100% would want a “LEARNING HOW TO LEARN and more” compilation of subjects and resources.

@foolishsamurai

Ай бұрын

+1

@nerdlearner0403

Ай бұрын

+2

@Jp-sp3eg

Ай бұрын

+1

@rizus100

Ай бұрын

+1

@tanayapandit2771

Ай бұрын

Same here... listened the episode while driving. And came back to request the same.

It is exhilarating to hear Ajay speak about the joy of pursuing a life rich in intellect and knowledge. I wish I could make a montage of all his clips from 'Everything is Everything' where he waxes lyrical on the beautiful possibilities of contemplative and deep, engaging life, far removed from the vacuity of mass culture. The montage can serve as a daily reminder, a daily dose of motivation.

Birds chirping is the perfect background score.

A few days ago, I met a man who has hired a few blue collar workers to clean water tanks for his customers in the city. He earns a decent living and also pays his workers decently. I asked him, how educated is he? He said he did not complete schooling. So, actually, uneducated people, are better off in India than educated people because they don't have the dilemma of the educated people who would not do such jobs. Today, in the top tier cities, handyman jobs earn a lot. So, the carpainter, plumber, or electrician makes more money than a graduate engineer. What people need to do is to have real jobs training depending upon their situation.

@meetagja79

13 күн бұрын

Many well-educated individuals spend their valuable years preparing for government examinations instead of acquiring skills that could benefit them financially.

A remarkable episode. Perhaps among the finest conversations on on education on the Internet. The only regret is that it is only 100 minutes long. What I find special about this show is that in other podcasts, one will not hear about a James Heckman, or a Lydia Davis. I wonder if during the Enlightenment across Europe this is what the salons and the cafes and the intellectual square felt like.

@RajeevKumar-wl6ei

Ай бұрын

I'm sure it was a version of this in those enlightenment years, hard problems sometimes require careful deliberation across various spectrums of society, and this is one such imo.

Truly educating episode. The one thing I have come to learn from "The Seen and Unseen" and "Everything is Everything" is that learning is a life long journey and if we stop learning then we are doing a disservice to our race. It's a compliment coming from the space of deep gratitude. Thanks.

Some thoughts: - Vietnam's performance on PISA, despite low per capita income, is remarkable. Vietnam matched some high income countries. - In the Young Lives Study, Indian children had a higher average score on Raven's CPM(cognitive ability) relative to Vietnamese children. Yet on later assessments of math and reading the Vietnamese children performed significantly better than the Indian children. - is there any recent research on how diglossia might affect learning to read and write, in particular how this affects Tamil students. - how does mixed medium(languages) environments of Indian schools affect learning, what happens to learning outcomes if the teacher isn't proficient in the medium of instruction -what is the vocabulary size of an 8 year old child? how does multilingualism affect this? Can children become proficient in a language not spoken in the home? -do teaching colleges incorporate the science of reading into pedagogy instruction. Does reading instruction for Indian languages need reform? -why don't cities or states collect their own data? -are there any teachers who write about their experience. India's schools seem like a bit of a black box. - fluoride excess in groundwater and the food supply is a serious problem, high levels may reduce cognitive ability. - In ASER 2018, female students in Kerala had the highest % to read at grade level, 63.8% could read the text. Only 40% of boys in Kerala could read at grade level in that same year. Why is there such a big gap between genders. Also what are they doing right so that the girls performed so well. - why do Tamil learners have among the poorest outcomes on ASER, ORF. How do tamil learners in singapore perform on reading and writing assessments.

Just discovered you guys and I feel like I've chanced upon a goldmine of really stimulating content. I hope you guys never run out of things to talk about or resources to make this podcast. I would love to pay for this if there is a way. I don't see any links on the video itself.

Yes! I'm very keen and definitely interested in Life Lessons. Please do! All your videos/podcasts are super interesting. However it needs one to be a little sophisticated and patient. Such a course on life lessons would certainly interest new entrants as it would directly impact them.

On Life Lessons: Something on mental models, first principle thinking - experience and stories around them, war stories/ancedotes that Ajay sprinkles here and there - the ppl behind the thinking, working with constraints.. My 12 year old listens to SeenUnseen. Some of her favourites are: Ep 318 with Nitin Pai, Ep 329 and best is Ep 335 on Ukraine Russia War. She says she understood more from Shruti's episode (336) then from her civics text book. Currently we both are listening to Ep 387 of Rajeswari.

@ajayshah5705

Ай бұрын

For your 12yo, engagement with such ideas, possibly as little as overhearing adults talk about them, will add up to the ultimate privilege. It is knowledge about the world, the power of language (precise and high quality language using a rich vocabulary, not plebian mistakes), critical thinking with disagreement and conflict handled in a friendly and polite way, seeing the richness of the world instead of cardboard cut outs, awareness of the world of books and the people making the ideas.

@vidyab1422

Ай бұрын

@@ajayshah5705 Thank you. I did not think of such higher purpose. She was sitting besides me when I was listening and wanted to continue listening. Thats how it started. Now we discuss whatever we listen. I pause, ask her opinon and then we try to making meaning of it together.

@ajayshah5705

Ай бұрын

@@vidyab1422 when in Bombay, meet Rajeswari :-)

@vidyab1422

Ай бұрын

@@ajayshah5705 I am based out of Bangalore. Would love to meet her when opportunity arises. I would love to meet you two in near future.🤞

@ajayshah5705

Ай бұрын

@@vidyab1422 yes. Do email me.

Learning how to learn. Game On. More power to what you. Grateful for sharing your wisdom.

Excellent podcast. Working backwards from the root purpose of life - which is psychological evolution - “flexible general intelligence” he calls it - “weaving & interconnecting the whole being” - is exactly the Yoga Mind.

Definitely yes for life lessons.

Great episode. I have a few questions: 1) "Industrialized education" brings in scale. Ideally, this should lead to the development of 50 "industries" of education offering 80 different education models (similar to 80 types of soaps in a supermarket). Do you think this hasn't happened because we haven't allowed markets to function in the education sector? 2) Following from 1), assuming high levels of education is a good thing and we need more of it - how do you think about educating millions of kids at scale? (homeschooling seems to require high time/energy commitments from parents; Gurukul style integrated classes without age-segregation, require high student-teacher ratios, pose difficulties in assessing skills among other things) Few thoughts not questions: 3) Emphasizing early childhood interventions at the level of the family seems to be putting too many expectations on a family wherein parents might have to substitute other productive activities to raise a child (notwithstanding the actual ability to have complex conversations/cognitive discourse at home). This substitution is more salient in low-income settings like India. This is probably why you'd start thinking about schools as not just daycare centers/canteens but as outsourced educational institutions. 4) I am not entirely sure of the "drenched in mass media" middle class argument. For a country which had 1 TV channel for decades, it is only natural that people will gravitate towards content they find relatable, now that we have a variety. In fact, particular media is mass media because it speaks to a large section of the society. To say that the population watches cricket & Bollywood leading to poor cognitive development in kids seems like a stretch. Again, thanks for the great conversation. The setting is lovely!

@ajayshah5705

Ай бұрын

Dear Utkarsh, I fear that along with the scale came a major loss of signal. We have scale and we have the chasing of brand names. Somewhere along the way, we lost sight of what it was all about. Yes, Heckman also worries that in many families, the correct early childhood interventions are hard to organise. But it's important to have a sense of direction of what's desirable. Early childhood interventions are desirable. Master/apprentice (a.k.a. guru/shishya parampara) is desirable. These are difficult for all persons and won't scale, and they won't deliver easy brand names using which status conscious buyers/sellers can operate. Cognitive development: the issues go way beyond childhood. Learning and intellectual development is a lifelong journey. It requires an elevated state in terms of priorities, lifestyle, communities, passion.

@utkarshnarain08

Ай бұрын

@@ajayshah5705 Thank you for answering, Ajay. Agree with your idea about having a sense of direction wrt what is desirable and the problem with chasing brand names. However, when we talk about/propose policy solutions to improving education as an end in itself (irrespective of its effect on economic prosperity), it is hard for me to not think about scalability. While I agree with the idea of learning and intellectual development being a lifelong and personal pursuit, when we envisage systems (public/private), a minimum viable product of sorts only seems possible by an "industrialised" approach. This MVP is especially important if we think education leads to economic prosperity. Adding over and above that MVP can & should be a personal endeavour.

From 13:40 to 17:20 Ajay was talking seriously about OECD PISA, ASER and PPE and Amit was thinking furiously about how to work in 'upper tail bump' into a joke

@amitvarma

Ай бұрын

Busted!

I’m a big fan of the podcast. But Overall - I feel a lot more fleshing out and driving your arguments to fruition would have helped. 1) If education doesn’t lead to development, what’s the model for development that we need? 2) I understand other aspects that are needed beyond industrialised education. But You maintain that capitalism is better, implying the benefits of competition. Shouldn’t the benefits of that apply to industrialised education too? Also, for most India 2 folks wanting social mobility, signaling value and standardised tests might be a more democratising force than subjective assessments where elites might benefit more. Hence isnt current model net net beneficial? 3) What exactly is the recommended model of education - more details would be helpful on a principle level as well as practical changes required

Great Episode ... Please count me in for Life s skill s course ....

Learning how to learn wow. Please bring this soon.

Thumbs up for any kind of initiatives from you both. The synthesis or convergence that you guys offer, is remarkable

52:01 great idea. Highly appreciated. Kindly make it accessible to everyone.

My sincere vote for the “Life lessons course”. It would be a great service. Scope can be a broad base and with an objective to stir curiosity on important aspects of life. be it economics science or philosophy. Good luck and looking forward!!!!

Thanks for this conversation. Ajay's thought on every topic broadens my knowledge. For the course you're talking about, I think I would be interested to learn more about Audio/Video productions.

Was waiting for this

Ye! Yes! A thousand times yes to that bundle of life lessons!

Fascinating!

Schools offering alternative education are slowly growing in number. Education which prepares a child for life, not only for a job.

I am all in for "Learning how to Learn". I agree that there is some approach to these, have had the success of learning something just out of curiosity, and getting a job on it in the past, and whenever i spend sometime on any technology, it kind of helps, as IT and real world as Amit says, most of the problems are multi-disciplinary !

education bonds! so much better than electoral bonds.The infrastructure is already there! Infact; all fees should be paid via vouchers and maybe the school can get the vouchers in proportion to an OECD PISA percentile ?

Excellent. I am 60 years old and since you guys had asked whether we would be interested in learning….so yes I would. Maybe how to leave my addiction to my phone- or how to learn, more specifically on how to use AI so that I can keep up with technology.

This is not an episode with focussed attention only on chosen , narrow aspects. It is almost an eclectic tapestry on the vast aspects of what we define as education . The attempt is daring but tries to squeeze in too much into too little a frame. This should actually be (a) broken into specific segments - at least 7 to 8 categories within the umbrella of a framework for development of the human mind - (b) get into immersive discussion on each and break this into a three to four part debate (c) finally come up with both a vision and mission statements format. This is too good a discussion to be left hanging. Other experts must join the issues raised here.

@ajayshah5705

Ай бұрын

The purpose of EiE is to kindle the fire, not fill a vessel. :-) we try to add value by bringing diverse knowledge together and thinking from first principles, from disrespecting the establishment and the credentialed ones. Many people are happy to pursue narrow questions like: How to get to 100% literacy? How to get to 100% enrollment into schools? How to build and expand government schools? How to get more college grads? Etc. Vast amounts of money and effort are presently devoted to these dreams. All these narrow objectives turn out to be off track. We need the full picture shown in the episode to fare better: as an individual, as a parent, as a teacher, as a person in an educational organization, as a public finance allocator, as a philanthropist, as an employer. Bad decisions by all these, today, are tying up human society in knots.

It would be great service to all of us to have such a curated package- life lessons -

Indian Education Services is needed in India now like IPS, Engg Services etc.

Much needed course, LIFE LESSONS, because Academia is choking life and feeding continuously on our souls, but where to go for Validation.

Most resentment of education professionals comes from preference falsification and is solved by accepting that the service they wish to provide is a non-essential luxury good.

@raw_dah

Ай бұрын

Can you elaborate? Are you saying education is a luxury? Or I'm getting this wrong

Absolutely ready to subscribe to learning how to learn course. I would really like some emphasis on numeracy, numbers, and probabilistic thinking, economic thinking, and cost-benefit analysis to improve decision making- both personal and professional(including policy)

Very imp subject

First of all you both are epitome of knowledge and insights are very interesting and eyes opening. I would love to join whatever the course will be. My personal take would be it should be something around "How Indian society failed the marginalized or people at the last strata".

+10 to the idea of a learning how to learn episode.

please do make that! cover ideas that are both unintuitive, and likely useful for everyone (eg probabilistic thinking, positive-sumness of the world)

Life Lessons! Yes please!

Life taught me everything. Nice Amit, last part is excellent.

lovely conversation

17:30 WTF?! 😂

@shubhamraheja6420

Ай бұрын

😂

Topic requests for the life lessons course - - something on research . Yes dive into rabbit holes from scholar but most of it is behind paywalls , and a lot is inaccessible even via sites like scihub or the preprint directories . Subscriptions for say elsevier are unaffordable for those interested but lacking institutional access or well a community online or otherwise . - you sometimes talk of communities of choice (ajay seems less keen on it than amit though it'd be nice if he could explain more) and chance . What if you're remote/restricted - geographically , socio-culturally . Sometimes , it doesn't even feel possible in any substantial tangible way . -second the numeracy and prob thinking and anything else you have in mind run with it ! A lot of the times you don't know what you need or like till you're in it.

This was a wonderful episode

Simply amazing👍😍

Love this episode.

Interesting discussion. Agree Friedman’s voucher system can get the desired effect. Yet it cannot be used in here. Rural areas need support badly. Taught craft briefly at a Zilla parishad School in a town 25 km from Khed (Maharashtra). It only had 3 teachers (including the principal), but covered grades KG to 7th. Where would the children there go with vouchers? No alternative schools around. Go to the next town 7 km away? Okay. But who will take them there and back? How much diff is the school in the next town going to be? Even Ajay’s idea of letting govt schools continue as meal centers won’t work. There are no school clusters at all around in towns there. Let alone quality of teaching. Everything breaks down in India. As one of you said, the India that you and I know is just that living in a few cities, the elite, perhaps the truly uneducated. The real challenge is in our rural areas. I would even challenge the idea that we are educated. If we were, we wouldn’t have allowed India to develop the way it has. Everything is concentrated in a few cities, mostly about software, racking up concrete matchbox type apartments, networks and relationships, nepotism and what not. Everytime somebody lobbied, govt let them have their way. We are just not about growth. We are about preservation of ourselves and our money. Our policies are designed that way. Our attitudes and behaviors are such. Look at the Tatas. When they saw $10B on the table for semiconductor manufacturing, they even put together a new company - Tata Electronics Pvt Ltd. Come on, where is the economic freedom? Don’t get me wrong. I’m a devotee of Milton Friedman. He was a champion of individual freedom which enables a group of individuals to come together to collaborate and cooperate to start an enterprise. Where is the economic freedom for such cooperation in India? Elitism and privilege are so desired in our society that we killed local traditional crafts, skills and tradee. Elitism or privilege is the reverse side of the coin of preservation of ourselves and our wealth, not growth. Guess it is we who need education more than the rural children. I found their cognitive capacity to be much better than that of the children of the wealthy when I taught craft in that rural school. Even though my marathi was not the best, the children were excited and came back with more craft questions and ideas. At the time, I was teaching at J Krishnsmurti’s Sahyadri School in the vicinity at Tiwai hill. The children who paid large sums to Sahyadri School were not inclined to dirty their hands. Unless there is a critical mass of people living in every rural town of India, Ajay’s ideas of a better quality school sitting within a short distance from a govt meal centre school will not fly. Only a true change in our economic policies will bring about the atmosphere of freedom and the opportunities thereof in rural areas to enable a critical mass of people live there. Rural doesn’t mean backward. Rural is synonymous with natural surroundings. In the west, most live amidst nature. Suburbs are rural in nature. Why do we have to concretize and wreck every place the educated live in? Why can’t we decongest our cities? The population densities in our cities is way beyond healthy limits. Ajay talked about exposure to diff things and experiences. Our country is devoid of experiences for us or our younger ones. Where in our cities are our libraries, playgrounds, parks, museums, footpaths, trees, nature? Education is every experience throughout our life, right? Recently Air-India sold its jumbo jet for scrap. Why couldn’t they have pioneered again after a long time in building the first proper aircraft museum? The plane was being retired. It had already paid for itself and a lot more. Our cities don’t have adequate experiences commensurate with our humongous population numbers. My wife who is a pediatric occupational therapist says children of construction workers who play with gravel, stones, sand, sieves and such other construction material are better able in both physical and mental respects than children and adults whose apartments are being built. We educated and elite are far removed from natural stuff and nature. Long and short, education may not be our problem. Our policies do not give us economic freedom. That ties us down a huge lot. Let’s set our policies right. Let’s also educate and set children free. Why push them in one or the other area? Let them choose. Friedman’s free to choose. And whatever local or rural skills children come up with will automatically enable them to earn a living right where they are. Let’s revive local crafts, skills and trades through rural freedom. Had once traveled to the West Godavari region in AP. Was Visiting an educational institution there and representing an MNC in hardware design. I gave a talk on tech and how it could help them come up with their own ideas. I didn’t sell jobs there. Later that evening, the Vice-Chairman of the institution told me something interesting. He told me how most MNCs would come there to market their jobs. That people in cities do not understand that their children know how to live amongst things in nature. They are not worried about jobs. They know how to live and earn with the help of nature. What we’ve done over the years is snatched away their local skills, knowledge and trades away from them through our bad policies. Even more foolishly, we are treating education as a means to livelihood only. It’s very wrong. Education is far more importantly a pathway to understanding and knowing human life as it is, making us realize who we are and our potential. It is about becoming aware of the life that is us and to know and experience life. Absolutely disastrous and foolish to tailor education towards employment. Should instead be strength of character Forget the West. The West are in a quandary today. It’s all finally coming home to roost. I admired the brilliant in the West though, such as Adam Smith, David Hume, Friedman, Hayek and others, for their perseverance in digging deep down at and into the truth. They’ve of course provided a huge amount of information for us and posterity. Plus we have our very own ancient wisdom. Do not ever underestimate the Indian way of life and thought. The West however has been, all through a long time, about ensuring they can leverage their economic ascendancy achieved mostly with the help of the ideas of individual freedom to keep shoring up their economic position now and then. Initially perhaps they did bring themselves up economically from the trenches of poverty from a pure self-interest (not selfish interest as is demarcated by Adam Smith) point of view. However, since WWII, the West has been trying mostly to maintain their economic ascendancy at the expense of the rest of the world. This has never been better exemplified than in the formation in the 1970’s of the original group of G5 nations (France, Japan, Germany, the UK and the US) and then the formation of the G7 nations (G5 + Italy & Canada). From the beginning, neither G5 nor G7 seemed proper. The populations of India and China was already more than that of either the G5 or the G7!!! The West has never been about establishing democracy globally. Thinking of the West as an usher of the ideas of individual freedom is no further from the truth than what the West has been up to around the world. It is a great tragedy of human thought and human sympathy, hijacked and misplaced with self deception. India chose democracy cuz it took to it like a duck to water. It wasn’t because of the 90 years of its being a part of the British Empire. India’s ancient cultures and traditions were already steeped in democratic thought and ways. Democracy, otherwise, is too foreign a concept for an unexposed people to adopt. It’s what’s been observed mostly in the 20th century. There are regions more politically stable under dictators. There’s been more violence and more heinous crime after these dictators were forcibly ousted. I’m not arguing for dictatorship at all. Yet one has to give the idea of individual freedom some time to mature as a thought in the minds of people who are insecure yet about it. The Western form of education, an economist by the name of EF Schumacher describes, is that which discourages people from being able to look after themselves. It is all about training generations of young to become employees. The metrics you talked about are essentially that. It’s a cleverly worked out ploy. It is what has helped us destroy any leftovers from colonial times of the local skills, knowledge and trades. So, on the one hand, economic freedom is taken away through clever policies helping a few. On the other, limited directed education is provided to mould us into employees. While many prefer being employees, we must also try to restore the freedom of individuals so that they can collaborate and cooperate to bring about the growth of ideas and so many more other things. Unemployment will take care of itself. It’s our interference through wrong economic policies that has brought about such disparities and such a landscape driving us into people clusters (our cities) that boast of limited things (concrete construction only, schooling culminating in entrance tests, queuing towards software related and medical professions, entrepreneurship mostly in the form of middle agencies (apps), or in physical forms such as eateries, vanity fair, smartphone and laptop stores, apparels, footwear, hold and jewelry, and service centers for things that go wrong). Where is the freedom of the individual when we have been pushed so hard into these narrow channels in every which way? Where are those experiences that Ajay refers to? My childhood Bombay in the 1960’s and early 1970’s was by far and away a much higher reflection of individual freedom and enterprise!!!

@ajayshah5705

Ай бұрын

a. the essence of the voucher idea is that giving parents purchasing power would incite a supply response. self-interested entrepreneurs would start schools, that serve the interests of parents, in a way that the unresponsive Indian ruling class does not. b. Yes, there are remote locations that are under-served. But the bulk of India is in dense population congregations. It will be good to make progress on the 80 and then figure separately what to do about the 20. c. Your text runs through many things. Three elements are worth clarifying (and they are overlapping). First, there is the question of prosperity. A lot of your complaints about India come from just one thing: a low GDP. We're a poor country. Change that, and many things will change. Hence, economic growth is the highest priority. Second, there is the question of the state. The state is the community that wields coercive power. So focus on the use of the coercive power and wonder if that can be done in better ways. Finally, there are societal ills which are about you and me as persons. We should become better people. That's on us. There are plenty of bad elements of values, culture, behaviour, which are for us -- one individual at a time -- to recognise and fix. E.g. in this episode Amit and I talked about the harms of test-prep culture and of mass-culture. More of us need to wake up to these things and start living differently. By default it's just a country of cricket and bollywood and low end labour - but can it be more than that?

@sid1680

Ай бұрын

@@ajayshah5705 Thank you, Ajay. Glad to hear your views. Indeed I made a lot of points. Perhaps distracted more. My response again: a. The essence of the voucher idea was recognized even as I wrote earlier. Not seen a greater Friedman devotee yet. :) b. Even if most of India is in urban areas, as you say so, what gives anyone the confidence that a modified voucher strategy on them 80% first will do the trick? No strategy on urban folk ever bore fruit. Why would it now? I would be remiss if I didn’t say it is foolhardy to try to perceive promise in the urban 80% first. Urban India is a spent force - moulded and baked. Wealth and preservation is all they care about. Not growth. Friedman famously said that capitalism is not at all about big business. He would much rather see millions of SMEs instead of large businesses. Established people or businesses are just not about innovation or growth. I was in Silicon Valley. My employer swallowed small outfits and shelved their products to keep out innovation! And if you think the rest of the urban people who are in need of proper education are going to be able to cut it, it ain’t going to happen! Simply because the rest have been injured mentally badly by the colonialization of their minds in the way they think, in a limited and constrained way that help to promote further the grand designs of the wealthy urban who are, once again, about preservation, but never growth!!! Our rural 20%, unsullied, yet full of life, have way more in promise than the urban 80%! The Pareto 20/80 principle. Just that it’s applied in a fresh new way. Seemingly implausible because the 20% here are not the wealthy rich! Already gave examples as to why the rural 20% is far more important: Rural kids near Khed are enthused on their own and show off their innate ideas. The East/West Godavari kids are very resourceful alongside nature and can earn a living with its help. These rural folk have far more growth latent in them for they are full of ideas with out-of-box thinking. One more example of how addressing the urban scene first is only going to be more disastrous. I also worked for an education charity foundation in the heart of Bangalore last year. Funded by the IT bigwigs through govt’s forced CSR. Again, if the funding is not from the heart, then it’s got nothing to do with Friedman’s “free to choose.” It’ll therefore not produce the intended results. It’s one of the reasons why the US eliminated the military draft in 1968. It was a decision made by economists. Those who joined the military of their own liking did a whole lot better. Anyway, continuing on my story... As a maths and science teacher for that charity, I took after-school tuitions for children of migrant laborers at their very school. As you rightly said so in the video, education is an accumulation of experiences. The private school these children go to is just a two-storey building (perhaps initially an apt block converted to a school on demand). Parents of these migrant children pay half the tuition fee for skin in the game. The charity pays the other half. But look at the exposure the children get in their understanding of what a school ought to be. I taught for about 8 months and then left disillusioned. Obviously, the owners, the principal, the teaching staff, the clerical staff and the management are not about education. Just because the owners as a private entity have money does not qualify them to organize and run a school. There is no library, no break room, no labs, horrible toilets, no play or games room, no quiet places, no ground of any sort at all, no canteen… Guess what would happen if these children grew up and managed to have enough to run their own schools. What sort of schools might they be organizing and running in the future? Am I the only one able to see why education in India is so disastrous? The zilla parishad school near Khed was at least far better in its layout and atmosphere. It was literally a dungeon in Bangalore. Broken and badly dented, damaged wooden benches and desks. Not even a proper plain surface to write on! C. The idea that India is a poor country has been promoted for over half a century. It is nothing more than an excuse we make for the shabby way in which things happen. As you rightly pointed out in the other discussion on Aadhaar and universal ID, the state has our data and can possibly use it against us. People are protected from Private players possibly misusing their data, but processes and legal verbiage to protect people from similar use of data by the state have still to be formulated and established. In like manner, we use the “excuse of poverty” to overcome any motion in the direction of establishing processes and guidelines for certain paramount economic activities we may perform. Not asking for setting up a huge bureaucracy and 100 odd licenses gating educationists from building and running schools. Yet a checklist, endorsed by the state or even a citizens’ body, given to parents with a mention of the minimum basics in terms of a set of specific services and exposures parents ought to look for in a school during the admission process (including a walk-through), other than the usual classrooms, labs, children and teachers, should be able to deliver the intended. Beyond that, it is up to the private entity to add more and run it as it deems fit. At the end of it all, I still feel that economic policy changes ought to be brought about very quickly that are perceivable enough to make things happen the right way. Right now, the way policies with respect to land, rentals and realestate in general have been since 1947, the people who have been getting into education are those who are far removed from it in terms of knowing what it ought to be. Educational institutions are mostly opened by politicians, and/or the wealthy realestate developers. Bangalore’s international schools are mostly built, owned and run by the big developers. A university I taught last year at was started in 2019 by a realestate developer who runs hotels on prime land in Bangalore which he owns too. I have no issue with their owning land and using it too at the same time! But I’ve a big issue with who we are enabling through our weird policies to build, own and run schools! I hope I am able to put forth a viewpoint that needs much attention. The individual freedom that Friedman expounds is nonexistent. Cuz it’s a constrained situation. In a constrained situation such as this, the people who come forward to run schools are those who are the farthest removed from it. It is not a truly competitive scenario. It’s a very contrived one. It is in such a culture that test-prep and other useless things are able to survive. That’s why urban areas are spent forces. Waste of time to look at them first. Focus on the rural 20% first, try not to brainwash them as we did in urban areas. Be different and nuanced so as to be able to enthuse them to come alive and bring the latent in them out. There’s a lot more they have than we can give them. They’re the ones who are aware of the true human potential. We in cities have already allowed ourselves to be besieged by ML and AI and are even prepared for a life of subservience to ML and AI.

Definitely interested in a course like that. Just make sure not to dumb it down too much. Your 'gentle viewer' is generally pretty well read and already knows a thing or two. The level of such a course should ideally be higher than undergraduate study imho, even if concise.

Would love to have a course by the two of you.

Even among the upper layer that’s ‘cool’ according to Ajay, there’s very little reflection by the students at various points. At every point of life most of us take a predetermined path - what after 10th class? do science - but what if someone wants to do history? What after 12th - do engineering or medicine, what after college? Get a job, get married, have kids. We very rarely pause to reflect and understand what one likes or doesn’t. People who take gap years are ostracized. And people who don’t follow the script are made to feel insecure about their choices. One great thing about the internet though, has been the democratization of knowledge. That doesn’t mean all of us have become smart automatically, but if we want to go down rabbit holes and really learn about something we’re not gatekept by institutions.

TSTU episodes keep playing on Alexa at my home. Two pre-teens at home are the subjects.

@ajayshah5705

Ай бұрын

Brilliant! Add discussions by adults in the room of that material.

So glad you did this subject!

As a fellow Fergusson alum, I’m a bit offended that Amit considers that he doesn’t have any cred. Just a bit 😊

An excellent episode as always. How did it go from spending money on education doesn’t help economic growth to how we should reform education.

Great episode guys, the Amit-Ajay combo is a perfect mix of free flowing creativity and the structured, logical, data backed perspectives which is essential. Btw guys, ASER is the name of the survey, the NGO is PRATHAM, they do it. You can mention it in description so that more people know about this great NGO.

Topic request for "LEARNING HOW TO LEARN SERIES" would be doubling down on First principle thinking what exactly is it, how should one approach it .Btw absolutely loved your episodes

Life Skills course 🤚 where do i sign up? What to include - How to unlearn and learn new Mental models, Health and Wellness (there is much research that we know now about our body and mental state), nature and environmental knowledge, Financial literacy, money habits and models for different stages of life (budgeting, investing, insurance etc), worldwide historical civilizations we can learn from (not think that we are the only one that is great), social rights (friends, family, parent, grandparents, cousins, co-workers etc), basic law and legal rights of individuals, building failure mindset, conversational skills, how to argue, negotiate, .... i could go on and on. Please dont make it only videos, interact with the audience (atleast asynchronously).

Chapter6 Great Advice! Could be a template for your life lessons course.

Insightful conversation. Thank you. I do not subscribe to the view of school (K-12) as only day care. I learnt very little that turned out to be useful or meaningful at Engineering school. BUT, I learnt more about life at K-12 school than I did at home. We had some wonderful teachers who opened up my mind to so many possibilities while they "taught" literature and history and science. They introduced me to books and films my parents never did. Further, my wife is a secondary school math teacher for 24 years, and she likes to help kids (many from less privileged backgrounds) understand life better. I have real testimony from some of her students that she was able to change their lives. Perhaps this is my personal bias, but school may be far more than daycare, and often is.

One of my favorite EiE episodes. Thanks a bunch. Taking away so much - concept of fluid general intelligence, How schools and organizations reward for Conscientiousness trait of the Big 5, role of parents, teachers and policy makers, work of Heckman... The list is endless, I'm leaving with so much to mull over And yes, pls pls start a program on Learning to Learn. Cover statistics, communication, storytelling, emotional intelligence, relating with people, interesting mental models, and first principles thinking paradigms. Sharing lots of gratitude, as a lifelong student to his teachers Amit and Ajay 🙏🙏

Great episode. The last one oabout cycling opened up a new world for me and this episode has repeated that. Both of you look like you pulled an all nighter, it's funny that this happened for the episode on education. Also please consider having guests on the show e.g. having an expert of pedagogy could have taken this to another level. Maybe something to consider for episode 250?

Thanks for sharing your insights on the topic. It highlights the challenges in the education system really well - specially government schools. But there's very little talk about why public goods need to exist in the first place - the "sub-saharan" standards are also reflective of the rural realities in India. It was surprising that Ajay did not talk about development economics at all and why things like healthcare and education or even basic infrastructure in rural areas have to be led by the state because the "profits" are just not there for private enterprises to foray. The discussion on challenges was great but just like any policy maker/intellectual arm chair discussion, this left a lot to be desired in terms of understanding of executional challenges and discussing some realistic solutions.

@ajayshah5705

Ай бұрын

We have a few episodes on this: See kzread.info/dash/bejne/qXWmr8OqoLHcdqg.html kzread.info/dash/bejne/dombw5ikg9faops.html kzread.info/dash/bejne/kXd2q7ltmbifeNo.html kzread.info/dash/bejne/nH2dztyHeMrSnMo.html kzread.info/dash/bejne/kXd2q7ltmbifeNo.html An episode on the foundations of development economics is coming.

@H-ec5lj

Ай бұрын

@@ajayshah5705 thanks for sharing. Yes, would appreciate the nuance around challenges of development economics while treating issues like healthcare, education, rural India and role of State. Questioning outcomes of State initiatives and your reference to the amazing work of the likes of Lant Pritchett were eye opening. But loosely stating things like education budget is better spent paying debt and everything education is something that the private sector can do better felt like a conclusion which could require more thought and deliberation

I don't buy any online courses, but will definitely buy Learning how to learn course by Amit and Ajay.

An amazing episode. I have worked in education for a decade, and I feel like your conversation and the resources you mentioned have blown my mind. Please do further deep dives into education-related topics if possible. Please create the course that you mentioned. :) On the topic, I think Indian parents spend money on private schools vs leveraging the free government schools because education of the child is also very aspirational. Parents do not mind taking unreasonable decisions if it increases even a 1% possibility that that their child will be successful. Maybe that's why this unreasonable decision is taken?

@amit and @ajay. I have been a fan of your writings since the Indiauncut blog and listening to the seen and the unseen podcast and of course the EIE . Would love to just say, thank you! Thank you for rekindling the love for learning and just being happy being curious about the world. I would love the course that you two create and would listen to it with my kid. Some ideas to add in the course are financial literacy, how to negotiate, learning to be curious

Thank you for this discussion Could you make an episode on ways to tweak social behavior in order to curb bribe giving and bribe taking at the last mile service points, through technological means and otherwise?

My 2 year old kid spends almost 4 hours daily watching youtube videos and shorts! The conversation(especially importance of early childhood portion) is an eye opener for me !

Hi Ajay and Amit, I had made a note of a few topics from the TSATU episode 208 with Deepak Shenoy that piqued my interest arround the subjects like, probabilistic thinking, Memorization techniques, learning to think from first principles, knowledge management, and financial literacy. Nominating these subjects for the #LearningToLearn project. Thanks.

Coming to the topics that the course on life should cover are (Somethings that I am deeply enjoying to learning and helping me lead a better life): - The art of holistic health. Looking health beyond physical and mental health but also integrating social health and spiritual health as a part of it. - How to view nutrition and exercise and find what works for us and how actually educate outselves about these fundamental knowledge. (PS: My most fav reccomendation by Ajay was when he once recommended Tea in the episode and how he told eating different natural masalas and veggies is important. Such a simple yet profound idea) - How to identify a problem, research about it and write it down for a) For our understanding. b) To propogate it to other. (And how to back it up by numbers) - How to work in a collaborative way and build accountability for each other collectively. - The art of action bias and how to play to play :P - The art of prioritising and do things you deeply care about. Looking forward to hearing from the community in the comments on what topics should be covered in the course! I am genuinely excited for this project and I hope it pans out well.

If you were to create the course, it would be great to include a section on how to find communities of choice. Additionally, it should cover strategies for introverts to navigate a world that often rewards extroversion.

Are there a sufficient number of countries where there has been growth without any focus or investment on education?

So good. I would most definitely be interested in the course. These are some of the things I wish I had focused more on earlier in my life - Math (Numeracy, Probability, Statistics) English (Clear Writing, Speaking and Presentation) Computer Skills (Basic Programming, Linux, Git) Microeconomics (Supply/Demand, Marginal Utility, Opportunity Cost, Market Competition, Factor Markets, Market Failure) Psychology (Big 5 Personality Traits, Persuasion, Cognitive Biases, Game Theory, Evolutionary Psychology) Personal Finance (Compound Interest, Budgeting, Debt, Index Investing) Health and Nutrition (Basic Biology, Evolution, Genetics, First Aid, Diet and Exercise) Philosophy The episode also reminded me of Bryan Caplan's rather provocative books - The Case Against Education and The Selfish Reason to Have More Kids Btw, listening to the Seen and the Unseen and Everything is Everything is a good thing for the development of not just 5 or 17 year olds but also 50 and 70 year olds. ;)

There is no demand supply gap in education....few people want education. What most people want is credentials. By its very nature credentials are scarce...otherwise there is no value. Let the places which provide credentials - empower the ones providing education,but not credentials...I.e second rung.

6:22 i think Amit meant 7 and a half lakh crore here

when will the next writing cohort start

@amitvarma

Ай бұрын

August.

Can't get hold of Lance Pritchet's Article Where has all the education gone? through your link. Is there a free site?

"Learning how to Learn" sounds invaluable. Please pursue this!

I REQUEST AND EXPECT YOU TO MAKE A VIDEO ON PREVILEGES OF DIFF KINDS(RACE COUNTRY REGION CASTE RELIGION ECONOMY ETC) AND RELIGION REPRESENTATION RESERVATIONS, EQUITY EQUALITY AND RELATED ISSUES. AND THE STATUS/GROWTH N NEED OF THEM TODAY AND IN TIMES

Two suggestions for the compilation - 1. Basic Fundamentals of optimization and operations research - it’s such a widely applicable toolkit , in both work and life. Everytime you encounter any form on resource constraint , it is at its heart an optimization problem . 2. What is cleanly and empirically known about polarising topics. Might require too much primary research to be practical but it would be wonderful if something like this existed.

I wd like to do the course

one question amit , i understand that our schools are very bad in villages . i also know a lot of villagers are sending students to private schools which are also not better. However i have heard that public schools in Delhi have become better. So should'nt governance and accountabiliy be a solution rather than converting government schools to mid may meal centers or giving school vouchers.

@ajayshah5705

Ай бұрын

A. The better schools in Delhi are better in inputs. It is not yet clear that there is much of a gain in outputs or outcomes. ASER shows a steady exit, by parents, in the cities, away from public schools to private schools. Parents are turning their backs on a free product and choosing a paid product. Imagine that. B. No politician in India has shown any inclination to solve the problem of accountability of school teachers. Vouchers will actually push for this : the better public schools will get more money. For the rest, the most optimistic future for government schools is as canteens.

I am sure the 'life lessons' would turn out to be valuable. But one thing that you could add is how I can use it to add value (up my game) while preparing for upsc CSE

Where are you in H.P.? Looks like a great place to spend some time in.

@ajayshah5705

Ай бұрын

This group of episodes is called The Bir Sessions.

When private players are allowed to work in a field, they destroy the govt enterprise in that field. You yourself has given the examples of BSNL and MTNL. The same thing has happened to school education also. Private schools have completely destroyed the govt school. Nobody wants to send their wards to a govt school. Only those who could not afford the private school fee, are opting for Govt school. So at the school level itself we are creating two types of future citizens: the private school taught who will do the white collared jobs and the govt school taught who will do the menial jobs. What is the solution? More accountability on the part of the teacher who are having fat salaries. Something to be learnt from the Delhi govt schools, the Kendriya Vidhyalas and the Navodaya Vidhyalayas.

@ajayshah5705

Ай бұрын

Yes, generally the government works poorly, the private sector does many or most things better than the government, the Indian state works poorly, the Indian state should do less. We should use `market failure' as the organising framework. By default, freedom, so production should be organised around the private sector, and then within this there is market failure, which is the case for state intervention. Please see EiE Ep 25, `Understanding the state', kzread.info/dash/bejne/nH2dztyHeMrSnMo.html and EiE Ep 26, `When should the state act', kzread.info/dash/bejne/kXd2q7ltmbifeNo.html .

@rakeshchandra9638

Ай бұрын

@@ajayshah5705 Ajay, thanks for your reply. And I would definitely watch the videos suggested by you. Though the Telecommunication model of business can work in school education in India, though I doubt. The UK, I think, has a great Public School education system as well as the National Health care system also. Only elites I suppose go to Eton (Doon school type) type schools. In higher education, they have given more role to the private players.

@ajayshah5705

Ай бұрын

These kinds of things are not portable from one country to another. We have to be deeply grounded in our own backyard. Look hard at Government schools in India. It is difficult to make them work properly.

@rakeshchandra9638

Ай бұрын

@@ajayshah5705 thanks for your reply.

Amit you did not say anything about the teaching standard of Kendriya Vidyalaya a govt funded institution with better quality of education than a private school. Any comment ?

@ajayshah5705

Ай бұрын

A. Some KV are very good. B. It's analogous to AIIMS being very good: when senior civil servants are users, this creates feedback loops for quality. Also, the peers in class carry more human capital from home. C. This breaks down in some KV and it does not apply for normal government schools. In normal government schools that serve the people, there are tenured school teachers with zero incentive to teach. D. Teaching is not easy as (say) a vaccination program is. In the four-part classification of difficulty it is : number of transactions (high), discretion (high), stakes (low) and opacity (high), or 3/4.

@sangramraje5667

Ай бұрын

I read somewhere KVs haven't succeeded much. Most of them are limited to producing govt. servants (iAS/IPS, Armed Forces). Not much on creative side.

man does ajay really hate quadratic equations

one can find a hepatologist or a psychiatrist easily while finding a good men's tailor is an arduous task!

so no recommendations for philanthropists. kzread.info/dash/bejne/p5-mo5aEfZTQoqg.html Kuch kijiye

Can I give you an upper tail pump 😂

we want life lessons! make it up @amitvarma