The twenty-eighth day of February, the birthday of renowned scientist C V Raman is celebrated in a befitting manner as ‘National Science Day’ throughout the country. Prof. Raman was honoured with the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1930 for his famous theory of the Raman Effect on the scattering of light. ‘National Science Day’ may be described as a festival of knowledge, particularly for young minds.
ATLS (Atal Tinkering labs), NITI Aayog’s initiative in a vast number of selected schools across the country will accelerate and presumably give a substantive boost to the millions of children in India as the innovators of tomorrow. The project was started a few years ago under the aegis of the National Institute of Transforming India (NITI) to encourage students to explore and experience design, thinking, learning-by-doing approach, and ultimately derive solutions to problems. The projects have already selected about 50,000 schools.
The programme may be seen as one that seeks to transform young minds to emerge as innovators of tomorrow. The laboratories are designed to spur the spark of creativity with the idea of going beyond classroom textual learning and would be their creative technology platform. India is poised to move forward efficiently, effectively, and meaningfully to embrace the technology revolution in a cogent way.
The innovation drive in educational institutions for stimulating and nurturing young minds to inculcate a scientific attitude is extremely important and far reaching in its implications. The pragmatic decision to establish open-ended innovation workspaces equipped with modern sophisticated sensor technology kits, elementary electronics, computers and robotics, and to promote creativity, curiosity and imagination among school students by reforming school laboratories, is remarkable indeed.
Using science and technology to support school education and stimulate innovations has numerous benefits, but in doing this, we must also exercise caution. The benefits are in the ability of information technology-based learning environments to sustain student attention, encourage learners to develop imagination, foster curiosity, allow experimentation, and above all move towards a conducive learning environment that is selfpaced and adaptive. Students learn at different speeds.
A technology-based learning environment can allow the learner to decide how much more practice or learning he/she needs in the area. In addition to adaptive learning, tools with intensive analytical capabilities such as learning analytics can go far in helping teachers to understand indispensible requirements of the child, thereby optimizing their time by focusing on the needs of the child.
Our country is poised to move pragmatically and efficiently to embrace the “Skill India Mission” that seeks to bridge skill gaps, map skills, connect vibrant youth to global opportunities and create synergy between numerous skill development portals. This is imperative. The government is committed to train about a million youth per annum through apprenticeship training. The project was initiated under the aegis of the National Skill Development Mission (NSDM) with the objective or becoming self-reliant in order to bridge the gap between industry demand and skill requirements. In addition, the STARTUPS programme has already started nurturing intent and intellect of youths across all the states and union territories of our country. It should be regarded as the economic backbone of New India.
Creativity, imagination, and freedom of mind are also important for unleashing a spirit of inquiry and allowing the youth to feel free to soar.
Today, there is ferment in science and technology education. It is also recognized that imparting proper science education is the best way of bringing rapid economic development and technical progress in our country. It is therefore imperative that school students should enjoy learning ‘improved’ science and technology, from the beginning. The objective should be to provide all our children the basic knowledge they need to develop their scientific attitude and skills for better understanding of their environment. This would help them distil out all superstitions and prejudices.
It is felt that inculcating a scientific attitude is of utmost importance and learning science in schools should be a joyful experience. Students are supposed to receive the basic knowledge of physical and biological environments and of their immediate surroundings. To develop a proper scientific attitude, its foundation must be built on conceptual understanding and reasoning in a pragmatic way, rather than retention and reproduction of bits of information including statistical data. It must be borne in mind that in the 21st century, when there is an explosion of information through computers, email, and internet, the traditional lecture method to motivate students needs to be revised radically.
Today, science has become too important to be considered just another subject in the curriculum. It is one of the most pervasive and influential forces to hold away over culture and society. Imparting science education through ‘learning by doing’ method has shown remarkable results. This is the discovery approach of teaching science and technology. The students themselves learn ‘how’ and ‘why’ of things by way of experimentation and inquiry. This may be described as ‘science in action’ where the process of experimentation, observation and drawing inferences by the children is significant.
The term ‘observation’ is vital and plays a formidable role in learning science. ‘Observation’ by common people and ‘scientific observation’ with its deep penetrating power differ considerably.
It is true that most of the schools in our country do not possess sophisticated scientific equipment or enriched laboratories to teach science.
To that extent the new project of NITI Aayog’s ATLS programme promises to be extremely important in reforming obsolete laboratories of schools. Improving scientific equipment using available local resources is a good idea to teach science as it is now hard to conceive of science education without the help of equipment and materials.
Building scientific models by children and demonstration of these in science exhibitions also plays a major role in dissemination of the scientific attitude and can motivate appreciable numbers of enthusiastic students. Projects in electronics, computers, chemistry, physics, biology and space science may provide immense pleasure and lasting satisfaction at acquiring firsthand knowledge through experiments and observation of natural phenomena.
Children can perform simple experiments with water, electricity, magnetism, light, heat, semiconductors etc. using apparatus that can be made even at home or with inexpensive materials. This is improvisation of scientific equipment which induces creativity and innovation.
The value of computers in science education is great and challenging. Computers can control many experiments, record data and process data from experiments.
Computers may be considered as cultural objects and they carry powerful cultural identities. Perhaps the most exciting way of using computers is as an aid to understanding the theoretical and conceptual processes of science.
Teachers can play a formidable role in this regard, stimulating and exciting the young mind in a pragmatic way. We need a vast number of qualified and devoted teachers with a sense of intrinsic values, morality, and ethics. Good teachers are well organised, committed, firm, fair and possessed of a sense of humour.
To make the remarkable ATLS project successful, it is imperative to train the vast number of our schoolteachers in modern pedagogy using sophisticated technology.
Learning science is a joyful experience. Our effort should be to encourage the young children to learn science, developing their scientific attitudes, questioning, investigating, and discovering facts for themselves. India has a youth population of about 356 million.
Young people with colourful dreams in their eyes are innovators, creators, builders and leaders of the future. But they can transform the future only if they have skills, sound health and embrace value-oriented education. It has now become necessary to unleash this potential for the economic and social progress of the country
(The writer, a former reader in chemistry, presidency College Kolkata, was associated with UGC and UNICEF)