The Side-Effects of Research

This is a story that began in July 2016, when Dr. Balachandran came to conduct a session on how children can do research in Geography. Read more about it in our earlier post, ‘The joy of research’.

I clearly remember Mahima (a student) standing up in the introductory session and saying, “I have a topic, I care about but even if do the research, what will happen? How can I alone change the garbage situation in my area?” Similar sentiments could be sensed on many faces in the room. I remember telling these 9^th graders that if they are passionate about solving these issues, they would definitely succeed in making a change. Like the thousand things that we speak of and hope for, but move on, I moved on; fortunately, Mahima and her friends didn’t.

In the International Geography Youth Summit (IGYS), a total of 9 students presented their primary research. They had gone and studied people’s belief systems regarding the issue and also how people thought it affected them. They spoke to experts to find out their opinions on the situation and what can be done about it. They also managed to inspire the community in their own way to act on the situation. All these groups received huge appreciation and applause from the panelists for their honest efforts and passion.

But the story didn’t end there. The exciting part, what I call as the side-effects of research, is here.

These students continue to work on their respective research topics even today. Mahima and her team continue to practice waste segregation at home and try to recycle as many things as possible – keeps them creatively happy as well. The team that studied the ‘drainage system’ have taken it a step ahead by spreading awareness among community members. Together, these students convinced the school management to try out methods of reducing and managing waste at their own school. After already impacting many families and inspiring a few more, Mahima and her friends now believe that they have the power and will to positively impact their surroundings. I see many strong leaders in the making.

The whole experience of doing the research and participating in IGYS has had many such interesting side-effects. The confidence level of these students has shot up immensely; they show initiative; the clear edge these students had over their classmates in presentation skills became evident during several classroom presentations- they knew exactly how many slides to use, how to engage the audience, how to use effective body language etc. They volunteered to mentor the next batch of students for the IGYS projects. Such amazing enthusiasm… and if one thinks about it, this life-changing journey began with a request to think beyond textbooks and to do original research.

One simple looking exercise had such long lasting impact. What else could be more motivating..!

- The blog piece has been written by Ms. Shikha Bohra, who works as the School Transformation lead at Mantra4Change. 

Social Sciences Education and the Value Problem

In my first post, we explored “What kind of Social Sciences is worth teaching.” 
Part 1 of this blog explored the broad 'Aims of History and Social Sciences Education'. In this part, we will explore the ‘value problem’ in these disciplines.

The teaching of the social sciences to school children is complicated by what may be called the ‘value problem’ in these disciplines. The separation of value judgment from judgment of reality - or ‘ought’ questions from ‘is’ questions - does not pose the same kind of challenges in the natural

sciences that it does in the social sciences.

There are, of course, certain basic values embodied in the Constitution of India. The nature and significance of those values should be explained to students and they should be encouraged by their teachers to adopt them. But the Constitution sets down its basic values in very broad and general terms. It is when we come to details and specifics that the real disagreements come to the surface. As they say, the devil is in the detail.

Should we strive to elaborate one single set of values within the framework of the Constitution for the education of all school students throughout the country? I am not sure as to how far we can or should go in that direction without violating the basic principle of liberal democracy which is the tolerance of a diversity of values, including a diversity of conceptions of the good society. If there is one thing that we ought to be proud of and cherish in the Indian tradition is its tolerance of the diversity of ways of life among the people of the country. Our zeal for the promotion of ‘value-based education’ through the social sciences should not undermine that spirit.

Finally, if we believe that diversity is our greatest treasure, we must encourage our students to take a serious interest in this diversity and to value it. Here the most significant contribution of the social sciences to the education for citizenship will be to encourage our students to cultivate an enquiring attitude towards their own ways of life and a tolerant one towards other ways of life.

In 1964, the Kothari commission said that one of the aims of teaching social (studies) science is to help students acquire certain values and attitudes which are critical for participation in the affairs of the world other than the acquisition of knowledge of the environment and understanding the human relationships. And in 2005 in its position paper on social science, the NCF said that it is important to ‘reinstate the significance of the social sciences by not only highlighting its increasing relevance for a job in the rapidly expanding service sector, but by pointing to its indispensability in laying the foundations for an analytical and creative mindset’.

Given that since the time social science has been brought into the mainstream in the context of education in modern India, all the committees have said the ‘right’ things, the discipline is yet to get the status it deserves in the opinion of the larger society. For the larger society, social science is a non-utility subject. Therefore, there is need to drive home the point that the social sciences are essential to provide number of skills required to adjust to the globalised world, and to ‘deal with political and economic realities’. 

- The blog piece has been written by Ms. Vasundhara, who works as the School Transformation lead at Mantra4Change. 

Aims of History and Social Sciences Education

In my previous post, we explored “What kind of Social Sciences is worth teaching.”

Will there be any contention if it is stated that travelling to see places, armchair politics and stories concerning people- famous and ordinary, are among the top topics of non-work discussion for ordinary people in India (and elsewhere as well)? I do not think so. Ask any tour operator and he/she would confirm that our local tourism industry is thriving; Check any discussion forum, be it an informal gathering or a formal, one will find that politics is the most discussed topic; and a glance at the daily supplements of our newspapers and general magazines confirm the marketability of stories concerning people. If we strip the subject of social science down to the bare minimum, one can see that it is all about stories of people, places and institutions and we see all around us people tuning into stories, be it on the television, movie screens or newspapers.

However, survey of people, in general, on how interested they were in any of the social science subjects during their school days will indicate that either they were bored and hence completely switched off or disinterested because they saw no value add from these subjects to the practicalities of living life. And this when the subjects are all about living life!

In 1964, the Kothari commission said that one of the aims of teaching social (studies) science is to help students acquire certain values and attitudes which are critical for participation in the affairs of the world other than the acquisition of knowledge of the environment and understanding the human relationships.

The subjects that make up social science in school connect us to the past to understand, appreciate and learn how we have reached to where we are now; they also connect us to the present through the study of institutions that govern us; and contextualise the past and present by providing us with an understanding of the larger ecosystem that we are a part of.

Social science helps us to dream of building a better world. Practical questions related to human development such as ‘How to make our cities better, improve standards of living, reduce crime rates, overcome discrimination, provide better governance, improve productivity’ are what social science is made of.

The social sciences are sometimes described as the policy sciences, although the contribution of disciplines such as sociology and political science to the making of policy is indirect and limited. In any case, it would be unrealistic to aim to make school students into policy makers or even policy advisers. At the same time, a general awareness of how economy, polity and society work can help them in later life to understand the role of policy in public life. It can provide them with a basis for taking an informed view as to why some policies and not others are adopted, and, among those that are adopted, why some succeed and others fail. My view is that the more significant contribution of the social sciences is not in the training for policy making, but in the education for citizenship. An educated citizenry is indispensable for the proper working of a democracy. One does not pluck the qualities that make a good citizen out of the air; one needs a certain kind of education to acquire and promote them. To be a good citizen, it is not enough to be well informed about physical and biological phenomena; the good citizen must also have an informed understanding of the social world of which s/he is a part.

In 2005, in its position paper on social science, the NCF said that it is important to ‘reinstate the significance of the social sciences by not only highlighting its increasing relevance for a job in the rapidly expanding service sector, but by pointing to its indispensability in laying the foundations for an analytical and creative mindset’.

Educating students for citizenship, for example, requires encouraging them to think clearly, systematically and objectively about the social as well as the natural world. Beyond that, in the social sciences, it is important to give them some knowledge and understanding about the varieties of economic, political and social arrangements in such a way that the description and analysis of facts is not subordinated to the preferences and prejudices of teachers and writers of text-books.

In the next part of this blogpost, we’ll explore how teaching of the social sciences to school children is complicated by what may be called the ‘value problem’ in these disciplines.

- The blog piece has been written by Ms. Vasundhara, who works as the School Transformation lead at Mantra4Change. 

What kind of Social Sciences is worth teaching?

We have a subject called social science taught in some form or the other in schools across the world. Sometimes it goes by the name of Environment Studies (like in the present primary schools in India), sometimes as separate subjects – History, Geography, Civics (or the more Contemporary Citizenship Education in many countries today or social and political Life as in India) until middle school and then as History, Geography, Economics, Political Science and Sociology in high school. In some countries and at sometimes there has been a subject called Social Studies and some kinds of thinking excludes History and Geography from the Social Sciences and treats them as separate subjects while including Economics, Political Science and Sociology in the social sciences. For the purpose of this type of writing (Blogs), I will not enter into that discourse, however relevant. By social sciences, I mean all subjects dealing with the analysis of some or all aspects of society and social life seen through some lens or the other. Thus History is part of social science as it analyses continuity and change in different aspects of society and their interrelationships over time, Geography as it does the same across regions, Economics as it develops and applies the concepts and method to analyse economic aspects, Sociology as it does the same for the social aspects and Political Science for political aspects. Till the elementary level of schooling, the latter three are not taught as separate subjects, but are in some way integrated through the subject of civics, citizenship education or social and political life as the case may be.

At MANTRA, we have been striving hard to provide subject-content support to our teachers in whichever we can. We are looking for extending support to our partner schools in this discipline because this is the most commonly feared among the teachers and students.

“How do I make it interesting? The content is just so dry! What is the content aiming — remembering dates?!”

These are some of the common statements that I have received and trust me, as a student of Social sciences I feel different now. However, I felt the same way when I was in school. So what kind of Social Sciences is worth teaching?

Irrespective of how we understand the social sciences, there is often a question in the minds of parents and society in general as to whether the social sciences are relevant at all to the lives of people in today’s technocratic world. The first question people ask is what will a child do if s/he takes up the study of any of the social sciences at the college level? What kind of ‘job prospects’ does s/he have- become a teacher in a school or college, a researcher or academic; join one of the services through the entrance exams? Take up a management field particularly Human Resource Management. All these options are open to a graduate of engineering or a medical student as well; so why take up social sciences if the option of the so called technical fields is open?

This attitude percolates to the primary and high school level as well where students (and parents) have the attitude of just wanting to pass in the social sciences. Seldom is it asked as to how the social sciences can contribute to make students better human beings or make them capable of contributing to the betterment of society or in fact, how can the teaching and learning of social sciences at school sustain and develop a democracy. Specialising in a social science at the college level needs to be looked at differently from the essential education in the social sciences at the school level.

Getting too much for one blog?

Stay tuned for the second part wherein I will write what according to me the aims of History and Social Science Education should be. You can agree and disagree, add or subtract, maybe implement it in your classrooms! For that, you have to read the second part :)

- The blog piece has been written by Ms. Vasundhara, who works as the School Transformation lead at Mantra4Change.