Shiksha

by Manish Sisodia

  ‘The Rich Man’ is another such story. In this, a child asks his father for an expensive gift. When the father can’t get it because of financial constraints, the child is filled with negative emotions for the father. He even steals his father’s wallet and runs away from home. When he goes through the contents in his father’s wallets, he realizes that his father has no money. He realizes his mistake. This is an everyday example from families around us. When children discuss this story, they often reflect on their reasons for not obeying their parents. They analyse their relationships with their parents.

  Activities: Like stories, a lot of activities are also an integral part of the happiness class. Here too the aim is to help children analyse, understand and evaluate their thought processes. There is no moral to be learnt. Children are encouraged to look within and understand the reactions and thoughts that arise during the activities. It helps them build an opinion and make decisions when they are in situations similar to that in the activities. The activities are created keeping in mind the age groups. An important activity in class 8 is to understand one’s needs. It helps them assess how relevant the idea of ‘unlimited wants and limited resources’ is to their experiences. After the activity the children understand that they have wants of many kinds—material needs such as food, clothing, housing, mobile phones, cars, etc., and emotional needs such as love, respect, security, happiness, etc. Children make a list of these needs and then classify them as material or emotional. They also understand that material needs can be met through hard work while emotional needs are met through good interpersonal relationships. The most important part of this activity—which goes on for many days—is that children understand that both their material and emotional needs are limited and can be fulfilled. However, when we try to fulfil emotional needs through material goods, we fall into the trap of thinking that in spite of unlimited things, our emotional needs are not getting fulfilled. This confusion is what gives rise to the idea ‘unlimited needs and limited resources’. Through this activity, we also make children analyse their actions. For example, while buying something, they are made to think whether they need it or it is something they are doing to show off.

  Another important activity is about trust. In this, students discuss their trust in others and themselves. It helps them understand how one’s trust in the self is continuous and the trust in others or the trust born out of external things is comparative and ever-lasting. Many activities are also performed to inculcate a sense of gratitude in children towards cleaners, gatekeepers, parents and vendors.

  This is how mindfulness meditation, stories and activities have been included in the curriculum. All three have the same objective—to make children introspective. They help them look analytically at their own behaviour, thoughts and reactions. As mentioned earlier, this is a purely scientific syllabus that helps children resolve their dilemmas and become emotionally strong and determined human beings.

  Incidentally, when this syllabus was being prepared, I had gone to Harvard University to deliver a lecture. I met the teacher training specialist, Mitalene Fletcher, who is the director of PreK-12 and other international programmes at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. I told her about Delhi government’s plans and experiments. I wanted to see if we could get some examples and contacts at the international level. That would make our work simpler. She gave examples from many countries. But she admitted that, as far as she knew, this was the first time a programme like this was being planned in Delhi.

  Since then Nepal, Afghanistan and Washington have also expressed an interest in understanding this syllabus, and closer home, private schools have also talked about adopting this curriculum. It is not that bringing these efforts to fruition was without roadblocks. To make teachers understand the meaning of this curriculum so that they could teach it properly to students was the biggest challenge. I still remember that during inspection, I saw a teacher making his students close their eyes and chant a few mantras in the name of mindful meditation. These situations come about because in our system teachers have also been trained to promote rote learning. We have to subvert this age-old conditioning and teach them something new.

  In my opinion, there are two aims of education—to make people learn the ability to live happily and to help others live happily. That is what the ultimate aim of education, from nursery to college, is. When I say this, I am often asked if science, geography, history, literature aim to lead to happiness then why have the happiness class? The aim of the happiness class is to understand happiness. What is the meaning of happiness for our students at the present and in their future life? What does living happily with others mean? Can happiness be measured? Can happiness be compared? What is the science of happiness gained from comparing with others and happiness elicited from within? Is happiness synonymous with materialistic things? Answering these and similar questions scientifically after looking within and at your surroundings is what the happiness class is.

  Let me mention another interesting incident related to the happiness programme. I participated in the International Education Conference in Moscow in September 2017 where education ministers from forty-five countries had been invited to speak on education reforms, techniques and other aspects of education. I noted that most of the discussions were focused on the use of technology in classrooms. In my introduction, I requested that since education ministers from these countries were present there, could we think about how we could possibly look at resolving problems through education rather than solving them through strict laws and force. Could the education ministers of forty-five countries think of ways to end terrorism and global warming that have not been resolved in spite of these efforts and make the world a better place for humans and nature? For the next two days, almost all ministers came and spoke with me informally and said that what I was saying was right but how could terrorism be ended with education. I assured them that it was possible and the solution could be found in ancient Indian wisdom.

  As luck would have it, I participated in the international conference in Moscow again in December 2018 where I shared my experiments with and experiences of the happiness class. This time, education ministers from seventy countries had been invited to talk. Many countries showed an interest in the curriculum and have kept in touch. The Moscow incident is important to show that at a time when India is dealing with all these issues, it is possible to look for solutions to them in the happiness class. It has shown how these manmade disasters can be averted through education. I have said many a time that education is not about making buildings or modern classrooms or adopting technology in classrooms. These are its needs but not its achievements. Education’s biggest achievement is that it can foresee future problems, find solutions and prepare future generations for them. To me, the happiness class is a big and important step in this direction. There have been well-being, school and leadership education experiments across the world. Happiness classes have been organized too but their scope has been limited. These are usually limited to students in just a few schools. They mostly run for a month or for one or two classes in one month. Organizing happiness classes from nursery to class 8 for one year every day across 1000 schools, for 8 lakh students by 20,000 teachers is a large-scale project. From a spiritual point of view, 8 lakh students do mindful meditation for five minutes every day. Even thinking about the knowledge emerging from its positive energy is exciting.

  Entrepreneurship Mindset Curriculum: Getting Future Ready

  Every child deserves to go to school. Every child has the right to education. However, education does not mean simply creating a generation of youngsters with certificates in their hands. If the aim of school education is about raising employable children, then it should also prepare children to create new jobs. I often asked students in many private and government schools what they wanted to do after completing their schooling. Almost 99 per cent of them replied that they would like to take up jobs. When I asked how many of them wanted to become entreprene
urs, how many of them wanted to do their own work or if they wanted to work in a way where instead of looking for jobs, they would be capable of creating more jobs, just one or two of them raised their hands in response. Be it a private school or a government school, in my experience, there are hardly four to five students among thousands who think of providing employment opportunities to others rather than finding a job for themselves.

  The question is—if we only create jobseekers, where will the job providers come from? If almost every child, armed with a degree, goes looking for a job, who will provide these jobs? We often hear stories of graduates and even people with doctorates who are compelled to apply for positions that require much lower qualifications. Why does that happen? Why does the person who has spent twenty years of his/her life gaining expertise in a subject not have the confidence or ability to create opportunities if he/she can’t find one? Why do our educated youngsters lack in confidence? Why have they limited their potential to just getting a job? Why can’t they apply their skills in any other area? From what I see, the reason is the current education system. This existing system certainly imparts knowledge but it neither teaches how to apply that knowledge to create something new nor does it instil confidence in students. In this system, we equip our children with knowledge and qualifications but we don’t give them the ability to apply these skills independently. This ability is what I would call the ‘entrepreneurship mindset’.

  The lack of ability to think out of the box in spite of earning impressive qualifications is the reason why we are a country of jobseekers. There are no jobs because our schools and colleges are only creating jobseekers and not job creators.

  The issue is not just about employment, but the entire economy is at stake here. Ours is an economy of job seekers. Such an economy can never compete with the economy of job providers. In the US and many European countries, however, most schools develop an entrepreneurial mindset in their students. In my opinion, this is the reason they are able to think beyond just seeking jobs. They are also capable of creating jobs for talented people even from other countries like India. It is no wonder then that a large chunk of our graduates from IIMs and IITs look towards these countries for jobs. Who created these companies? Where did the creators of these companies graduate from? These days, the crème de la crème of our educated youth is either moving to the US, the UK or Europe in large numbers or seeking jobs in European or American companies based in India. Working for multinationals may not seem problematic on the surface but it is a huge strike on the country’s economy. That is because the profits from a product created by our people, even if used in America or Japan or India itself, go to the country where the company is from. I am not saying this from a swadeshi viewpoint. My worry is that the country’s power, infrastructure and money go into nurturing talent, but due to the lack of entrepreneurial attitude, this talent contributes to the country’s economy only by spending the money they earn or by paying taxes. The profit made through the hard work done by this talent contributes to the growth of companies and economies of the countries where the companies are based. That is my reason for saying that an economy of jobseekers can never compete with one of job creators and providers. The reason for the success of many economies in this day and age is that they are creating job providers and not job seekers in their schools and colleges.

  This analysis of education systems served as a background for introducing the entrepreneurship mindset curriculum (EMC) in Delhi government schools. This curriculum has been introduced for students of classes 9 to 12 as a stepping stone to lead them to the world outside the walls of schools. In the EMC, we are neither teaching our students how to work in offices nor are we training them for any particular job. As is evident from the name, this curriculum aims at infusing confidence in students to do new things, to do bigger things, to make decisions and work with courage; to take the fear of failure out of them and to make them pioneers in their work spheres.

  Interestingly, the class was started on the request of the students. It had just been a few months since the happiness class had started in schools and the results had been better than expected. Around this time, the senior students from almost all schools put forward a request for something like the happiness class for them. On seeing the good results among the junior students, even the teachers started asking for something similar for senior students. Even I wanted to do something for the senior students but I was not in favour of extending the happiness class to senior classes because its aim was the emotional development of students, which is best done till class 8. For students of classes 9 to 12, focusing on their career was more important.

  To begin with, I started having long discussions with my colleagues in the education department and started designing the EMC with them. My colleagues were of the opinion that it would be a landmark, but we didn’t have enough subject specialists to create an entire curriculum. So I took the discussion outside the department to Prithvi Reddy, Neeraj Gulati and Tarak Goradia. These three are my friends—Prithvi is also an IT professional, Neeraj is a well-known entrepreneur in his own right, and Tarak has a PhD in computer science and has worked with many multinational companies. They helped me come up with a concept note first. Then, I went to Bengaluru to meet a few young professionals who had been working on entrepreneurship in detail. Prithvi and Tarak introduced me to Mekin Maheshwari who was the founder–HR head of Flipkart and is inculcating the entrepreneurship mindset through the Udayam Foundation, where he is the founder head. My colleague in the government, Abhishek Gupta, who had been working in the area of skill development and entrepreneurship for almost a decade, also became a part of the team. This is how an informal team was created. After a few discussions, the responsibility to create the curriculum was given to a team led by SCERT director Sunita Kaushik. Many renowned SCERT scholars were also put on the team. Many extraordinary teachers from Delhi schools who had stood out in the last four years, many of them from government schools, were also included in the team.

  This was a team with a huge dream. But they didn’t have any prior experience or standing in the field. There weren’t any examples that they could emulate. Most of the ongoing entrepreneurship courses in the country were packages for a few months where students were introduced to the qualities required to become ace entrepreneurs. The aim of this team, on the other hand, was to initiate a thought process among children and that too not through a week or two-week-long programme but a four-year-long coursework for students from classes 9 to 12. There were no examples or case studies anywhere in the world of such a curriculum for four years. The first challenge the team faced was of imbibing the entrepreneurial mindset themselves.

  During the process of developing the curriculum, this team would come up with something new every day, they would create a new entrepreneurship-related inspirational story or activity, try it out in a school and try something new based on the results. The advantage was that there were enough schools and students to assess the impact of this intervention. This is why the efficacy of these ideas was put to test in different classes in twelve schools every day. The curriculum was also tested in twenty-four schools for one month. I don’t think any curriculum has ever been tested on such a large scale till now. The feedback received from the pilot study helped me develop my own understanding of entrepreneurship. The coursework was started as one that helped children develop an aptitude for starting their own business. It was probably in the first or second school that a girl told me that the curriculum was of no use to her because its aim was to make her a businesswoman, but she wanted to become a scientist and work for a space agency. We got similar feedback from many other students and realized that if we continued in the same direction, students, guardians and teachers would not accept it and might, in fact, turn against it. We spotted this in the initial feedback. We mulled over it and found that our idea of the EMC was incomplete. This was especially true for government schools, where, in many cases, students hardly have academic support
at home. In such homes, if we tried to turn children into entrepreneurs, they would become distrusting towards the EMC. Most parents of such students wanted their children to complete their education and get a job. We decided to focus not on honing skills but on creating an entrepreneurial attitude. The person who wants to become a scientist or a manager or a banker or wants to be a professional in any field and progress in it also requires such a mindset. Even to become a successful IAS or IPS officer, one needs an entrepreneurial attitude from the beginning of their career. We decided that we start working on creating this temperament from classes 9 to 12 through the EMC. This curriculum should have an effect on their personality by creating an entrepreneurial viewpoint and they may decide to be entrepreneurs or professionals in the process. When we started working on the curriculum with this aim and held discussions in schools, we found that no student or teacher was against it. In fact, they said it was necessary and very important for every child.

  Thus, the next challenge in front of the team designing the course was to create activities that wouldn’t be difficult for students of classes 9, 10, 11 and 12 to perform with their teachers. In schools that had a shortage of classrooms, lack of playgrounds and, to a certain extent, a few teachers with fixed mindsets—we had to come up with a curriculum keeping these basic ground realities in mind because they would have an impact on its execution. The work was difficult but we were emboldened by the fact that the team developing the curriculum also had the mind for it. The team worked continuously. After about six months of gruelling work, they came up with one book for classes 9 and 10 and one for 11 and 12. I would like to mention here that no books were made for the children under the happiness class or the EMC. Rather a collection of case studies and activities were compiled for the teachers. The one-month pilot study of the curriculum under the guidance of SCERT started from 1 April 2019 and continued till 10 May 2019 in twenty-four schools. Out of these, ten schools were for girls only, eight for boys and six were co-ed. Among these, eighteen ran in morning shifts and six in evening shifts. In the pilot classes, there were 26,301 students in classes 9 to 12. Around 424 teachers were provided special training before starting the pilot project. In the pilot phase, two observers were sent to every class to observe the response of teachers and students towards the content of the curriculum and activities. Additionally, one person from the core team went to the schools on a daily basis. In the almost forty days of the pilot, observers from SCERT took feedback every week for detailed discussions on every aspect of the curriculum.