t have the resources nor the training to support them individually. With time in the overcrowded classrooms the boisterous students became good at rot learning. The technique was simple i.e. the teachers wrote the answers and the students copied off the white boards onto their copies and memorized them for tests.

Being a headmaster’s son Mustafa’s was strong in his studies and followed the instructions in the classroom. He perceived himself as an able student. His father  developed in him a belief that he can succeed. The social fabric around instilled him the strong religious values. And he was expected to pass from the school whereas a majority struggled or dropped out by the time they reached the matriculation or tenth grade. With positive attitude that he’ll succeed, he memorized the answers and passed with above average grades from his school.

Mustafa’s father,had great aspirations for him. Later on he prepared for Pakistan Military Academy exam and hoped to become an officer in the army instead of a soldier in the ordinary ranks. He paid the academy to prepare for the exam as was the norm and memorized the answers by heart. The academy assured that the exam questions they had prepared with them will come in the entrance test as the PMA exams were repeated every two years. And that’s exactly what happened. Mustafa’s family celebrated his passing the written exam. Then in the second phase the interviewers asked him to tell the answers in his own words. This was something new to him and consequently very difficult to brainstorm the ideas. The concept was difficult for him. The fact that his father had dictated his goals and he wasn’t passionate about anything particular therefore didn’t know what to say anything worthwhile in the interview.

Thus he flunked the in person interview. The interviewers told him that the answers should be not have been memorized and his inability to think critically made him ineligible for the position.

In his school they were never supposed to do any science experiments or relevant projects tied to their lessons. Thus their self-esteem and self-concept never developed nor any passion discovered.

Over the generations, self-concepts of the students like Mustafa were affected by these kind of eventual outcomes. The schools like his reinforced the learning that placed them in the lowest segment of the social strata.

Thus students like Mustafa are rejected because of their poor self-concept. Prime Minister promises that the Single National Curriculum (SNC) will eliminate two tier education system. These differences between the private elite schools with Cambridge degrees and the local matriculation system practiced in madrassas and government schools degree that divide Pakistan into the socioeconomic classes.

The SNC will be implemented but the teachers will deliver the lessons same as before in the schools. The main problem that arises in the schools is the matter of self-concept and the private elite school know how to develop it in their students.

In psychology, self-concept generally refers to our perceptions of ourselves—how we see our abilities, attitudes, attributes, beliefs, and expectations (Harter, 2006; Pajares & Schunk, 2001).

In the schools the Punjab text board has started censoring what can be taught from the books. With restriction environment knowing oneself will become a challenge. We could consider self-concept to be our mental picture of who we are. It is our attempt to explain ourselves to ourselves, to build a scheme that organizes our impressions, attitudes, and beliefs about ourselves. But this model or scheme is not permanent, unified, or unchanging.

When students like Mustafa are not able to build concepts that connect them to the modern world of new ideas, impressions and beliefs of others and themselves, they start looking through a a narrow tunnel of their parents’ vision that is basically stuck in the past.

No changes in the curriculum can only be successful, if the students self-concepts is not emphasized.

All our self-perceptions vary from situation to situation and from one phase of our lives to another. So in Pakistan the social classes are segregated. The SNC is supposed to break these barriers. The professions that were taken up before by the elite schools, but now Prime Minister hopes that SNC will provide to the rest of the population who go to the poor schools, too.

Prime Minister Imran Khan through SNC wants everyone to have a chance. But the self-concepts are nurtured in private schools that they are trying dismantle.  

A worthwhile self-concept is developed, only, when the school curriculum goes along with the latest discoveries and ever changing knowledge and teaching that empowers students. With the current emphasize is static and can’t be critically analyzed as is religion, students self-concept cannot be developed.

Further the vested interests control the students into conforming to their dictates. For example madrassa trained students fought Taliban wars for two generations and reverted to violence and trauma. Thus strong self-concept in the student will help them in go develop in the right path. 

Further on, the elite private schools provide a platform for developing self-concept based on self-discovery and passionate perusal of self-knowledge. For example, a few female students from an elite private school were able to stand up for sexual harassment and gained the attention of policymakers for reformation. In retrospect, in madrassas and government schools no student speaks out.

So self-concept creates an attitude that differentiates the two tier education systems. Ironically the self-concept through which SNC desires to empower the poor schools, is the one we find in Cambridge based private schools that it eventually plans to censor and replace. So we hope that SNC would acknowledge the schools that provide Pakistan schools with critically needed attitude for passionate learning and eventually high level jobs that require critical thinking.

 

 
 

Details
Category: Post Covid 19 Education
Hits: 83

Who takes responsibility for student’s success or failure?

By Rizwana Khan

Credential Multiple Subject from CSUN

It’s a teacher who takes responsibility for student's success or failure (rather than assigning that responsibility to student ability or to external barriers).

The teacher in the low income schools where the failure rate is the highest correlates with the low self-efficacy. With low literacy in their homes, the children in the classrooms need extra help, motivation and self-discipline. Unfortunately that‘s not the case in the educational institutions in Pakistan. The teachers are harsh and intolerant and predict dire future for them.

In Pakistan the schools have the highest dropout rates. ‘According to a NGO advocating the rights of children, 35,000 high school pupils in Pakistan drop out of the education system each year due to corporal punishment. Such beatings at schools are also responsible for one of the highest dropout rates in the world, which stands at 50 percent during the first five years of education.’

One of the main reasons for the low standards of schools is the teacher’s sense of low efficacy. A major goal of formal education is to equip students with the intellectual tools, self-beliefs, and self-regulatory capabilities to educate themselves throughout their lifetime. The rapid pace of technological change and accelerated growth of knowledge are placing a premium on capability for self-directed learning. (Bandura, 2007, p. 10)

There is no effort being made to reach children at their homes or find out the obstacles that are stopping the students from achieving their goals. For example in Baluchistan the students who were sent back home from their universities due to Covid 19 were expected to fend for them. Without any means to buy computers or install Wi-Fi towers in the vicinity, most of the students were not able to participate in their lessons. It results in their low efficacy and thus they predict their own failure.

The systems fail and fall apart when the teachers stand in front of the class and declare that if all the children are not able to follow the lesson they can get help from somewhere else. This presupposition by the teachers is a sense of efficacy, defined as a teacher’s belief. The teacher’s attitude that that he or she can reach even difficult students to help them learn is important attitude that is missing in our schools.

Nowadays, while our teachers give up on the students that are different socio-economic backgrounds, minority or handicapped,  the Western world doesn’t. But it was not always like that in our culture where you give up on the students. The poets like Allama Iqbal, Haneef Shareef Balauch etecetras encouraged and motivated the weak and the needy to work hard and be inspired to get knowledge. Various cultures have spewed inspirational stories of knowledge, motivation, and self-discipline or volition. The corporate product advertisements like Nike promotes products with slogan ‘Just do it.’

The students aren’t encouraged to think for themselves and, so are the teachers. Although HEC was instituted to make sure the universities are accredited and scholarships are given to the deserving, the teachers are still penalized for differentiating the lessons for minority students. There seems to be low efficacy in the HEC or the school system run by the government.

The departments in the universities lag behind in their knowledge. The Punjab school text book publishers censored almost one hundred books and are constantly limiting what is being taught in the private schools. Imagine all the pig, witch stories and Shakespeare and Manto plays and Valentines poems censored from the curriculum. Even the words ham, pig, pork and dog will be called sacrilegious by certain segments of the population. Thus the knowledge fed to the students will be censored and limited.  

The knowledge from the decades old notes besides reflecting bad quality of education reduces the students’ chances of success in global economy. The teachers who try to develop students independent are laid off from the universities. Two renowned University professors, and Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy) have both been fired from the Forman Christian College. These are just the few who were penalized for developing self-efficacy in the students.

Further the knowledge is never absolute as the facts never stay the same. The new curriculum emphasizing the religion as the core source creates confusion and stalls innovation.

In the Western world support the students at every stage of learning. The teaching strategies, computers, as well as, lunches are provided to the children to make sure that they are better able to learn. The first level of the Maslow Pyramid emphasizes that the physiological level of the person has to be met before they can reach the top level of self-actualization.

Consequently this confident belief that teachers c­­­­an help their students develop knowledge, self-regulation and self-discipline is discouraged. As the self-efficacy lowers and the children, already, weak in the studies, fail. There are no strategies that will help them self-regulate with a differentiated syllabus, and a motivation to work hard. Further, ignored and punished for their failure, students drop out. 

Instead of predicting student failure, the teachers should learn to predict student achievement. In most of the Pakistan universities, teachers don’t take upon themselves to update their classroom lectures, motivate the students or help them get independent by providing them with individualized lessons.

The low achievement feeds into the pessimism inherent in the culture resulting from war, refugees, overcrowding, unemployment and poverty. In the culture where all the news is considered to be bad news, pessimism feeds into all the institutions. The education is mired with low efficacy. The three factors i.e. knowledge, self-regulation and self-discipline or volition are at its lowest levels.

Also, the investment in developing self-efficacy is important for the future of the country. The students working independently without the rote learning are motivated and self-disciplined to achieve success in their lives.

For example, nowadays in the army undercover activity in Waziristan, the minority students from  there  are scrutinized by the authorities. If they seek more knowledge outside the classrooms the professors are held responsible. So the professors afraid that they’ll be penalized, ignore them and don’t give them the educational tools from which they can get knowledge. Further on, when they go back to their villages, in Covid 19 times, its impossible to reach these students. The Smartphones cost more then their monthly salaries and so that they can ill afford any technology.

Pakistan isn’t intentional in their approaches to reaching their students. The children are left to their own resources which is basically a neighborhood tutor as both their parents are working or illiterate. In every street and in neighborhood an after school tutor helps the children finish their homework. There are no special visuals, talking computers, presentations, or manipulative for the children. The answers are dictated and solved by the teachers themselves. In the tests and exams, also, there has to be only one way to be solved. There are different ways of thinking as the different modes of learning are not encouraged by the system.  

In conclusion, Khan Academy is a good example of how the teaching can be personalized. Students use their exercises, quizzes, and instructional videos to learn and master skills. Further, they get immediate feedback and encouragement.

Unlike in Pakistani education system, the results are given out after a few months and thus dampening their motivation. Like the successful Khan Academy, if the teachers personalize their teaching and figure out what kind of strategies work for each child they can focus on their learning needs and it will result in overall higher self-efficacy.

  1. Poverty and Education in Pakistan