The New School

Last year, we changed schools for our then-10 yo daughter because it felt like she was taking studies too lightly… and the old school allowed her to. The new school was one that cared about academics. A lot. So much so that while they are a CBSE school, they taught based on ICSE books till the board classes… since the ICSE curriculum is much tougher.

 

If there was any doubt on joining the school, it was removed by a brief interaction during the online interview (those were still COVID days). When the principal wished her good morning, my daughter replied, “Good morning”. The principal said, “Good morning what?”. My daughter was zapped, so the principal told her the answer, “Good morning, m’am”. Academic rigor and discipline – just what the doctor had ordered for my daughter.

 

After one round of a test and exam cycle each, I saw some patterns:

  1. The focus was heavily on maths and science.
  2. Application oriented. In Geography, for example, the exam cited the longitudes of two places and asked what the time in one place would be if the time in the other place was (say) 10 a.m. (Longitude difference to time difference mapping aside, it required applying the idea of negative numbers, say, if one area was 20˚ East, and the other was 30˚ West, then the difference was 20 – (-30) = 20 + 30 = 50˚).
  3. Mix content across subjects. An algorithm question in computers might ask you to compute the circumference of a circle, which meant you had to know the formula, regardless of whether or not circumference was in the maths syllabus for that test cycle.

 

Like all kids, my daughter would fight me tooth and nail against such pre-emptive learning for scenarios like #3: Why should I revise a maths formula which is not even in the maths syllabus this time just because you feel it may come in the upcoming computer test?

 

But one can’t cover all scenarios. Her maths paper had 3 temperature values in degrees Celsius, and one in Fahrenheit. When my daughter mentioned this, I was sure she wouldn’t have noticed the difference in the units, and hence the need to convert them first. “No”, she declared, “I noticed it and even knew the formula to convert”. I didn’t believe her, “What is the formula to convert?”. “You add 273 to the Celsius value”, she announced with the supreme confidence that kids have.

 

Oops! She had mis-applied the conversion formula from Celsius to Kelvin. At least she had remembered the C to K conversion from the previous test cycle, something not part of the current cycle. Silver lining here, I consoled myself.

 

“But it didn’t matter”, she continued. “Later in the test, m’am came and told us that all temperatures in that question were in degrees Celsius only – it was a typo. So I re-did the question with all values as Celsius”.

Another example was when the biology chapter asked how one can prove we exhale CO2 (The answer: Exhaled air turns lime water milky). She knew that one. Then the chemistry connection: Why does that happen? My daughter didn’t remember the equation from her chemistry syllabus of the previous cycle.

 

Expecting kids to remember info across subjects, and even test cycles, yes, it’s tough. But isn’t that the way the world works? One can’t compartmentalize knowledge into silos called subjects, so I am not complaining. And from the chatter I see on the (unofficial) parents WhatsApp group, most other parents seem to share my view.

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