How can the mind of student in today's school set him/her for failure?

Mind can set up Learnt helplessness. And when learnt helpless sets in, it is very difficult to help a student to do anything positive in life. To know more about what is Inside journey, read this blog.

Learned helplessness is the condition of a human or animal that has learned to behave helplessly, failing to respond even though there are opportunities for it to help itself. How does this helplessness set in?

In the learned helplessness experiment an animal is repeatedly hurt by an adverse stimulus which it cannot escape. Eventually the animal will stop trying to avoid the pain and behave as if it is utterly helpless to change the situation. Finally, even when opportunities to escape are presented, this learned helplessness prevents any action. The only coping mechanism the animal uses is to be stoical and put up with the discomfort, not expending energy getting worked up about the adverse stimulus.**

I have also seen this learned helplessness in many students with regards to studies. How does it set in? Let me present you a hypothetical case of a student, called Savita, that slowly drove her to the state of learnt helplessness through her own mind that tries to make sense.

Scenario 1: Savita, a student, has been faring poorly in physics. She is sitting in the class trying to understand a new chapter of "light' of physics. She has queries. She asks questions to the teacher. Teacher, knowing that Savita is not good in physics, tells her "Please understand the full chapter before you ask a question'. At the end of the class, Savita rushes to ask the difficulty to the teacher. Teacher rebuffs her by saying ' Do i have time only to answer your queries in class?' 

How does Mind of Savita make sense of this situation?: She is confused because her friend is able to understand physics easily. She does not know the concept of logical skill? So she is not able to figure out that her logical skill may not be good in understanding subjects like physics. When someone tells her that she should 'Try harder", she is even more confused. Because she does not 'what else she should must do'. She is paralysed into inaction.

Scenario  2: Savita's father is an Engineer. Seeing her marks, her father wants to motivate her. He tells her his story of school struggle. He tells her how he was also poor in physics in VIIth class, and how he managed to work harder and harder until he understood physics well.

But while telling this story, her father misses the important ingredients of his story. For instance, he forgets to tell her that his class teacher was living in the neighborhood and therefore was more approachable. And he does not tell her that in those days, teachers were far more helpful, because they had more time, and also perhaps, more commitment . What is the impact of this story?

How does mind of Savita make sense of this situation:  Without knowing the full background of the story of her father, what does Savita conclude? She makes another big conclusion "I am unable to summon the willpower to work hard and concentrate". Now this sense-making is more serious, because she has labelled herself as 'something is wrong with me'  

Scenario 3: An experimental science fest is announced in the school. Savita is told to take part in the experimental science fest because her friend is also taking part. Knowing her poor marks in science, Savita does not want to take part in the experimental science fest. She tells her parents and teachers that she does not want to participate. This announcement of Savita now becomes the ultimate proof that she is not trying harder. Her teachers, parents and others have 'evidence' to conclude that she is not really trying harder, that she does not have willpower, that she is not capable enough. All negative vibes are given to her which downs her further. 

How does Mind of Savita pushes her in Learned Helplessness? After several such scenarios, occurring daily in different permutations and combinations, Savita's mind has concluded that she is not 'good enough' to survive in this 'world'. She gives up. Learnt helplessness sets in. And when it sets in, even if someone wants to help her, Savita refuses to use the help to get out of her mess. As her mind has already concluded ( like the animal in the experiment) that she is beyond any help, she refuses to be helped. In a way, Savita has used her own mind to set herself for failure. It takes a major miracle to turn round the situation ! ( Many successful achievers, whom i have interviewed, share such miracle event especially if they have fared poor academically)

Conclusion

In today's school systems, you will find many more Savitas, because schools do not help individual students to find their abilities. You cannot blame any teacher or parents for their helpless state. But unwittingly, the child's mind through sense-making sets him up for learned helplessness. And once, this sets in, even helping a student is not useful for the student, because the student refuses to be helped. 

We plan to prevent the students getting in this state of learned helpless by taking two actions. First,  we  plan to profile every student's abilities and background.  But profiling is just a means to an end. It will help every student develop a Continouous Learning Plan (CLP).  

With this CLP, the second action of assisting student can happen. With this CLP, students can explore their full range of abilities, grow some of them to a reasonable depth by utilising help from schools, teachers, friends and parents. If they have a non-mainstream ability like drawing or music, they still can motivate themselves by finding the 'domains' their ability can be used, because they will not be domain-blind. More importantly CLP, either with the help of mentor or coach,  enables a child to 'see' the invisible process of sense-making of Inside Mind and therefore 'correct' it or re-direct it in an intended direction.

** Martin Seligman and Steve Maier's experiments

Success formula at school age is to maximise learning outputs

As we discussed in the blog, to succeed in life, each person has to find his/her own success formula because he/she cannot use other's success formula. He can take help from other's success formula, but he still has to find what is right for him in that formula.

While for a working professional, the success formula has to center around producing outputs in work-life, for a student, the success formula has to center around producing learning outputs in school-life. Sometimes these learning outputs can be achieved by getting high marks, sometimes without them.

Success formula of a student should therefore satisfy only one criteria: Maximise learning outputs of a student in a school life. But because each student has different abilities and faces unique challenges pertinent to his background, every student therefore has to go through these three steps:

1. Step 1: Plan- Find learning opportunities to grow his 'chosen' abilities within his given background ( family and social conditions where he is born) and then
2. Step 2: Utilise - those learning opportunities fully ( as we have seen in the same blog, the mind of the student determines how he will utilise those opportunities) to convert them into outputs and then
3. Step 3: Re-plan - Depending on how he utilises his opportunities, he has to alter his plan. This may require choosing different abilities or using different methods to grow the chosen abilities.

So the plan continuously changes due to step 2. One cannot have a fixed plan. We are therefore calling it a continuous learning plan. CLP, in short. Ideally, CLP should be done at the fifth class so that the student sees the unfolding direction clearly by 8th class. The later the plan is done, less useful it is..

A student primarily faces three bottlenecks in creating a CLP  that will suit his abilities and conditions: 

Bottleneck 1: Ability blindness

Students cannot do this planning due to one basic reason: they do not have the lenses to view their 'abilities'.(Check out the typical 8 abilities that are tested in aptitude tests). They are ability-blind. They confuse subjects with abilities. For instance, Learning Physics and mathematics both develops logical abilities of different 'types', but the student does not know the difference between the two logical abilities. 

Bottleneck 2: Ability development ignorance 

Students do not know how to enhance their ability. For instance, physics requires experiments and live models to develop it, but mathematics requires abstract level complex problems to enhance one's grasp. While language development requires taking part in Elocution competition, Drama competition and others, development of drawing ability ( also called as visual ability) can be furthered by using computers. The biggest casualty of this ignorance is the insufficient attention to subjects like History and Geography, that are very critical later in life.

Bottleneck 3: Trait development arithmetic 

More importantly, students are not aware that lack of traits like concentration and patience can cause learning to grow slowly or even stop. Without these character traits, students are unable to utilise the opportunities that have been identified in Step 1. And character traits like concentration and patience develop indirectly, while cognitive abilities directly. For instance, arts enable child to develop character traits like concentration and patience. But ignorance of the indirect method to 'develop traits' either stops or retards student's learning even in subjects like physics and mathematics. During 7th or 8th class, the student faces the biggest emotional transition of adolescence. If the child is not ready for this emotional upheaval, his learning completely derails. 

Bottleneck 4: Domain confusion

Every year, in the month of April and May, you will find several announcements of career guidance seminars in a newspaper. Career guidance seminars explain the careers say in Engineering, Medicine, Accountancy, defence or public service. They really should be called Domain guidance seminars, because with a logical ability, say of Physics, one can enter in any domain for doing work: Engineering, Medicine, Accountancy or Defence. Ability is confused with Domain. 

In a school, a student should only think of identifying and growing ability, not how to use abilities in domains. However there are some exceptions to this rule. For instance, if a student has niche abilities such as in fashion, photography, painting, language, or ecology (which are not so popular abilities), he can confidently pursue growth of these niche abilities only if he knows that these abilities have 'market value'. For him, domain guidance seminars are very useful to help focus efforts. But for students who want to grow their logical abilities in Physics, chemistry, they have plenty of options. For them, Domain guidance seminars at a school age is like searching a key under the lamp just because there is light under the lamp. 

Conclusion

If you want to really help your child to succeed in his life, help him find his abilities, identify the learning opportunities to grow his abilities, and then help him utilise those learning opportunities fully. You can do this by having a CLP.

Be it a student with poor academic record, or a student with only right brain orientation like in language and arts, or a student with excellent academic record, a CLP ensures that he will be able to utilise his abilities fully and therefore succeed in life. This is the simple formula of success. As simple as that !

Profiling a student is the first step in guiding student's learning

As we have seen earlier, learning can only happen, it cannot be forced. Therefore, you can nurture the 'conditions' to make them conducive for learning and hope the student's natural abilities take over and he/she learns.However, on the other hand, if you do not 'intercept' early enough, time is lost irreversibly. So when to intervene is a crucial question in sustaining the learning efforts of a student. If you intercept too early, you demotivate the student because you are unnecessarily helping. If you intercept too late, it may too late. Perhaps the right question is 'how to listen to the student's feedback and fine tune the process' of student's learning over his educational life.

Profiling a student is the best way to 'initiate and fine tune the process of planning student's learning' over his entire educational life.

Profiling a student is understanding his natural and developed abilities, use his background and interest to guide those abilities by making plans, measure his progress ( or lack of it), fine tune and correct the strengthening of his core and complementary abilities. The purpose of this entire planning process is to ensure that a student can utilise his abilities to the fullest in his life to help him achieve his desired objectives.

If the purpose of profiling is to enable student to guide him to identify and develop his abilities, then what data of a student we should include in a student's profile? We need to profile at least three different data points of a student :

1. Student's Cognitive abilities

Abilities are invisible to an untrained eye. A student is learning linguistic and logical abilities by studying subjects like Language, Physics or History.  We can therefore measure a student's progress in learning these abilities only by measuring his/her progress in these subjects. We will have to carefully co-relate  his progress in excelling in these subjects to his development of abilities. We also have to remember that both Left brain oriented subjects and right brain oriented subjects present different challenge.

On the other hand, more marks or less marks can both misguide, because marks only represent the student's ability to reproduce what is taught, not  what he applies in his life. We have seen earlier how the inability to get feedback on knowledge work makes it equally difficult to judge one's progress.Because abilities cannot be measured correctly by marks, we will also have to use other subjective methods of inputting this information.

As we have seen earlier, student's core and complementary abilities are equally important to be tracked because both are equally useful in enabling student to utilise his abilities fully.

2. Student's family and social background ( for conative traits) 

Family and social background present are dual edged swords: they add to the learning constraints as well as increase the opportunities in student's learning.

For instance, although the rich family background means that the family can spend money on student's learning, the rich background also prevents the student to shift the source of self motivation of learning from outside to within which blocks the student's learning efforts. In other words they affect conative traits. To know more about conative traits, read this.

Similarly, a student from a middle class educated background has the tendency to educate and use his abilities in knowledge work, although his cognitive work may be more suitable for entrepreneurial work for which his other interpersonal and intrapersonal abilities are required. Because development of intrapersonal and interpersonal abilities are primarily determined by parental interactions before adolescence, parents may have to play a more active role in learning before adolescence.

3. Student's character traits like self regulation 

Output of student's cognitive efforts, unlike the efforts of sportsman and musicians, are invisible and cannot be seen and measured easily. Student has to be 'helped' to report his progress honestly until his adolescent age. Otherwise, we may get misguided by the student's reporting.

On the other hand, learning is ultimately a voluntary and private activity that has to be guided by a student. His ability to self-regulate his behaviour and mind to guide his efforts predominantly determine the quality of his/her learning.

The student's ability to self regulate his learning can be measured by how he/she utilises his/her emotions and stress. Student's ability to measure and improve his attention span has also to be included in the profile. Self regulation of Mind is also important to help the student to hear his 'inner calling', especially when others around him are pulling him into attractive zones like software.

This Self regulation factor is even more important after adolescence  because the student gets into the adolescent age during his school years, somewhere between 7th and 8th class. Student's ability to negotiate this turbulent adolescent period not only depends on how he/she is prepared before adolescence, but also how his/her parents and teachers support during adolescence. Self regulation can therefore be guided powerfully by the profile data of the student.

Conclusion

Today's students learning efforts need to be guided because they have to learn to utilise their fullest abilities. Why should they use their fullest abilities?

They have to use their fullest abilities because of three reasons: One, competition in the labour market has increased to a very high level. Two, aspirations of students have increased due to TV and other media information. Three, global tools of internet and labour market have made it easier to utilise his abilities fully if the student knows how to utilise his abilities fully.

Are you ready to profile your child/student?

Imbibing one value - growth mindset - is more important than anything else

In my research, I discovered that there is one factor that determines whether a student will excel in the future life. It is the value of growth mindset. Carol Dweck has written about the effect of this mindset in her book.

Please remember that we must have a map and compass to achieve our work-goals. Map helps us to reach to the next destination by anticipating and preparing for expected hurdles while compass helps us in negotiating unexpected hurdles and opportunities. Compass has value settings which guide us in deciding how to put our effort.

Acquiring the value from outside till the age of 12-13 is automatic 

When parents and teachers have fixed mind set  in contrast to growth mind set, they believe that intelligence and talent are fixed traits independent of effort. They believe talent is innate in them. If they do not have it, they are unlucky and cannot do anything about it. 

In such a fixed mindset, external motivators like marks ( which both act as punishment and reward) are the only means to help them understand their intelligence. They avoid difficult subjects because they are worried about faring poorly in them and being labelled as 'stupid'. Even when they score well in a subject, they are worried about being evaluated in them because they may find that they are poor in them. They chose 'fail-safe' options like Engineering and medicine, because majority of their friends chose them. They tend to refuse to work on their passion in drawing , photography and adventure, because excelling in them takes lot of effort and time. Because these students are constantly worried about being evaluated, shifting the source of motivation from outside to within is very difficult for them.

However, if you have teachers who pat your back for the efforts you have taken to learn a difficult chapter, say in mathematics, and not patting on the basis of marks you get in the test, you learn to regard mistakes as the first step in excelling. ( Psychologist call it growth mind set) . They tend to work on a subject/topic, even when they fail for the first time. They believe, that with effort, they can master anything. For them intelligence is not a fixed trait, but like a muscle, it can be developed with practice. 

Luck may also help the students in acquiring this value. For instance, if the student is good in left-brain oriented (LBO) subjects such as physics, chemistry and maths, he or she tends to automatically get the support of parents, teachers and friends (PTF) in pursuing his path to excel. With some confidence in the bag, the student finds it easier to master those subjects because they start feeling 'I am good'. On the other hand, if the student is good in right-brain oriented subjects ( RBO) such as history, geography and language, then the support from parents, teachers and friends is minimal. Without the PTF support, it is not easy to master RBO subjects because they cannot put in the required practice. Without no confidence in the bag, they are unable to master these subjects and therefore start believing that 'i am bad'

Which students require help in imbibing this value?

Students good in RBO subjects ( such as music, art, dancing, history and geography), but poor in LBO subjects, definitely require lot of help and support to acquire this value.They are down because the environment around them is not offering them any encouragement. They have no  motivation to study subjects like physics and maths, while they are unable to muster enough energy to work on their strengths, although that is their only road to excellence. They require urgent help.

But students good in LBO subjects, nurtured with fixed mind set,  also require support. They tend to avoid difficult challenges because of fear of failure. They tend to constantly compare with others instead of feeling secured in their abilities. They tend to always feel that the grass is greener outside and therefore move from one activity to another. Inability to shift their motivation from outside to within stops them in finding their path of excellence.

Conclusion

Fixed mindset urges student to avoid difficult challenges because of the fear of 'failing' in them and being labelled as 'stupid'. On the other hand growth mindset urges students to accept that intelligence can be developed with practice and therefore anything can be learnt by effort. For them, learning difficult subjects is easier. 

How students excel even after missing the bus in the school

If you have seen the earlier blog, you will discover that first two steps of choosing the bankable ability and making a learning plan are required to excel. But you will find many students miss these steps. So, despite missing them, they still manage to excel in life. How?

I have found five ways that help these students to excel. Basically, they manage to fill the gap of abilities (that was not developed in school life) by using one of the five options. Let us understand these five options these students take:

1. They find a college of graduation that fosters the depth in the logical abilities

If a student has to develop higher depths in his logical ability, the college should provide the right challenges and support. Because, good marks, are not enough to excel. For instance, the universities in western countries provide the right challenges to a student. You will have heard many stories such as Larry Page and Sergie Brown who excelled at Stanford. They found a problem on which they could invest all their time and effort, and sharpen their abilities.

In India such challenging environments in technical arena are provided by IIT's and top engineering colleges. In design it would be provided by the top fashion design insitutes like NIFT or NID. In law, the top law colleges such as in Bangalore provide the toughest challenges. Choosing the colleges is therefore important to excel, because these colleges themselves provide the right fertiliser and ground to excel.

2. They find a group of friends that work together during graduation

In India, however, i have found another equally powerful way that helps students to excel. That route is  'group of friends'. This is a powerful route that even helps scientists to collaborate with each other and excel. There is lot of research on why 'a group of like minded individuals' working together enables each other to excel.

For instance, as we discussed earlier, I found Astha who excelled because she managed to find a group of friends in her college, They worked almost 2-3 hours each day together, challenged each other and needled each other to excel. I advise graduate students to do two things to excel. First is to find such a group of friends who complement each other( complementing members compete less with each other). And two, work on a real-life problem that will help to sharpen abilities. In a college, project activity is an ideal real-life problem for a technical engineer to sharpen his logical ability.

For instance, Abhishek Sen, one of the excellent performer who was interviewed in Ved program, found a real-life  problem of finding an instrument to measure haemoglobin, when he was doing medicine.

3. They find a graduating college ( or town) that develops their complementary abilities

Very few colleges actively develop other complementary abilities. A student is more likely to excel if the student can combine abilities, instead of relying only on one ability. A college, is therefore ideally suitable to help the student to develop complementary abilities such as in music, sports, communication, presentation, or any other field. A college like BITS, Pillani is very helpful in developing such complementary abilites because it offers students different groups to join.

4. They find a graduating college which enables the development of inter-personal abilities

Some colleges enable students to participate in many outdoor activities and group activities and develop their  inter-personal skills that are useful in excelling. As we have seen in the list of 8 abilities, one of the  most important ability that enable a person to develop as an entrepreneur is his interpersonal ability. As inter-personal ability also facilitates growth of intrapersonal ability, development of this ability is critical to excel.

Pradeep Lokhande, one of the excellent performer who was interviewed in Ved program, was an average student  in his logical abilities. What helped him excel in life, is the development of his interpersonal ability during his college days.

5. They have the right push of 'poverty' and pull of their 'ability' to excel

Some students have the appropriate logical ability to develop. Plus due to their average economic background, they have the right incentive to learn in the college. These two elements often combine together for a student to remain focussed in the college and therefore develop the necessary logical abilities to excel. Sunil Khandbahale, one of the excellent performer who was interviewed in Ved program, seems to be a person with this type of background.

Conclusion

In other words, students get a second chance to catch up if they have missed the development of their abilities in the school phase of their life. They can find the right college ( or the right town environment) to develop and fill the skill gaps. As you would appreciate, the real potential lies in using the option 3 and option 4.

In the next blog, we will talk about the the skills required to use the option 1. Even if the college provides the best environmental conditions to fill the skill gaps, the student must be 'skillful' enough to use the environment provided by the college. 

If you wish to excel with average IQ or just above it, you are forced to use these 3 steps

Let us recap some of the constraints that an average student faces in excelling :

1. To excel, a student must choose his ' bankable ability' that he can grow to 500 feet depth

A student of 13 must chose an ability ( be it logical ability of physics, visual ability of drawing, or physical ability of sports) that he can probe to 500 feet depth. It is depth that matters in excelling.

To reach this depth, a student must keep on untangling the threads, find interconnections of different elements, understanding the real-life implications of his understanding. He progresses in discontinuous steps. If he untangles initial threads, it is easier to untangle the next; until he encounters another block. Again he has to untangle. If the student manages to unfold the layers one after another, he is on his path of excelling. In other words, this process of unfolding is not completely in his control. Sometimes he gives up if he fails to negotiate a block. Therefore probing requires time and attention. Because a student has limited time, he cannot grow all his abilities in his limited time (unless he is a genius). He has to trust his intelligence and bank on some ability that he think can grow to a reasonable depth. Let us call this bankable ability. How can the student  choose the 'right' bankable ability amongst his different abilities?

Every student faces this tough dilemma on which ability to bet. Until we use an ability and spend time on it, we do not know what are we good at. But, given our limited time, we cannot explore and engage in all possible abilities.  It is a Catch-22 for every student. Do all students face this tough question of choosing bankable ability? No. Some are lucky.

For instance, if a student has a musical ability ( used by musicians) or kinesthetic ability ( used by sportsman), he is lucky. Because both are senses-based ability, they grow quickly at an early age. Therefore, these students at the age of 11-13 can see their 'developed abilities' in music and sports, and take a conscious decision to chose them easily. If their parents also have similar background in music and sports, it is easy for the student to choose this ability. That is why it is easy for daughters of actors to become actress while sons of sportsman to become sportsman and so on.

For students with cognitive ability like logical ( physics, biology etc) and linguistic ability ( English, French), which grows slower than senses-based abilities, choosing this bankable ability is tougher. However, for students with high IQ like Einstein, because their cognitive ability grows quickly and that too on one dimension, choosing this bankable ability is easier for them as it has grown to a sufficient extent. ( In other words, talented students with abilities on single dimension find it easier to choose their bankable ability !)

However, for majority of the students, with average IQ( and remember that most of the Noble Prize winners are not of high IQ), this is a difficult choice. They are good in many subjects. As their cognitive ability grows slower than senses-based ability, none of their ability has grown enough by the age of 13. They are therefore forced to choose amongst the abilities that have poorly developed to the similar depth!

How can these average IQ students chose their bankable ability and also focus on it for a long enough time? If the student is asked to chose one ability without being told why, he may comply with the instructions for a moment. But no sooner he finds someone else developing another ability, he will waiver. No sooner he will face big roadblocks, he will give up.

In order to help student not just choose his ability, but also remain focused on it for a long enough time, the student must be confident of his choice. To be confident, 1> Student must know why is he choosing a bankable ability. He must understand all his abilities and how much he has developed them. All his doubts should be clarified. 2> He must understand what can he do with his chosen ability in the future, what jobs and industry he may be able to work in the future. 3> He must understand the different possibilities that cognitive performers like him have in combining their abilities, in complementing their ability, and so on. In other words, he must understand the principles of excellence that he can follow while excelling in his chosen ability.

Only when a student seriously engages in this journey of choosing his bankable ability, he can develop the requisite willpower and conviction to consciously stick with the 'bankable ability' over the next 4 years ( till his XIIth class) without getting distracted. For an average IQ student, this dedicated attention and effort is absolutely necessary for him to grow his bankable abilities and excel!

2. To excel, only choosing a bankable ability is not enough. Student must develop a learning plan to guide the growth of his bankable ability over the next 4 years till XIIth. 

As we have seen above, developing an ability ( be it in English, Physics or any other arena) to a reasonable depth not only requires time and attention, but also the right self-made plan to get assistance from around him, because every student will face constraints due to his school as well as location of his residence.

For instance, if  a student has to develop his bankable ability in physics, he must find the right self-made plan of using four different possibilities 1> Using local teachers and experts in physics who can help him negotiate the blocks of learning physics as and when they appear, 2> Identify and join with local friends who also wish to pursue the same growth in physics 3> Use online tools on internet to learn a difficult topic of physics, and 4> Find community of physics friends at a wider global level who can constantly help and challenge him. We have seen already seen how this learning plan should be made in an earlier blog.

As you would observe in many cases, if a student does not have enough local help from his school or city, he has to shift his school. That is why, you will find that many students go to big cities for getting admission into IIT. If  a student has to excel in design, for instance, he has to do the same.

3. To excel, a student should chose appropriate graduation career path to convert his abilities into a skill   

Basically graduation career path is chosen not only to develop the chosen bankable ability to a further depth of 1000 feet and more after XIIth class, but also enable the student to grow other ancillary abilities which can be combined in a skill-package in which the student can excel.

However, career paths today are chosen today only with a limited objective of developing the core cognitive ability, say of engineering, drawing, or medicine. However, when a student ignores his other abilities, he remains ineffective to function in a job despite getting good marks in graduation. Nasscom-mckinsey survey of 2009, for instance, found that only 26% of the engineering graduates in India are employable, while 15% of other graduates are employable.

Chosen career path should also help you develop complementary abilities, let us say in music or nature, if you have them. For instance, if a student is good in music, choosing an engineering college that will offer opportunities to develop the ability of music is important for this student. Please remember that the objective is not to develop 'all round talent' in a student; instead the objective is to help him develop music ability sufficiently, so that he can combine music with his engineering. For instance, Sony offers jobs where  music+engineering skills can be combined very effectively in one job.

Other useful ancillary abilities are intrapersonal and interpersonal abilities, which as we have seen earlier, are crucial abilities for cognitive performers.

And more importantly, one should also chose the career path with wide open eyes. For instance, the student should explore all the optional routes of a career path, so that he is not surprised when he fails to grow his  bankable ability to the desired depth. For instance, most of the IIT students employ the exit route of  MBA when they discover that they cannot grow their engineering ability instead of using the 'combination' path because they are not aware of the other options.

Summary

In order to excel in his career, the student at the age of 13 must therefore take at least 3 steps: 

1. Choose and focus on the bankable abilities for a long enough time to grow them to sufficient depth. 
2. Find the right Self-made plan of using local and global support, and make a learning plan, to grow 'bankable abilities' to sufficient depth till 12th and 
3. Choose the most appropriate graduation career path (after knowing all its options) to combine all his abilities into a useful skill 

As you would appreciate, all three steps are necessary for a student, to ensure that the student is ready to excel. Without choosing bankable ability, there is no focus of effort. Without self-made learning plan, bankable ability does not grow to sufficient depth. And without an appropriate graduation career path, bankable ability cannot be converted into a useful skill in which one can excel. 

A high IQ student can afford to spend his time and attention on many abilities, use the available career path options poorly but still manage to find and grow one of his ability in which he could excel. However, when they do not use these 3-steps, they are more likely to waste their high talent. For an average IQ student, however, it is  mandatory to take all the 3-steps, because he will be able to produce results only if he 'focuses his limited energy on few abilities', develops his other complementary abilities simultaneously, and knows how to combine his 'abilities' innovatively. 

Do not rely on aptitude tests to decide your child's career path

Aptitude tests have become popular mechanisms of assessing child's abilities when the child is in Xth class. These tests consists of hundreds of questions with multiple but fixed choices. These tests typically measure 8 abilities. Although, some of them have started including other abilities, aptitude tests typically follow the framework of multiple intelligences of Howard Gardner. 

These 8 abilities are logical, linguistic, visual, natural, musical, kinesthetic,  intrapersonal and interpersonal. Now a days, some institutes have attempted to increase the breadth by redefining the scope of abilities. For instance, some institutes have attempted to understand the depth of an ability such as mechanical ability to identify the mechanical aptitude. To reduce the errors of measurement, some aptitude tests have also increased the number of questions, changed the nature of questions, and extended the test over a longer period . 

However, despite their increasing breadth and depth, these tests do not measure the abilities accurately, cannot help us predict the future course of ability, and therefore do not help in taking better career decisions. There are many technical reasons why static aptitude tests with multiple choices cannot increase their accuracy beyond a specific level. Here i am attempting to explain to you in simple English, some of the big reasons, why aptitude tests are not useful in helping you to evaluate your child's abilities:

1. Aptitude tests do not measure potential

Many parents and students believe that aptitude tests measure the 'hidden' potential of a student. This is a myth. In an earlier blog, we had discussed in quite details, why this is not technically possible. 

In this study of 120 highly talented individuals who were tracked from their childhood to adult age, for instance, only two of the 120  had won 'local competitions' while one of them had won a 'national competition' by the age of 10. But none of the 3 had shown skill that was comparable to the 'masters' in their respective field. Aptitude tests therefore cannot measure your potential. 

Aptitude tests can measure only your current abilities that you have 'demonstrated' and used in your life. For instance, only if you have used and played with 'mechanical' objects, the aptitude test will be able to measure your 'mechanical ability' with reasonable degree of accuracy.  This is very important caveat to remember. 

2. Aptitude tests are better at measuring 2 cognitive abilities ( like logical, linguistic) 

Out of the 8 distinct abilities , these aptitude tests are better in measuring two abilities: logical and linguistic. However, one has to be cautious in relying on them due to two reasons. 

First reason is language and culture-specific. Many of the tests are designed in English. Understanding of English language and its nuances is important to ensure that the child's response is accurate. Secondly, some responses are culture-specific. A response from a urban student and rural student varies because they come from different cultures. These variations are not captured in these 'general tests'.

Second reason is more critical. As these two cognitive abilities are measured at a very young age of 13-15, where they have just stared developing, one cannot predict the domain in which the student can develop these abilities in the future. Please remember that this cognitive ability can be used in multiple domains such as legal, chartered accountantany, medcine, engineering, software and basic research. So, even if the cognitive ability is found to be higher, aptitude tests cannot help you make any career choice ! Now a days, some institutes have attempted to bridge this gap, by covering 'domains' such as software, however as you would have realised, it is impractical to cover all of them till the age of 15. 

3. Aptitude tests cannot measure 3 senses-based abilities (kinesthetic, visual and musical ability ) better than real-life observations and assessments 

If you are good in drawing/painting, music, or sports, it is easily demonstrated by your proficiency in these activities. If you are good in one of these five senses ( sense of hearing, body-eye coordination, and visual sense), you naturally develop that ability better with practice. Any expert in that field ( be it animation, sport, or music) can evaluate your child's ability and his readiness with far more accuracy than any aptitude test.  

Aptitude tests , because they are measured on class-room questions and fixed choices, cannot measure these senses-based abilities better than real-life assessments and observations of an expert in that field. If your child has these abilities, it is far more safer to rely on experts in these fields. 

4. Aptitude tests measures intrapersonal abiliy very poorly. This ability spells a big difference between good and excellent performance. 

You must have heard about two young cricketers who showed extraordinary potential at a young age,Sachin Tendulkar and Vinod Kambli, who were studying in the same school. Vinod Kambli however could not achieve as much his classmate despite his acknowledged prodigous cricketing talent, because of his inadequate 'intrapersonal ability'. It is also called as mental growth in layman's language. With inadequate mental ability, even high amount of prodigious talent is not enough to ensure good performance in the future. 

For example,  one of the important component of intrapersonal ability is emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is measured by recognizing emotion in faces and asking you to respond to situations like 'what would you do if you find your friend crying'. The answers are multiple choice, and limited. They do not capture your 'real-time response'. The same is true about stress responses, or your ability to manage distractions - the two sub-components of your intrapersonal ability. When we respond to these questions in a test, we tend to be far more logical and smart, than what we actually are in real situations. As these tests cannot measure our real-time response on such issues, these tests are highly inaccurate in measuring intrapersonal ability. 

5.  Aptitude tests measures interpersonal ability very poorly. This ability is one of the key ability of entrepreneurs.  

You will find many entrepreneurs succeeding with very little academic qualification. Examples like Larry Ellison, Dhirubhai Ambani are some of the popular examples. One of the critical ability they possess is the interpersonal ability, an ability to relate with people and collaborate with them. 

Because aptitude tests cannot measure our 'real time response' to people, aptitude tests also cannot measure this ability. We tend to be far more different in answering these questions than when we are responding in real situations. And because of this deficiency, aptitude tests fail to measure this interpersonal ability well. 

Conclusion

Out of the 8 abilities that aptitude tests typically measure, 5 abilities ( visual, musical, kinesthetic,  intrapersonal and interpersonal) are either not measured at all, or are measured so poorly that you cannot rely on their scores. 

Two cognitive abilities - logical and linguistic - are measured with some degree of accuracy but far higher accuracy can be achieved by relying on student's school marks in languages and logical subjects like physics, chemistry or mathematics. And more importantly, they lack the predictive capacity. This means, that even if a child find this cognitive ability as high, he cannot predict the domain ( Engineering, medicine, or accounancy) in which he can use it the best. So the aptitude test score, even though right, is not useful to take any decision. 

We have not discused the measurement of naturalistic ability, the eighth ability. This ability enables child to appreciate and engage with nature. Once again, this ability is not 'measurable' by aptitude tests accurately, as the scope of nature-oriented activity for a urban student is too narrow. It may be more accurate for a rural student !

In other words, aptitude tests do not measure your abilities with any degree of accuracy, and when it measures, it is not useful in making any career choice 

If aptitude tests is not a viable alternative in assessing your child's ability and choosing the career path, what is a better alternative? We shall discuss about a more robust, practical and technically correct alternative in the next blog.