I was itching to get back to India, and reminded of this when I arrived for my flight at Suvarnabhumi and discovered complications – something about Air India not properly booking my flight on Thai Airways. My 30 minutes with Thai Airways left me with the answer – “Good luck, I can’t help you...” repeated eleven times to my various questions. I arrived at Air India desperate as I had a 9 am meeting in Bangalore the next day. After 5 minutes with the manager at Air India I had the flight I needed as well as some avuncular advice – “When there is a roadblock, we learn to go around, fly above or dig under. In India and in life, there should be no roadblocks.” I walked away with my ticket and yet another affirmation that I love this country.
I returned to full days in Bangalore pitching Curriki to various corporate leaders, foundations and schools with the Curriki Executive Director, Bobbi Kurshan, and another volunteer, Barbara Bauer (an executive for Sun who recently has taken a career break as well). I’ve been fortunate to work with some brilliant people in my career, and these women were no exception. Both are passionate, creative, innovative and the list goes on – but more than anything they have perfected the art of balancing “heart” with “bottom-line.” And the caliber of our meetings proved this as they were all set up based on their relationships – the Azim Premji Foundation (unfortunately Azim Premji was out of town on business and couldn’t meet with us), MindTree, Microsoft Education, etc.
Perhaps the most memorable afternoon was at MindTree, a company that specializes in technology innovation 3 years ahead of where the market is – if you are using Blue Tooth technology you are using their innovation. Encouraging creativity is the essence of their culture. They have adopted a school for spastic children and held a contest among the children to develop their logo. As you walk through the halls, the children’s art is blown up as murals (see above). They have set up their offices to mirror Indian villages – teams sit in pods of seven (the average size of an Indian household with grandparents, etc.), families make up neighborhoods and eventually a floor is a village with its very own replicated tree at the center where they hold village meetings. Everyone we met with had lived in the US at one point and all of them chose to return to be part of this culture, and, I assume, part of the IPO which is schedule for Q1 07.
MindTree is run by Ashok Soota who sets a high-standard for his 4,000 employees where learning is a vital part of their competitive advantage to innovate. Mr. Soota’s major challenge is hiring talented employees – intelligence isn’t the problem (Indians out-test most in education). The challenge is developing creativity and application skills, something that isn’t embraced in the Indian education system. Often corporations are forced to send new employees to “finishing” schools to learn these skills.
We heard this sentiment echoed during our meetings with executives at Wipro – who sponsored a ground-breaking study on this challenge just a week ago. The study is unique in that it focuses on the “top” private schools and discovers the same challenge often associated with only the government schools – teaching emphasizes rote learning as opposed to true understanding and application.
No one disagreed with this challenge in Indian education. But we did find two disparate parties on Curriki as an approach to solving this challenge. Curriki, by its very essence, embraces three philosophies (1) trust your teachers, (2) believe they are capable of modifying and improving the curriculum and (3) the more open the platform, the more valuable it will become.
The first camp, usually the technology leaders, live these philosophies with their own employees and were enthused about Curriki’s potential – empower teachers to create and you will foster creativity and application skills in the students. And usually these people had first hand experience with the power of collaboration, communities, wikipedia, etc. and their success.
The second party just couldn’t get past the vision of Indian teachers modifying curriculum – less than ½ of India’s teachers have a university education, how can they be trusted to change curriculum. I wanted to ask a larger question – how can you trust them to teach your future if you don’t invest in their creativity? Especially when your country embodies the philosophy of "go around, fly above or dig under."
I returned to full days in Bangalore pitching Curriki to various corporate leaders, foundations and schools with the Curriki Executive Director, Bobbi Kurshan, and another volunteer, Barbara Bauer (an executive for Sun who recently has taken a career break as well). I’ve been fortunate to work with some brilliant people in my career, and these women were no exception. Both are passionate, creative, innovative and the list goes on – but more than anything they have perfected the art of balancing “heart” with “bottom-line.” And the caliber of our meetings proved this as they were all set up based on their relationships – the Azim Premji Foundation (unfortunately Azim Premji was out of town on business and couldn’t meet with us), MindTree, Microsoft Education, etc.
Perhaps the most memorable afternoon was at MindTree, a company that specializes in technology innovation 3 years ahead of where the market is – if you are using Blue Tooth technology you are using their innovation. Encouraging creativity is the essence of their culture. They have adopted a school for spastic children and held a contest among the children to develop their logo. As you walk through the halls, the children’s art is blown up as murals (see above). They have set up their offices to mirror Indian villages – teams sit in pods of seven (the average size of an Indian household with grandparents, etc.), families make up neighborhoods and eventually a floor is a village with its very own replicated tree at the center where they hold village meetings. Everyone we met with had lived in the US at one point and all of them chose to return to be part of this culture, and, I assume, part of the IPO which is schedule for Q1 07.
MindTree is run by Ashok Soota who sets a high-standard for his 4,000 employees where learning is a vital part of their competitive advantage to innovate. Mr. Soota’s major challenge is hiring talented employees – intelligence isn’t the problem (Indians out-test most in education). The challenge is developing creativity and application skills, something that isn’t embraced in the Indian education system. Often corporations are forced to send new employees to “finishing” schools to learn these skills.
We heard this sentiment echoed during our meetings with executives at Wipro – who sponsored a ground-breaking study on this challenge just a week ago. The study is unique in that it focuses on the “top” private schools and discovers the same challenge often associated with only the government schools – teaching emphasizes rote learning as opposed to true understanding and application.
No one disagreed with this challenge in Indian education. But we did find two disparate parties on Curriki as an approach to solving this challenge. Curriki, by its very essence, embraces three philosophies (1) trust your teachers, (2) believe they are capable of modifying and improving the curriculum and (3) the more open the platform, the more valuable it will become.
The first camp, usually the technology leaders, live these philosophies with their own employees and were enthused about Curriki’s potential – empower teachers to create and you will foster creativity and application skills in the students. And usually these people had first hand experience with the power of collaboration, communities, wikipedia, etc. and their success.
The second party just couldn’t get past the vision of Indian teachers modifying curriculum – less than ½ of India’s teachers have a university education, how can they be trusted to change curriculum. I wanted to ask a larger question – how can you trust them to teach your future if you don’t invest in their creativity? Especially when your country embodies the philosophy of "go around, fly above or dig under."
2 comments:
This reminds me of our own history in education. People develop new ideas, someone is threatened by it, it is sabbataged and then looked at as a failure. It is so hard to get anything changed in education. We did a lot of different things when I was teaching. getting bored with repetition, I was willing to try anything. When you have teachers willing to try many different approaches I would be smart to embrass them and promote them in this endever.
thanks for having read the article and strecthed a hand in spreading the word across..
anar
Project coordinator
Educational Initiatives, Ahmedabad
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