How to find a better school for your child?

By now, you are aware, that the schools are fundamentally different only in two aspects: Teacher versus student centricness and Learning versus Development orientation. Other differences in the school are just superficial. Do not get misled by it.

However, because most of the schools at least in India are Teacher-Centric Learning oriented schools (TCLO) schools, you need better methods of evaluating them, without getting sidetracked by the superficial glossy-looking features of the school. Let us call this TCLO school as classical school because they are available in plenty around you.

When you are evaluating a school for your child, ask these five questions about the school: Instruction design followed in the school, System for tracking and correcting lagging students, Building inter-subject connectivity, Building Real-world connectivity of a subject and Student guidance available in the school. 

1. Instruction designs followed in the school : Instruction design is the design of teacher to help the student learn a specific lesson. The lesson could be of LCM or Fractions in Arithmetic, or it could be Radiomagnetic waves in Electricity, or volcanoes in Geography. Design includes elements like ' method of teaching, sequence of introducing content to the child, getting feedback from students to ensure that the progress of teaching is appropriate, and helping the student to connect with students outside the school'. School therefore has to set up a 'system' to help the student learn a specific subject well. If the 'system' is better, it helps the student to understand the 'content' of that subject in a more easier, faster and accurate way. All three characteristics of instruction design - or system- are important. Please understand that 'teachers' are just one part of the system; good teachers alone are not enough. 

Because setting a system takes time, schools tend to have good 'systems' ( which is formally or informally designed by Instruction designers) only in specific subjects or areas. That is why you will find some schools are known for producing better 'mathematics' students, while some produce better 'arts' students and so on. I have also seen some schools specialised in producing 'Sportsman' in hockey. Find out what the school is offering and match it with your child's needs.

2. System to track and correct lagging students in time:

Despite a brilliant 'system' set by a school, not every student learns at the same pace and time. Some students understand a 'lesson' faster, some slower. Some students may also miss a lesson, because they are not 'attentive' on that day. Variations in understanding the lesson in a class of 30 student are enormous. When a student lags behind in specific lesson ( say LCM), they have to be corrected quickly because that also slows their learning of next lesson , say in fractions. In other words, the effect of 'not learning something' in time can be cumulative. It can set a student progress behind by considerable amount. This is an inherent weakness of a teacher-centric system, in comparison to student-centric system.

To overcome this inherent weakness, a school therefore has to set up a 'feedback system' to track a student's grasp of a specific lesson - after the lesson is taught to students - and then 'immediately' correct those lagging students who have fallen back. Spotting the lagging student and correcting them are both required for a teacher-centric school. Swedish schools, who have ranked the best in the world, have alternative teachers who are responsible for both tracking and correcting the student. But this system is practically absent in many schools in India. But some schools, using e-learning packages, have set up a system to at least track the progress of student's learning and spot the lagging students.

3. Building Inter-subject Connectivity 

Although subjects - Mathematics, Science, History, Biology - are taught independently in a school by separate teachers, in real life they are connected with each other. When a school helps the child to 'see' these interconnections of subjects, learning of student deepens. For instance, teaching geometry while teaching solar system in Geography helps the student deepen his learning of both subjects. Or teaching History and English together, or teaching Algebra and Geometry together. And so on.

Montessori schools (which are student-centric) deepen the students learning because they help students connect the apparently disconnected subjects. Some classical teacher-centric schools, like IB schools, also follow this practice. Many school teachers follow this practice informally at their individual level, but until the school formally adopts this system, this is not very useful for students.

4. Building Real world connectivity of a subject

A concept in a subject can be understood best by a student, when he sees it's practical life application in the real world. For instance, the concept of longitude and latitude is best understood by understanding the coordinates of one's 'house in a city'. Or one can understand understand the concept of light while constructing a camera. Or understanding the concept of compounding by understanding its application in the multiplication of money.

Many schools have caught on this idea . Some schools, who practice this a lot, call themselves 'Experimental schools'. But many schools follow these principles in bits and pieces, only in certain areas and subjects. Therefore, while evaluating these schools, ask some probing questions to ensure that the school is indeed following these practice.

5. Student guidance available in the school

Because of teacher-centricness of the school, a school has to help a student to focus his efforts. Not all children are alike. Some are better at mathematics, some in language. Some learn better by doing, some by observing. Some prefer to be in student groups, some prefer to be alone. Some like to study in the morning, some in the evening. Some are good in understanding a subject in depth, while some are good in scoring marks in that subject. Although emotions help learning, some children are too emotional while some are too rational. Both require separate guidance. Morever, negotiating the transition of 'adolescence', for instance, is one of the toughest hurdle of a student which can derail a child's learning. Without this guidance on different aspects, the students cannot utilise the facilities of the school, even when they are available.

Surprisingly, despite plenty of availability of such guides, only few schools utilise them. Many schools instead have counselors whose job is to deal with 'problem children' in the schools. But a TCLO school requires this support for their 'normal children' so that they can focus their 'efforts' only on chosen areas. We shall discuss about the features of this Student Guide later.

Summary

Whenever parents meet me for the first time, they ask me 'Which school is better of my child?'. I hope these five criteria of choosing a school can help these parents. 

Help your child to learn

If your child is in school, then the most important objective of yours should be to Maximise his/her learning outputs. For this one needs a Continuous learning plan, based on the child's background of his abilities.

This sounds simple. But there are many hurdles to cross. One is the confusion between teaching and  learning. Second is the blackbox of  'earning?'. Let us try to decode learning bit by bit.

Open the blackbox of learning

Learning helps the child to understand 'something' and use it to achieve his personal goals. In other words, it changes him in some ways. To help you understand learning, it is useful to know that Learning occurs at five levels:

1. Learning of content ( what )
2. Learning 'why' of the content ( relevance, context, purpose)
3. Learning of how to use the content ( how to use counting to give money)
4. Learning of behaviour ( habits)
5. Learning of beliefs and mindsets

These five levels are inter-dependent and inter-related. But understanding them separately helps you understand and correct the child's mistakes that occur in learning. Lower Level learning ( say level 1 of learning content) takes much lesser time than higher learning levels, say learning a new belief. But higher level learning hastens the learning of 'lower level'. So sometimes, you have to spend time in 'teaching' higher level learning even though it takes longer time.

Learning has four characteristics:

1. Using multiple levels of learning consolidates learning faster

For instance, we often marvel at the 3 year old's ability to remember and recognise 'car names', or 'a for apple' or '1 to 10' numbers. At this age, the child is learning 'content' and 'replaying' it again and again. This is level 1. This is just 'using memory'. There is another way to consolidate learning. For instance, if one uses different 'senses' to connect with a word 'car', memory becomes deeper. Recollection is easier.

But if the child moves to 'level 2' when he understands more about cars. For instance, when he understands why a car is called 'Jeep', and another called 'taxi', it helps the child understand the finer distinctions of 'car', because the purpose of each car is different. Now he understands car a bit more. Earlier, in level 1 he is only using memory to 'remember' car. Now he 'understands' the meaning of car a bit, and therefore put this in 'working memory'. His learning consolidates as he can use this 'data' of car.

The more levels a child uses in learning, better the consolidation happens. For instance, let us say she has learnt counting numbers. If she uses it to count chocolates, which is both level 2 and level 3, learning consolidates better. If he learns to count money while taking it from shopkeeper, it improves even further.

2. Learning 'how' deepens learning very quickly

This is level 3. While learning radio magnetic waves from the books helps, Learning is deep when the student builds a FM radio transmitter. Learning ' the principles of L:ight' from books is helpful even with experiments, but it is very deep when the student builds a camera. Learning 'programming' helps, but learning is multifaceted when the student uses it to program 'robot'.

The first two levels, even though understood at a conceptual level, can be consolidated well if the student uses the 'how to use the concept' in a real object.

3. Learning of appropriate behaviour helps learning

Learning also helps if appropriate behaviour - habit - is accompanied while learning. ( This is level 4). For instance, habit of keeping things in order helps in learning , because it helps the child to take a step at a time and reach the final step ( sense of order).

The most important habit that helps learning of content is the habit to sit and work patiently. This also includes the habit of managing the distractions. Emotional distractions are the most difficult to manage for the child where parents can contribute the most. Without adopting this habit, as the child grows, learning stops abruptly.

Infact because our schools do very little to 'help' the child to increase his attention span, most of the students suffer from very poor attention span. For such a distracted child, the only way to increase attention span is to use the child's internal motivation. For instance, parents can use the child's motivation of learning Tabla or drive a bicycle to increase his attention span.

4. Adopting learning-friendly beliefs is very important for learning 

Learning is never sequential. Learning involves making lot of mistakes and learning from them. But, if your child has a belief that 'Performance matters" then he tends to do activities, or study subjects, where he 'performs well'. He does not take challenging activities where he is likely to fail. Carol Dweck calls this performance mindset. On the other hand, when the child has a belief that 'he can always improve himself', he keeps on doing activities for becoming better at them. This is improvement mindset.

Carol Dweck has done lot of research on these two mindsets ( beliefs) and how they impact learning. If your child has 'performance mindset' and has a fear of performing, then it is important to change his mindset. Because, if not today, his learning will get hampered.

Summary

Because learning occurs at five levels, one has to be mindful of the level of learning one is trying to achieve. Most of the schools work at the level 1 and 2. Some schools have some activities at level 3. These schools call themselves practical learning schools, experimental learning schools, or even Project learning schools. Very few schools work at level 4/5 and expect the parents to contribute. Parents can do a lot at level 4 and 5 to help their child 'hasten' their learning later even though they fall 'behind' in class. Unfortunately, like schools, very few parents know how to help child learn new habits or new beliefs. Their only method is to instruct, admonish or 'blackmail' children which never works. 

Help your child unfold, not discover, his talent

Many parents believe that potential talent can be 'detected' at an early age. This assumption is simply untrue. Benjamin Bloom's study of 120 high performers proved that even 'potential' of high performers could not be detected at early age. Child prodigies make us believe that 'talent' can be seen at younger age. But the conversion of child prodigies to adult performers is so 'rare' that one cannot rely on potential talent at lower age. 

I have researched the process of unfolding of talent over 10 years. I have found large differences in how people discover their talent. Some like Boman Irani discover their talent at a later age. He discovered his talent of acting at the age of 35. And that too by chance. Last year, i met a corporate professional who discovered his talent of writing at the age of 40. Some discover it by chance and at early age. For instance, Jaya discovered her talent of drawing when she met a drawing teacher in her 8th Grade.

I have seen bigger surprises in the process of talent unfolding. Some discover their talent at an early age, but once they start their work-life, they find that it does not suit them. For instance, Jessica spend 28 years of life pursuing medicine, but once she started working she found that she is not ready for using her talent. Every year i meet countless students who pursue IIT courses after grueling preparation, get into IIT, and then find that IIT does not suit them. Abhay is one such student i met.

In other words, the process of finding talent is not a straightforward path of sequentially taken actions. It is path of tangled threads. Some deliberate , some unconscious. Even when the path is understood, one can 'influence' it, one cannot control the process of unfolding of talent. I therefore call the process as Unfolding of talent.

So how can you help your child to unfold his talent? 

Here are five basic rules that are practical and useful:

1. Accept broader view of talent: Talent was earlier seen as a narrow acquisition of cognitive ability like mathematics or programming. Lewis Terman's study of 1500+ high IQ students has proved that IQ alone is not the prime cause of any success. Meaning of talent, as we have discovered now, is much more wider and holistic. It is definitely not just one single skill. It consists of cognitive abilities, character traits and conative traits. For some more light on the subject, see this view of talent.

2. Making the right choice of education path at 10th grade is less important than making the most of a given choice: Our path of unfolding of talent goes through three stages. Stage I is choosing an education path after 10th grade. Stage II is choosing the work path after graduation. And stage III is choosing the career path after exploring various work-paths. If stage I directly leads to Stage III, your child is lucky. But if you do not want to depend on luck, you must take right actions during graduation instead of spending time on finding the right education path of graduation.

3. Maximise your child's learning outputs in school: There is a huge gap between teaching and learning. See this difference and help your child in learning. Help him contextualise his understanding of a subject be it Mathematics, English or History. Help him use his knowledge of subject to manipulate real life objects like radio and bicycle.

4. Tackle the bottleneck of emotional distraction in child's learning in advance: Bigger bottleneck of learning at school is not inadequate efforts or insufficient willpower. The bottleneck is the distraction that is caused by emotional upheavals that are part of growing with other friends. The transition of a student to adolescence during 7/8th grade causes huge hormonal changes that distracts a student the most. I meet many such students who have got distracted from learning because of their misdirected interest in sex-related articles. Help your child tackle emotional distraction by practicing empathy.

5.Actively manage the child's 'motivational engine' to guide learning: A child's motivation is very important for his learning.  But we cannot use his motivation to guide him because we do not know how to use the fire of motivation. For instance, the child's love of bicycle at the 4th grade can be used to motivate him to learn some of the basic principles of physics. Here are some ideas. 

If your child is not fond of academics, help him PLAY

Schools and parents lay huge emphasis on training of cognitive abilities like logic ( science), numerical ( mathematics) and linguistic( languages). Indeed they are critical cognitive abilities that can help the child train his mind and then later use it for more producing productive outputs. But what if your child has fallen back in academics and has therefore lost interest in pursuing academics ? Do you have any option? Yes, there is. 

Second law of success states that talent can be built by combining COB ( Cognitive Abilities), Character Traits ( CAT) and Conative traits ( COT). In other words, if the student is not good in developing his cognitive abilities, we can use his school time to develop his Character traits. Three character traits are important later in life. These are to think creatively, to cooperate with others effectively, and to regulate oneself ( i.e to control their own impulses and emotions.) . These skills cannot be taught like subjects. So where can we learn this?

They are learned and practiced by children in play. Not structured play, but unstructured play. 

Structured play is the play where one competes at the highest level, but unstructured play is the play between the children where more than competition, getting along is more important. Structured play has strict rules and regulations imposed by the play, unstructured play have the rules that are decided by the consensus amongst the members who are playing.

Unstructured play is important because it develops three critical character traits that are important for building the talent in the later phase of life:

1. It nurtures creativity in the child

We can’t teach creativity in schools, because schools centers not on answering children’s own questions but answering those questions dictated by an imposed curriculum. In a school, all questions have one right answer and everyone must learn the same answer and repeat it. Surprisingly, in today's economy, we no longer need to perform routine calculations (we have calculators and computers for that), or to answer already-answered questions (we have search engines that can perform the same function). 

But we do need children who can ask and seek answers to new questions, solve new problems and anticipate obstacles before they arise. These all require the ability to think creatively. The creative mind is a playful mind. And where are the children most creative ?

In unstructured play, they design their own creative rules of play. They find innovative ways to negotiate the constraints like space or number of children. They convert their weaknesses into strengths by setting rules that will overturn the normal advantage of a over-aged child. They creatively find ways to bring in a strong partner to compensate for their weakness. They creatively find games where they have more specific strengths. 

2. It builds capacity to cooperate with others

Unstructured play, by definition, is voluntary, which means that players are always free to quit. If you can’t quit, it’s not play. All players know that, and so they know that to keep the game going, they must keep the other players happy. When players disagree about how to play, they must negotiate their differences and arrive at compromises. Each player must recognise the capacities and desires of the others, so as not to hurt or offend them in ways that will lead them to quit. Failure to do so ends the game and leave the offender alone, which is powerful punishment for not attending to the others’ wishes and needs. 

The most fundamental social skill is the ability to get into other people’s minds, to see the world from their point of view. Children practice this skill continuously in their social unstructured play.

3. It promotes Self regulation amongst children

In unstructured play, children also learn how to control their impulses and follow rules.

All play – even the wildest-looking varieties – has rules prescribed and negotiated by the members. In the play-fight you cannot kick, bite, scratch, or really hurt the other person; and if you are the larger and stronger of the two, you must take special care to protect the other from harm. Purpose of play-fight is not to win at any cost, but to prolong the play by keeping the other happy.

In socio-dramatic play – the kind of imaginary play exemplified by young children’s games of “ driving a bus” or pretending to be superheroes or running a house – the primary rule is that you must stay in character. If you are the pet dog, you must bark instead of talk and you move around on all fours no matter how uncomfortable that might be. If you are policeman, you must be rigid and harsh, howsoever you may feel really.  In these roles, the children learn the art of controlling impulses and behaving in accordance with social expectations.

Conclusion

Unstructured play, in the good old days, was highly in vogue when joint families used to stay together. Even though we did not stay in joint family, the families we lived in our town were so close that we practically knew every child in our neighborhood. We did not even know that most of the traits developed in us were through the unstructured play we engaged with our playmates. Thank God, we lived in good old days. But our children are not so lucky. They therefore need our help.

Peter Gray is a rare psychologist who has studied the role of PLAY in developing our character traits. He is also author of Free to Learn: Why Unleashing the Instinct to Play Will Make Our Children Happier, More Self-Reliant, and Better Students for Life (Basic Books, 2013). This blog has been written by using the ideas of his book. For more details, read his book. 

How to use free career advice available on internet and books?

Many believe that one can always get some useful career advice by listening to the story of an achiever.

They argue that we get tips and ideas to succeed by hearing their stories. By knowing how achievers negotiated their hurdles we find how to negotiate our hurdle, by listening to their responses to difficult situations we learn to respond innovatively, or after hearing the ideas of how they energised themselves after failure we can also use the same methods to buck ourself up after failing. But is this assumption really true? Can we really adopt career ideas and suggestions of others achievers directly?

Let us understand how we use health advice in our lives.

How do we use health advice of others 

In order to use someone's health advice effectively, I have to 'incorporate' the advice in my daily routine. I cannot adopt an idea as it is, I have to adapt it for my situation. For this, I have two choices.

• First choice is creating an intellectual framework. For instance, to use the advice of weight control, I must create a framework of "Weight control", the framework of 'cause and effect'. What causes weight increase and what causes weight loss. The framework consists of basic info like noting down the calorie impact of each food, estimating the calories we burn during the day, predicting the calorie intake by eating our normal food. Then i need to understand my own habits: both of consuming food and burning calories.  Understand my current weight scenario. ( if i am not overweight by too much kg, i can use less drastic regimes). Only after creating a framework like this, i can use an advice of a celebrity who reduced her weight by 20 kg in two months.  
• Second choice is based on Similarity: similarity of background. For instance, to copy the food habit of a celebrity, I must find a person who is more similar to me. If i am consuming South Indian type of food, i must get the advise from a South Indian. If i stay in Mumbai, I must copy the exercise habits of Mumbai-based resident, because i cannot do normal exercises at 6 pm! This is copy-paste method, except that you have to take care in the copying the right person ! 

Both methods have pros and cons.As you would realise, intellectual framework Method forces you to take more cognitive effort, but it can also help you incorporate advice of many celebrities easily. The Similarity Method requires less cognitive effort,  but you must spend more effort on finding the right person who is similar to your background. 

Take care while using similarity method (Copy-paste) for your career advice

Many individuals prefer to use the second choice, because it takes lesser cognitive effort.

But they ignore the essential rule of finding the right person. For instance, finding any south Indian person in Mumbai will not help, you must find such a person who has also lost his weight successfully. That is difficult. Finding a person with more similar background increases the chances of using the advice successfully , but it is also increases the difficulty in finding such a person. For instance, finding a person who has similar habits like you ( such as having desk bound job, because you work on computers) is not easy. 

Without finding the right person, however, most of the people use the wrong learnings from other successful achievers.  And that is why, despite so much of health advice on controlling weight, you will find so many individuals struggle to control their weight. Despite so much of health advice on stress control to control BP, you will find so many individuals suffering from high BP at low age. Despite so much of health advice on controlling a simple ailment like cold and headache, you will find so many individuals suffering from cold and headaches.

Similarly, there is plenty of career advice on internet.The same is true while using career advice of celebrity achievers. When you hear the stories of these achievers, and hear their ideas and struggles, you can use them by using either of the two methods of adapting it: Either create a Career framework to find which advice is appropriate for you or Use Similarity method to find the right achiever who resembles with your background and situation.

You will find that students use Similarity Method, when they chose the profession of their parents or close relatives. When a child in the family of actors want to be in entertainment profession, he can easily chose Similarity method of getting ready-made career advice. Being in the family, they find it easier to get the right customised career advice for their career. No need to find any other celebrity or an outsider. That is why it is easy to chose and succeed a discipline/profession which is followed by your father, uncle, grandfather or cousins !

Another option of using Similarity method of seeking career advice is to find a role model in your chosen work-path. That is why entrepreneurs find mentors who are successful entrepreneurs or Angel investors. Or find a role model of a Professor if you want to pursue a work-path of a Professor. Or find a role model of a researcher, if you want to pursue research. In technical language, this is called finding a Mentor. Mentoring is very helpful if mentor is found in the same work-path . This is how one can use the interviews of successful achievers. 

How to use generic advice of achievers 

But how to use career advice of other achievers, who are in not in your domain, or from your background, but who have achieved something in a very different arena?

There is a plenty of career advice available in the net, in the books, in the heads of achievers. It is a very good idea to use this advice. But most of it is not for you. How to separate wheat from chaff?

One simplest way is to find answers to some specific questions. For instance, nested goals is often common in every person's life. If you therefore meet celebrities, ask a question " How did your goals kept on changing".

Second way is to ask questions about the important values of compass setting. Values such as 'Process is more important than Result' determine the course of life more than any other value. This value determines if you dream 'big' without thinking of the consequences of 'failing' in realising the dream. This value also determines the extent of 'ethics' that you may want to sacrifice to achieve your goals.

Conclusion

But what you want is the specific customised advice that will be applicable to your career, the advice that will be applicable to you, given your family and parental background, advice that you will be able to incorporate in your daily work practices, advice that suits your specific work path. In short, what you require is a 'Customised career advice'. Tips and ideas of career advice look good on the surface, but are not useful to most of us. 

We all search internet to discover a success formula that can help us surmount all our career difficulties. If there is one success formula you must use, it should be either developing your own career framework by using generic framework like Enlight.  Only your career framework can help you sort out good career advice from bad ! 

How to nurture your extra intense child?

In his new book, Enjoying the Gift of Being Uncommon: Extra Intelligent, Intense, and Effective , Willem Kuipers writes about XIP ( Extra intense persons).

XIP children share these four characteristics 

1. High Intellectually ability in a given subject or field like chess, maths, or music
2. Incurably inquisitive in anything they do
3. Require high degree of autonomy: they seem to have their own minds to take their own decisions
4. Possess excessive zeal in pursuit of their interests be it sports, arts or a s
   ubject 

As you would notice, Willem Kuipers definition of gifted-ness is not confined to intellectual ability or IQ. It includes conative traits like passion and character traits like inquisitiveness and autonomy. In other words, as discussed earlier, talent or gift includes the 3Cs of talent. 

I happen to meet many such children now a days. Parents often approach me because they note the intensity of their young child before they realize that their child is developing at a faster rate.

When they are progressing appropriately in their classes, they look normal although they may also seem to be different and compulsive in their behaviour. Please also read this blog of prodigies. Some of these children are also autistic on a range of spectrum. Please read this blog to tackle the wrong interpretations of autism. But when these extra intense children lose their path, they seem to display the worst of their behaviour: disobedience to elders, ruled by their changing whims and fancies, breaking the rules at the drop of hat, and always seem to be too much in a hurry. Sometimes, the child keeps the frustration inside and rebels against everyone and everything.

Parents of these children follow these three strategies to help their intense children: 

1. Understand that these children's emotional ability lags behind intellectual ability

Although their intellectual ability is growing at a rapid rate, their emotional ability always lags behind. And this causes most of the problems for these intense children. They are not in synch with their age-group children, their aspirations get mixed with competence, and they often have no cognizance of what they can do and what they cannot. Their social competence is often lacking.

Parents have to remember that their child is of young age although he or she may seem to accomplish something unusual sometimes. Even though they are doing wonderfully well in some fields, they have to be given the space to fail in relationships and in managing their stress as well as positive emotions. Although they seem to know what they want, parents have to remember that they are equally scared of failing on a chosen path. They need help in understanding and finding the right friends.  They are also seem to gel with elder children because the older children display more emotional maturity. 

2. Find an avenue, even if it is arts,music or sports, to express their creativity and high level of energy 

Many a times, it takes a long time to find a domain that will do justice to the child's talent. When this happens it presents a curious problem to parents. If a child is unable to express his abilities, he or she feels frustrated and vents out his frustration in dysfunctional manner. It is therefore prudent to find an avenue in which the child can dissipate his energies, even though the avenue may not lead the student to the final destination of his domain such as Engineering or medicine. For instance, students with extra ordinary cognitive abilities in mathematics, seem to love music. Parents of these students should let them develop their interest in music, even though music may not be the final domain in which the student will flourish.

3. Follow the child's cognitive growth closely and feed it on timely basis

This is easier said than done. It is important for the parent to understand what her child can do well and help her find a teacher or an activity where she is challenged in that activity. For instance, if the child is very good in logical reasoning, it is important to introduce him to the 'computing world' so that he can not only feels challenged enough, but also finds a medium to 'consume his energy and attention' on his own. The same is true if you find the child is good in numerical reasoning, spatial reasoning or verbal reasoning. Some parents find this difficult because it forces them to understand the underlying principles of learning and development and actively participate in their child's development. Some parents find it easier to take help of developmental coach who can understand the child well and appropriately find a path that suits the child's complex and idiosyncratic personality.

Why should students learn history and geography in school?

Often parents ask me 'Why should children learn history and geography?'. Especially, why are our students learning about the stories of Aurangzeb and Humayun? or about Egyptian civilisation? Or why are students learning about the different continents ? How were they formed? What do we learn from the wars that have happened in the past? Even students feel that getting this knowledge is not useful. They study history and geography at the last moment only to get passing grade. 

The real question is 'Why should students learn history and geography in school'?

Two major reasons to learn History and Geography in school

1. One, is to sustain the motivation of your child in the school. 

Initially, a child may pursue an activity for its own sake.  He/She may start doing an activity – such as playing guitar, or solving science problems, or playing cricket – just because it is exciting. But, after a while, she loses interest in it and stop doing it. 

To sustain motivation for a long time, some students have to find 'meaning' in learning that activity. These children are not motivated just by learning subjects like Algebra or Science.  Marks alone do not excite them. They get bored by solving problems in algebra, mathematics or English, because their mind keeps on raising a question 'Why am i learning this subject? What is the purpose of learning this?" 

I never liked History subject in school. That was until i was in VIIth. In VIIth, i got a new teacher. When i fared poorly in History, he surprised me by asking me ' You are so good in History. Why do you score poorly when you know so much in History?' When he saw my wide mouth look, he replied ' You always answer my questions such as who invented Steam Engine and how. That is History'. He completely reframed the meaning of History to me. He increased my interest in science by making me gain more information of how those scientific discoveries happen,  who makes them, how they happen by chance. I discovered Edison and his countless experiments. I found the bigger motivation to learn science. From then onwards, I did not study science to get more marks. I studied science because it was going to help me solve 'bigger problems' of mankind. 

2. Second, is to ensure that the future work-life is not stuck up due to lack of motivation.

In a school, our children require motivation to learn. In the work-life, we require motivation to do our work. But to sustain motivation , we need to find 'meaning' in that activity. Initially, money may help us get motivated to do our job. But we cannot do our jobs only for money after a while. We need to find meaning in our job. How do we find meaning in an activity? To find meaning in an activity, we need practice. 

In history, we get the practice of finding meaning in the events and situations that made history. Such as the small event of Salt Satyagraha in the India's Independence. Or knowing the evolution of a steam engine, through History, we understand the importance of learning the function of car engine. Geography enables us to connect with the dense interconnection of different elements of life, be it earth, air, water, animal life and forests. And Literature – novels, biographies, and other artifacts - is the source of knowing about how the leaders and big geniuses perceived their lives, what they considered as meaningful in life. 

Why do we need to learn these subjects in school? If we start learning these subjects in school, we tend to store them in memory. According to the fundamental rule of learning, the more 'items of a subject' we store in memory, the more easier it is to learn new things on the same subject. If for instance, you were initiated in Geography in school, you will understand the topic of global warming when you read it in newspaper. You will understand the impact of pollution on the air. With more reading, you will be able to appreciate the dynamics of pollution, and find a way by which you can contribute to the 'cleaner climate'. Through history and geography, we understand how a 'small' contribution in a field from our side can make a 'big' impact in the world outside. 

On the other hand, when we are not exposed to History and geography in our school, we get stuck up in our work-life like Manisha, Digvijay or Ramesh, because they are unable to find their motivation of doing the job. One cannot learn this skill easily at a later age. One must be building on this skill from early age.    

However, individuals who get this practice of finding meaning, tend to find their long term motivations in life more easily. This is how individuals like Larry Page of Google can make a bigger impact on society. Or help individuals like Nandan Nilekani find satisfaction in helping government by using their professional expertise. Or help rich entrepreneurs like Wipro's Premji to spend money in education.   

Summary

As you would have guessed by now, History and Geography help you develop your Conative traits, the third C that helps you unleash your talent. If you have not read the 3Cs of talent, read this. Conative traits are the traits that help you fire your torch, that motivate you in a sustained manner. Doing the normal routine of your life, be it work, play, movies, friends, can be made more happy and satisfying if you develop your conative traits. And the earlier you develop them, the better it is for you. Because if you do not develop them early, you will find it difficult to live your daily life. You will never know where and how you have lost the fire ! So if your child is in school, it is time to develop his/her conative traits by introducing him to History and Geography early in life.