In India, 90 percent of children from poor families remain illiterate despite completing four years of school education. Also, around 30 percent of children reach the illiteracy rate even after attending five-six years of school. Other than this, only 44 percent of rural students in Maharashtra and 53 percent student in Tamil Nadu in Std V age group could perform two digit subtraction sums.
These are just a few to name among the many alarming findings in UNESCO's 11th Education For All (EFA) Global monitoring report. IT clearly depicts that though progress is taking place, most EFA goals to be achieved till 2015 are being missed. As per the report, the speed of achieving universal primary education, lower secondary education and youth literacy is woefully slow in various nations.
Keeping India in mind, the report said that though the rich young women have already achieved universal literacy, the poor are projected to reach there only by 2080. Reporting on the financialeducation trends, for all the nations, the report states that: "Around the world, governments are grappling with ways to reallocate their education budgets to those children most in need. Allocations per child still do not adequately reflect the costs of delivering quality education to the marginalized."
According to the report, in India analysis, Kerela being one of the wealthier states, spend merely 685$ per child on education. The figure is only 100$ in Bihar. The reports have suggested that one of the new EFA goals after 2015 should be setting a target for all countries to allocate at least six percent of the GNP to education and at least 20 percent of the total government expenditure on education.
India has been in the list of those 10 countries that have progressed very fast in being able to reduce the children drop-out rate in recent years, but it has also created a learning crisis. Nearly 250 million children across the globe fail to learn the basics, one-third of which are based in South and West Asia.
The progress is too slow especially for the disadvantaged. Mathematics remains a struggle for many. The gaps between rich and poor states in India is widening day by say. Besides this, poverty decreases the chances of students continuing school education for a long time. In U.P. only 70 percent of poor kids make it Std V, whereas in MP only 85 percent of poor kids attend schools compared to 96 percent in rich children.
Wednesday, October 21, 2015
Secrets of the teenage brain
Why are teenagers such moody, lazy, selfish nightmares? We gave readers the chance to ask Frances E Jensen, author of a new book on the adolescent mind, how to deal with these hormonal time bombs
What’s going on in there?: ‘Very smart adolescents will do very stupid things in a very impulsive way,’ says Frances E Jensen. Photograph: Scott Camazine/Alamy
Several years ago Frances E Jensen’s 16-year-old son wrote off a car. A few years earlier, her other son had returned from a friend’s house with his hair dyed jet black. The University of Pennsylvania neurologist was finding her teenagers’ erratic behaviour increasingly taxing, so she decided to study teenage thought processes and gathered her research in the book The Teenage Brain. She found that while much had been written about teen psychology and parenting, no one had explained the neurons and cerebral connections that make those years such a unique – and terrifying – part of growing up. The teenage brain has only recently become a subject for serious research, which shows how little was known about it.
Advertisement
But does knowing what is going on in a teenager’s brain make them any easier to live with? Without a doubt, says Jensen, who thinks that her research allowed her to be more patient with her sons. “We expect a little bit more out of adolescents than we should, given where their brains are,” she says.
Given that the relationship between parents and teenagers is one of the most fraught in family life, we asked readers to send in questions for Jensen to tackle.
Clothes left in the bathroom, losing things, plates festering under the bed… Why doesn’t my teenager care about being tidy?Tidiness needs a sophisticated level of cognitive control, and the way the teenage brain is connected means that their planning is not very good. Parts of the brain connect to each other through synapses, which are insulated, just like electric wires. That insulation is a fatty substance called myelin, which is created over time. The process takes years, and it starts at the back of the brain and slowly moves forward. The last bits of the brain to connect are the frontal and prefrontal cortices, where insight, empathy and risk taking are controlled. This means that very smart adolescents will do very stupid things in a very impulsive way. I don’t think organisation is a high priority for most teenagers. They have other things to worry about – they are messy because they don’t give themselves enough time to tidy up before they run off to do something else.
No-go zone: the teen bedroom should be entered with caution.
Why does my daughter always seem so angry, especially with me? Teenagers can get frustrated with situations and themselves, as a lot of things still aren’t fitting together in their brain. The risk-taking behaviour and impulsivity they exhibit because they don’t have full access to their frontal lobes can cause mood swings and fuel conflict and anger. Adults can respond to this behaviour in an angry fashion themselves. While I’m not condoning teens’ erratic behaviour, the hope is that by understanding what is going on inside their child’s head, parents will be a bit more patient and might be able to stop themselves reacting and setting up a vicious cycle by alienating their child. Try to stay close to your teenagers, even if they seem to push you away. Always count to 10 and think twice. This is a time when mental illness can come on, and anger can be a front for depression or other anxiety disorders. Are they just being surly, or is there another explanation?
Advertisement
I feel increasingly cut out from my teenager’s life. Why won’t they talk to me properly? The teens are an age of self-discovery and novelty-seeking behaviour, and it’s natural that they will start to cut ties. Teenagers need to become independent, but we live in a very complex world, and no other teenage generation in history has had this much stimulation and exposure to the many potential stresses that arise from their being online. Because of this, parents do need to be vigilant and stay connected with them. I used to love car drives with my children because we were just looking straight ahead, and the lack of eye contact helped us to start talking about sensitive things.
Why won’t my teenager go to bed, and why can’t I get them up in the morning? There is absolutely a biological basis for this. In many other mammals, like baby rodents, sleep patterns shift during the adolescent period. From puberty to the end of the teens, the circadian clock is actually programming them to go to sleep and wake up around three to four hours later than adults. This is a problem, as they are relatively sleep deprived when you wake them up at 8am. It’s something we might want to think about as a society and in education systems, as chronic sleep deprivation is certainly not helping teenagers do their biggest job, which is to go to school. We know how important sleep is for consolidation of memory and learning. It’s all about strengthening synapses, a process which is chemically impaired in a sleep-deprived brain. This could be a reason for the fights, too – everyone knows that sleep deprivation makes you emotionally impulsive.
‘We expect more out of adolescents than we should,’ says Frances E Jensen.
Given the way the teenage brain works, should we lower the voting age to 16? I think that society on both sides of the Atlantic and in most parts of the world is hugely confused, with dozens of mixed messages for teenagers. One example of this ambivalence is that in the US we send 18-year-olds to war yet we don’t let them drink. From what I’ve learned, the data would suggest that if you’re looking for a vote to come from somebody who you trust to make rational decisions using cause and effect, and some insight, the average 16-year-old will not yet be at that point. Also, as teens are so impressionable, the concern is that their opinion might be overly swayed by others and override their decision-making.
My teenager doesn’t seem to care about school at all. Why are they so uninterested in doing their homework, and how can I motivate them to study? How many other competing interests do they have? For many teenagers, it’s certainly more fun to play a video game or go on Facebook than do their homework. It’s an issue we all face in the modern world, but serious demotivation can be a symptom of learning or processing problems. In that case, the teenage years are an ideal time to diagnose any problems and help work on their strengths as well as weaknesses. People have different learning styles, and there is a lot of opportunity for plasticity before your brain is fully mature. Teenage brains have more synaptic connections than adult ones, which makes them highly impressionable, as they’re building synapses and modifying them as they learn. They are primed to learn quickly and can memorise things faster. People might think their capacity for academic achievement is set in stone from a very young age, but this can change quite dramatically over adolescence. It’s a period of huge opportunity, and this suggests that you can really change your destiny with respect to how you function at school if you get some attention during this time.
Should I worry about my teenager drinking or dabbling with drugs? The same quantity of drugs or alcohol has a much stronger effect than it does in adults. Binge drinking can cause brain damage in teenagers where it will only cause intoxication in adults. We know hard drugs can also do more damage to young brains for the same dose. Teens are primed to learn quickly – but addiction is actually a form of learning, and they get addicted faster than they would if they were exposed to the same substances later. Chronic pot smoking has a long-term effect, as it’s actually changing your brain chemistry, just like enriching environments and academic learning do. Studies show that if you smoke pot on a daily basis for prolonged periods of time in your teen years, your verbal IQ drops.
Addiction is a form of learning, and teens get addicted faster than they would later in life.
Why can’t my teenage children leave their smartphones alone, even at the dinner table – surely Instagram can’t be that interesting?The teenage brain is hungry for stimulation. But there is an unprecedented amount of it in today’s world, maybe more than ever. Because teenagers lack access to their frontal lobes, using their judgement to say: “I’ve had enough” or “I need to stop and do something else” is still a weakness for them. Studies have shown that while teenagers are better at learning to multitask than adults, distraction from smartphones and other devices can still impair learning, so they should switch them off completely when they’re trying to study.
Why don’t teenagers wear coats, even in very cold or wet weather? I don’t think there’s a biological basis for this. It could be an example of their lack of executive function along with their risky, impulsive behaviour – they’re not planning ahead. Their priorities are not as common sense as they will become over time. Also, teenagers will do outlandish things to please their peers, even if it means getting wet.
My child loves playing video games. What effect do they have on the teenage brain?Video games are another source of stimulation that teen brains respond exuberantly to. But as their brains respond more strongly to stress than adult brains, they have to learn to put what they see and do in the games into perspective. Adults must remember that as our frontal lobes are connected, we can reflect and do things in moderation. If teens overfocus on video games to the extent they’re not interacting with real people, that’s a problem. Video gaming and gambling use the same reward circuits as getting addicted to a substance.
How can I look after my teenager’s mental health? You need to stay connected with your teenager. Consistent social problems can mean that there may be an anxiety disorder or another psychiatric problem, such as depression, that’s beginning to emerge. Bipolar disorder and schizophrenia often come on at the end of teenage years and in the early 20s, because you need your frontal lobes to manifest those disorders. That’s why when kids seem to be socially isolated or gain or lose a lot of weight or stop taking care of themselves, parents need to be aware of it, as this might be the first sign of a deeper problem. Ironically, at this age if they do have an emerging mental illness, not all of their peers are as well equipped to be understanding as adults would be, because they don’t have the empathy skills.
My school is different from other schools and I love my school. I am penning down my thoughts on what makes my school different……..
Can you think of the place, where one meets children from different backgrounds, temperaments, some mischievous, some bright, some really cute.
The challenge of discovering for yourself the magic of science in the laboratories, learning the skill of programming, making robots dancing to your tune in the computer laboratory, makes you feel like a magician.
Could there be a better fairy land than a school which makes it possible for us to create all this? cool, where one makes friends, one plays, enjoys, learns and grows. Such a place, my friends, can only be a school!
Imagine how dull our lives would be if there were no schools. The open spacious grounds to run and play, the world of books, where one lives in the characters described in them, the experience of living a life with different characters in novels.
Losing oneself in them, visiting different cities, countries, reliving the past, the present and the future, as visualized by the writer, gives a completely different dimension to one’s life. Could it be possible had it not been for the school library?
My school, which is situated in the heart of Delhi, is the place which I have described above. I love my school; it is like the blood which flows in my veins, I cannot live without it. I am what I am because of this wonderful part of my life.
My school is the temple of learning which I worship each day, without fail. It is here that I have learnt to differentiate between right and wrong, to read and enjoy what I read, the skill to manage my conflicts, the ability to modify my behavior, respect my elders and friends, be kind, compassionate, forgiving and good. I learn all this from my teachers who have these qualities and do not just ask me to be good. They make me understand, how to be good, by being good themselves. They never lose their patience, they do not scold, they just make us reflect over what we have done and what will be the consequences of our actions.
In other words they make us accountable for what we do. They forgive us for our mistakes and we learn to forgive others for theirs. When they teach, we are spell bound, we do not know how, but we keep on answering correctly, all the questions, which they put up to us? Learning can be fun is what you can experience in our school. We debate, discuss, question and then conclude. The best part is there are teachers, who learn with us, rather than making us learns.
Who would not want to remain 24 hours in a school like ours? We go on field trips, live in villages, visit historical places, attend leadership camps, participate in adventure camps and are involved in so many activities that life is filled with excitement, *each day.
We have coaching for nearly all games and a state of the art gymnasium where all athletes and sports persons undergo scientifically designed training on a number of workstations.
I think no school has a better sports culture than ours. It is because of this that our school students do exceptionally well at the National and International arena. We are indeed lucky to be studying in a school like ours. My school is fun, my school is exciting and each day in my school is full of opportunities, an adventure, and a discovery.
Oh my dear school I love you so much that I can not imagine my life without you.
In a great school, in a great country.
Living and studying in Brunei, I always consider myself lucky in many ways. First of all, I am indeed happy to live in a peaceful country with loving and gentle people. Secondly, I like my school so much because of the caring teachers and good friends.
The name of my school is St. John’s School, Kuala Belait.What I like most about my school is that we have a large number of extra curricular activities which help us to change our talents into super talents. Our teachers always encourage us to join such activities. There are many clubs in our school, for example, badminton club, chess club, football club etc. Our school is beautiful and we keep it always clean. We have two big basketball and football grounds. Our school has classes from KG1 to Year 11. Here is a small quote which our school follows: Our progress as a nation can be no swifter than our education. Human mind is our fundamental resource. This is said by USA’s former president John F Kennedy. Education is very important and that is why schools are very important.
Here is a brief history of our school: St. John’s School was founded in the 1930s. It was one of the first English schools in the country at that time. It still keeps its great tradition as a great institution of knowledge.
Now, thinking about the country, what I like most about Brunei Darussalam is that it is beautifully peaceful. Nowhere we see rush or people quarrelling or fighting. Brunei’s greenery is a great attraction for me. I have been to many beautiful places like Temburong, Labi waterfalls and Tutong beach and I was surprised to hear from my geography teacher that 80% of Brunei is tropical rainforest. I like to live in this country very much for these reasons. I hope this great country will preserve its tradition of peacefulness in the future too. With its petroleum money, Brunei can be the most powerful country in all of South-East Asia, better than Singapore.
Health, wealth or happiness? When it comes to their children’s future, most parents in India rank professional success more important than a happy life, while in China being healthy is the number one priority and happiness comes out top in the U.S.
Those are some of the findings of a new global survey by HSBC Retail Banking and Wealth Management, published in a report titled “The Value of Education: Learning for Life” released Wednesday.
Compared with their counterparts in developed countries like the U.S., U.K., Canada and Australia, Indian parents place greater emphasis on their offspring succeeding at work – something they perhaps believe will lead to future happiness.
Of the Indian parents surveyed, 51% said career success was the most important, followed by 49% who said they want a happy life for their child more than anything else. In the U.S., at least seven in 10 parents said that being happy was most vital. Almost three quarters, or 72%, of parents in China rated leading a healthy lifestyle as an important goal, compared with 33% of Indian parents.
“In developed economies, parents tend to take a more ‘hands off’ approach,” wrote Charlie Nun, who heads wealth management at HSBC. “They are less likely to have a career in mind for their children and are more relaxed about formal education,” Mr. Nun added.
To achieve the sought-after careers, Indian parents are keen their children continue their education in university and to graduate level. Almost 90% of them, the largest proportion globally, said that a master’s degree or higher would help their child achieve their life goals as adults.
In China, the perception that a master’s degree is the minimum level of qualification required is much lower–almost all parents surveyed said an undergraduate degree was a necessary qualification and that it would suffice. In the U.S., about six in 10 parents showed enthusiasm for university education and in the U.K. and Australia, it was even lower.
Parents across the world are keen their children study medicine but in India, most parents want their child to pursue an engineering degree, the survey showed. And they’re willing to pay to provide additional tutoring during at least one stage of their children’s education to achieve it–around seven in 10 Indian parents participating in the survey said they would do so.
Competition to get into India’s most-prestigious engineering colleges is intense. The reputed Indian Institutes of Technology have one of the toughest entrance exams, to prepare for which students drop out of high school and join coaching institutes with dedicated two-year training programs. One town in the western Indian state of Rajasthanruns a gamut of these coaching institutes,the first of its kind charging close to 100,000 rupees ($1,575) for a two-year tutorial program.
American and British parents, on the other hand, are much less likely to pay for extra academic support for their kids–only about 25% said they had done so. And their view that university education is too expensive is also strong–71% of them in each of the two countries said so.
In India and China, parents are more than willing to pay for their children’s education and will even rope in grandparents for additional funds, the survey found. They expect it to take them about seven years to repay loans taken to cover the fees. Though the report adds that parents “tend to underestimate how long it will take their child to repay their university debts.”
Some Indian parents contemplate sending their children to universities abroad because they believe students receive a more rounded education overseas–rather than learning how to cram for exams. Others are deterred from staying in India by inefficiencies. Last year, the University of Delhi delayed admissions as it debated whether undergraduate degrees should be three or four-year programs.
Indian parents are willing to spend more than they would in their own country to give their child the experience of studying abroad. Nearly 60% of those interviewed said they would consider paying at least 50% more to get a degree from a foreign university.
Chinese parents are the most enthusiastic with almost 70% of them saying an education abroad is worth the extra money. Parents in France, Australia, the U.S. and the U.K. would rather their children stay in their own country to study.
The HSBC survey is based on responses received in March and April from 5,500 parents in 16 countries across the world. The parents interviewed have at least one child aged 23 or younger who is either enrolled in a university, or who soon will be.
