Academics

Now that we have put across our idea of education, the next thing we need to define is the scope of this education. As we mentioned before, the two institutes that our children interact with are school and home. So, these two institutes share the burden of moulding and developing the child. And together, we ‘educate’ the child. Lets talk about the school's role.

First and foremost, the school should give the child training in academics. Concepts and ideas should be presented to a child in a way that the child can understand them for what they are and where they can be applied. The school should give the child physical training as well. Since there is a large number of children of each age group in a school, the school is in a better position to provide the sense of competition to the children than any sports training facility. The school should also train the child in creative arts and crafts. When a variety of activities are done in school, the child finds at least one which he / she really enjoys and that encourages the child to do perform in the other activities as well. Let us see why each activity is important.

As we have already established, we believe that education should be a wholesome and enlightening experience. For that, we have to make sure that children do not get stressed or zoned out when an academic session is going on. We know that the best way of learning is when the teacher and student interaction is one on one. That enables the child to learn at his / her own speed. However, having one on one interaction is not usually financially feasible. From the point of view of a child, it is not even always desirable. It becomes, well, boring! But having a large group always doesn’t make sense either. The aggressive and dominating members of the group decide the speed and direction that the group is taking. This is not beneficial for each child either. That set Dr. Phatak thinking about finding a ‘golden mean’ which would have a little bit of both, be beneficial to the children and affordable.

Programmed learning solves this problem to a great extent. The children are given first exposure to a concept with the help of multimedia rich presentations. The content of the presentations is designed in such a way that there are lots of comparisons to known situations, ideas slowly build up on one another and there are lots of recaps in between. Due to this, the introduction to a concept is slow and the children find it interesting and enlightening. As the lecture proceeds, children get their difficulties answered in the class, the teacher asks them pointed, thought provoking questions and helps them assimilate the knowledge they have gathered.

After that, on a different day, the children get to watch the lecture individually in our computer labs. We have more than a hundred machines, so no child has to share a computer. Each child logs in, puts on headphones and listens to the lecture carefully. This time, it’s not a continuous lecture like it was in class. After each concept in the lecture, we pause and ask questions. The child has to answer them. A pre decided minimum score must be attained in this mini quiz to proceed, or the unit has to be repeated. The session proceeds for each child at a different pace. Once the whole lecture is completed in this way, we can safely say that most of the children have attained basic proficiency in that topic.

The children have classroom sessions as well. Questions where kids have to give their opinion or find their own solution to a problem are asked here. There are arguments, discussions, debates in these sessions. The classic ‘standard’ questions are answered in class too. The advantages of having a group are utilized to the fullest.

Children are also given access to these lectures and quizzes at home. Parents can set tasks for their children on weekends, just like we do in school. When the child completes the assignment, an email is sent to the parents. It contains a detailed report about the child’s performance and suggestions on what to do next.

Children are also given projects and research assignments that are related to the topics. Some assignments involve actually performing a certain experiment, another may involve reading a book, interviewing a person, reading an article, commenting on a situation after doing research etc.

Therefore, at Millennium, the system that is in place automatically takes care of everything your child needs at an academic level. The child gets revision, repetition, instant evaluation and parents and teachers get detailed reports on all these activities. That helps the child understand, prepare for the examination and if the results do not match a child’s potential, repetition and more practice can be done.

This is how we think a school should handle academics – by finely integrating knowledge, technology, creativity and energy.