Need for overhaul in how we learn

The way we educate our children in schools and adults in colleges and beyond is largely based on a teacher delivering a lecture, and asking questions intermittently to gauge the level of understanding of the knowledge recipients. There may be a test during this lecture or later on to further assess the learning outcomes. A few teachers use props and simple experiments to elaborate topics further - like the famous demonstration of swinging pendulum and its amplitude by Walter Lewin (click here) - but they are still largely just transferring knowledge from teacher to student and then using some means to confirm it happened to a satisfactory extent. This methodology has always been a topic of debate among educationists, and there has generally been a consensus that such instruction-based teaching and learning methodologies are not the most effective. Yet it's the most commonly used method because of 2 reasons: (1) It's the most convenient form of knowledge delivery for a teacher, and (2) It's the most convenient way of knowledge reception for the student, although highly passive and lacking any real-time processing of the information received. "Convenient" here means that it doesn't require any major effort or challenge for the teacher or student beyond the transaction of information transfer; it involves minimal consumption of energy to validate the information, relate it to something known or taught before, process it to draw insights beyond what is said, even think it over to an extent that the mind starts having questions (rather than the students "coming up" with questions for "class participation").

Now, it's the whole system designed in a certain way. And breaking out of it completely is not possible as parts of it require mandatory adherence. For example, school education has to end compulsorily with the students clearing the "board" exams conducted by authorized agencies of the State, and which becomes an eligibility criteria for college admissions. And colleges need to have their own mandatory affiliations. So we basically have an education system that is forced to adhere to specific syllabus and testing methodologies. The State would always want such a control, not only to ensure a certain standard of education in the country, but also to drive a certain form of content and thought process that is in its best interests. The latter has been a tool of the ruling class for ages, and the access to the kind of information like we have today hasn't lessened its impact. We've only ended up with people becoming agents for propagating their kind of information further. Being part of this world and yet breaking out of this carefully crafted model is impossible. Even if you start from scratch in an unknown colony in Mars, you would ultimately end up with the same power games and someone wanting to control how the others learn.

I started writing this article hoping to stress the need of taking educational institutions out of the frameworks of boards/affiliations and authorized syllabus. This, I thought, would open doors to creativity in how education is imparted and learning is approached. But I've realized there will always be someone who'll decide what's in the interest of the student to learn. Given that we can't totally break out of this human element, we could still aim at designing a system that ensures better learning and that builds smarter and wiser individuals who can not only think right, but also learn about everything from different angles, are able to build the right correlations, reach in thought where nobody has, imagine what nobody has and together be more creative and empowered than what the current approach allows. And also pass the exams and get the degrees they need to, but really understanding their true worth.

Techniques like peer instruction seem quite effective, especially - and this is my view - among more disciplined and mature students. It also requires that the teachers be trained to execute it effectively. And to draw most from peers, a student needs to be an extrovert to a considerable degree; and so do teachers; and that's a problem. Introverts have a tough time everywhere! Is it that majority of professional teachers are introverts and are more comfortable at delivering a lecture rather than creating a more communicative, participative and indulgent form of learning?

Would love to know what others think.

Here's Eric Mazur talking about peer instruction and how he thought about it:

के उजाला कम भाता है अब हमें

शनिवार की शाम का सुकून
और साथ में हल्की सी बारिश
ठंडी हवा का खिड़की से आना
मौसम की कोई मदमस्त साज़िश
गर्म चाय की चुस्की लेते हुए
नेटफ्लिक्स का पहला मुफ़्त महीना
बड़ी अय्याश हो गई है ज़िन्दगी
कोई लौटा दे वो ज़माना बोरियत का
फिर नज़र डालें मौसम पे
फिर निहारें चाँद तारे
सूरज को फिर भी न देखेंगे
के उजाला कम भाता है अब हमें

Observations from the Ranking task in Big Boss 11 - Episode 92, 1 January 2018

Big Boss Season-11 ended last weekend with Shilpa Shinde winning the show this season. I am one of those dimwits who followed the show this year, no kidding. While we often hear that a major part of these reality shows is scripted based on the show-makers' idea of what the awaam wants to see, there must still be the larger part left untouched as most of it perhaps looked unimportant. And often, scripting is not as efficient as natural course of events in increasing the overall entropy - and so by the 2nd law of thermodynamics, the shit you see gets more chaotic than intended and more in line with nature. You see how matured and scientific my analysis has become after watching this shit!!!😄😄😄

This post is to point out specifically to one task which was assigned in the 1st Jan 2018 episode. The housemates were supposed to discuss and arrive at a consensus on who stands where in the show; and then accordingly stand on the steps marked with the ranks - 1 was the highest and 6 was the lowest.

Out of the 6 guys, 3 -Shilpa, Hina Vikas - were so-called celebrities, and 3 - Puneesh, Akash, Luv - were so-called commoners. Now let me tell you about how the personalities of these 6 contestants appeared to me in the show; and you may disagree with me. Vikas - rightly called the mastermind, was always very calculative, strategic in his actions and decisions, and mature in his conversations. Shilpa - the oldest of the lot, was very hard-working in the kitchen, very natural in her behavior and presented an innocent disposition that was very difficult to not fall for. Hina - proved repeatedly that she had limited intellectual abilities and wisdom, and yet she thought the fame and face she carried justified her self-importance; and because of her profile, even the audience burdened her with lot of expectation. Luv was an average good-looking dude you see in posh areas of cities like Delhi. Puneesh was a rich desi kind of guy, not a huge show-off in his mannerisms but confident enough to take on anybody. Akash was a total nutcase, part-crazy, part-psycho, and eerily delusional about himself. These are just impressions these guys left on me during the show, and may be far from reality.

Now... the task! Arriving at a consensus on where one stands is a tricky task, especially when you are in front of the camera, and at stake is winning the show, while everyone has his/her own ideas on what would be perceived by the audience as "good" behavior in such a situation. I am sure each one wants to go on top, but then, if one wants to be seemingly "good" as well, one would not necessarily be rigid about wanting to be there for the task. So, as the task began, everyone eyed the number one spot. But as the process of consensus started taking shape, they took different approaches. The biggest idiot - Akash - made the loudest noise about being on top, and he wouldn't listen to anybody. The rest of the weaklings - Puneesh and Luv - tagged along as they saw an opportunity to somehow make it higher. The stronger 3 let them move up, perhaps coz they were or wanted to seem:

• Giving: As the weaklings were all commoners, it would look nice to let them take the higher spots for the task, as this probably couldn't mean (they thought) that they would actually win the show.
• Avoiding ugly fight: Akash was in his craziest avatar. Although everyone else is equally capable of ugly verbal fights, they wanted to avoid fighting with the mad man on this, as it wouldn't have looked nice at this stage of the game, more so just for the spot, which may have made them look selfish. Interestingly Akash didn't think that way.
• Under-confident: This might have been the reason to some extent, and they perhaps didn't want to seem stupid by pushing for something which may be the audience didn't think they deserved.
• Unwilling to compete: One may not be sufficiently powered to compete, especially when the perceived stakes aren't too big. This can easily happen in a constantly competitive environment, where competition fatigue sets in.

The more I think about it, I realize we come across this task in various forms and its outcome very commonly in our lives - companies, families, societies, democracies, ..., everywhere. We tend to let the crazy and incompetent guys go up, just to avoid being bothered by their tantrums, and end up having much more competent people taking orders from them. The reasons may be the ones listed above, and more.

I hadn't thought of this before, but it occurred to me just now as I was writing the previous paragraph - a similar observation, although more in the corporate context, was made by Scott Adams who went ahead and defined what he called The Dilbert Principle, which states that "companies tend to systematically promote their least-competent employees to management, in order to limit the amount of damage they are capable of doing". There is much more to the Dilbert Principle, and I'd strongly recommend the book of the same name by Scott Adams, where he has expanded the principle in very funny and thought provoking ways.

Life is a chain of availed possibilities

Life is a chain of availed possibilities. Most of us who are in positions to choose still don't make the choices that we know for sure would make us happy. The inertia in being in the current state and what it leads to in its natural random course is often very strong, and the mind cooks up all kinds of explanations and illusions for itself to justify why choosing anything else is not feasible. The so-called 'comfort zones' are hardly comfortable. But somehow the mind finds its ways to make us want to settle for what we've got, and yet regret not pursuing what we could have. Perhaps it's part of being an animal, and to break out requires a different mindset, unless constantly breaking out is more a natural course for someone.

How to train one's mind to make the choices it really wants to?

Kill your time wisely

Social media, regular media, mobile phones, TV - have all and together dumbed us down so badly and so tremendously that I fear we are losing our ability to think, reason and interact like erstwhile normal human beings. Things are getting integrated and we are pushed for ever higher adoption, so that more and more data is generated that can be fed into big-datas and AI's - and help businesses target customers better, create machines that are like the screwed up versions of humans that we ourselves are on the internet. The addictive nature of online platforms is no more a hot topic of debate, as it was in the Orkut days 10 years back - perhaps coz the debates that gain prominence now are controlled better by the platforms that host these debates, and there's no incentive for them in letting the content that hurts them show up, especially when they are listed companies and responsible for keeping on generating profits and shareholder returns.

Picture copied from here

Getting out of this quagmire is as nearly impossible as it is easy getting into it. It plays with your mind constantly, and the moment you try to distance yourself from it even a bit, the feeling of getting left out grips you all over, and when the cold turkey becomes unbearable, you are pushed back into the mess. And even if you are capable of dealing with the psychological complexities, the more practical issue is that the way most stuff works these days is tightly integrated with the web and the social media. How could you stay away from WhatsApp when everyone in your office is lying in that group in the app where office matters are discussed, although only for 1% of the time; and there are more 1-1 interactions happening on these instant messengers than face-to-face? How can you stay away from LinkedIn when networking has become the only way to get good jobs - true especially for MBA's? I owe finding my wife to a matrimonial site, so I shouldn't complain. But then, a matrimonial site doesn't try to engage you beyond its purpose. Same is the case with a job portal or a travel/hotel booking site, although they want you to return for your next job or booking. But the likes of Facebook and Twitter work on a different principle. Their goal is not to help the user carry out a transaction but to tie down the user and make him/her stay for as long as possible. And they do this by creating an environment where the users pull each other while the platform provides them with tools to do so. And smartly embedded in those tools and the environment are pieces that are paid for, not by the users but by the actual customers of these platforms for gaining access to the users killing time and exposing themselves to these pieces in the process, and also offering information about themselves that helps businesses target them more effectively. This is a simple and general way of looking at what happens on the web, but the point that does come out is that someone out there is using our time to help other businesses. In a way that's great for the market. We, as users, are undoubtedly served better in the process, but at what expense? The opportunity cost can't be quantified as any alternative scenario seems inconceivable the way things have evolved on the web and into our lives. Nor do I think we can go back from here. But perhaps some of us can make better choices and make something else of our time, while also not totally giving up the better service that's on offer!

Speed Bumps

We bought a new Air Conditioner in March this year. Twice since then some birds have screwed up the wires leading to the external unit outside. I earlier thought it was pigeons, as a lot of them fly around. But recently saw a few parrots going there, at the point where the wires were messed up last time. How to deal with this issue? I told my wife in Hindi - "Ye kabootar nahi, mitthu ne kiya". She burst out laughing. I came to know that Mitthu is more like a loving nickname for parrots. The more common word for them is Tota. I knew Tota, but didn't know that Mitthu is more the with-love kind of name. I sort of understand that now - Irfan Khan used to call Saba Qamar as Mitthu in the movie Hindi Medium - it was a love-name like for a parrot, i.e., Tota. I see that Tota is clearly masculine, I am not so sure about Mitthu from the sound of it, although it has to be masculine just to be consistent. Anyhow, the damn creature keeps damaging the wires of the AC, and I can't do anything about it. I have to set up some hurdles, so that the parrots can't reach the wires.

I came back just now from a stroll in our neighborhood - one of the 3-4 tea-and-walk breaks I take everyday as I work from home. There's a new ugly speed-breaker built on the nice concrete road in our area. I was totally pissed off looking at it. Firstly coz I hate these things called speed breakers in India, which you find all over the country, and which I find most idiotic as a concept. And secondly, a lot of times these are made really huge and high without any consideration for the vehicles that have to pass the hurdle... my brother's Honda City was hit at the base because of insufficient ground clearance.

The most ridiculous aspect of these so called speed-breakers is the concept itself - creating a hurdle on the road so that one is forced to slow down - who thinks like that? Well, I do agree that humans are a kind that don't adhere to speed limits if you just tell them to. You have to either penalize them effectively and without fail, or force them to slow down somehow. And the latter is what these bumps on the road do. It seems the more technical term for these is speed-bumps.

As is common with the way we Indians think about ourselves, I always felt that the these speed-bumps are so idiotic that they must have been invented and are used only in India. But when I looked up their history here - Speed_bump - Wikipedia, I came to know that the invention was by the Americans in the early 20th century, and the first ones were built in New Jersey. In my 3 short trips to the US over the past 10 years, 2 of which were to New Jersey, I've never seen these bumps. If they're still found in places, I didn't pass by any. According to the wikipedia page UK and parts of Europe have what are called speed humps, which are less aggressive than speed bumps, and are built with lots of regulation, oversight and research. I find them stupid too. Anyway, Indian city roads have all kinds of humps and dumps on our roads resulting from patches, stuff, gutters, potholes, and so on, besides the specifically installed bumps, which together make driving here a lot of fun.

Being a Civil Engineer only by a 4-year degree, I know that guidelines exist in India as well on how these bumps are to be constructed. And I know for sure that they are rarely followed. I still remember the lecture in my 3rd year at IITB where the professor talked about the guidelines present in some IS code, and then referred to the newly built super high and ugly bumps in the campus and talked about how poorly they were designed, rather not designed at all. That was in 2003.

We live with them. We adapt, coz questioning could be dangerous or tedious in India. It's much easier to just cross the bump and move on. Often when I am driving, I feel like I am running a hurdles race. Sometimes I refuse to slow down and let myself fly, but manage land immediately thereafter and keep going. They say if you take off and reach orbital velocity, you can go round the earth. And if you reach the escape velocity, you can go beyond. Some day these bumps will help me take off to heavens, not slow me down!

A few hours without my smart phone!

I forgot to carry along my mobile phone today to office. The last time this happened was in 2011. And on both occasions, nothing much was missed on the mobile phone when I came back to it. The difficulty for the most part was psychological. However, a lot has changed in these 6 years. And this time, I felt my life depended more on my phone than it did in 2011. How? -

1. I was not able to tell (text) my wife that I reached office. Nor was I able to be in touch with her.
2. I was not able to view my official email on-the-go, which created uneasiness and stress in my mind.
3. I was not able to carry out any digital transactions of small value that I usually did through my mobile wallet - thanks to demonetization, I now use digital means even to pay extremely small amounts, wherever possible. And therefore I keep very little cash. So I didn't have breakfast - the banana I had at home was sufficient, I told myself - and just had tea by giving away 10 rupees. Well, another reason I skipped breakfast was to not lose any more time and to reach my desk and get connected ASAP. But there were more challenges...
4. This one has more to do with the crappy way my company's apps work and my bad day - I reached office and connected to the LAN, but couldn't open Outlook or Skype. And for any internal site of the company, including email, to be accessed through the browser, these days every time you have to enter a One-Time-Password which is sent on your mobile number registered with the company. So.... I was totally cut off from connecting with anything inside the company, despite being inside the office, despite using the company laptop and being logged in using my corporate ID. To be fair, this OTP thing wasn't supposed to be every time earlier but just for the first time and the system remembered thereafter... but some fuck-up in the network has led to the system needing it every time now. I took my laptop to the tech-support guys in the office, and they helped me get the OTP through a voice message on a landline phone at office - I was not aware of this option before, and I guess it's rarely used. (They couldn't fix the Outlook and Skype problems though. Repairing MS Office didn't help. I just lost 2 hours staring at the monitor.)
5. The sub-conscious scrolling of news and facebook apps looking at random things that never register in the mind at all... I missed this only a little bit, coz the mind was totally occupied and stressed by the stuff above. The phone I have now is much more smart than the one in 2011, but it seems most of the smartness of phones generally gets utilized in feeding us junk information better or helping us buy more easily.
6. The near-complete digitization of my job, and even our lives to a large extent, resulted in me feeling totally useless and meaningless when not connected and online. I could usually sit alone all day in a room and work while mentally being part of various situations involving lot of individuals - who are all just IDs, names and voices in a way, and so am I in that model - when am connected and constantly exchanging information through various digital means; but when all connections were lost today, it was just me in the room, and I was alone, and the comfortable illusion of being part of the various herds was gone. I was really alone.

Common with 2011

1. Not that I get a lot of calls, but the fact that I could miss some was creating stress in my mind. Thankfully most calls (even 1-1) in my company are over Skype (internet), and so I was less likely to get any official call on the phone, unless of course I couldn't be reached online - which turned out to be the case today. But when I came back home today and checked my phone, there was not a single missed call. Nor was there any in 2011.
2. While the phone was away, I was reminded of all the calls I needed to make, and everything seemed like long overdue, that had to be done without losing more time.
3. I didn't miss social media at all.
4. Not being accessible to anyone meant nobody could contact me even in an emergency. While this level of being inaccessible was more than normal 10-15 years back, it was screwing with my mind now, making me quite uncomfortable. This was normal life before we had mobile phones, but clearly my habits have changed, and so has my mind and its definition of normal.

As I realized the inseparability of phones in our lives, for a few brief moments thoughts about the future of these gadgets crossed my mind. Perhaps chips embedded inside and connected directly to brains would be very convenient - you won't forget, your hands will be free, and data will flow more freely. But it may lead to such seamless shit that your mind may be full of junk in no time - not that it isn't now, and we are mostly adopting it by making that choice through exposing ourselves to all such media and letting them drain our mental resources. But the scarier consequence would be the potential differences in capabilities between humans based on technology that they can afford, and thereby have many more ways of screwing each other. May be it is happening already, while you and I are busy entertaining ourselves with all this junk! And getting increasingly dependent on it!