Evolving K-12 Education
-In pursuit of happiness -not only great grades, but a strong character as well
Children love to speak and they love to be spoken to – this is how they learn best. HiVoco is a first of kind 2-way audio interactive platform where the best teachers and story-tellers around the world provided interactive content and quizzes to children of 4-10 years of age. Here, Pritesh Chothani, Co-founder, HiVoco Education and Learning shares his views on value-based education.
Is your child a super-coder? A chess-grand master? A math prodigy? A young achiever? There is a good chance that you would have come across these ads as you scrolled down the social media feed. As a parent, I have always had the guilt of not doing enough. As jobs get tougher, new opportunities shrink, capital gets concentrated in fewer hands, we are under constant pressure to find avenues that will make our children “relevant for the future.” And so, the rat-race begins from the age of 5-years. Therefore, parents and teachers are more inclined towards focusing on tangible results. Grades, Medals and Trophies.
Value-based learning…
In this race for great grades, we fail to recognise the role of building a strong character. Today the curriculum focuses on imparting critical technical-skills, we are seeing a vacuum in building character-skills. Skills acquired through values based learning.
One source of values based learning is through our folk tales, history and mythological stories. While these stories are old and have certain ‘rough edges’, they allow teachers and parents to blend the learnings from the story with contemporary thought.
Like in main-stream education, technology can play a big part in values-based-learning curriculum. At HiVoco, we have created a voice-based technology where many teachers and world-class storytellers have created voice-interactive stories. Interactive storytelling can help incorporate a ‘Narration-Enquiry-Answer’ storytelling format. This opens up many creative possibilities. Through this method we have been able to incorporate the 5W1H method in the storytelling experience. So not only is the child learning through narrations, but also through logical reasoning and decision making.
Many schools have started incorporating Values-based-learning for primary school students. Currently the approach is fragmented. But it is one space that both teachers and parents recognise needs a concerted effort.
Skills and morals: both are necessary
It is estimated that every human being makes more than 1000 decisions per day. Some of these decisions are skill based, but many decisions are moral-based. It’s time we started training our brains not only for the right answers on subjects like Science, Maths, English but also for critical life decisions – choosing between what’s right or wrong, choosing between selflessness or selfishness.
In pursuit of happiness, good grades matter, but so does a happy ecosystem of good friendships, happy family and a mind at peace with itself.
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