In order to design a curriculum that teaches what truly matters, educators should remember a basic precept of modern developmental science: developmental precursors don’t always resemble the skill to which they are leading. For example, saying the alphabet does not particularly help children learn to read. But having extended and complex conversations during toddlerhood does.

Ok. So if we are teaching the wrong stuff, what is the right stuff? Let's think about what a student should know by the time they complete primary/middle school.

So what should children be able to do by age 12, or the time they leave elementary school? They should be able to read a chapter book, write a story and a compelling essay; know how to add, subtract, divide and multiply numbers; detect patterns in complex phenomena; use evidence to support an opinion; be part of a group of people who are not their family; and engage in an exchange of ideas in conversation. If all elementary school students mastered these abilities, they would be prepared to learn almost anything in high school and college.

This actually seems much easier than whatever we are forcing our children to excel at, doesn't it? So imagine a 3rd standard classroom based on these principles:

In this classroom, children would spend two hours each day hearing stories read aloud, reading aloud themselves, telling stories to one another and reading on their own. After all, the first step to literacy is simply being immersed, through conversation and storytelling, in a reading environment; the second is to read a lot and often. A school day where every child is given ample opportunities to read and discuss books would give teachers more time to help those students who need more instruction in order to become good readers.

As a parent, I understand that we cannot change the school system. But we can control what we do at home. Instead of spending time helping the kids with homework, or doing tables, or spellings, or improving handwriting, or whatever it is that they are currently struggling with in school, we should just have long complex conversations with them.

What I've found is that picking up a newspaper and trying to explain any news item results in a nice complex conversation. Shiv Sena has banned My Name in Khan in Maharashtra. Why? It takes about 10 minutes to explain that in terms the kids can understand. "good man", "bad man", "man who speaks a different language", "man from a different country", "India is a country. Just like that Pakistan is a different country", etc. We have been able to successfully explain such concepts to our son when he was 5-years old, and were surprised to learn that 6 months later he still remembered the gist of the argument.

Or read a novel to them. We are reading Hardy Boys novels to our kids. To the 7 year old, we simply read the text. The 5-year old also wants the same story, but is unable to follow the English straight. So we explain the story to her in Marwadi (our mother tongue). This is a daily ritual, both at night just before they go to sleep, and in the morning when they're getting ready for school. In fact they love it so much that, "I will read you only 2 pages instead of 4" is considered a major punishment in our household.

And we encourage them to write. See here and here. By write, I don't mean the physical act of writing. I mean the composing. They usually dictate the story to one of us, and we type it in for them (without corrections) and post it.

Until now, we were doing these things just instinctively, because we enjoy the activities, and the kids enjoyed them too. Now, this article seems to suggest, that what we're doing is the right thing.

Read the whole article. In addition, also check out this article about reading, language, mother tongue, and vocabulary is also interesting in this context. As are these tweets by @drbhooshan

Posted via email from Navin’s posterous

क ख ग घ ङ

च छ ज झ ञ

ट ठ ड ढ ण

त थ द ध न

प फ ब भ म

य र ल व

श ष स ह

I’ve intentionally dropped the ळ क्ष ज्ञ because anyway they are poor cousins that we don’t want to throw out on the streets.

Anyway, have you ever wondered why the alphabet is always written out as a 2-dimensional table like this? Compare that with the English alphabet which is pretty much a one-dimensional sequence of alphabets without any organizational structure. There are obviously strong reasons why the devanagari alphabet is arranged in a table like this.

To get a hint, focus on the first 5 rows above. First, say aloud the letters in any one of the horizontal rows (top 5 only). Notice any similarities? Now say aloud the letters in any vertical column (just the first 5 rows). Again, notice any similarities?

Before I give the answer, here is a full table, organized according to phonetics, taken from the Wikipedia page on Devanagari

If you read any row horizontally, you’ll notice that your lip position and tongue position remains the same, and only the method of expelling air from your voice box, nose and mouth changes. It remains exactly the same for the first 5 columns (until the nasals), and then changes slightly for the last row (the aproximant or the fricative).

If you read any column vertically, you’ll notice that the way air comes out of our mouth/nose/voicebox remains the same and only the tongue/lip position changes.

Also, I’m sure, this is the first time many of you have figured out how to correctly pronounce ङ and ञ. (Actually, my Hindi teacher in primary school taught us that ञ is the sound made by a small child crying, and ङ is an even smaller child crying. So, obviously, none of us had any clue how exactly one is supposed to pronounce those letters.) And, also, I’m sure there are many who have now figured out the difference between श and ष for the first time. (”They are ’same’,” is what I believed for many years due to the same Hindi teacher…)

Last month, I created http://ForPune.com, a website for questions and answers about Pune. It is catching on quite nicely, and has garnered 161 questions in just over a month, and most of the questions have good answers. A nice community of regulars and irregulars is building around it. I, as the founder-cum-moderator-cum-administrator, and the other early active members of the community will end up defining the character of the community – by subtly or explicitly encouraging or discouraging certain behaviors, and by making some people feel welcome and some people feel unwelcome. For example, questions that seem like thinly veiled attempts at self-promotion quickly get voted down by the community. And that's a good thing.

However, consider the following sequence of events on this question. Regular user @drbhooshan does not believe in homeopathy and left a sarcastic answer. I have also in the past made no secret of the fact that I don't believe in homeopathy. So I tweeted that I found the answer funny. But @sroy_sroy (in a DM) and @kshashi called me on it. To  quote @kshashi:

You cannot create a community by discouraging a genuine participant. http://bit.ly/8XpKAu

This is an important and valid point. Irrespective of what I and drbhooshan think of homeopathy, the question was a valid and genuine question, and there were valid and genuine answers that were useful to the original question. In that mix, drbhooshan's answer was not the correct answer, and deserved to be voted down, instead of voted up. Truly, a community is not created by discouraging a genuine participant. I repented. (Although the system does not allow me to undo my +ve vote, since a certain amount of time has already passed.)

But now, I'm wondering. As a moderator/admin I have a greater responsibility towards making people feel welcome. But for that should I be really hiding my personal opinions? On the one hand, I can argue that the community deserves to see the real me, not a carefully crafted, all-welcoming, well-rounded, PR-approved persona. On the other hand, if the real me is a misanthropic jerk, then a community will never really get formed. So where do I draw the line? How do I separate my moderator/admin duties (which should be impartial and based on published site guidelines) and my personal opinions (which should have the same weightage as any other user). Since everyone knows I'm the moderator/admin, can I really ever be 'any other user'? Any suggestions? Experiences?

(Note: This post is not intended to be a pro-homeopathy vs anti-homeopathy discussion, so please keep that aspect out of your comments, as it will unnecessarily distract from the main issue I'm trying to bring out. Thanks.)

Posted via email from Navin’s posterous

I swear I'm not a Luddite. I'm not moving to Florida to bitch about the government full time and I'm not in some remote shack banging this out on an ancient Underwood. However, I guess I count myself among the skeptics when it comes to the unmitigated goodness of progress. Or at least its distant cousin, trendiness.

The article rambles a little (intentionally, I think) but has lots of beautifully crafted paragraphs. Like this one:

This all began with these lingering questions: "Why are we conference attendees paying good money, traveling long distances, and sitting for hours in chairs narrower than our shoulders only to stare at our laptops? Why do we go to all that trouble and then spend the time Twittering and wall posting on the overwhelmed conference wifi? Or, more specifically, why are we so fascinated with our own 140 character banalities pouring down the stage curtain that we ignore, or worse, mob up on, the speakers that drew us there in the first place?"

Touché. Even I'm guilty of this one.

Then he talks about what real time addition really is:

Email was the first electronic medium to raise my clock speed, and also my first digital distraction problem. After some "ding, you have mail," I turned off the blackberry notification buzz, added rationing to my kit bag of coping strategies, and kept on concentrating. Then RSS came along and it was like memetic crystal meth. The pursuit of novelty in super-concentrated form delivered like the office coffee service. Plus, no one had to worry about all that behind-the-counter pseudoephedrine run around. "Hey, read as much as you want, no houses were blown up in Indiana to make your brain buzz."

It was a RUSH to know all this stuff, and know it soonest; but it came like a flood. That un-read counter was HARD to keep to zero and there was always one more blog to add. Read one interesting post and be stuck with them forever. In time keeping up with my RSS reader came to be like Lucy in the chocolate factory with the conveyor belt streaming by. From my vantage point today, RSS seems quaint. The good old days. I gave it up for good last year when I finally bought an iPhone and tapped Twitter straight into the vein. Yeah, I went real time.

Now I can get a hit at every stop light. Between previews at the movies. Waiting for the next course at a restaurant. While you are talking to me on a conference call (it's your fault, be interesting). When you look down at dinner to check yours. Last thing before I go to sleep. The moment I wake up. Sitting at a bar. Walking home. While opening presents on Christmas morning (don't judge me, you did it too). In between the sentences of this paragraph.

Don't  tell me you don't see yourself in those paragraphs! And did you think about why you do all this? Here's why:

I tweet into the void and listen for echoes. There it is now, that sweet sweet tweet of instant 140 char affirmation. Feels good. RT means validation. I think I'm developing a Pavlovian response to the @ symbol that borders on the sexual.

Read the whole article for a very interesting second half where he discusses real-time and the singularity.

Posted via email from Navin’s posterous

@netshrink said: "Why does every woman want me (the doctor) to tell her husband to do things she wants him to do eg. exercise, not drink, come home on time"

and @sarikaphatak replied: "@netshrink that's called 'Sonarane kaan tochane' you have much more cred than the so called 'nagging'. effectiveness needs to be studied"

I have also been in a similar situation (i.e. situation similar to @netshrink's) often, except that instead of woman and husband, in my case it is typically mom and child. It's either a school kid who's probably not studying as much as the mom wants him to, or a college student who is partying too much, or in some cases son/daughter of marriageable age who is rejecting the parents' matrimonial suggestions.

The mom ends up telling me: "He will listen if you tell him."

You know what? Most probably, I'm not going to tell him.

The reason your kid listens to me is because I don't nag him about every damn, trivial thing that you feel compelled to improve in your kid.

The reason your kid listens to me is because of the 100 things that I feel like telling him, I only tell him 3, and keep the remaining 97 to myself. Because, frankly, (and this is true of everything in life), of the 100 things that you worry about, only 3 are really worth worrying about.

No, I am not going to tell your kid to read "educational" books instead of the "trash" he reads. I think the "trash" he reads is fine. No, I'm not going to tell your kid to not play the obscene 'Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.' There's nothing we can really do about it, and might as well focus on ensuring that he grows up with the correct values, inspite of playing GTA: Vice City. No, I'm not going to convince your daughter that she should agree to marry that nice Software Engineer in New York, who makes a lot of money, but is not interested in movies, or books, or sports, or travel. The reason your daughter listens to me is because I don't give her stupid advice like this.

Indian mythology has this interesting concept. Sadhus and rishis acquired great powers through penance, but their powers reduced every time the were used. Hence they had to be a little careful before using their powers and randomly cursing people. That, I find is a very useful piece of insight – your power increases when you don't use it, and decreases when you use it. ("No, I am not going to use my blog to promote your event, because if promoted every silly event, then people will stop reading my blog. I can only promote events that are really worthwhile.")

Now, if I could only follow the above advice when parenting my own kids…. but damnit, it's too difficult to do on a 24×7 basis!

Posted via email from Navin’s posterous

In this post, I am going to give one very simple and effective technique that will significantly improve your talks or documents or presentations or blog posts.

Whenever possible, give specific examples.

That's it. That is the technique. It is very easy, and yet most people ignore it. You were probably going to ignore it too, except that I am now going to convince you with an example.

What I am said above was a little theoretical and abstract. It sounds interesting, but it hasn't really had a significant or lasting impact on your brain.

So here's an example. Consider the following paragraph from a random blog post:

We would like to profile women who we consider an inspiration to others. These are women who are on the way to living their best life. What they have to say is of great value to the forum. We will be featuring these write-ups from time-to-time. It is also a great opportunity for them to highlight what they do/ what works for them.

Compare that with this:

Did you know that Asha Joglekar, owner of 'Bhakri' restaurant spends two hours a day in just dropping and picking up her kids from school? How does she do that and manage a restaurant? Reema Shourie is an accomplished painter and has held three exhibitions of her work inspite of having a full-time job in a software company, and having two kids. We would like to profile such women who are an inspiration to us. These are women who are on the way to living their best life. What they have to say is of great value to the forum.

The second one definitely has more impact, because when the reader is reading the second part of the paragraph ('women who are an inspiration' etc) she has specific examples in mind that makes the rest of the paragraph easy to relate to, remember, and understand at a deeper level.

Don't take my word for it; there's scientific research backing up this claim

This is not just my gut feeling. There is psychological research showing that people understand "thematic" and "concrete" stuff better and faster than abstract things. This was first proved in a famous experiment called 'Wason's Selection Task'. Instead of describing the experiment, I'm going to run it on you.

Here is a puzzle for you. I'm going to show you 4 cards. Each card has a number on one side, and a color on the other side. The rule for the cards is this, "If one side of the card has an even number, then the opposite side of the card MUST be RED." Your job is to figure out whether any of these cards violate the rule or not. I keep the 4 cards on the table in front of you. You can see one side of each card, and what you see is: '3', '8', 'BROWN' and 'RED'. Your job is to determine whether there is any violation of the rule or not by turning over the minimum number of cards. So, to be sure, how many cards do you need to turn over, and which?

Time yourself. How long did it take you to solve this?

And you probably got it wrong. 73% of the people do. The correct answer is: you need to turn over 2 cards. The one with '8' on it, and the one with 'BROWN' on it. If you got anything else, you're mistaken. 8 has to be turned over to check that it's back is RED. BROWN has to be turned over to ensure that it's back is not an even number. '3' and 'RED' do NOT need to be checked.

Now here's a different puzzle:

You are a policeman in a bar. You have to ensure that all the drinking happening there is legal. The rule is, "If a person is drinking beer, then he must be above 21 years of age." You can see 4 people at a table drinking. The first person is drinking a coke, but you can't guess his age. The second person is drinking a beer, and you can't guess his age. The third person is obviously a teenager (i.e. he's definitely under 21), but you're not sure what he's drinking. The fourth person is an old man, easily above 50, and you can't tell his age. Now, to be sure that the rule is not being violated, whom all do you need to check. (Here check is defined as asking for an age proof, and checking what drink he's drinking.)

Again, time yourself.

Within a few seconds you must have gotten the right answer: you need to check the age of person #2, who's drinking the beer, and you need to check whether person #3, the teenager,  is drinking beer or not.

Here is the amazing part: both puzzles are identical! Yet most people get the first one wrong and the second one correct. And, it takes them much less time to do the second one.

Now do you understand why your talks need examples?

Posted via email from Navin’s posterous

participants were told that the questions were developed either by a research institute located in California, "around 2,000 miles away" (distant condition), or in Indiana, "2 miles away," (near condition).  In a third, control group no information regarding location was mentioned. As expected, participants in the distant condition solved more problems than participants in the proximal condition and in the control condition. Because the problems seemed farther away, they were easier to solve.

This pair of studies suggests that even minimal cues of psychological distance can make us more creative. Although the geographical origin of the various tasks was completely irrelevant – it shouldn’t have mattered where the questions came from – simply telling subjects that they came from somewhere far away led to more creative thoughts.

These results build on previous studies which demonstrated that distancing in time – projecting an event into the remote future – and assuming an event to be less likely (that is, distancing on the probability dimension) can also enhance creativity.

Posted via email from Navin’s posterous

In 1954, psychologist James Olds and his team were working in a laboratory at McGill University, studying how rats learned. They would stick an electrode in a rat's brain and, whenever the rat went to a particular corner of its cage, would give it a small shock and note the reaction. One day they unknowingly inserted the probe in the wrong place, and when Olds tested the rat, it kept returning over and over to the corner where it received the shock. He eventually discovered that if the probe was put in the brain's lateral hypothalamus and the rats were allowed to press a lever and stimulate their own electrodes, they would press until they collapsed.

There you go. If you didn't have actual work to do, you would keep hitting refresh on your twitter client until you collapsed. (It's true, isn't it?)

And, apparently, this little corner of the brain is not the pleasure center. The high that you get is not similar to the one you get after eating chocolate or after sex (or both). This is a different high, characterized not by euphoric satisfaction, but rather by excitement of finding something, and craving for more.

It is an emotional state Panksepp tried many names for: curiosity, interest, foraging, anticipation, craving, expectancy. He finally settled on seeking. Panksepp has spent decades mapping the emotional systems of the brain he believes are shared by all mammals, and he says, "Seeking is the granddaddy of the systems." It is the mammalian motivational engine that each day gets us out of the bed, or den, or hole to venture forth into the world. It's why, as animal scientist Temple Grandin writes in Animals Make Us Human, experiments show that animals in captivity would prefer to have to search for their food than to have it delivered to them.

For humans, this desire to search is not just about fulfilling our physical needs. Panksepp says that humans can get just as excited about abstract rewards as tangible ones. He says that when we get thrilled about the world of ideas, about making intellectual connections, about divining meaning, it is the seeking circuits that are firing.

And the best part is this:

Later experiments done on humans confirmed that people will neglect almost everything—their personal hygiene, their family commitments—in order to keep getting that buzz.

Exactly. Describes you perfectly, doesn't it, my dear twitter/rss/email/sms addict?

Read the full article, if you're scientifically, or neuroscientifically inclined.

I found this article via http://twitter.com/sandygautam, someone whose twitter and friendfeed stream you must follow (and refresh compulsively) if you liked this article.

Posted via email from Navin’s posterous

@ngkabra: This account is used for general interesting information from around the web. Often it is about psychology, economy, funny stuff, India, etc. Most non-techies should follow this one.

@_navin: This is for technology tweets. Programming. Computer Science. Python. Maths and Statistics. Only geeks may venture here.

@ngkx: This is for general conversation. Restaurants I liked. What my kids are up to. Silly remarks. IM replacement. Only likely to be interesting for people who know me personally (and sometimes not interesting to even them!)

@punetech: This is the "official" twitter handle of http://punetech.com. All about technology in Pune – and nothing else. All techies in Pune are required by law to follow this.

@punetechlive: This is for live-tweeting tech events in Pune. During an event we often tweet 20 to 50 times in an hour, and that is too much stuff to foist on to regular readers of @punetech who might not be interested in the event. Live-tweeting of any event from this account is _always_ preceded with a tweet on the main @punetech account announcing that live-tweeting is going to commence. So, particularly discerning readers can start following @punetechlive just for events that they find interesting and unfollow when they are not interested in that event.

Why?

Why all this segregation and complexity?

Basically, because I believe that twittering is not about what I want to say – rather it is about what my followers want to hear. I doubt that the seven hundred people who follow @ngkabra for interesting articles around the web, e.g. the people in Atlanta, or Portland, would really be interested my review of the @grubshup restaurant on Canal Road, Pune. Nor do the doctors and accountants following me have any interest in python debugging techniques.

And, the evidence appears to show that this segregation is working well. A quick analysis of the followers of these different accounts shows that the overlap between the various accounts is rather low, indicating that people are selectively following only some of my accounts.

But maybe I should find out the list of people following all my accounts and give them a prize of some sort!

Posted via email from Navin’s posterous

But it also points out other aspects that are more interesting. For example, the existence Indian “contract research organizations” which do specific research for and under the guidance of major western companies. Or that the Serum Institute of India in Pune supplies products to 138 different countries and claims to immunize half of the world’s children against several diseases.

But the paper also points out the danger that the Indian companies will focus too much on the lucrative western markets and neglect local illnesses and issues for which there is a pressing need to develop effective drugs locally. Historically, Indian companies have been the principal providers of vaccines and medicines for the major local killers like malaria and tuberculosis. And if these companies start producing Viagra, who will cater to the TB patients?

Read full article.