A SEVEN-year-old recently asked me, while crying, why learning was so difficult and took so much time. She was trying to learn to read and write basic Urdu and was having a difficult time. A couple of days ago, a 19-year-old in an economics class I am teaching, also asked me the same question. Why was learning so difficult and why did it take so much time and effort? She was close to tears.

Learning does take time. We are not dealing with information or facts alone. When learning, we are dealing with knowledge acquisition and the development of understanding. It takes time. The same material needs to be presented a number of times to the student; it needs to be contextualised; it needs to be provided in different contexts, in different ways, using different applications and applying it to different cases. The idea is that the child should understand the concepts being presented, their applications and have the ability to play with them and utilise them for looking at the world or for solving issues she might be facing. Learners need to make mistakes and see them as a necessary means of learning.

Not only is all of the above time-consuming, it also demands a high degree of effort from the student. But, if it is any consolation, the learning process is more or less similar for all. Why is it then that some students struggle more than others? There are differences in ability but these tend to be within a narrow spectrum. And I do not have any insights on what explains individual differences. But my teaching experience of almost three decades points to some general trends too.

Students’ ability and willingness to hold ambiguity in place and have patience with it have declined. Students want learning to be instant. The idea of curating ideas, finessing them, working on them for some time till they sink in deeper has become alien to students. Instead, the search is for quick understanding, quick answers, correct answers, and low tolerance for process.

When learning, we deal with knowledge acquisition and the development of understanding.

Is this being driven by the age of Google search and instant internet via phones? A friend’s child asked him “what does God look like?”. My friend said, “I don’t know”, and was still thinking about how to explain the concept when the child said impatiently, “why don’t you Google it Baba?”

Facts are taken to be knowledge and understanding. Television, internet and social media have definitely increased access to facts, news and views exponentially. But the news and views are pre-packaged and the effort to make them more accessible to the people means students do not have to exert much effort if they want to go with the given news and views and base their own opinions on them.

With the introduction of AI tools like Chat GPT, the trends will be strongly reinforced. If we are only teaching students to have an acquaintance with the facts, news and views, what do we need teachers for? Chat GPT-type programmes could be much more superior to error-prone human teachers.

Our schools tend to have a large number of subjects and a heavy syllabus for each subject in each grade. English, Urdu, Islamiat, Pakistan Studies, Nazara Quran, mathematics, social studies and science — almost all of these are taught in most grades and the syllabus for each subject is quite heavy with regard to ‘learning objectives’. This means teachers are usually more concerned about covering the syllabus and completing all lessons and chapters than how well the students, especially those who might take a bit of time to internalise material, are learning.

The fast pace of the class focuses the student on learning material that she is being exposed to and reproducing it for examinations and tests. It does not encourage the development of reflection, critical (or any other) thinking, and development of understanding. It has no place for making mistakes and learning from them: only the right answers are expected, and that too, all the time. It does not facilitate the development of an individual’s mental prowess, voice and personality.

Our tests and examinations, mostly based on the need to recall what has been taught in class, reinforce the trend towards reproduction rather than reflection, thinking and reimagining. ‘Teaching to the test’ is a common phenomenon in education. If the test privileges recall, this is what teaching will be about and what teachers, parents and students will focus on.

After schooling in Pakistan I went to university in England, where one of the first pieces of advice I received from a very wise teacher, after he read one of my first essays, was: “Faisal, this is not an essay. It tells me all about what Mill [it was on J.S. Mill’s On Liberty] said and what his critics have said, but I did not need you to tell me all this. It is there already. I wanted to know what Faisal thinks about these issues. And this is what is missing from your essay.” This piece of advice changed the world for me. It changed the way I studied, thought, analysed, argued and wrote. We need wise teachers in our system too. And we need to alter the system, in terms of flexibilities about pace and material and how we test or examine children.

But the changes needed now are a lot more than those that can be carried out in the education sector alone. We need to figure out how to internalise the impact of technology, internet and social media, too. Today’s children are being shaped by their screen time and by what they can do online.

It is also shaping the way they access information and their learning processes. Learning requires slowing down and taking time. They are being shaped by instant processes and answers. How this thesis and anti-thesis can be synthesised is the question.

The writer is a senior research fellow at the Institute of Development and Economic Alternatives, and an associate professor of economics at Lums.

Published in Dawn, October 25th, 2024