Anatomy of the A-ha Moment

The brightly lit bulb in comics depicts a flash of insight, when something incomprehensible suddenly makes sense, the moment you go ‘A-ha, I got it!’ The mental exhilaration you get when you make
a connection between something new and something you already know is called the a-ha moment.

True comprehension is also what makes knowledge actionable.

But why is it that your formal education journey doesn’t have too many of these a-ha moments? And what can you do such that all the panels in the comic strip of your formal education journey are full of brightly lit bulbs? Well, if you deconstruct the a-ha moment, according to educational psychologists, you can follow a path towards deeper comprehension, whatever be the topic of study:

1. First step in the path to deeper comprehension is ‘Building Your Curiosity’ about the topic.
2. Second step is ‘Formulating Probing Questions’ that pique your interest and activate whatever ‘prior knowledge’ you have about the topic.
3. Third step involves looking at the topic of study from ‘Multiple Perspectives’.
4. Fourth step is formulation of ‘Instructive Analogies’ and ‘Synthesis of Knowledge’ that helps update your mental model.
5. Fifth step is ‘Multiple Representations’ to depict your updated mental model.
6. Sixth step is ‘Multiple Performances of Understanding’ to assess comprehension.

Let’s look at these steps a little more closely -

1. Building Your Curiosity

The a-ha odyssey begins with curiosity. Once your curiosity gets fired up, it secures the cognitive commitment needed to undertake a learning adventure. Curiosity arouses your interest. The deeper your interest, the more likely you are to stick with it, despite the frustrations and setbacks that accompany all learning journeys.

2. Formulating Probing Questions

When you formulate compelling questions that you are curious to find answers to, it not only builds your curiosity – thus strengthening your resolve to learn – but also activates whatever ‘prior knowledge’ you have about the topic of study. This is essential because comprehension is nothing but the bridge between what you already know and the new thing you want to learn.

Here, you must be aware of one thing – problems in understanding can happen because your current mental model or the prior knowledge that you have about the topic is flawed. You must be conscious of this and remain mentally flexible to address this issue, if needed.

3. Multiple Perspectives

After you have formulated insightful questions, look at the topic from multiple perspectives. For example, look at a book from both the protagonist’s and the antagonist’s perspective, or consider the life situation of a mathematician when he postulated a new theory instead of just mugging up the final formula he gave. This will give you a deeper appreciation of the larger context and the nuances of the topic of study, which will help in conceptual comprehension.

4. Instructive Analogies & Knowledge Synthesis

Analogies help you go from the known to the unknown. They invoke your prior knowledge about the topic and help build connections from something you know to the new topic. For example, while studying the circulatory system, you can draw an analogy with a cops & bad guys movie, assigning character roles to red and white blood cells, platelets and organs involved. Once you have formulated instructive analogies, you should then synthesise your knowledge by making connections across disciplines. Say, you learn about Venn diagrams in math but instead of making another Venn diagram in the math exam (which you will anyway and all it indicates is your ability to regurgitate), you should create a Venn diagram in English to compare and contrast two books or two authors – how they are similar and how they are different.

5. Multiple Representations

The next step in the journey to deep comprehension involves representing the new knowledge in multiple ways. For example, you could make flowcharts, concept diagrams, or mind maps to represent what you have learnt and understood.

6. Multiple Performances of Understanding

Finally, look for opportunities to demonstrate your understanding, preferably in a real-world context. You could ask yourself how something you have learnt in science can be practically useful in the local environment where you live. If real-world application is not possible, demonstrate your understanding in other ways like participating in discussions and debates, writing a blog, creating podcasts or making animation, videos or apps. Creating an e-portfolio based on what you have learnt not only deepens your understanding of the topic, it also serves as evidence of your comprehension. It can become another form of assessment.

Nobel laureate Sydney Brenner was of the view that nobody in science, especially students, read anymore. They only Xerox things. He once quipped to a student, “Have you tried neuroxing papers? It's a very easy and cheap process. You hold the page in front of your eyes and you let it go through there into the brain. It's much better than Xeroxing.”

Once you understand the anatomy of the a-ha moment you can neurox any form of knowledge!

The Positive Spiral of Education

As an independent educator, I often conduct workshops at schools and this gives me a chance to interact with teachers. Couple that with all the various parent-teacher meetings I have attended as a parent to a 14-year-old, and it means I have observations on the different kinds of teachers that people the education world. I find that they can broadly be classified into three types:

• Maximum Markus: Some who have a very narrow definition of schooling and are ‘grade’ focused – do this and you will get better marks.
• Subjectus Superior: Some who think end game of education is social success only and hence are very ‘exam’ focused (X subject will be a good choice for GCSE/A-level and will help the student get admission into a good college).
• Expecto Passionum: Fortunately, most of my son’s teachers focus on ‘how to build his interest in their subject’.

I say fortunately because in many schools I feel we have created a vicious circle – first we (parents, teachers, society) prioritise ‘learning to earn’, then we work backwards and say this requires ‘admission to a good college’, which in turn means getting 'good grades’ in school and hence we emphasise ‘gaming the system’ to get good grades.

Gaming the system includes doing things like practicing the past 10 year exam papers, learning by rote and regurgitating what you have memorised, without any deep comprehension and in a manner that gets you good grades in exams.

A good school is one that facilitates and empowers students to discover their area of interest and then fosters a life long curiosity and ability to master and shine in that domain. Interest in a domain secures cognitive commitment to stay the course despite setbacks and frustrations and consequent specialisation in a domain leads to the student becoming a musician, dancer, artist, geographer, historian, scientist, mathematician or whatever maestros will be called in future disciplines.

A virtuous circle of education would first foster a ‘yearning to learn’ (against the current emphasis on ‘learning to earn’) and for this a good school should provide,

• A rich learning environment (offer many different disciplines/subjects, clubs, sports and other extra-curricular activities…) so that students can explore and discover their element.
• Teachers should don the role of the guide and mentor, so as to aid students with becoming self-directed and self-determined learners.
• School management should reward such teachers and policy makers should encourage and support such schools.

And we parents should appreciate that focus of schools on cultivating lifelong yearning to learn coupled with making students capable of taking ownership of their learning is what is in the long-term interest of our children. Especially when the rate of change is as fast as it is in the 21st century and children who will succeed in future will be those who can figure out for themselves:

• What is worth learning?
• How will I learn it?
• How will I know I have learnt it well?
• How will I become better at learning new things and keep reinventing myself?

The Promise of Curiosity: A 21st Century Superhero

Long gone are the days when curiosity killed the cat. Meant for a time when asking questions – being curious – was considered undesirable, since you were only supposed to “receive” information being meted out to you in classrooms mostly, today it is curiosity that’ll take the learner a long way. We could revise that proverb to say well, ‘Be curious and you’ll be one cool cat!’

If you think of a 21st century superhero – someone who’s bound to shine in this age – you’ll find curiosity as an essential super power. Mastery over using intelligent machines, empathetic collaboration, ability to thrive in diversity, original thinking, innovative problem solving, judicious decision making and the ability to inspire and lead would be some other traits of the 21st century superhero, but curiosity would be the lynchpin superpower.

Because that’s where it all starts.

Curiosity is the intense desire to know. An innate impulse to fill in that knowledge gap that itches your brain. We’re all born curious. As babies we are diligent investigators examining and making sense of our world using all four limbs and all five senses - sight, sound, touch, smell and taste. As toddlers we are ever exploring and never bored!

Ian Leslie author of Curious: The Desire to Know and Why Your Future Depends on It, differentiates between ‘diversive’ and ‘epistemic’ curiosity. Diversive curiosity is attraction to novelty. It is an impulsive drive to find quick answers. Think of it as scanning Google search results and skimming the first couple of links to satiate that mental itch. ‘Epistemic’ curiosity on the other hand is a focused, effortful, self-disciplined and conscious exploration for building knowledge and making connections to deepen understanding. Think of it as that initial itch that urges you to find, question, explore, and, if you’re a true seeker, to turn that into a desire that digs deeper.

The 21st century superhero will need both types of curiosity because she has to be a ‘jack of many and master of one’. At IBM they describe this as ‘T’ - the ideal shape of an information age worker. The horizontal line of the ‘T’ depicts the ‘breadth’ of knowledge and the vertical line depicts the ‘depth’ of expertise.

This ‘T’ shape is essential because lucrative future jobs will involve solving non-routine, non-rule-based, complex problems (since routine, rule-based problems that can be reduced to an algorithm will be solved more efficiently by intelligent machines in the near future – for more on this read our earlier article ‘AI Versus Me’ - http://timelesslifeskills.co.uk/?p=4066). Solving such “wicked problems” – problems that are difficult to solve because of complex interdependencies - will require profound expertise in a domain, which in turn will require a deliberate approach to fulfilling the desire to know - the vertical line in the ‘T’. But creativity and innovation happen at the cusp of different domains, usually achieved by bringing together a multidisciplinary team of experts. To be an effective contributor in such teams our superhero will need sufficient knowledge of these other domains to meaningfully engage with experts in different fields. This is the horizontal line in the ‘T’.

Super news for our superhero is that today there is plethora of easily accessible knowledge resources, many available for free, to satiate all types of curiosities. Open Educational Resources (OERs) like MOOCs, talks by experts, Google Scholar, podcasts, websites, blogs, ebooks, apps, serious games and plenty of other resources are available at the tap of a button. Our superhero needs to work on becoming a master curator of these! It’s like curating your own curiosity!

She can also take inspiration from Academy Award winning Hollywood producer and author of the book A Curious Mind: The Secret to a Bigger Life, Brian Grazer, and plan deliberate ‘curiosity conversations’. Grazer, because he was dyslexic and couldn’t read in his early years of elementary school, formed the habit of asking questions to learn. For the last three decades, on average once every two weeks, he has made sure he has hour-long conversations with experts in domains outside movies and television business so that he can broaden his horizon.

Curiosity is not a genetic trait. It is a learned skill that can be cultivated. From a young age, to become a future superhero, our protagonist will need to become an intrepid explorer who boldly goes where no one has gone before! As a student, her curiosity will fuel her learning and, to paraphrase British researcher Sophie von Stumm, her educational success will depend on her hungry mind.

The first step our superhero will need to take in any curiosity adventure will be formulating probing questions answers to which will give her a fresh insight, a new way to connect the dots. Story goes Isidore Rabi, winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics, when asked how he became a scientist, replied, “My mother made me a scientist without ever knowing it. Every other child would come back from school and be asked, ‘What did you learn in school today?’ But my mother used to say, ‘Izzy, did you ask a good question today?’ That made the difference.”

In formulating insightful questions our superhero could take a cue from Rudyard Kipling who wrote – “I keep six honest serving-men, (they taught me all I knew); Their names are What and Why and When, And How and Where and Who.”

Being curious, hence, holds a big promise – curiosity is essential for employability and entrepreneurship in the 21st century, curiosity eventually leads to sense making and fulfilling your curiosity is an innately satisfying experience.

The Networked Learner

A common joke these days goes something like this –

Child: “Dad, what is the meaning of the word omniverse?”

Dad: “Umm, I don’t know."

Child: “That’s ok. Can you ask Google?”

We are living in an era that is often called the age of information explosion – which makes it impossible to know everything. But what does it mean, and what are its implications for the learners of today?

When knowledge explodes, there is a big gap between ‘what you know’ and ‘what you need to know’. During formal education, since you are tested only on what you have learnt, there is a clear boundary for what you need to know. However, in a work environment, the gap between what you know and what you need to know becomes much more amplified because you are supposed to know all that is needed to make good choices and wise decisions, but you know only that much. Plus, you need all this knowledge ‘just-in-time’. So how do you fill this knowledge gap, just-in- time?

You do it by becoming a networked learner. 

According to corporate anthropologist, Karen Stephenson, “Experience has long been considered the best teacher of knowledge. Since we cannot experience everything, other people’s experiences, and hence other people, become the surrogate for knowledge. ‘I store my knowledge in my friends’ is an axiom for collecting knowledge through collecting people.”

One example that helps illustrate this better is the act of reading books. When we read about adventures that characters in books are taking on, we, as readers, “experience” them too, vicariously. In the process, we gain knowledge – about experiences and journeys that were hitherto unknown to us.

Today, we have social media to enhance this further. We can create a Personal Learning Environment (PLE) where there are fellow learners with similar learning interests, who can become our co-explorers and co-creators. We can look for and find mentors who can guide and motivate the group, have content curated by all the participants and conversations that bring coherence and deeper comprehension.

According to researcher and writer George Siemens, learning needs a coherent narrative, but technologies like the Internet fragment knowledge. ‘Connectedness’ i.e. how one learner connects with other learners or experts helps in creating coherence in the fragmented learning space. Tools like Wikis, Blogs and eLearning Platforms hence become tools for sense making because they are effective information interrogation systems and provide a social overlay to otherwise fragmented information.

Siemens writes, “Learning (defined as actionable knowledge) can reside outside of ourselves (within an organisation or a database), is focused on connecting specialised information sets, and the connections that enable us to learn are more important than our current state of knowing.”

A PLE comprising of a network of fellow learners and experts also helps us curate appropriate learning resources and knit them together in a coherent fashion which in-turn further facilitates deeper sense making.

Today when knowledge has become a commodity, it is deep comprehension, the ability to synthesise information, find the patterns and cultivate creativity that are of value. We need hindsight (ability to analyse information), insight (ability to synthesise information and find patterns) and foresight (ability to draw novel inferences).

To shine in the 21st century we need to work towards becoming a Networked Learner – one who is capable of creating a Personal Learning Environment and is comfortable becoming part of a tribe of learners with similar interests, who together fill a knowledge gap, in order to solve a problem or design a novel solution.

The idea then is to become your own Google, and crawl through the intricacies of the two big webs that matter the most today - the worldwide web, your own network - like the Google spider, and to be able to interweave them to your personal learning advantage.

This Deepawali Light the Lamps Within… in the Right Sequence!

In his book Surely You’re Joking, Mr Feynman, physicist and Nobel laureate Richard Feynman narrates this story – when he was around 12 years old Feynman got a reputation for fixing radios. Once he was asked to fix a radio that made an ear piercing noise when it was switched on and it took a few minutes before the music started playing. The initial noise ruined the listening experience.

Feynman thought for a while and figured that the valves in the radio were heating up in the wrong order. The amplifier valve was heating first and started making the crackling noise because the tuner valve had not heated yet and the static was getting amplified. Feynman swapped the valves such that now the tuner valve heated first and by the time the amplifier valve heated up the radio was properly tuned into a channel. When switched on there was no harsh sound, instead the radio was silent for a few minutes and then played melodious music.

Like the valves in the radio, we humans have three lamps or three types of fires within us - To Have, To Do and To Be. The ‘to have’ or the fire of desire leads us to want the next bigger car or the next bigger house. The ‘to do’ fire spurs us to action and the ‘to be’ fire guides self-introspection and leads to deeper self-awareness.

Usually our ‘to have’ fire lights up first and makes us want more and more material possessions. This fire of desire then leads to the lighting of the ‘to do’ fire and motivates us to act to acquire the possessions we desire. We tell ourselves that once we have adequate wealth we will then light our ‘to be’ fire.

We need to pause and consider if this sequence of lamps lighting up – to have, to do and to be, is it leading to a joyful life in the long run, or is it leading to an anxious, stressful experience like the noisy radio?

Should we not shape our life such that our ‘to be’ lamp lights up first and we become more self-aware, more self-regulated and develop an internal locus of control? Would this not allow us to make more conscious and better choices? Choices that will then guide our ‘to have’ lamp – to have without becoming compulsive, to have while letting others and future generations have too, to have without compromising the larger good.

This will then fire up the ‘to do’ lamp and lead to action that is focused at pursuing thought-through choices that allow us to flourish, without harming other inhabitants of the planet or our environment.

This Diwali light the lamps within… in the right sequence.

The Evolving ‘R’ - Story of Education in the West (Part-3)

We are discussing the history of education in the West. In Part-1, we looked at Greek and Roman education, influence of Christianity that led to the formation of Church schools, Monasteries, Grammar schools and later to formation of Universities. The 3Rs of education at this point were – Reading, ‘Riting and Religion. In Part-2, we looked at the influence of growing trade that gave impetus to Apprenticeship and also added the fourth R - ‘Rithmetic to the education mix. Renaissance and Humanists propagated the idea of ‘education for all’ and Age of Enlightenment then gave rise to the scientific method. Reason became the 5^th R of education.

The bohemian spirit of Renaissance went up in steam… literally! The Industrial Revolution took a dictator-like grip on education, demanding schools produce large numbers of compliant, inter-changeable cogs for the industrial behemoth. Education entered Modern Times, and much like Charlie Chaplin, students were force-fed and accelerated along an assembly line of standardised curriculum.

To train large number of people in new skills, experiments such as the Monitorial system were tried. A teacher standardised the instruction, trained a few students – called monitors - and these monitors then imparted the same standardised instruction to their fellow students. This way, one teacher could teach hundreds of students while keeping the cost of imparting education low. In 1892, the American National Education Association appointed a Committee of Ten. The Committee recommended 12 years of compulsory education and its standardisation, which meant adopting a one-size-fits-all curriculum and pedagogy.

Denizens of the agrarian economy thought of time in months – plough the land, sow the seeds, then harvest. But the ideal worker for the factories required changing this mindset to ‘work in 8 hours shift, with short breaks in between’. So they invented school bells. Study one subject for 40 minutes, then switch to another subject. Take a short lunch break and get back to class again. Sit in rows, follow rules and routine (timetable) and be obedient. Sound familiar?

The World Wars that needed very large number of soldiers and nurses and the post-war immigration further stoked the need for mass standardised education. In America, to sort students quickly and efficiently, a professor in Kansas invented the multiple-choice test, which he described as ‘a test of low order thinking’. This format has become the most used assessment format in education today and has made us outstanding at mass testing lower order thinking, which in turn means that now lower order thinking is all we prepare students for!

Though on the positive side, after the Wars schooling was extended and school-leaving age raised. Child labour was abolished. War created disabilities raised awareness about special education. In England, The 1918 Education Act, made schooling for all disabled children compulsory.

Pavlov’s experiment with salivating dogs and Skinner's operant conditioning chamber led to the adoption of the carrot & stick approach to motivating learners. Rote memorisation and regurgitation of this learnt-by-heart information in exams, strict discipline imposed through fear and emphasis on conformity became the norm of education. Think Pink Floyd’s anthemic “We don't need no education. We don't need no thought control.”

By and large this post Industrial Revolution education system is what we are still following. Students get admitted to a particular grade or class based on their age, not based on their ability. All students in a particular class then learn the same curriculum in exactly the same way and face standardised assessment. Some thrive in this system. Many fail. It could be argued that education today does not even meet the age-old objective of ‘Know Thyself’ thus making joyful living elusive to most.

At Timeless Lifeskills, we believe this need not be the case.

Seven billion human population that will soon become nine billion (mostly frustrated or unhappy), growing inter-dependence that leads to local problems cascading globally - be it a financial crisis or a viral epidemic, poverty and widening gap between the haves and the have-nots, diseases, climate change, terrorism, wars, advances in technology and other such factors require not a redefined set of ‘R’s but a paradigmatic shift in education.

We need to shift from the narrow ‘R’s based education to an education system that addresses all aspects of life. The 4Ds of education should look at success in all four dimensions of life – social success, physiological success, psychological success and existential success (a life of exuberance, joy and bliss). This 21^st century education should also be personalised – suiting the ability and disposition of each learner, highly affordable and universal. From being a privilege, such education should become a life long right, for all.

Only then can we hope for this story to meet a conclusion we can all benefit from.

The Evolving ‘R’ - Story of Education in the West (Part-2)

We are tracing the story of education in the West and in Part-1 we considered how the disciplinary Spartans, philosophical Athenians, pragmatic Romans and zealous Christians envisioned an educated person.

The Christian Cathedral schools and Monastic schools grew in numbers and in importance. These schools were effectively run by one teacher, and as some teachers became famous, their fan following grew. As it happens when local television personalities become celebrities and move to Hollywood, rising tension between the groupies/students of two teachers and skirmishes with locals made some famous teachers move to bigger cities like Bologna, Rome and Paris.

Meanwhile, multiplying MCCXXXIV with MMCCCXLV became much simpler because in Indo-Arabic numerals this simply meant multiplying 1,234 with 2,345, and instead of a ‘hungry tailor looking for an undraped farmer’, the ka-ching of money replaced barter and smoothened trade. As trade picked up, Merchant Guilds were formed, wherein apprenticeship was the preferred form of education and training. This meant that by the end of 12th century, education was no longer limited to monks, clergy and nobility. Traders and merchants emerged as the new educated class.

To the existing 3Rs of education - Reading, ‘Riting and Religion, a 4th R got added – that of ‘Rithmetic.

Celebrity teachers who attracted larger number of students also became a magnet for other teachers. These other teachers ‘set up their chairs’ in close proximity to the star teachers. These places came to be known as studia publica or studia generalia – i.e. a generally recognised place of study. More teachers attracted more students and a micro eco-system got created that attracted other people to service these students and teachers like administrators, librarians, scribes, lower officials who prepared the parchment and others. This congregation of teachers, students and support staff led to the formation of universities, those of Bologna, Sorbonne, Oxford and Cambridge, among the most famous ones.

The plot thickened during the Renaissance – an era that was marked by its questioning of authority and emphasis on the individual. Protestants wanted everyone to be able to read the Bible and humanists wanted all citizens to be able to read and write so that they could become effective participants in the civic life of their community. To the Trivium curriculum, the humanists added history, poetry and moral philosophy and called it studia humanitatis, what today has been replaced by the more banal-sounding humanities.

The invention of the printing press was another catalyst here - it led to the Bible becoming affordable and available in the vernacular. This further stimulated the desire to read and learn.Many of the modern trends in education are not so modern. Martin Luther’s ‘Sermon on Indulgences and Grace’ written in pamphlet form, for instance, is arguably the first example of ‘bite-size learning’ and its distribution by travellers who carried it to other towns where local printers re-printed the pamphlet, probably the first use of ‘social-media in education’ – both terms we hear a lot these days

Renaissance led to the Age of Enlightenment whose educational heroes were John Locke and Rousseau - both advocated the importance of shaping young minds early. Prussia, because of a decree issued by Frederick the Great in 1763, became one of the first countries to offer a tax-funded, compulsory primary education for boys and girls. French and American Revolutions added impetus to the need for providing universal education. By late Enlightenment, education was no longer limited to a few, instead for the first time, in theory at least, the spirit was ‘education for all’.

The Age of Enlightenment placed emphasis on reason. This led to the emergence of the Scientific Method, which meant arriving at conclusions not on the basis of belief or religious faith, but by formulating hypothesis, conducting experiments and using empirical observation.

A 5th R of Reason was added to the existing 4Rs of education.

Coming up tomorrow: Did you know that the school bell was introduced to discipline students, in preparation for their futures as “compliant cogs” in an industry-driven world? We look at the genesis of such practices and why they have become anachronistic today.

The Evolving ‘R’ - Story of Education in the West (Part-1)

The answer to the question “How ‘R’ you?” over the centuries has come to epitomise who is considered an educated person. ‘R’ is the defining letter when it comes to understanding the evolving story of western education. ‘R’ stands for Reading, of course, but the ‘R’ of ‘Riting and ‘Rithmetic follow not too far behind. How they got added and how ‘R’ was redefined from Rhetoric to Religion to Reason, reveals the changing emphasis of education, which is what we’re talking about here.

We begin the story with the Spartans for whom an unyielding Resolve was the essence of education.

The Spartans considered the art of fighting, courage and valour as the end game of education for their lads (not the girls mind you, they had to learn sewing, knitting and cooking from their mums and nurses). If you have seen the movie 300, you know this. The setting is the Battle of Thermopylae fought in 480 B.C. where King Leonidas of Sparta, with just 300 soldiers, shows the Persian army a thing or two about daring gallantry and superhuman grit. That was what Spartan education aspired to impart. Rowdiness and bullying would have probably got you an A+ in a Spartan school!

After defeating the Persians in the Battle of Marathon earlier in 390 B.C., their neighbours, the Athenians, had become a little wussy. Their sense of duty to the State had got diluted and to them, the sign of an educated man (again not the women and men only if they could claim the right antecedents) was a person literate in grammar – elegance of language, and in rhetoric – the fine art of argumentation. Their teachers, called Sophists, through discussions and debates, trained Athenian students to reason effectively on both sides of an argument. Sophists would make a killing today tutoring politicians!

Socrates was the rockstar teacher and he added the ‘art of living a good life’ to the Athenian curriculum. Man became the measure of all things, emphasis was on correct individual thinking and 'Know Thyself' became the key mantra of good education. Socrates’ superstar student, Plato, founded the ‘Academy’ in 386 B.C. that became the model for famous schools like ‘Lyceum' started in 335 B.C. by Plato’s protégé Aristotle (same chap who was tutor to Alexander the Great) and the school of the Epicureans, founded by Epicurus in 306 B.C., among others.

Then the Romans came along. They were doers, not really into philosophical ruminations. They believed great education meant excellence in agriculture and the ability to engineer fine aqueducts so that rich Roman citizens could have luxurious baths in the comfort of their homes. They built an Empire and gave it law and order. When the Romans clashed with the Greeks, this alchemy led to the philosophical, intellectual and aesthetic education cultivated by the Greeks, being enjoyed and promoted through much of the vast Roman Empire.

The next big change in education came with the rise of Christianity and the zeal with which its believers wanted to influence (some would say indoctrinate) those with a more pagan bent of mind. The spread of churches meant that a greater number of trained clergy was required and a rudimentary form of school called Episcopal schools emerged to meet this growing demand. In 529, St Benedict, a wealthy Roman, tired of corruption in his city, founded the monastery of Monte Cassino, with a strict curriculum that included living a life of poverty, chastity, obedience, labour and religious devotion. (Read: No fun!) This idea caught on and thousands of monasteries were established. Among other things, the monks diligently copied famous classical texts like writings of Plato and Aristotle, thus preserving this knowledge for posterity. Good thing there were no copyright lawyers then!

Christians loved their choir music and Song schools emerged to impart training. This was a welcome move for the monks who could now focus on advancing knowledge in the seven liberal arts – the Trivium: grammar, rhetoric and dialectic (logic), and the Quadravium: arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music. They created advance schools called Grammar schools. The rising demand for church schools meant more teachers were needed and the obvious way to meet this demand was to train more assistant teachers, under the supervision of the diocese. And in 1150, the License Raj in teaching emerged as a License to Teach was required to join a church school.

The 3Rs of education at this time were Reading, ‘Riting and Religion.

Coming up tomorrow: Ever tried multiplying MCCXXXIV with MMCCCXLV? No? Well, that's because of how this story evolves. Watch this space. (Oh, and that's 1,234 times 2,345).