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Board exams in India are accorded a prominent position not only in students’ imagination but in the larger culture as well. When a child is appearing for the board exam, parents have sleepless nights. Teachers, under pressure to produce stellar result,…
As technology penetrates our lives ever more deeply, STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) subjects continue to be students’ preferred choice. Degrees in Finance, Law and Medicine are also sought after, as they lead to high-paying jobs. However, apart from…
Writer and educator, John Holt, has authored a number of best-selling books, including How Children Fail, a classic work that raises many more questions than it answers. Being a teacher himself, he has a ringside view of what schools purport to…
Done right, oral exams can be a rewarding experience, as they offer many benefits for students Ihave had only two oral exams, both while defending a thesis. Unlike a gazillion other exams I have written in my life, my memories…
Though the pandemic drove home the point that classroom teachers and in-person instruction cannot be readily replaced by technology, education and digital devices are inextricably interwoven nowadays. The latest artificial intelligence (AI) entrant t… .
Until now, in this column, I have covered non-fiction books written mainly by researchers and academics that I felt would resonate with teachers. This time, I review a delightful account of a little Japanese school girl whose life is turned…
That students are reluctant to write lengthy answers is a common lament among educators. Additionally, fewer children exhibit eye-catching penmanship with a subset of writing illegibly. Given that handwriting is becoming redundant in the workplace, s…
That a person is either left-brained or right-brained is one of the neuromyths that pervade popular imagination. While left-brainers are believed to be logical with a facility for verbal and mathematical reasoning, right-brainers are considered to be creative, artistic and…
Though not an educationist himself, in the narrow sense of the word, Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister, embodied, in both letter and spirit, what an ideal education may achieve. Through two books, written as letters to his daughter, Indi…
Prolonged school closure during the pandemic drove home (in this case quite literally) the point that kids hanker for school. But if you asked most children what they missed about in-person school, friends, fun and extracurricular activities typically topped their…
Aruna Sankaranarayanan is the author of Zero Limits: Things Every 20 Something Should Know. She was the Founder & Director of PRAYATNA, a centre for children with learning difficulties in Bengaluru & Chennai for 22 years.