In conversation with Uma Sudhir

Witty and tongue in cheek, it’s a delight to talk to Uma Sudhir about Science and Science Education.

 I have been working at the Eklavya Office in Bhopal on an illustration assignment and due to the lockdown- 15 of us have been staying here, like a family, taking turns to cook food, look after each other and occasionally fight ( just for kicks!).

It’s a bonding that is interesting, because all of us were strangers until recently but have grown to known each other a lot more than we would otherwise have, under normal circumstances.

I have known Uma for almost about a month now and I thought it would be interesting to share with the world some of the conversations we have had about science, education, travel,  life – all interspersed with her intelligent sense of humour. 

Uma is a research associate with Eklavya. You may have come across her writings in Sandarbh magazine.

Uma is also one of the few people I know who can count off the number of places she has NOT visited in India – quite a feat, when you consider how large, wide and diverse India is.

(This conversation also has excerpts from a write - up by Uma, published in Sandarbh magazine)

Me - What was your childhood like, growing up in different parts of India?

Uma - Well, growing up all over the place means that I am comfortable with the idea of living anywhere in India (though I might fuss about some places being hot or humid ) I would not dream of going and living abroad - holidays are okay, but work and long-term, only in India, and anywhere in India :-) The only places I haven’t visited are Goa, Mizoram, Nagaland, Tripura, Meghalaya, Sikkim, Diu, Daman and Mahe.

I have ended up loving each place I have lived in, in spite of a great deal of reluctance at the initial move. Depending on who I am talking to, and what I am talking about, I can end up defending, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Mysore, Indore..... So I tend to identify myself with a whole lot of places.

I have come to realise that people are the same all over, there are mostly good people, maybe a few bad eggs, but human nature is very much the same.

Me – What got you interested in learning Science?

Uma - Science is fun.  I liked History and Geography too, but I didn't want to study it. I don’t like writing long answers :) I decided in 10^th that I want to be a teacher. Through most of my school years, especially in high school – I had very good teachers. The whole grounding that I had was because of my teachers – they got me interested – they answered my questions.

I decided to do Chemistry in post-graduation for two reasons - we had good Chemistry teachers in our college, and I knew I was interested enough in Biological Sciences to keep reading up on it on my own.

The joy of discovery, of knowing something for the first time is amazing; I don't think I have the words to describe it accurately. I think Science gives us this kind of joy, so however much science might give in to market-forces, this joy is still there for the taking, and this is something that comes from fundamental research, something that is not getting any funds these days.

Me – So you have had an enduring interest in Science and a vocation for teaching. How did you take it forward?

Uma - I studied the BScEd (Bachelor of Science Education) and went on to do my Masters (MScEd) at Mysore.

The BScEd (Bachelor of Science Education) was planned as a programme to prepare teachers for classes VI to X. We got a more thorough grounding in the Education papers. And I realised much later how well the course had been planned and executed.  The MScEd course was designed to prepare teachers to teach classes XI and XII and for that this did a good job. 

I was very clear that I wanted to teach in a school. I worked for a year in a school and then went on to do my PhD in Organic Chemistry. The research I was doing was pure fun, it was great to be able to figure out what was going on.

When I finished my PhD and told my teachers back in college that I want to go back to teaching in a school, one of my professors told me that I might get frustrated going back to teaching and told me about the work that Eklavya was doing.

In 2001, I made a trip to see the work that Eklavya is doing and the HSTP ( Hoshangabad Science Teaching Programme)  programme was still running in schools and I managed to see those classes. 

 I was really impressed with the work that they were doing – I also thought that I should have some experience of teaching in schools because when I did the BScEd what I found is that what we learn in the curriculum is an ideal situation – like you plan for your lessons and look at all the activities- but when you are actually teaching in a school the situations can be really different and you won’t always have the facilities to do everything that a BScEd tells you you’re supposed to be doing. I thought I should know more about the actual situation in schools before I joined Eklavya.

Me – Did your experience as a teacher lead to new insights in the projects that you worked in, at Eklavya?

Uma - When I was teaching in Himachal Pradesh, I noticed a whole lot of problems with the textbooks -the way in which the activities of the concepts were written.  At one level, some of the experiments would not work because they were not practical .Often the content was not according to what we had learnt about – at what stage the child would be able to understand various concepts.  If you interact with children it is very easy to see that at different ages, they deal with things in a different way. You need to keep that in mind while making the syllabus. And this understanding was essential to me when I became a part of the textbook writing team with the NCERT.

Me - If you had to give a definition of science, what would it be?  What makes science different from other pursuits?

Uma - Science is one of the many human endeavours that try to make sense of the world around us. 

Human beings are curious and we explore our surroundings and we notice patterns and wonder why these particular patterns are observed and not others.

We are programmed from birth to latch on to some patterns; then we learn to take in other patterns too; and we then tend to attach meanings to these patterns.

Science is different in the sense that theories are always tested - you can't make predictions that don't materialize and get away with it (like astrologers do!).

 Defining science would not be so easy. I guess, I will just go with what Popper says, theories are supposed to explain your observations, but these theories also need to make novel predictions which need to really take place and happen.

 So far, Science is the only discipline which does this in a consistent fashion, and keeps making better and better predictions too.

So we need to keep the following things in mind when we talk about Science -

1. It is an attempt to explain the world around us

2. It proposes a test which will help us decide whether the explanation is useful

3. It does not ever give us the 'ultimate' truth

4. Every theory will have an expiry date (which is never known in advance)

Me – As a child, I found Science interesting but intimidating. I always felt that you need to be brilliant to be able to completely grasp what these famous scientists and inventors were talking about.  

Uma - Anyone can do Science.

Anyone can look at the data generated and figure out whether the whole thing is a bluff or trust-worthy.

A theory might occur to only a prepared mind, but once the theory has been proposed, anyone can test it.

 As a matter of fact, the history of Science seems to show that it is not as if only one person can come up with a theory. No, lots of people were working towards the same conclusion. For example, we know that both Darwin and Wallace independently came up with the theory of evolution.

Science textbooks usually list some 'great' people who had access to the secrets of the universe – Curie, Watson & Crick, Rutherford, Mendel, Boyle, Hooke, Newton, Darwin.

The circumstances that gave rise to different theories, the data the scientists had access to, the equipment available at that time, these are never gone into.

 Knowledge is created in a certain social context, all knowledge, not just scientific knowledge, and often reveals its relevance only in that specific context.

Me – So you feel the times they lived in played an important role in how scientific discoveries were being made? And that the emphasis should not be on any individual scientist but on the process itself?

Uma - I don’t know if it is an Indian trait but we try to make gods out of everyone. If you look at the history of science, every single instance of discovery or invention – there has been a lot of work by various people that has gone into that.

The current picture is always as if it is the effort of individuals. And that’s a problem. And then there’s also that problem of making them into gods.

A child who is in the classroom thinks that I can’t be a god, I can’t do anything. One of the important things about teaching  science is that, we must look at the process of what made people think of various things – being able to look at data, drawing inferences for yourself –  That this process is what they base their ideas on.

 Being just told the ideas doesn’t help. So there should be an emphasis on how these ideas are born or the social context around it. That’s the only way children would appreciate and understand the concept. Otherwise they’d just learn things by heart and not understand what it means.

Me - While I enjoyed reading about science in books that were in the library or books that were gifted to me, school textbooks always alienated me from enjoying the knowledge that is being shared.

Uma - Yes. A big problem with school science textbooks is that it gives answers without the kids having any idea of what the question is.

Answers make sense when we have been grappling with a problem, some contradiction that does not fit in with our prior knowledge. Once a question arises in our mind, we strive to find a solution. 

When the students are given answers to questions that have not occurred to them, the knowledge does not fit in organically with their schemas, their belief systems.

And another problem is that - In our school system, do we give the students any inkling of the open-ended nature of science? Do we prepare them to look at different claims and judge their worth? Do we teach them to question claims and ask – how do you know that?  how did you test that claim?  what data do you have to support that claim?

Me – What is the role of Science education in schools?

Uma - We are talking about the function of science education being put together with two goals – 

One, what should an aam admi know of science? 

And two, how to look at things critically and not just accept what people are telling you – the other part is also to create excitement so that some children are inspired to take up science and study and explore it further.

One of the major aims of science education is to encourage the spirit of critical enquiry, and it cannot be done if Science continues to be taught the way it is.

 Me- You have been a part of the Science textbook making process. Where are we going wrong in the way textbooks are being put together?

Uma - The experiments given in textbooks, they don't work, or they don't work in the manner described, or they are showing the effect of some other phenomenon. You find contradictions on a careful reading of textbooks, and if you try out the activities according to the instructions given.

There is no attempt to verify anything – neither the information given nor the activities.

 A small anecdote about this carelessness. One is about the amount of iron in spinach. The original study had reported an error, there was a problem with the placement of the decimal point, this seemed to show that spinach is a great source of iron, and we have Popeye the sailor becoming instantly stronger after eating spinach. That mistake has now been corrected in the primary literature, but our textbooks still perpetuate the old mistake.

Another problem is finding an appropriate activity to demonstrate the concept you want to convey.

Hence, whenever we are part of any textbook writing exercise, we try to ensure two things, one that the experiments work as we describe them, and two that the materials for the activity will be available in the average school.

In that sense, the HSTP ( Hoshangabad Science Teaching programme) programme was a great effort -  it showed that you could have an entirely activity based curriculum which was also very specifically based on the child’s experiences.

Me – Tell me more about the Hoshangabad Science Teaching Programme.

Uma - The HSTP was started by two NGOs working together – Kishore Bharati and Friends rural center ( Rasulia)  in 1972 in Hoshangabad,  later taken up by Eklavya set up in 1982 . 

It is the only programme in which there was collaboration with the government, and the program was running in around 1000 schools.  Board exams in class 8 were modified so that there would be experiments. The HSTP team keeps insisting that the programme was developed for Hoshangabad and its surroundings – so if you want to do science elsewhere – you would have to look at things there. They used a lot of things that were common in that area for teaching various concepts. 

 

This is the first of its kind that tried to change the examination system – to reflect what they were doing in the classroom. In that sense, it is a great attempt.

The best thing about Bal Vaigyanik workbooks that were developed in the HSTP over the last thirty years is that it has experiments that have been tried out and if you look at the descriptions of experiments –you can easily follow those instructions.

 The other thing is Bal Vaigyanik is again related to the local, actual environment in which the textbook is supposed to be used.

 A lot of things that were available locally were suggested as part of the kit for doing the experiments and that’s a very good thing because that also made the kit much more affordable.

So, the thing about Bal Vaigyanik is that it encouraged reuse – just collect a lot of stuff that people are throwing away and you could do experiments with them. You don’t need a fully, well-organised lab to get children to do basic stuff. So the science kit is something really good that has come out of the Bal Vaigyanik. The learnings from the HSTP are living on.

Me – So, apart from playing an active role in creating textbooks, you have also conducted workshops and teacher trainings.  Could you tell us a little more about your field experiences?

Uma - After all the content and experiments are taken care of, there still needs to be space for open-ended investigations in the science classroom. We try this out regularly in our teacher-trainings. 

In addition to regular sessions in which we deal with concepts which are part of the regular syllabus, we devote a lot of time to getting teachers to work on questions to which they would like to find out the answers.

During the workshops, you would get an idea of what was it that the teachers are also confused about. It is interesting to see how the teachers’ confusion is exactly parallel to what the students’ confusions are.

 It should be obvious because these are not confusions which are tested in any standard examination. There have been many studies which have shown that teachers and students are able to answer textbook examination kind of questions but not be able to make sense of questions which are phrased in a slightly different manner.

You pass exams, you get a job and you are expected to teach the same things. So you never ever are asked anything which makes you question what you assume is right. 

There were problems when projects were scaled up – getting the teachers, following up, addressing all their concerns. It was very intensive – initial training would be followed up by monthly meetings where classroom findings were addressed.

This was actually quite necessary because when you do any experiment – there are always variations – and something unexpected comes up – so you need to be able to handle that. There’s no way someone who’s done just one teacher training will be expected to deal with that. And you need a lot of follow up to ensure that things move forward.

We know that a one off workshop doesn’t help.  You need constant discussion and follow up.

Me- Do you think, in the past couple of years, that there has been an improvement in the way Science is being taught in schools? What is the way forward?

Uma - Not in India. In India the problem is that science is so much linked to the entrance exams that there is no scope for a rational syllabus.  The entrance exam demands are pushing down things and that’s the entire focus. There is no attempt to learn what science is. The current situation does not give you any scope for changing anything. There can be minor efforts by individuals but on a large scale I don’t see anyone doing anything.

Now, there is a very strong movement that you should start with children’s questions – it’s a very utopian idea. You have something in your mind while you teach that you want to convey. You can’t just leave it to the time some kid may ask a question. But the thing is that if you are taking the effort and are interested in teaching, I am sure it is easy to push children to at least think in a certain direction.  It’s a question of exposing them to the right experience – asking the right questions.

It’s not that you can’t get children to be interested in the topic you want to teach – It’s just that the effort is not being made in textbooks.

Things are just there in the syllabus and the teacher training is also not sufficient to empower the teachers to take it up so that they can carry the children with them.

This is partly because you can’t put everything in textbooks. Children are so different. But the teacher knows her students - so the teacher should be able to take them ahead from where they are.

So I would say that the best situation would be when kids don’t have textbooks – but the teacher has a lot of resources; and is given a set of things to be covered. The teacher should decide how best to cover it – based on  what her kids are interested in, what her resources are, what the surroundings are like – what the children are seeing – what the questions are about.

I think it is very difficult to make a pan India textbook which is comprehensive – which would be there in every place – Even in one state you have so many variations, and textbooks must reflect this.

Me – Your parting advice?

Uma - Please be more suspicious than doubting Thomas the next time you come across a claim that goes against good sense, please check if there can be a physical explanation instead of a supernatural one for any phenomena. Please check the numbers and statistics thrown at you, maths is not difficult, but so many of us have an irrational fear of it that numbers are used to fool us, scare us.

Me – Spoken in the true scientific spirit :)

Learn more about Eklavya and their work in the education sector here.