A Movable Feast

This is the unedited version of a post  that appeared in Solution Exchange, a site initiated by the UN Country team in India, where the education community discusses questions of interest. It addressed some of the questions raised by Rohit Dhankar, a noted educationist, regarding child-centred education. He asked, among other things, what child-centred education meant to us, how we knew what the child's needs were, and whether all that children were interested in was in their best interest.

Rohit’s questions are each one like the Arabian Nights magic umbrella. They can be carried in one hand but expand to cover an entire army. Therefore, in this post, I am going to try to restrict myself to just one or two of the questions.

Like all catch-phrases, child-centred education (CCE) is a peg to hang our favourite cloak on, with little regard to what other cloaks hanging there look like.

As we listen to various people involved with children talk about CCE, we quickly realise that, whatever it may have started out as, it is a socio-political notion (not psychological, not even ethical), masquerading as a pedagogical principle.

This is not unreasonable. Eventually, what will manifest as child-centric behaviour is what the teacher believes is child-centric behaviour. (Do we really believe that the teachers who used the cane liberally did not think they were being deeply concerned about the interests of the child)? And so, either the teacher will come to the child with a view of what child-centredness is, or she will have been instructed to exhibit a behaviour that someone else believes is child-centric. It is usually postulated as something self-evidently good, but it goes unacknowledged that it is a set of preferences of someone in some position of authority.

As an example, consider the enormous emphasis (rightly) placed on eliminating physical cruelty in class (e.g. corporal punishment). We hear far less about the many forms in which a child can be traumatised without physical punishment, because there are so many different ways to list and each one would require so many caveats. So, in lists of child-centric practices, it is unusual to come across prescriptions against excessive competition, subtle boycotts or use of rewards as a means of enforcing behaviour, even though they can mark a child much more dramatically than a dozen cane strokes.

This is a general problem with all list-based approaches. They emphasise some practices, and deemphasise others, often reflecting the preferences of the one who is listing, but also as a result of the ease or otherwise of the listing itself. Really important concerns might get left out, simply because it is too difficult to articulate them.

Either way, in most discourses on the subject, there seems to be little space for acknowledging that CCE might be a movable feast, to be discovered in the actual teacher-child relationship, and tested for validity, salience and effectiveness right there. Which, of course, means that the teachers need to learn not the five ways in which to be child-centric and the six reasons why child-centricity produces good results, but the art of being in a meaningful relationship with the child. It also means that as the teacher seeks to understand the child’s learning processes and struggles to find adequate responses, she is, in fact, being child-centric.

The responses of such a teacher will, inevitably, continue to be conditioned by her own background, the “child-centric training” she has received, the community that she, the child and the parents are a part of, and a host of other influences that operate in all our lives. Not only is there no way around it, it is the most desirable way it could turn out. It is only in that authenticity that any meaningful relationship can develop between the child and the teacher. Only in that relationship is there any possibility that the teacher’s behaviour (and the teacher herself) is actually modified to be responsive to the needs of the child. In that relationship is it possible to test, on an on-going, here-and-now basis, whether indeed the child is competent to decide what he should learn. And, in that relationship, the specific question of the right of the child to do so disappears, simply because that right operates throughout the relationship, and is conditioned by the teacher’s understanding of his needs.

If we pursue this, we also see that to ask if children are really interested in what is in their best interest is itself problematic. In the best interests of the child from what perspective? The need that he should become a part of the “productive work-force”? Or that he should be a free soul, who can write poetry and paint? Or that he should turn out to be a top executive, capable of negotiating the treacherous corporate waters? Or that he should contribute to a peaceful, cooperative and mutually-supportive community? Or, most wide-spread, that he should memorise well enough to get past the ritual of the examination.

We see that every debate on this question is suffused by the alternative perspectives, frequently unstated, and assumptions about skilful means for achieving the objectives, mostly untested. I don’t see how we can get away from that. But I would certainly rather that those decisions be made by someone close to the child rather than someone who is far away, who has lots of degrees but no contact.

I have heard it said that adults should not foist their perspectives upon children. In some way, we should allow the natural genius of the child to reveal itself without contamination from the adult. Even in places that claim this, I have never seen an actual case where I could say that this was happening.

And I am very glad that I can say that, because the alternative would rob the teacher of a role in the relationship, and thereby make the relationship itself meaningless.

If we accept this, then we arrive at a very different notion of child-centricity. First, we acknowledge that, because teachers and children are different, it is not going to look the same everywhere, thank God. Second, we see that teachers need support of a very different kind from what is currently provided in the name of child-centric pedagogical education. They need to learn, essentially, what it means to be in relationship to the child. Third, we learn, because it becomes essential for systemic integrity, to foster an on-going dialogue across various parts of the system, a dialogue about the effectiveness of different actions, assumptions and preferred frames in meeting the child as an authentic human being.

It is often said (in both the government and private systems) that there is little possibility of actually developing teachers to be sensitive in the way that this approach requires. My experience suggests that it is not at all difficult for a teacher to reflect upon the bond that she has with a child in her class, and what happens when she treats it with affection, concern and responsiveness. It is certainly much easier (and much more rewarding) than to get her to put into practice a set of prescriptions which are someone else’s idea of good education. Unfortunately, in teacher development, the on-the-ground effectiveness of the development programmes is rarely considered. So, of course, it seems much easier to read out a received list of child-centric practices to a roomful of teachers. 

It is. It is also useless.