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Parmeet Shah

Marathon Nextgen Realty Ltd.

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Where is the revolution in education?

I work with Marathon Group, a real estate firm and we are embarking on a school project. I am personally leading this project and I'm very inspired by the thoughts of Ken Robinson, Salman Khan and even Sugata Mitra. We want to change the traditional classroom characterized by one-dimensional lecturing and make it more interactive and leverage peer learning. Moreover, we want revolutionary and cutting edge teaching methodologies and curriculum.

So how to achieve these objectives? It seems that the best we can do at the moment is go for International Baccalaureate in terms of the board and curriculum, but that doesn't ensure any of our objectives.

One could even challenge what is taught at schools: why don't we teach things in school that will actually matter in terms of life choices like positive psychology, personality theory, etc? How relevant is history, geography, higher level chemistry, physics, etc why not impart skills and knowledge that actually matter like negotiation, presentation, etc?

Coming to my primary question: where is the revolution? who is thinking about such things and why aren't things changing?

And practically speaking, how and to what extent can I introduce such revolutionary methodologies and ideas in the school that we have to make NOW?

Related Talks:
Topics: Education Innovation INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION K-12 Education education education quality education reform education revolution education systems
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    Fritzie Reisner 100+

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    Mar 21 2012: In answer to parts of your questions: Q: Who is thinking about such things? A: It seems almost everyone within education, parents, politicians, government, think tanks, and people in the private sector. Q: Why aren't things changing? A: They are continuously changing. New experiments are continuously launched and evaluated, both in curriculum and pedagogy. Q: Why not impart skills like negotiation and presentation? A: Work in these areas has been part of what K12 teachers work on with students for decades, at least I know this is true in the United States.Q; How relevant are history, geography, high level chemistry, and physics? A: I believe these subjects are increasingly important if we want to give all children a role in understand our world and participating in changing it for the better.

    • Parmeet Shah

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      Mar 21 2012: Fritzie, I'm not really sure about K-12 education in the US, but having gone through the liberal arts curriculum at Yale I'm sure that K-12 in US must be the most updated and world-class system. However, in India and from what I here even in Western Europe, systems are totally outdated, hardly any innovation is taking place, and things haven't changed for decades. And you're right I shouldn't have taken a swipe at History/Geography, but yes I do feel that many important skills and abilities that would be highly critical in life after education are just not touched upon at all.

      In any case, would love to hear regarding what latest cutting edge stuff can be adopted for our project.

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