Questioning the usefulness of teaching basic alphabets in nursery to students, founder of Tagore International School Neera Chopra on Thursday said that the basic structure of teaching has slowed down the development of kids.
According to her, instead of making students sit in rows and columns, teaching on blackboards and reading from textbooks, teachers need to now introduce Flipped learning Technologies (FlIT). The educationist was speaking at the national conference on EBPCS, which discussed some of the emerging best practices in CBSE schools.
“By the time kids come to nursery, they already know how to speak some language even if it’s their mother tongue, but we still end up teaching them A, B, C. Kids have developing minds and teaching them how to draw a line when they are three year old is underestimating them,” she said.
Chopra also promoted practical teaching in classrooms. She said, “The idea of making students sit in rows and columns is not good. Have children sit in groups so that they can do activities, discuss and actually imbibe. Teachers get worried that how will they see blackboards. I think blackboards should be removed from classrooms.”
According to Chopra, FlIT learning where students can read up from home and then come to class and discuss should be adopted. She added that the durations of classes should be flexible and the teaching should be student-led. “We use all the jargon but don’t blend ourselves to it. Practical learning is the way ahead,” she said.