Rethink the Role of Extracurricular Activities

Many kids attend schools near their homes. They get fairly good grades and test scores, although nothing phenomenal. While at school, they also maintain an extracurricular activity schedule. As per schedule they dance or act in a play, participate in that one drama; win a quiz competition as a participant in the team, and a prize in the debate competition. They are also members of NCC / NSS and other social clubs. These satisfy them and their parents.

To accomplish the above it is not required to make a big commitment. They get fairly good grades in the curriculum, not great, and as a package become they assume this is wholesome development.

However, over the years the personality of these children does not really reflect what they can actually be or do. They just become socially conforming humans to a routine their parents have had, may be busier as the competition just got bigger.

I believe that children should be encouraged to have a deeper engagement which can influence or change personalities. At schools we should introduce extra-curricular activities as a method to change/impact the personality of a child. The idea, I argue here: perhaps, our understanding of extracurricular activities so far at schools and their role in the growth of a child’s thinking process, is all wrong.

Beyond the List

It’s common, for example, to hear students talk about an activity demonstrating their “leadership potential” or “passionate commitment.” The activities in school that they currently get involved with are not extra-ordinary things to make them competitive. The greatest asset of these relaxed superstars is not the number of activities they participated in, but the fact that they’re genuinely interesting people. This trait, which is called interestingness, permeates their thinking processes and has a profoundly positive impact on their career chances. In other words, what’s important about an activity is not its impressiveness, but its impact on your personality. Extracurricular activities play a different role in creating the interestingness. While creating the interestingness we should use activities to transform children into more interesting people.  It is important to develop a deep interest in one or two activities. There is a level of enthusiasm to be created for the depth of interest.

Students Aren’t Born Interesting, They Earn It

The interestingness hypothesis is appealing — using a small number of activities to transform children into an interesting person is much less demanding than trying to build a long list of time-consuming commitments. It is a common belief that only a few lucky students are born naturally interesting, while everyone else has to prove their worth the hard way – one demanding extracurricular commitment at a time.

But is this true?

In 2001, a research team led by Professor Linda Caldwell of Penn State University, conducted an experiment that effectively put the idea of the naturally interesting student to the test.  They gathered a group of middle school students from four rural Pennsylvania school districts. A subset of these students was randomly selected to receive a six-week training course called Time-Wise. The goal of the course was to teach the students to make better use of their free time (their theory was that less bored students are less likely to fall into dangerous behaviors, such as drug use).

One of the lessons, for example, taught students how to balance what they “have to do” with what they “want to do,” while another provided strategies for following up on an idea that seemed interesting.

After the course finished, all of the students were subjected to a battery of tests to assess their interestingness. Results showed in a 2004 paper http://php.scripts.psu.edu/users/l/l/llc7/Preliminary%20Evidence%20PDF.pdf, that a group that received the training showed “higher levels of interest (and thus lower levels of boredom) than the control group. They also “scored higher…on initiative…the ability to restructure boring situations…and the ability to plan and make decisions about their free time. They participated in more new and interesting activities.

This is an astonishing result.

We tend to think about interestingness as an innate trait possessed by a lucky few, but Caldwell and her team revealed that half-a-dozen common-sense lessons were enough to make a significant difference in the measured interestingness of randomly-selected middle school students. If these basic lessons had such an impact on bored middle school children, imagine the change possible for someone committed to the goal of becoming more interesting.

In other words, to become more interesting…

1. Do fewer structured activities.
2. Spend more time exploring, thinking, and exposing yourself to potentially interesting things.
3. If something catches your attention, use the abundant free time generated by rule 1 to quickly follow up.

Pulling the Pieces Together

The argument is simple:

• High school students place too much emphasis on the qualities demonstrated by their activities.In a quest to demonstrate as many good qualities as possible, they end up stressing themselves with unwieldy lists of time-consuming commitments.
• Successful students highlight a different approach.They show that that being interesting can go farther than being widely accomplished. With this in mind, they use activities to build their interestingness – not their credentials – and therefore enjoy happier lives.
• The research of Linda Caldwell supports a powerful corollary:any student can become more interesting – it’s not an innate trait possessed only by a lucky few.

This article is an edit / compilation of some ideas from blogs / articles on the web. It is not original.

Blog 1: First Principles of Education

 

 

 

There are a couple of different definitions for education all meaning the same though. Lets take the most general of them: “It is the act or process of imparting or acquiring general knowledge,developing the powers of reasoning and judgment, and generally of preparing oneself or others intellectually for mature life“.

Although Education in its true sense had only one goal i.e. intellectual maturity – the current day developments seem to have narrowed its cause. The evolution of economies and human development have more or less caused these narrowing effects. From what was broadly developing Intellectual Maturity – it has now become an imperative to survive in the society, a platform to compete for almost anything, a status symbol in some cases and in many cases a tool to acquire skills and therefore jobs. While these are good in some ways, they aren’t good if the first principle i.e. intellectual maturity development is not accomplished.

What is Intellectual Maturity? To me, it is the ability to judge the good from the bad. The ability to reason and judge actions and consequences. There is nothing to write beyond what is already said in the Gita, Bible or Quran. Further these great teachings are simplified enough for all of us to read and understand. But we have separated it from today’s education and narrowly defined education as Maths, Science, History & Languages etc. In that lies a flaw – I think. Intellectual maturity i.e. ability to judge good from bad is not taught in the subjects / books prescribed by the education boards.

How then do we teach Intellectual Maturity? Not in class-rooms and with books and tests. Gita or Bible or Quran is a way of life. To speak the truth, to not hurt others, to follow the principles / rules to be tolerant etc are practices. They have to be demonstrated to the kids. Students should be taught to not only be successful but also good. One test is to see if they are “loved and respected” in their adult years. In fact these are more important than financial success. As a matter of fact respectable people will have more chances of being successful in a growing economy as larger opportunities exist.

The onus is on the parents, teachers and the society at large to follow the principles of life. and help our children accomplish – intellectual maturity.

Good students who achieve scores do not necessarily achieve intellectual maturity. They cannot distinguish between right and wrong and therefore resort to unethical methods and practices in life. I cannot imagine other reasons for the greed our society seems to have developed. Parents constantly tell children that great social positions give power to earn more. And all that children want to do acquire power to earn.

It is time to change that and to tell our children that the power is in “living a life with great intellectual maturity”.

Blog-2: Children Educated only in the Classrooms remain “Uneducated”!

Many of us, in this generation have unconsciously concluded that, school is a place where disciplines like Maths, Science, History, Geography, Languages etc are learnt. Scores and Ranks are our metric. If our child scores well, we assume success. And it is relative success. Seldom do we think or analyze what does the school feed our children in addition to these subjects/disciplines.

In the past, way past, Indian families were more closely knit. There were always elders at home who would educate the then children on values, behavior, sharing, kindness, appreciation etc. The new societies have families that are more nuclear and smaller in size. There is added dimension to the smaller families – both parents are employed. As we move into a developed economy, more women will go to work and it is an important aspect of growth. This is progress in one dimension. However, we have to solve this problem of spending time with children on aspects that are beyond the subjects/disciplines. At a larger-community level, there is a great responsibility on all of us to ensure the future doesn’t degenerate because we are making progress in one dimension.

Schools can play an important role in this area. We can design programs in schools which focus on team building, sharing, appreciation for others, respecting relationships etc. While parents keep asking for facilities in schools at the time of admissions they do NOT really inquire about programs supporting behavioral aspects and values development. How much time and what programs are really focused on behavioral aspects, is not a common question.

Secondly even if a parent is satisfied that there are programs in school to help behavioral aspects, it is also the responsibility of parents to practice those at home. I think every adult is a “teacher” and we don’t have to be in a classroom in front of kids to be teachers. As an example teachers in the school will mention that smoking is bad for health. The student may find the “teacher at home” i.e. the father/mother smoking at home. Same with goes with use of abusive language.This kind of behavior by adults creates conflict in young minds. Remember we are all teachers to all the children around us and that children are constantly watching us…

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William Arthur Ward said…

The mediocre teacher tells.
The good teacher explains.
The superior teacher demonstrates.
The great teacher inspires.

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It is upon us to become the type of teacher we want to be!