Enabling Employees to Own Rather than Rent Homes through a Time-Shared Co-op Housing Method
Abstract:
Currently Indian ministers, MPs, MLAs, and other government officials and employees occupy spacious homes on rental from the government. In most cases, these homes are situated on significant land, while the country is under pressure for land. After working for government for thirty to forty years and owing to the fact that they live in rental homes throughout their career, government employees have no equity built in homes. When they retire, they move into flats that are much smaller than the homes in which they lived. A method is suggested to address these problems. Through a Public Private Partnership, government can provide its land for private companies to develop multistoried homes, which may be owned by government employees on a time-shared co-op basis. The result from this method will be that a) government does not have to invest in homes for employees, b) private real estate developers get a good return on their investment, and c) employees build equity through home ownership and will save for a home by the time they retire. This paper explains the method.
Goal:
To enable government employees to own equity in their homes instead of merely paying rent during their employment.
Concept:
By developing a method operated by a Public Private Partnership, it is possible to enable employees to own homes.
Current Situation:
Currently, governments and some private companies provide homes for employees and on a rental basis. In this traditional method, employees rent homes in campuses owned by the employer (either the government or a private company). The positive aspect is that the employees get accommodation. In many cases, such accommodation is also subsidized by the employer. But this method has drawbacks as described below.
Problems:
a) After some thirty to forty years of working for the government or company and paying rent, employees accrue no equity at all in the home. After retirement they have to walk out and look for a home to buy or rent.
b) The government or the employing company finances for the building and maintenance of the homes for the employees, which is an unnecessary financial and operational burden on them. In the case of the government, the investment funds come from tax payer funds and it is an unneeded burden on the taxpayers. In the case of private businesses, such investment in housing is not the main business of the company and it would have been better for them to utilize such finances on their core business areas.
In the following sections, we will focus on Government housing only. But, the situation and problems are equally applicable to private businesses that provide such housing to employees.
Other Observations:
a) Employees are allotted houses that are highly subsidized. In case of higher level officials, bungalows with considerable land are allotted. It is generally observed that upon retirement, such officials cannot afford such bungalows and actually buy or rent much smaller apartments with a little or no private yards.
b) Government is forced to procure a larger acreage of land to accommodate the main project as well as lavish or spacious housing for the employees.
c) Government has to invest funds for the housing in addition to the main project.
d) Government has to have staff not only to run the main project but also to manage and operate the housing complex or campus.
e) Since the employees do not own the home, the care received by the homes is insubstantial. Thus the homes deteriorate faster than those occupied by owners. The property receives less (tender loving) care as it is managed by neither owners nor renters but by a third party, namely the managers.
Examples:
Here are a few examples of government organizations that provide such housing.
• Parliament and Legislative Assemblies
• Government Departments (Administration, PWD, Electricity Departments, Irrigation Department, etc.)
• Justices and Courts
• Educational Institutions (IIT, IISc, Universities, Polytechnics)
• Research Laboratories
• Police
• Military
• Railways
• Hospitals
Key Parameters:
As we attempt to address this problem, it is important to identify some key parameters in this problem.
• Ownership vs rental
• Mortgage payment vs rent
• Private finance vs public finance
• Owner management of O&M vs administrators
• Affordable homes vs traditional habit
• Owning a specific home versus co-op homes
• Ownership on a (modified form of) time-share basis
Approach to a Solution:
The approach to the solution is explained here.
Government should get out of ownership of the homes and the management of operation and maintenance (O&M) of the campus.
Private companies should be in the financing of the home building and campus development.
Employees own homes on a mortgage basis. (Explained below under Key Mechanisms.)
Real estate management companies should be recruited by home owners to manage maintenance functions.
Key Issues:
Several key issues are to be recognized in this context.
• Employees are not likely to be employed for the full thirty or forty years of their careers in one location and with one employer. This is especially a characteristic of modern employment.
• As employees get promoted and as they move to higher positions with better salaries, they may want to move to larger sized homes.
• As family size increases, employees may want to move to a larger sized home and at a later stage in life, as employees become empty nesters, they may want to downsize.
• Some employees may move to private industry from government or vice versa.
• Some employees may not wish to own homes or may not be able to own homes.
• Other situations as they arise.
Key Mechanisms:
At this point we introduce a couple of concepts.
a) Time-sharing of homes is a key mechanism that addresses the key issues pointed out above.
In general, a timeshare is a vacation property with shared ownership. A management company handles the construction and sells shares, which entitle buyers to spend a specified amount of time (usually one week per year) at the property. (By extending the concept to private industrial companies and Retiree groups, flexibility to accommodate the expected mobility of the next generation workforce can be achieved.)
We need to realize that it need not apply to vacation homes only. The key point in time-sharing is that several people (and entities) own a property. It need not apply to a specific home but can be extended to a property in a complex with several properties or to a home in any one of the complexes owned by a cooperative group of owners.
b) When you buy into a co-op, you become a shareholder in a corporation that owns the property. As a shareholder, you are entitled to exclusive use of a housing unit in the property. [2]
c) Now, by combining the concepts of timeshare and co-op, we get very interesting and beneficial features described below.
An employee can own shares in a co-op and be allotted a home as if it belonged to him at the location where he is employed. The co-op can be regional or national in character. Then, if the employee moves to another location through transfer or change of job from one government agency to another, or even to a private company, the employee can be allotted a unit in the new location.
When an employee wishes to upgrade or downgrade the accommodation he/she likes to live in, he/she can upgrade or downgrade his/her ownership level in the co-op (subject to availability of desired home units).
Value of housing units at each location would differ. This should be treated in a manner similar to selling a home at one place and buying another home in a different location. The adjustment may be carried out in the owner’s equity and new mortgage payments.
Ultimately, when the employee retires he/she can seek a housing unit in a retirement co-op or cash.
All the housing units in the co-op are maintained by a real estate management company with the co-op owners at a location overseeing the local mangers.
The Government may own some units for employees (who do not want to own housing units) and others visiting the local organizations for short or long periods of time.
There should be provisions for buying out some housing units and for renting some units.
It is possible that the government may restrict who may live in certain locations for special reasons of their own.
It is possible that some units may become unoccupied and such an eventuality may be accounted for in the scheme.
Just as in any co-op of timeshared unit complex, there will be home owners associations that make rules of conduct. In the case of the instant scheme, there should be national rules of conduct and additional local rules. In general, such rules will be not much different from what the government imposes on employee renters currently.
The government continues to own the land. It may charge a reasonable fee as a lease fee or it may waive such fee as an incentive to employees to join the scheme. Since land is a major cost in real estate in most locations (especially cities and towns), if government (lease) charges are small, employees can find mortgage costs reasonable.
It is a good idea to explore other potential issues and address them as the scheme is put together.
Main Thrust:
Government should seriously and sincerely consider a Public Private Partnership (PPP) to develop a new method of housing employees as described above. It should invite private real estate developers and investors to consider such program(s).
Currently, government has significant quantities of land used in various government housing complexes and campuses. By inviting the private developers to build multistoried buildings, on the PPP model, instead of single story bungalows and homes, a greater number of homes can be built and save land. Depending on the local circumstances, such land can either be used to expand government facilities, or be released for private companies (on sale or lease).
In new government projects, government will need to acquire less land than is otherwise needed with the suggested model.
Benefits:
The method benefits the participants in the following manner.
a) Employees become “home owners” right from the beginning. After thirty to forty years of employment, they may own a home unit fully. They may transfer such ownership to a retirement area or sell it and move to a location of interest with the cash in hand. They may also bequeath their homes to their descendants or to private charities.
b) As home owners, employees can get tax advantages, which are not available to them as renters.
c) Just as the government currently deducts the house rent from the employees’ monthly earnings they can deduct the mortgage payments (principal, interest, taxes, insurance, and maintenance fees) and pass them on to the Developers.
d) Government benefits from getting out of financing, owning, and managing homes, which is really not a government function. This method would reduce the burden of financing such home development from the government and hence from the taxpayers.
e) Real estate developers get a large slice of housing development and management business. As stated earlier, by enticing private industrial businesses also to join this model program, that slice of business becomes even greater.
f) Currently, real estate developers find it difficult to get land for their housing development projects. With this method, there is a ready source of government owned land available for such a project.
g) The developers are assured of a market as well as a guarantee of mortgage amount collection on a timely basis.
h) By converting the older housing complexes to the newer suggested complexes, smart communities can be readily developed. Valuable land will be released for other beneficial uses.
i) The scale of development will provide benefits of economies of scale. Projects can also be completed on a fast pace. It does not mean that local architectural features and design requirements are ignored.
j) As stated in an earlier section, the model can be transferred to the private sector housing. And, by gaining such experience and expertise, the Developers can transition the model to export markets and benefit the other developing countries and themselves.
Market:
Currently the Central and State governments own considerable home complexes with significant real estate and that assures a significant market.
Initially, the focus can be on the Central government housing in Delhi as the NITI Aayog and the Minister Gadkari have suggested taller buildings as opposed to bungalows. [3, 4] If the ministers and MP’s lead the way, other government officials and employees will follow suit and the taxpayer is highly likely to appreciate their gesture. It also allows these ministers and officials to build equity as they work in Delhi and carry the proceeds with them when they retire and return home.
Indian Railways can be the next target for the model. The Railway minister, Shri Prabhu has been talking about better uses for Railway land and the Railways have millions of employees and provide a variety of housing for them. [5] By reducing land usage for housing complexes for employees and by allowing private developers to build office, and other housing complexes adjacent to rail stations, Indian Railways can spur significant developments in rural towns and villages owing to such rail connectivity.
Business Plan:
The next step is the development of a Business Plan to evaluate technical feasibility, economic viability, and acceptability of the concept and method by all the parties that needed to support and participate in the venture.
Promoting the Concept:
In order to promote the concept, we have to estimate and quantify the benefits to the beneficiaries – Government, Employees, Developers, and Investors.
Government should be convinced how much land they would save and the operation and maintenance cost savings they would gain from the implementation of the scheme to various levels. It allows the government to manage its business and not become a real estate management company.
Estimates should show employees their mortgage deductions as opposed to the rents they generally pay and the equity they build in their homes and the appreciation of their housing unit values over time.
Estimates of return on investment (ROI) and management profits show the gains that investors and developers would get from the scheme. The cash flow is guaranteed as the government (as the paymaster) deducts payments and remits them to the management company.
This concept can be applicable to industrial townships also; private businesses can invest their money in their specific businesses. With experience in such a scheme, developers can expand their market to international arena and gain from a global market.
Recommendation:
Real estate development companies and investors, Indian Government, and employee unions should seriously consider, evaluate, and embrace this concept and ask for the implementation of the program to realize the benefits described.
References and Bibliography:
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeshare
[2] http://www.investopedia.com/articles/pf/08/housingco-op.asp?lgl=lg-mt
[3] http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/wealth/personal-finance-news/go-in-for-taller-building-in-urban-areas-panagariya/articleshow/58397714.cms
[4] http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/why-not-house-mantris-in-flats-instead-of-bungalows/articleshow/58275429.cms
[5] http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/indian-railways-mull-new-policy-on-station-development-says-suresh-prabhu/article7289291.ece?homepage=true
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Monday, October 23, 2017
Education Level One (Pre-KG to Elementary Level)
Education – Level 1
Education or learning starts from the time of birth. Initial learning may be up to nature. A time comes when parents and society have to take responsibility for a child’s learning process through education.
Parents, relatives, and friends begin to admire the physical and mental features of a child. That is good. But, as children grow, their physical and mental faculties grow based on the environment in which they were brought up. A child’s interests, attitudes, and behaviors are molded by the environment.
Rich people and middle class people decorate the room in which a child is brought up with the hope that it influences the child’s character as he/she grows. They buy toys, games, and musical instruments that engage, calm, and educate the child. The middle class in the West leave the children in front of the Sesame Street program. There was a time when American children started their day with Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood. All that is fine, perhaps! But, a time comes when the real education starts. The nursery schools and Kindergartens in the West take care of it. They are supplemented by the Sunday schools. They are OK for the West – at least so for their upper and middle class children.
India needs its own system owing to its unique characteristics. I am making an attempt to suggest a framework to develop a system suitable for India with its diversity in many areas.
What do we mean when we say that a baby or a child is growing? It is the growth of the physical body as well as the mental faculties and attitudes. Those muscles in the body that are exercised most are the ones that grow best. This is evident when we see one child is able to run fast while another child can digest a lot. Yet another child can begin to sing or read small books. Some children pick up slang fast and pick up fights frequently for no cause. This should tell us that we should get the child to exercise her physical and mental muscles gently, regularly, and progressively in the proper direction.
A child’s natural urge to explore self and surroundings would suggest what she likes to learn and how she likes to progress. These trends should guide us in how we structure the teaching and learning system at Level 1- the early childhood.
Figure 1 shows the natural progression of the space (geographical entities) that a child and a person should explore over time. A child is naturally interested in self. It is not my intention to say that a child tries to learn about herself. A child responds to impacts on herself. She cries when cold air or hot air impinges on her. She gets startled when a sudden loud sound hits her ears. She likes to eat certain items and dislikes certain others. She laughs when tickled. In a short while, she may even respond to her name. She starts to develop tastes for certain toys and even becomes used to them (addiction comes later on!). At a young age, a child learns ownership as she likes her own bed or own utensils. At a certain age, she knows if one out of a certain number of familiar toys is removed from her sight. That is the beginning of her talents in mathematics, economics (ownership), and defense of property.
Figure 1: Space (Geographical) progression natural for a growing child.
As the child grows, she starts to recognize mother, father, and the family, in general. As the child goes about her surroundings, she begins to recognize her home, street, and village. This learning process should instruct us to enable the child to move progressively with age to learn about expanded spaces as shown in Figure 1. Thus, teaching them about global things before local things is unnatural. It is meaningless to sing the nursery rhyme, “Pussy cat, Pussy cat, where have you been, I have been to London to look at the Queen.”
Figure 2 shows a list of subjects (not in any ranking order) that a child will find it natural to learn as she grows. The first time a child cries, it is conveying to the parents and the delivering nurse that the child is live and ready to enter this world. Later on, when she is all cleaned up and wrapped up warmly, she smiles and conveys her contentment and happiness. The child starts with those binary means of communication (crying and smiling). Gradually, she starts her own language which parents and siblings try to make sense out of but the child starts to adapt herself to the language of the family, called the mother tongue. Society has to learn that it is best to provide an environment where the child learns about the environment in her mother tongue. The child follows certain routines dictated by the parents and other caregivers. Initially, she may express (remember she has a language and ability to communicate) some disinterest, distaste, and rejection, but soon follows the rules and regulations imposed by parents. She sleeps on time, has meals at regular intervals, has playtime, and so on. She learns the laws of the self (body) and the family. It is noteworthy that on many an occasion, it is the parents and nurses that may relax their rules and give conflicting signals to the child. Of course, the child shows some definite creativity to do her own things while behaving within the rules laid out most of the time.
Figure 2: Subjects Appropriate for a Growing Child to Learn.
The child starts to learn about the parents, aunts, grandparents, baby care givers, family, and friends as the first lessons in history. She likes her family dog but cringes when the neighbor’s Pitbull barks loudly. While she is willing to pat her family dog, she is careful about the cat as her expression of personal security.
We know that those muscles which we exercise most are the ones that grow strong. As stated before, the child exercises her vocal muscles the most. Of course, she has been kicking her legs and waving her hands even while she was in the mother’s womb, those limbs grow fast to make her mobile (to topple, tumble, crawl, walk, and run). Such exercises are important for a child to be ready to grow into an amateur or professional sportsperson, or athlete at school and college. A child should be exposed to reading, watching, listening, and speaking so that the important organ called the brain also grows. It is not uncommon to observe leaders in every field who, in their childhoods, have been avid readers of books, listeners of stories from their mothers and teachers, speakers at debates and elocution events, and writers at every level of the school. Parents and guardians do well to support and encourage children to exercise their brains so that they grow their memory capacity and long term retention of what was learned, culled, and stored.
It is very difficult to seek the brain to do much if it did not build itself during child’s growth stage. Since the brain does both keeping memory as well as processing, both kinds of exercises are important for children of every age.
A child outgrows her clothes as well as her toys and books. She explores new geographies, and new tricks showing her curiosity and creativity. It is again instructive to parents and teachers that putting children in a box does no good for their growth. The child should be exposed to the local culture albeit some screens and filters may be placed (like training wheels on a bike) so that she is exposed to what is considered good and classic culture but not to indecent and immoral behaviors and attitudes. Participation in activities in arts and fine arts are likely to direct the child into good culture, discipline, and team work.
While the child would learn that following certain rules set by the parents would be beneficial to her as they reduce time-outs and yield an occasional ice cream and frequent pats on the back from dad. Exposure to religion and stories from the epics could instruct a child that there is more than the home and immediate surroundings but a wider cosmos to be aware of and to follow its moral tidings.
We will discuss how the subjects and horizon fit together as a child passes through adolescence and youth and gets graduate diplomas from various levels of schools. This is shown in Figure 3.
In my childhood, I learnt about goldmines in Coolgardie, and Kalgoorlie in Australia, prairies in America, Merino wool in New Zealand, and cricket in England, among a few other strange factoids in our history, geography, and other classes in our schools. Of course, we memorized the facts to pass the tests and escape caning from the teachers and mockery by older cousins and rebukes from uncles. But, we had no clue about the gold, the games, or the places. The saddest point was that we had no inkling about what was available in our village and district, games played locally, the origin of our village, how people lived in the village, and so on. It did not occur to us that our family had a history until our children started asking us questions about our ancestry to write their essays in their schools in Australia and America. What a pity that our (Indian) school curriculum removed our history, geography, economy, culture, and religion from our conscience!
I wish that they had a curriculum of the following type when we were children. I wish that Indians launch such a curriculum now.
Figure 3: Study of subjects and the extent over time.
Subjects and Descriptions:
Language:
Parents should be communicating with children in their mother tongue such that the baby develops good expression in that language. For good communication, a child has to have good command of the language in terms of its structure, vocabulary, and meaning with respect to context. Then, the child should know the domain of the conversation. Then, there is the body language. Finally, there is a script for the language. As the child grows, she should know that there are other languages used by other people. The child should be curious to learn those languages in order to converse with the other people, and to appreciate the richness and beauty of those languages also.
Society should introduce to the child various other subjects via voice, text, pictures, and action, i.e. via listening, and watching modes.
Language is for communication among people, among generations, and between people and animals, and machines. It is to express data, information, knowledge, commands, and wishes. It is to entertain, excite, motivate, and guide people.
Communication:
A child should be encouraged to communicate. Parents love it when their baby begins to say some words. That is good but the child is not a parrot just to regurgitate what she listens to. As she grows, she should begin to understand the meaning and intent of words, commands, and speech. Likewise, she should be able to translate her wishes and thoughts via her speech. The more the muscles involved in the speech process are exercised, the stronger they get. Since communication involves the thinking brain, it also gets exercised. But, there must be a balance between the content in the brain and the conversation. This aspect requires that the child should be a quiet listener (for a part of the time) so that the hearing, listening, and filling the brain with content can occur. As we now know, it is not just data that a child’s brain should hold. It is data, information, methods to process the content, indexing, computation, generating new constructs from the basic information (imagination and creativity), developing links, and finally using the generated forms to convey as speech or writing or art.
Communication is not an isolated action. It is in the context of other factors in life. Thus, as part of culture, law, and discipline, a child should learn the occasions that are right for her to speak and when she should not.
A child should be introduced to information via speech and texts gradually covering various subjects to gain understanding the local to global scenes such that the child can connect the physical objects and actions to language.
Use of extremely foreign names and concepts in stories will not provide context and association whereas local names will allow a greater understanding for the child. Perhaps, this may be the reason why our elders used animals in children’s stories as the children were also exposed to animals in real life. Of course, currently, children see only plastic replicas of animals and trees as we have been exterminating the real live animals and trees or keeping them in zoos, aquariums, and nurseries. Again, the behaviors of the captive animals do not fit the prior descriptions of animals. There is no predator and prey in a zoo as they are all fed on welfare.
Law:
A child is expected to obey the laws that the body imposes on her in terms of her food, sleep, sanitation, and activity or playtime. Essentially, these are the rules imposed by nature. Those rules are followed by the family’s rules. Rules are generally for the welfare, safety, and well-being of the child and family.
As the child gains more autonomous mobility, she will come in contact with other children and adults in other environments, such as play pens, parks, sandlots, swimming pools, grounds, nurseries, kindergartens, and schools. At that stage, the rules laid out by the controllers of those environments will come into play. It is important if the child can learn that the rule is not arbitrary but it is in the interest of her own safety and wellbeing (i.e. not getting hurt, not feeling pain, or not falling sick). If a child learns during her childhood that rules have been laid for good reason, she is highly likely to understand the rationale for rules as an adult and respects and follows them sincerely throughout her life.
New rules apply with time as the child grows and moves in the village, the town, the district and so on into the larger geographies. For example, the rules at mealtime are likely to be different at home versus the school, versus the picnic grounds. Every game has its own rules of play and conduct. She will also realize that there are specific rules for organizations and for people in their various roles. Of course, she will expect them to follow the rules laid down for them. Through proper understanding of the systems, she will realize why the others cannot do certain things the way she would wish that they do certain things.
Hence, schools have a responsibility to teach children about the laws within each theater and ultimately in the nation and the globe. Together with the rules are the people responsible to enforce them (conductors, directors, and police) and those (judges) who dispense justice (punishment or compensation) when the rules are broken. If children understand these principles about law and gain respect for the laws in an orderly society, there will be fewer law breakers in later stages. They may also become good rule makers as adults.
History
Learning history starts at home when a child learns who her parents, grandparents, relatives, and various service providers are. A local grocer may provide the ingredients for the food in her home in her childhood, while Amazon or Flipkart may provide most goods for her in her adult life. She may realize that her classmates are constantly competing to gain the teacher’s attention, while she may realize later on that competing companies are arguing to sell their raw materials to a big buyer.
A child would see history as a sequence of events in the lives of people in villages, towns, states, and countries. Neither all events are recorded, nor everything recorded are necessarily objective. It is akin to children’s reports to their parents about happenings in the school and at playgrounds. Of course, the aim is to record events of significance and in a concise manner. The objective is to learn to characterize people and groups such that the lessons of history can guide people in their manner of conduct in the future.
Once the purpose of history is thus understood, children can learn progressively the history of their own family, the village, the country, and ultimately, the globe. They would develop a logically connected idea of what events have shaped the world as it exists today and how they might conduct in the future to make the world and the planet a better one for tomorrow.
Health
Parents take care of a baby’s health and make sure that she gets nutritious food and lives in a sanitary environment. They take care of the inoculations and vaccinations. As they let the child venture outside, they keep cautioning her about the precautions and consequences of violations. Various parties, such as parents, child minders, healthcare providers, teachers, and coaches, who watch the activities of the child, should be noticing any deviations in health and providing feedback to parents for timely action.
We know from the nature of the human body, those organs that are exercised most in childhood grow best. Besides taking care of the child’s health, she should be provided knowledge about healthcare. Through various means, a child should be given information about the components of the human body and the need and means to keep them healthy. Once such knowledge is in a child’s mind, she is highly likely to be conscious of health throughout her life.
Simply imposing rules like, ‘do this and do not eat that’ will be tolerated, or resisted, and forgotten over time. But, if the rules are presented as methods to prevent something bad happening to the body and improving the abilities and capabilities, such knowledge is likely to have a lasting and positive impact on a child.
From a personal health, a child might be able to project the knowledge to the health of the society and the environment as she grows.
Geography
Once a child begins to understand her room, her home, and so on, it is time to introduce to her, which is her street, her village, and progressively larger geographies. The geography contains resources that benefit her in several ways. These features should be used to help her learn what the geography is about. The local hills, streams, fields with crops, streets with homes, and farms with animals should be part of her geography lessons. Each feature has a unique characteristic and the child should be able to extrapolate them to other features prevailing in other locations. Thus, she will be able to learn the geographies of larger units, such as the country, the globe, and the universe.
Security
A child starts to develop attachment to certain objects, usually her bed, stroller, and toys. She likes not to be separated from them, which is the beginning of the security response. At appropriate times, she should be informed about possession and dispossession of items without scaring her. By instructing her about how much effort is required to get possession of items, she should be enabled to understand their value. Thus, security may be understood in terms of protecting value. Thereafter, the value of various items that are physical, mental, cultural, and spiritual can be introduced. In parallel, she should learn the means of protection and her individual responsibility for protection versus when it is the responsibility of others.
Sport
Sports, games, and workouts are essential for the well-being and growth of the child. An infant might start playing with her physical and virtual toys. But soon, she will start playing with other children. These activities offer great opportunities to learn about the roles in each game, the level of participation, expectations of outcomes, thought and decision making processes, and the meanings of results. Games allow children to understand the meaning of work in a team. They will get an opportunity to learn their own limitations, interests, and aptitudes. As they progress in sports, they will learn about competitiveness as well as cooperation. They will understand goals and the means to accomplish them progressively. It is important for parents to realize that winning the medals is not the end but understanding the process helps the child to learn valuable lessons for her future life. Sports will improve health and increase a child’s physical as well as mental capabilities when she is properly trained.
Mathematics
It is said that when one of the toys out of a set of toys is taken away from a child, she recognizes and it is considered the beginning of mathematical capability in a child. A mother may plead with the child to eat one more spoon of the vegetable pudding. A father may agree to give the child one more cookie if she sleeps early. These are subtle introductions to mathematics and its early utility. A child’s knowledge of arithmetic is the important foundation to her later life. She may be encouraged to count the number of books on the mother’s bookshelf, number of houses on their street, and such interesting exercises. When she goes to ice cream store, she may start learning about tables displaying menus and prices. She can learn comparison and concepts like equal, greater than, and less than. As she moves around town, she can learn shapes as unannounced introduction to geometry. When she goes to a store with items that she may not be familiar with, that can be the beginning of X, Y, Z in Algebra. Parents should encourage children to join them in their accounting and bookkeeping chores (assuming that they do these chores). It will give the child introduction to accounting, budgeting, and responsible spending. Games like Monopoly are good to teach about money and transactions but parents have to be cautious that children may not consider real money as a game and that they can always do better the next time.
Creativity
It is very important for parents to encourage their children to engage in activities where they come up with new ideas. It starts with thinking about a situation and a way something is currently done and evolving a new way of doing the same. It is critical to present common items that have many different designs. If children realize that they were the results of creativity of some people before those items existed, children will realize that creativity is always possible. It is just a new way of doing something or a new arrangement.
A child can be encouraged to identify different ways of going from home to school. They may come up with new ways. Of course, they can be helped to evaluate the merits and demerits of the different ways they came up with. Results of such evaluations may help them why we generally see only some solutions and how occasionally, new solutions overtake old ones.
New ways of expressing a statement will help them in language and communication. Games have to be played according to the rules laid out for a particular game. But, not all people have the same capabilities and abilities and different standards are created. Children should be allowed and encouraged to evolve new rules in a given game, and new variations of games; it is only a game. They should realize that the goal is fun for all and none should feel cheated. As children develop such skills, they may become better administrators, managers, and leaders who recognize the ultimate goal(s) and not be bound by the method laid by predecessors.
The key in childhood is to let them be open to thinking of newer ways of doing any activity. This will allow them to become creative in later life.
Culture
Children follow their parents in terms of how they live in a society. The way parents behave and interact between themselves and with other relatives, friends, and visitors would influence the children. Children pick up their language, reaction to situations, and mannerisms from parents. As children interact with other children at school, playgrounds, and social meeting places, they tend to follow the group. As learners, children may be attracted to what is new and discard the old methods they have learned. Thus, parents determine the exposure that children get.
Therefore, it is important for parents to expose children to groups that focus on good behavior, courteous and pleasant interactions, and high values. Arts, music, dance, literary activities, plays, and social service are some of the activities that would encourage children to expose their minds to pleasant experiences while imposing discipline. These activities would teach them the idea of group performance in addition to individual accomplishment. Children would learn and gain the ability to appreciate people and societies with culture. At the end of the day, it is culture that relaxes and soothes the mind. Early exposure to cultural activities is likely to improve their talents. Of course, one has to realize that certain innate talent is necessary to excel in culture.
Religion
As the world becomes intensive in science and technology, people tend to think that we are and we can be the masters of the universe and the cosmos. In reality, every time, we face a disaster, we think of our faith and get back to our beliefs. We seek relief that physical and psychological structures cannot yet offer. Faith comes to rescue and we recover and life continues. Hence, children should be involved in their religion that discusses nurturing and love rather than hurt and hatred. Religion may offer to them an alternative explanation for some intriguing situations that other disciplines are not able to answer.
We will discuss the education thrusts for the next level later on.
Education or learning starts from the time of birth. Initial learning may be up to nature. A time comes when parents and society have to take responsibility for a child’s learning process through education.
Parents, relatives, and friends begin to admire the physical and mental features of a child. That is good. But, as children grow, their physical and mental faculties grow based on the environment in which they were brought up. A child’s interests, attitudes, and behaviors are molded by the environment.
Rich people and middle class people decorate the room in which a child is brought up with the hope that it influences the child’s character as he/she grows. They buy toys, games, and musical instruments that engage, calm, and educate the child. The middle class in the West leave the children in front of the Sesame Street program. There was a time when American children started their day with Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood. All that is fine, perhaps! But, a time comes when the real education starts. The nursery schools and Kindergartens in the West take care of it. They are supplemented by the Sunday schools. They are OK for the West – at least so for their upper and middle class children.
India needs its own system owing to its unique characteristics. I am making an attempt to suggest a framework to develop a system suitable for India with its diversity in many areas.
What do we mean when we say that a baby or a child is growing? It is the growth of the physical body as well as the mental faculties and attitudes. Those muscles in the body that are exercised most are the ones that grow best. This is evident when we see one child is able to run fast while another child can digest a lot. Yet another child can begin to sing or read small books. Some children pick up slang fast and pick up fights frequently for no cause. This should tell us that we should get the child to exercise her physical and mental muscles gently, regularly, and progressively in the proper direction.
A child’s natural urge to explore self and surroundings would suggest what she likes to learn and how she likes to progress. These trends should guide us in how we structure the teaching and learning system at Level 1- the early childhood.
Figure 1 shows the natural progression of the space (geographical entities) that a child and a person should explore over time. A child is naturally interested in self. It is not my intention to say that a child tries to learn about herself. A child responds to impacts on herself. She cries when cold air or hot air impinges on her. She gets startled when a sudden loud sound hits her ears. She likes to eat certain items and dislikes certain others. She laughs when tickled. In a short while, she may even respond to her name. She starts to develop tastes for certain toys and even becomes used to them (addiction comes later on!). At a young age, a child learns ownership as she likes her own bed or own utensils. At a certain age, she knows if one out of a certain number of familiar toys is removed from her sight. That is the beginning of her talents in mathematics, economics (ownership), and defense of property.
Figure 1: Space (Geographical) progression natural for a growing child.
As the child grows, she starts to recognize mother, father, and the family, in general. As the child goes about her surroundings, she begins to recognize her home, street, and village. This learning process should instruct us to enable the child to move progressively with age to learn about expanded spaces as shown in Figure 1. Thus, teaching them about global things before local things is unnatural. It is meaningless to sing the nursery rhyme, “Pussy cat, Pussy cat, where have you been, I have been to London to look at the Queen.”
Figure 2 shows a list of subjects (not in any ranking order) that a child will find it natural to learn as she grows. The first time a child cries, it is conveying to the parents and the delivering nurse that the child is live and ready to enter this world. Later on, when she is all cleaned up and wrapped up warmly, she smiles and conveys her contentment and happiness. The child starts with those binary means of communication (crying and smiling). Gradually, she starts her own language which parents and siblings try to make sense out of but the child starts to adapt herself to the language of the family, called the mother tongue. Society has to learn that it is best to provide an environment where the child learns about the environment in her mother tongue. The child follows certain routines dictated by the parents and other caregivers. Initially, she may express (remember she has a language and ability to communicate) some disinterest, distaste, and rejection, but soon follows the rules and regulations imposed by parents. She sleeps on time, has meals at regular intervals, has playtime, and so on. She learns the laws of the self (body) and the family. It is noteworthy that on many an occasion, it is the parents and nurses that may relax their rules and give conflicting signals to the child. Of course, the child shows some definite creativity to do her own things while behaving within the rules laid out most of the time.
Figure 2: Subjects Appropriate for a Growing Child to Learn.
The child starts to learn about the parents, aunts, grandparents, baby care givers, family, and friends as the first lessons in history. She likes her family dog but cringes when the neighbor’s Pitbull barks loudly. While she is willing to pat her family dog, she is careful about the cat as her expression of personal security.
We know that those muscles which we exercise most are the ones that grow strong. As stated before, the child exercises her vocal muscles the most. Of course, she has been kicking her legs and waving her hands even while she was in the mother’s womb, those limbs grow fast to make her mobile (to topple, tumble, crawl, walk, and run). Such exercises are important for a child to be ready to grow into an amateur or professional sportsperson, or athlete at school and college. A child should be exposed to reading, watching, listening, and speaking so that the important organ called the brain also grows. It is not uncommon to observe leaders in every field who, in their childhoods, have been avid readers of books, listeners of stories from their mothers and teachers, speakers at debates and elocution events, and writers at every level of the school. Parents and guardians do well to support and encourage children to exercise their brains so that they grow their memory capacity and long term retention of what was learned, culled, and stored.
It is very difficult to seek the brain to do much if it did not build itself during child’s growth stage. Since the brain does both keeping memory as well as processing, both kinds of exercises are important for children of every age.
A child outgrows her clothes as well as her toys and books. She explores new geographies, and new tricks showing her curiosity and creativity. It is again instructive to parents and teachers that putting children in a box does no good for their growth. The child should be exposed to the local culture albeit some screens and filters may be placed (like training wheels on a bike) so that she is exposed to what is considered good and classic culture but not to indecent and immoral behaviors and attitudes. Participation in activities in arts and fine arts are likely to direct the child into good culture, discipline, and team work.
While the child would learn that following certain rules set by the parents would be beneficial to her as they reduce time-outs and yield an occasional ice cream and frequent pats on the back from dad. Exposure to religion and stories from the epics could instruct a child that there is more than the home and immediate surroundings but a wider cosmos to be aware of and to follow its moral tidings.
We will discuss how the subjects and horizon fit together as a child passes through adolescence and youth and gets graduate diplomas from various levels of schools. This is shown in Figure 3.
In my childhood, I learnt about goldmines in Coolgardie, and Kalgoorlie in Australia, prairies in America, Merino wool in New Zealand, and cricket in England, among a few other strange factoids in our history, geography, and other classes in our schools. Of course, we memorized the facts to pass the tests and escape caning from the teachers and mockery by older cousins and rebukes from uncles. But, we had no clue about the gold, the games, or the places. The saddest point was that we had no inkling about what was available in our village and district, games played locally, the origin of our village, how people lived in the village, and so on. It did not occur to us that our family had a history until our children started asking us questions about our ancestry to write their essays in their schools in Australia and America. What a pity that our (Indian) school curriculum removed our history, geography, economy, culture, and religion from our conscience!
I wish that they had a curriculum of the following type when we were children. I wish that Indians launch such a curriculum now.
Figure 3: Study of subjects and the extent over time.
Subjects and Descriptions:
Language:
Parents should be communicating with children in their mother tongue such that the baby develops good expression in that language. For good communication, a child has to have good command of the language in terms of its structure, vocabulary, and meaning with respect to context. Then, the child should know the domain of the conversation. Then, there is the body language. Finally, there is a script for the language. As the child grows, she should know that there are other languages used by other people. The child should be curious to learn those languages in order to converse with the other people, and to appreciate the richness and beauty of those languages also.
Society should introduce to the child various other subjects via voice, text, pictures, and action, i.e. via listening, and watching modes.
Language is for communication among people, among generations, and between people and animals, and machines. It is to express data, information, knowledge, commands, and wishes. It is to entertain, excite, motivate, and guide people.
Communication:
A child should be encouraged to communicate. Parents love it when their baby begins to say some words. That is good but the child is not a parrot just to regurgitate what she listens to. As she grows, she should begin to understand the meaning and intent of words, commands, and speech. Likewise, she should be able to translate her wishes and thoughts via her speech. The more the muscles involved in the speech process are exercised, the stronger they get. Since communication involves the thinking brain, it also gets exercised. But, there must be a balance between the content in the brain and the conversation. This aspect requires that the child should be a quiet listener (for a part of the time) so that the hearing, listening, and filling the brain with content can occur. As we now know, it is not just data that a child’s brain should hold. It is data, information, methods to process the content, indexing, computation, generating new constructs from the basic information (imagination and creativity), developing links, and finally using the generated forms to convey as speech or writing or art.
Communication is not an isolated action. It is in the context of other factors in life. Thus, as part of culture, law, and discipline, a child should learn the occasions that are right for her to speak and when she should not.
A child should be introduced to information via speech and texts gradually covering various subjects to gain understanding the local to global scenes such that the child can connect the physical objects and actions to language.
Use of extremely foreign names and concepts in stories will not provide context and association whereas local names will allow a greater understanding for the child. Perhaps, this may be the reason why our elders used animals in children’s stories as the children were also exposed to animals in real life. Of course, currently, children see only plastic replicas of animals and trees as we have been exterminating the real live animals and trees or keeping them in zoos, aquariums, and nurseries. Again, the behaviors of the captive animals do not fit the prior descriptions of animals. There is no predator and prey in a zoo as they are all fed on welfare.
Law:
A child is expected to obey the laws that the body imposes on her in terms of her food, sleep, sanitation, and activity or playtime. Essentially, these are the rules imposed by nature. Those rules are followed by the family’s rules. Rules are generally for the welfare, safety, and well-being of the child and family.
As the child gains more autonomous mobility, she will come in contact with other children and adults in other environments, such as play pens, parks, sandlots, swimming pools, grounds, nurseries, kindergartens, and schools. At that stage, the rules laid out by the controllers of those environments will come into play. It is important if the child can learn that the rule is not arbitrary but it is in the interest of her own safety and wellbeing (i.e. not getting hurt, not feeling pain, or not falling sick). If a child learns during her childhood that rules have been laid for good reason, she is highly likely to understand the rationale for rules as an adult and respects and follows them sincerely throughout her life.
New rules apply with time as the child grows and moves in the village, the town, the district and so on into the larger geographies. For example, the rules at mealtime are likely to be different at home versus the school, versus the picnic grounds. Every game has its own rules of play and conduct. She will also realize that there are specific rules for organizations and for people in their various roles. Of course, she will expect them to follow the rules laid down for them. Through proper understanding of the systems, she will realize why the others cannot do certain things the way she would wish that they do certain things.
Hence, schools have a responsibility to teach children about the laws within each theater and ultimately in the nation and the globe. Together with the rules are the people responsible to enforce them (conductors, directors, and police) and those (judges) who dispense justice (punishment or compensation) when the rules are broken. If children understand these principles about law and gain respect for the laws in an orderly society, there will be fewer law breakers in later stages. They may also become good rule makers as adults.
History
Learning history starts at home when a child learns who her parents, grandparents, relatives, and various service providers are. A local grocer may provide the ingredients for the food in her home in her childhood, while Amazon or Flipkart may provide most goods for her in her adult life. She may realize that her classmates are constantly competing to gain the teacher’s attention, while she may realize later on that competing companies are arguing to sell their raw materials to a big buyer.
A child would see history as a sequence of events in the lives of people in villages, towns, states, and countries. Neither all events are recorded, nor everything recorded are necessarily objective. It is akin to children’s reports to their parents about happenings in the school and at playgrounds. Of course, the aim is to record events of significance and in a concise manner. The objective is to learn to characterize people and groups such that the lessons of history can guide people in their manner of conduct in the future.
Once the purpose of history is thus understood, children can learn progressively the history of their own family, the village, the country, and ultimately, the globe. They would develop a logically connected idea of what events have shaped the world as it exists today and how they might conduct in the future to make the world and the planet a better one for tomorrow.
Health
Parents take care of a baby’s health and make sure that she gets nutritious food and lives in a sanitary environment. They take care of the inoculations and vaccinations. As they let the child venture outside, they keep cautioning her about the precautions and consequences of violations. Various parties, such as parents, child minders, healthcare providers, teachers, and coaches, who watch the activities of the child, should be noticing any deviations in health and providing feedback to parents for timely action.
We know from the nature of the human body, those organs that are exercised most in childhood grow best. Besides taking care of the child’s health, she should be provided knowledge about healthcare. Through various means, a child should be given information about the components of the human body and the need and means to keep them healthy. Once such knowledge is in a child’s mind, she is highly likely to be conscious of health throughout her life.
Simply imposing rules like, ‘do this and do not eat that’ will be tolerated, or resisted, and forgotten over time. But, if the rules are presented as methods to prevent something bad happening to the body and improving the abilities and capabilities, such knowledge is likely to have a lasting and positive impact on a child.
From a personal health, a child might be able to project the knowledge to the health of the society and the environment as she grows.
Geography
Once a child begins to understand her room, her home, and so on, it is time to introduce to her, which is her street, her village, and progressively larger geographies. The geography contains resources that benefit her in several ways. These features should be used to help her learn what the geography is about. The local hills, streams, fields with crops, streets with homes, and farms with animals should be part of her geography lessons. Each feature has a unique characteristic and the child should be able to extrapolate them to other features prevailing in other locations. Thus, she will be able to learn the geographies of larger units, such as the country, the globe, and the universe.
Security
A child starts to develop attachment to certain objects, usually her bed, stroller, and toys. She likes not to be separated from them, which is the beginning of the security response. At appropriate times, she should be informed about possession and dispossession of items without scaring her. By instructing her about how much effort is required to get possession of items, she should be enabled to understand their value. Thus, security may be understood in terms of protecting value. Thereafter, the value of various items that are physical, mental, cultural, and spiritual can be introduced. In parallel, she should learn the means of protection and her individual responsibility for protection versus when it is the responsibility of others.
Sport
Sports, games, and workouts are essential for the well-being and growth of the child. An infant might start playing with her physical and virtual toys. But soon, she will start playing with other children. These activities offer great opportunities to learn about the roles in each game, the level of participation, expectations of outcomes, thought and decision making processes, and the meanings of results. Games allow children to understand the meaning of work in a team. They will get an opportunity to learn their own limitations, interests, and aptitudes. As they progress in sports, they will learn about competitiveness as well as cooperation. They will understand goals and the means to accomplish them progressively. It is important for parents to realize that winning the medals is not the end but understanding the process helps the child to learn valuable lessons for her future life. Sports will improve health and increase a child’s physical as well as mental capabilities when she is properly trained.
Mathematics
It is said that when one of the toys out of a set of toys is taken away from a child, she recognizes and it is considered the beginning of mathematical capability in a child. A mother may plead with the child to eat one more spoon of the vegetable pudding. A father may agree to give the child one more cookie if she sleeps early. These are subtle introductions to mathematics and its early utility. A child’s knowledge of arithmetic is the important foundation to her later life. She may be encouraged to count the number of books on the mother’s bookshelf, number of houses on their street, and such interesting exercises. When she goes to ice cream store, she may start learning about tables displaying menus and prices. She can learn comparison and concepts like equal, greater than, and less than. As she moves around town, she can learn shapes as unannounced introduction to geometry. When she goes to a store with items that she may not be familiar with, that can be the beginning of X, Y, Z in Algebra. Parents should encourage children to join them in their accounting and bookkeeping chores (assuming that they do these chores). It will give the child introduction to accounting, budgeting, and responsible spending. Games like Monopoly are good to teach about money and transactions but parents have to be cautious that children may not consider real money as a game and that they can always do better the next time.
Creativity
It is very important for parents to encourage their children to engage in activities where they come up with new ideas. It starts with thinking about a situation and a way something is currently done and evolving a new way of doing the same. It is critical to present common items that have many different designs. If children realize that they were the results of creativity of some people before those items existed, children will realize that creativity is always possible. It is just a new way of doing something or a new arrangement.
A child can be encouraged to identify different ways of going from home to school. They may come up with new ways. Of course, they can be helped to evaluate the merits and demerits of the different ways they came up with. Results of such evaluations may help them why we generally see only some solutions and how occasionally, new solutions overtake old ones.
New ways of expressing a statement will help them in language and communication. Games have to be played according to the rules laid out for a particular game. But, not all people have the same capabilities and abilities and different standards are created. Children should be allowed and encouraged to evolve new rules in a given game, and new variations of games; it is only a game. They should realize that the goal is fun for all and none should feel cheated. As children develop such skills, they may become better administrators, managers, and leaders who recognize the ultimate goal(s) and not be bound by the method laid by predecessors.
The key in childhood is to let them be open to thinking of newer ways of doing any activity. This will allow them to become creative in later life.
Culture
Children follow their parents in terms of how they live in a society. The way parents behave and interact between themselves and with other relatives, friends, and visitors would influence the children. Children pick up their language, reaction to situations, and mannerisms from parents. As children interact with other children at school, playgrounds, and social meeting places, they tend to follow the group. As learners, children may be attracted to what is new and discard the old methods they have learned. Thus, parents determine the exposure that children get.
Therefore, it is important for parents to expose children to groups that focus on good behavior, courteous and pleasant interactions, and high values. Arts, music, dance, literary activities, plays, and social service are some of the activities that would encourage children to expose their minds to pleasant experiences while imposing discipline. These activities would teach them the idea of group performance in addition to individual accomplishment. Children would learn and gain the ability to appreciate people and societies with culture. At the end of the day, it is culture that relaxes and soothes the mind. Early exposure to cultural activities is likely to improve their talents. Of course, one has to realize that certain innate talent is necessary to excel in culture.
Religion
As the world becomes intensive in science and technology, people tend to think that we are and we can be the masters of the universe and the cosmos. In reality, every time, we face a disaster, we think of our faith and get back to our beliefs. We seek relief that physical and psychological structures cannot yet offer. Faith comes to rescue and we recover and life continues. Hence, children should be involved in their religion that discusses nurturing and love rather than hurt and hatred. Religion may offer to them an alternative explanation for some intriguing situations that other disciplines are not able to answer.
We will discuss the education thrusts for the next level later on.
Saturday, October 21, 2017
Cosmic Energy System
This energy system description is only a thought. There may be no scientific or engineering support for it. Please read it with caution.
The core of the Sun is said to be at a temperature of 15 million degrees Celsius, and the temperature of the sun’s photosphere is about 5,500 degrees Celsius. (We get degrees Kelvin by adding 273 to the Celsius value. At these large values such addition is not important for our discussion here.)
We, on earth, get thermal energy (heat) by radiation from the Sun. As we discussed earlier in another posting, this heat is used to evaporate sea water, to cause clouds, to move them up into the sky and all over the globe. In the night time (at various points on the earth), the heat is radiated from the clouds to deep space and the clouds become water and water will come down to the earth as rain or snow.
It is interesting to realize that here is a heat engine. It has a source (Sun) at a high temperature, a sink (Deep space) at a low temperature, water acting as the working medium converting thermal energy into mechanical energy (work), and space serving as the apparatus or equipment.
It is also interesting to realize that the thermal radiation from the Sun is also heating air and moving it up while the Deep space is cooling it at night time. Thus, there is another heat engine generating mechanical energy in the form of kinetic and potential energy of the air.
We thank the Sun (the donor), but we should also thank the Cold Deep space (the donee) and the elements water and air, which act as the working media. Otherwise, without the done and the elements, we would have gotten heat and not mechanical energy (work).
We should wonder if on some other planets, a similar energy to work conversion would take place if those planets have fluids such as water and air. It may be worthwhile conducting an experiment by taking water to some planets with no atmosphere there and see if rains occur.
Even a larger Energy System:
Astronomers explain that the angular momentum allows the earth and other planets in the solar system to continue to spin and orbit. It is perhaps so!
But, there may be a larger energy system that causes the rotations and movements of all the planets in our universe.
The thermal cycle taking place on the earth (namely, solar energy evaporating water, deep space causing that water vapor to condense as rain, and generating mechanical energy) should prompt us to ask if there is a bigger heat engine going on in the cosmos. It may not use water and air as the working substances but may use other energy conversion mechanisms and still using the thermal cycles.
In the cosmos, there may be a body at a temperature at infinity degrees and a body at zero degrees spinning all the planets in the solar system. The body at a temperature at infinity degrees can only give away heat but cannot receive heat, while the body at zero degrees can only receive heat but cannot give away heat unaided with mechanical energy from another body. The body at zero degrees can be a Black hole as far as thermal energy is concerned.
We know that the Sun (just) is there with internal sources generating energy from materials to sustain life on earth with energy. One could hypothesize that there is some infinite thermal energy source continuing to radiate looking for a body either to absorb it or reflect it. Someone has to search the whole cosmos and show the absence of the Infinite temperature source and the Zero temperature sink.
Please note that according to our observations of the nature and as enunciated by the Laws of Thermodynamics, heat can flow only from a body at a higher temperature to a body at a lower temperature unaided by external forces. These laws do not say anything about other forms of energy and whether the other forms of energy can flow from and to the bodies at any temperature.
The Laws of Thermodynamics also do not say anything about other universes as we have no knowledge about them. Other universes and what happens in these extreme bodies (Infinity and Zero) will be interesting to imagine and study.
The core of the Sun is said to be at a temperature of 15 million degrees Celsius, and the temperature of the sun’s photosphere is about 5,500 degrees Celsius. (We get degrees Kelvin by adding 273 to the Celsius value. At these large values such addition is not important for our discussion here.)
We, on earth, get thermal energy (heat) by radiation from the Sun. As we discussed earlier in another posting, this heat is used to evaporate sea water, to cause clouds, to move them up into the sky and all over the globe. In the night time (at various points on the earth), the heat is radiated from the clouds to deep space and the clouds become water and water will come down to the earth as rain or snow.
It is interesting to realize that here is a heat engine. It has a source (Sun) at a high temperature, a sink (Deep space) at a low temperature, water acting as the working medium converting thermal energy into mechanical energy (work), and space serving as the apparatus or equipment.
It is also interesting to realize that the thermal radiation from the Sun is also heating air and moving it up while the Deep space is cooling it at night time. Thus, there is another heat engine generating mechanical energy in the form of kinetic and potential energy of the air.
We thank the Sun (the donor), but we should also thank the Cold Deep space (the donee) and the elements water and air, which act as the working media. Otherwise, without the done and the elements, we would have gotten heat and not mechanical energy (work).
We should wonder if on some other planets, a similar energy to work conversion would take place if those planets have fluids such as water and air. It may be worthwhile conducting an experiment by taking water to some planets with no atmosphere there and see if rains occur.
Even a larger Energy System:
Astronomers explain that the angular momentum allows the earth and other planets in the solar system to continue to spin and orbit. It is perhaps so!
But, there may be a larger energy system that causes the rotations and movements of all the planets in our universe.
The thermal cycle taking place on the earth (namely, solar energy evaporating water, deep space causing that water vapor to condense as rain, and generating mechanical energy) should prompt us to ask if there is a bigger heat engine going on in the cosmos. It may not use water and air as the working substances but may use other energy conversion mechanisms and still using the thermal cycles.
In the cosmos, there may be a body at a temperature at infinity degrees and a body at zero degrees spinning all the planets in the solar system. The body at a temperature at infinity degrees can only give away heat but cannot receive heat, while the body at zero degrees can only receive heat but cannot give away heat unaided with mechanical energy from another body. The body at zero degrees can be a Black hole as far as thermal energy is concerned.
We know that the Sun (just) is there with internal sources generating energy from materials to sustain life on earth with energy. One could hypothesize that there is some infinite thermal energy source continuing to radiate looking for a body either to absorb it or reflect it. Someone has to search the whole cosmos and show the absence of the Infinite temperature source and the Zero temperature sink.
Please note that according to our observations of the nature and as enunciated by the Laws of Thermodynamics, heat can flow only from a body at a higher temperature to a body at a lower temperature unaided by external forces. These laws do not say anything about other forms of energy and whether the other forms of energy can flow from and to the bodies at any temperature.
The Laws of Thermodynamics also do not say anything about other universes as we have no knowledge about them. Other universes and what happens in these extreme bodies (Infinity and Zero) will be interesting to imagine and study.
Monday, October 16, 2017
Entropy Explained
Let us say that a body has a certain amount of thermal energy (heat) at temperature T1. If we take some thermal energy from that body, and put it through an engine and have a low temperature sink, it will produce some mechanical energy (work).
On the other hand, let us say that we took that same quantity of thermal energy from the body at temperature T1 and allowed it to transfer it to another body at a lower temperature T2 without producing any mechanical energy (work).
Now, if we take that thermal energy from the second body at temperature T2 and put it through an engine and have the same low temperature sink, it will produce less work than in the first case. (We explained elsewhere that higher the source temperature, greater will be the work produced.)
What happened is that when some thermal energy moved from the body at temperature T1 to the body at temperature T2 (where T2 lower than T1), we lost some capability to produce mechanical energy (work). Or in other words, we degraded the quality of energy.
They had invented the property called Entropy to explain this degradation of the quality of energy.
We would say that the first body has Entropy S1 (along with its temperature T1) and that Entropy is decreased when a certain amount of thermal energy moved away from it. The second body has entropy S2 (along with its temperature T2) and that Entropy has increased when it received the thermal energy from the first body. The increase of Entropy of the second body is greater than the decreased value of entropy in the first body.
But, in the universe, which has the first body and the second body, one has decreased its entropy and the other has increased its entropy for the same amount of heat that transferred from the first body to the second body. The increase is greater than the decrease. Hence, in the universe, the Entropy has increased.
So, we conclude that while we have not lost any energy in the universe, its quality has decreased. Such increase can be measured (observed or indicated) by the increase in the Entropy of the universe.
Thus, Entropy is a good measure to indicate the degradation of the quality of energy.
Combustion, friction, and heat transfer degrade the quality of energy and there will be increase in Entropy (of the universe).
The property, called Entropy, can thus be used to measure if a system that we are designing or operating is keeping up the quality of energy or degrading it.
Please note that it is different from wasting energy.
An observation:
Bring boiling water and frozen butter together (without actually mixing them) and you will find that the boiling water would give some of its heat to melt the frozen butter. The entropy of the universe increases. The entropy of the boiling water decreases and the entropy of the butter increases (more than the amount of decrease of entropy of the boiling water.)
Analogy:
Let us say, we have a heart surgeon and a first aid worker. The heart surgeon can do heart surgery as well as provide first aid. The first aid worker can provide first aid but cannot perform heart surgery. Now, if a first aid case comes up, it is best to assign that task to the first aid worker and not to the heart surgeon. If we use the heart surgeon for first aid work, we are degrading her capabilities. We could say that we are increasing the Entropy of the system. Again, please note the difference between wasting one’s time versus degrading one’s capabilities.
In popular conversation, we say that the Entropy has gone up when we do something to degrade the quality of someone’s capabilities.
Saturday, October 14, 2017
Energy Quality
Quality of Energy
Energy takes different forms and all forms of energy are not of the same quality. For example, mechanical energy can be converted with one hundred percent efficiency to thermal energy (heat). But thermal energy cannot be converted one hundred percent to mechanical energy. Therefore, the quality of mechanical energy can be considered superior to that of thermal energy (heat).
We use thermal systems (engines, turbines, and rockets) to convert thermal energy to mechanical energy. In these processes, thermal energy at a higher temperature is used and when some of that energy is converted to mechanical energy, there is a requirement that the rest of the thermal energy is rejected to another body, which is necessarily at a low temperature.
That all thermal energy cannot be converted to mechanical energy and some of that thermal energy must be rejected to another body at a low temperature are observed in nature. In Thermodynamics, such requirements are defined as the Laws of Thermodynamics.
If we have thermal energy in a body at a low temperature and if we wish to transfer it to another body at a higher temperature, it is not possible unless aided by another device with mechanical energy. This case is what we observe with items in a refrigerator. The food is kept at a low temperature and the thermal energy from it is taken out and transferred to outside air (at a higher temperature) with the use of an electric motor that requires the expense of mechanical energy. It may be noted that mechanical and electrical energy are of the same quality.
Chemical energy can be converted to electrical energy in a battery with one hundred percent efficiency in a theoretical sense. Thus, Chemical, electrical, and mechanical energy are of the same high quality.
Let us look at two hypothetical constructs.
Let us assume that we have a certain amount of energy in a body at an infinitely high temperature. We will require no mechanical energy to transfer it to a higher temperature because it is already at the highest possible temperature (Infinity).
Let us assume that a certain amount of energy is at a temperature Zero degrees absolute (Kelvin). Such energy cannot be converted to mechanical energy as there is no other body at a temperature below it to take rejected heat when we try to convert that thermal energy (heat) to mechanical energy (work).
Absolute Zero degrees temperature is defined thusly.
These two scenarios can be used to state that thermal energy (heat) can have a quality depending on the temperature at which it exists.
a) The quality of thermal energy (heat) can be as high as that of mechanical (or chemical or electrical) energy when thermal energy is at temperature, Infinity.
b) Thermal energy is of quality Zero (lowest) when it is at Zero degrees absolute (Kelvin).
c) When, thermal energy is at any temperature between these two limits (Infinity and Zero), its quality is in between the highest and lowest.
Combustion:
Let us consider the case of chemical energy in a fuel. When a fuel is burned, the chemical energy in the fuel is converted to Thermal energy in the products of combustion. Invariably, we get temperature of products much less than Infinity and greater than Zero degrees absolute. Hence, combustion degrades the quality of energy. The degradation depends on how low the temperature of the products of combustion is. This is the reason why in engines we try to obtain temperatures that are as high as practically possible.
Friction:
Friction will be there whenever there is motion caused by force. Frictional forces oppose motion. Friction causes mechanical energy to be converted to thermal energy (heat).
Since friction converts mechanical energy to be converted to thermal energy, it degrades the quality of energy. Friction does not cause thermal energy to be converted to mechanical energy.
We try to minimize friction so that energy degradation is minimized.
Heat transfer:
We know that thermal energy (heat) moves from a body at a higher temperature to a body at a lower temperature when the two bodies are allowed to come in contact. Say, certain amount of thermal energy is transferred from a body at a higher temperature to another body at a lower temperature. Since that thermal energy (heat), which got transferred, is now at a lower temperature, its quality has degraded. So, we state that heat transfer across a temperature gradient degrades energy.
Summary:
Thus, while designing and operating engineering systems, we try to make sure that the quality of energy is not unduly degraded.
Energy takes different forms and all forms of energy are not of the same quality. For example, mechanical energy can be converted with one hundred percent efficiency to thermal energy (heat). But thermal energy cannot be converted one hundred percent to mechanical energy. Therefore, the quality of mechanical energy can be considered superior to that of thermal energy (heat).
We use thermal systems (engines, turbines, and rockets) to convert thermal energy to mechanical energy. In these processes, thermal energy at a higher temperature is used and when some of that energy is converted to mechanical energy, there is a requirement that the rest of the thermal energy is rejected to another body, which is necessarily at a low temperature.
That all thermal energy cannot be converted to mechanical energy and some of that thermal energy must be rejected to another body at a low temperature are observed in nature. In Thermodynamics, such requirements are defined as the Laws of Thermodynamics.
If we have thermal energy in a body at a low temperature and if we wish to transfer it to another body at a higher temperature, it is not possible unless aided by another device with mechanical energy. This case is what we observe with items in a refrigerator. The food is kept at a low temperature and the thermal energy from it is taken out and transferred to outside air (at a higher temperature) with the use of an electric motor that requires the expense of mechanical energy. It may be noted that mechanical and electrical energy are of the same quality.
Chemical energy can be converted to electrical energy in a battery with one hundred percent efficiency in a theoretical sense. Thus, Chemical, electrical, and mechanical energy are of the same high quality.
Let us look at two hypothetical constructs.
Let us assume that we have a certain amount of energy in a body at an infinitely high temperature. We will require no mechanical energy to transfer it to a higher temperature because it is already at the highest possible temperature (Infinity).
Let us assume that a certain amount of energy is at a temperature Zero degrees absolute (Kelvin). Such energy cannot be converted to mechanical energy as there is no other body at a temperature below it to take rejected heat when we try to convert that thermal energy (heat) to mechanical energy (work).
Absolute Zero degrees temperature is defined thusly.
These two scenarios can be used to state that thermal energy (heat) can have a quality depending on the temperature at which it exists.
a) The quality of thermal energy (heat) can be as high as that of mechanical (or chemical or electrical) energy when thermal energy is at temperature, Infinity.
b) Thermal energy is of quality Zero (lowest) when it is at Zero degrees absolute (Kelvin).
c) When, thermal energy is at any temperature between these two limits (Infinity and Zero), its quality is in between the highest and lowest.
Combustion:
Let us consider the case of chemical energy in a fuel. When a fuel is burned, the chemical energy in the fuel is converted to Thermal energy in the products of combustion. Invariably, we get temperature of products much less than Infinity and greater than Zero degrees absolute. Hence, combustion degrades the quality of energy. The degradation depends on how low the temperature of the products of combustion is. This is the reason why in engines we try to obtain temperatures that are as high as practically possible.
Friction:
Friction will be there whenever there is motion caused by force. Frictional forces oppose motion. Friction causes mechanical energy to be converted to thermal energy (heat).
Since friction converts mechanical energy to be converted to thermal energy, it degrades the quality of energy. Friction does not cause thermal energy to be converted to mechanical energy.
We try to minimize friction so that energy degradation is minimized.
Heat transfer:
We know that thermal energy (heat) moves from a body at a higher temperature to a body at a lower temperature when the two bodies are allowed to come in contact. Say, certain amount of thermal energy is transferred from a body at a higher temperature to another body at a lower temperature. Since that thermal energy (heat), which got transferred, is now at a lower temperature, its quality has degraded. So, we state that heat transfer across a temperature gradient degrades energy.
Summary:
Thus, while designing and operating engineering systems, we try to make sure that the quality of energy is not unduly degraded.
Education of a Child - Pre-nursery & Elementary
Education – Level 1
Education or learning starts from the time of birth. Initial learning may be up to nature. A time comes when parents and society have to take responsibility for a child’s learning process through education.
Parents, relatives, and friends begin to admire the physical and mental features of a child. That is good. But, as children grow, their physical and mental faculties grow based on the environment in which they were brought up. A child’s interests, attitudes, and behaviors are molded by the environment.
Rich people and middle class people decorate the room in which a child is brought up with the hope that it influences the child’s character as he/she grows. They buy toys, games, and musical instruments that engage, calm, and educate the child. The middle class in the West leave the children in front of the Sesame Street program. There was a time when American children started their day with Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood. All that is fine, perhaps! But, a time comes when the real education starts. The nursery schools and Kindergartens in the West take care of it. They are supplemented by the Sunday schools. They are OK for the West – at least so for the upper and middle cast children.
India needs its own system owing to its unique characteristics. I am making an attempt to suggest a framework to develop a system suitable for India with its diversity in many areas.
What do we mean when we say that a baby or a child is growing? It is the growth of the physical body as well as the mental faculties and attitudes. Those muscles in the body that are exercised most are the ones that grow best. This is evident when we see one child is able to run fast while another child can digest a lot. Yet another child can begin to sing or read small books. Some children pick up slang fast and pick up fights frequently for no cause. This should tell us that we should get the child to exercise her physical and mental muscles gently, regularly, and progressively in the proper direction.
A child’s natural urge to explore self and surroundings would suggest what she likes to learn and how she likes to progress. These trends should guide us in how we structure the teaching and learning system at Level 1- the early childhood.
Figure 1 shows the natural progression of the space (geographical entities) that a child and a person should explore over time. A child is naturally interested in self. It is not my intention to say that a child tries to learn about herself. A child responds to impacts on herself. She cries when cold air or hot air impinges on her. She gets startled when a sudden loud sound hits her ears. She likes to eat certain items and dislikes certain others. She laughs when tickled. In a short while, she may even respond to her name. She starts to develop tastes for certain toys and even becomes used to them (addiction comes later on!). At a young age, a child learns ownership as she likes her own bed or own utensils. At a certain age, she knows if one out of a certain number of familiar toys is removed from her sight. That is the beginning of her talents in mathematics, economics (ownership), and defense of property.
Figure 1: Space (Geographical) progression natural for a growing child.
As the child grows, she starts to recognize mother, father, and the family, in general. As the child goes about her surroundings, she begins to recognize her home, street, and village. This learning process should instruct us to enable the child to move progressively with age to learn about expanded spaces as shown in Figure 1. Thus, teaching them about global things before local things is unnatural. It is meaningless to sing the nursery rhyme, “Pussy cat, Pussy cat, where have you been, I have been to London to look at the Queen.”
Figure 2 shows a list of subjects (not in any ranking order) that a child will find it natural to learn as she grows. The first time a child cries, it is conveying to the parents and the delivering nurse that the child is live and ready to enter this world. Later on, when she is all cleaned up and wrapped up warmly, she smiles and conveys her contentment and happiness. The child starts with those binary means of communication (crying and smiling). Gradually, she starts her own language which parents and siblings try to make sense out of but the child starts to adapt herself to the language of the family, called the mother tongue. Society has to learn that it is best to provide an environment where the child learns about the environment in her mother tongue. The child follows certain routines dictated by the parents and other caregivers. Initially, she may express (remember she has a language and ability to communicate) some disinterest, distaste, and rejection, but soon follows the rules and regulations imposed by parents. She sleeps on time, has meals at regular intervals, has playtime, and so on. She learns the laws of the self (body) and the family. It is noteworthy that on many an occasion, it is the parents and nurses that may relax their rules and give conflicting signals to the child. Of course, the child shows some definite creativity to do her own things while behaving within the rules laid out most of the time.
Figure 2: Subjects Appropriate for a Growing Child to Learn.
The child starts to learn about the parents, aunts, grandparents, baby care givers, family, and friends as the first lessons in history. She likes her family dog but cringes when the neighbor’s Pitbull barks loudly. While she is willing to pat her family dog, she is careful about the cat as her expression of personal security.
We know that those muscles which we exercise most are the ones that grow strong. As stated before, the child exercises her vocal muscles the most. Of course, she has been kicking her legs and waving her hands even while she was in the mother’s womb, those limbs grow fast to make her mobile (to topple, tumble, crawl, walk, and run). Such exercises are important for a child to be ready to grow into an amateur or professional sportsperson, or athlete at school and college. A child should be exposed to reading, watching, listening, and speaking so that the important organ called the brain also grows. It is not uncommon to observe leaders in every field who, in their childhoods, have been avid readers of books, listeners of stories from their mothers and teachers, speakers at debates and elocutions, and writers at every level of the school. Parents and guardians do well to support and encourage children to exercise their brains so that they grow their memory capacity and long term retention of what was learned, culled, and stored. It is very difficult to seek the brain to do much if it did not build itself during child’s growth stage. Since the brain does both keeping memory as well as processing, both kinds of exercises are important for children of every age.
A child outgrows her clothes as well as her toys and books. She explores new geographies, and new tricks showing her curiosity and creativity. It is again instructive to parents and teachers that putting children in a box does no good for their growth. The child should be exposed to the local culture albeit some screens and filters may be placed (like training wheels on a bike) so that she is exposed to what is considered good and classic culture but not to indecent and immoral behaviors and attitudes. Participation in activities in arts and fine arts are likely to direct the child into good culture, discipline, and team work.
While the child would learn that following certain rules set by the parents would be beneficial to her as they reduce time-outs and yield an occasional ice cream and frequent pats on the back from dad. Exposure to religion and stories from the epics could instruct a child that there is more than the home and immediate surroundings but a wider cosmos to be aware of and to follow its moral tidings.
We will discuss how the subjects and horizon fit together as a child passes through adolescence and youth and gets graduate diplomas from various levels of schools. This is shown in Figure 3.
In my childhood, I learnt about goldmines in Coolgardie, and Kalgoorlie in Australia, prairies in America, Merino wool in New Zealand, and cricket in England, among a few other strange factoids in our history, geography, and other classes in our schools. Of course, we memorized the facts to pass the tests and escape caning from the teachers and mockery by older cousins and rebukes from uncles. But, we had no clue about the gold, the games, or the places. The saddest point was that we had no inkling about what was available in our village and district, games played locally, the origin of our village, how people lived in the village, and so on. It did not occur to us that our family had a history until our children started asking us questions about our ancestry to write their essays in their schools in Australia and America. What a pity that our (Indian) school curriculum removed our history, geography, economy, culture, and religion from our conscience!
I wish that they had a curriculum of the following type when we were children. Perhaps, Indians should launch such a curriculum.
Figure 3: Study of subjects and the extent over time.
Subjects and Descriptions:
Language:
Parents should be communicating with children in their mother tongue such that the baby develops good expression in that language. For good communication, a child has to have good command of the language in terms of its structure, vocabulary, and meaning with respect to context. Then, the child should know the domain of the conversation. Then, there is the body language. Finally, there is a script for the language. As the child grows, she should know that there are other languages used by other people. The child should be curious to learn those languages in order to converse with the other people, and to appreciate the richness and beauty of those languages also.
Society should introduce to the child various other subjects via voice, text, pictures, and action, i.e. via listening, and watching modes.
Language is for communication among people, among generations, and between people and animals, and machines. It is to express data, information, knowledge, commands, and wishes. It is to entertain, excite, motivate, and guide people.
Communication:
A child should be encouraged to communicate. Parents love it when their baby begins to say some words. That is good but the child is not a parrot just to regurgitate what she listens to. As she grows, she should begin to understand the meaning and intent of words, commands, and speech. Likewise, she should be able to translate her wishes and thoughts via her speech. The more the muscles involved in the speech process are exercised, the stronger they get. Since communication involves the thinking brain, it also gets exercised. But, there must be a balance between the content in the brain and the conversation. This aspect requires that the child should be a quiet listener (for a part of the time) so that the hearing, listening, and filling the brain with content can occur. As we now know, it is not just data that a child’s brain should hold. It is data, information, methods to process the content, indexing, computation, generating new constructs from the basic information (imagination and creativity), developing links, and finally using the generated forms to convey as speech or writing or art.
Communication is not an isolated action. It is in the context of other factors in life. Thus, as part of culture, law, and discipline, a child should learn the occasions that are right for her to speak and when she should not.
A child should be introduced to information via speech and texts gradually covering various subjects to gain understanding the local to global scenes such that the child can connect the physical objects and actions to language.
Use of extremely foreign names and concepts in stories will not provide context and association whereas local names will allow a greater understanding for the child. Perhaps, this may be the reason why our elders used animals in children’s stories as the children were also exposed to animals in real life. Of course, currently, children see only plastic replicas of animals and trees as we have been exterminating the real live animals and trees or keeping them in zoos, aquariums, and nurseries. Again, the behaviors of the captive animals do not fit the prior descriptions of animals. There is no predator and prey in a zoo as they are all fed on welfare.
Law:
A child is expected to obey the laws that the body imposes on her in terms of her food, sleep, sanitation, and activity or playtime. Essentially, these are the rules imposed by nature. Those rules are followed by the family’s rules. Rules are generally for the welfare, safety, and well-being of the child and family.
As the child gains more autonomous mobility, she will come in contact with other children and adults in other environments, such as play pens, parks, sandlots, swimming pools, grounds, nurseries, kindergartens, and schools. At that stage, the rules laid out by the controllers of those environments will come into play. It is important if the child can learn that the rule is not arbitrary but it is in the interest of her own safety and wellbeing (i.e. not getting hurt, not feeling pain, or not falling sick). If a child learns during her childhood that rules have been laid for good reason, she is highly likely to understand the rationale for rules as an adult and respects and follows them sincerely throughout her life.
New rules apply with time as the child grows and moves in the village, the town, the district and so on into the larger geographies. For example, the rules at mealtime are likely to be different at home versus the school, versus the picnic grounds. Every game has its own rules of play and conduct. She will also realize that there are specific rules for organizations and for people in their various roles. Of course, she will expect them to follow the rules laid down for them. Through proper understanding of the systems, she will realize why the others cannot do certain things the way she would wish that they do certain things.
Hence, schools have a responsibility to teach children about the laws within each theater and ultimately in the nation and the globe. Together with the rules are the people responsible to enforce them (conductors, directors, and police) and those (judges) who dispense justice (punishment or compensation) when the rules are broken. If children understand these principles about law and gain respect for the laws in an orderly society, there will be fewer law breakers in later stages. They may also become good rule makers as adults.
History
Learning history starts at home when a child learns who her parents, grandparents, relatives, and various service providers are. A local grocer may provide the ingredients for the food in her home in her childhood, while Amazon or Flipkart may provide most goods for her in her adult life. She may realize that her classmates are constantly competing to gain the teacher’s attention, while she may realize later on that competing companies are arguing to sell their raw materials to a big buyer.
A child would see history as a sequence of events in the lives of people in villages, towns, states, and countries. Neither all events are recorded, nor everything recorded are necessarily objective. It is akin to children’s reports to their parents about happenings in the school and at playgrounds. Of course, the aim is to record events of significance and in a concise manner. The objective is to learn to characterize people and groups such that the lessons of history can guide people in their manner of conduct in the future.
Once the purpose of history is thus understood, children can learn progressively the history of their own family, the village, the country, and ultimately, the globe. They would develop a logically connected idea of what events have shaped the world as it exists today and how they might conduct in the future to make the world and the planet a better one for tomorrow.
Health
Parents take care of a baby’s health and make sure that she gets nutritious food and lives in a sanitary environment. They take care of the inoculations and vaccinations. As they let the child venture outside, they keep cautioning her about the precautions and consequences of violations. Various parties, such as parents, child minders, healthcare providers, teachers, and coaches, who watch the activities of the child, should be noticing any deviations in health and providing feedback to parents for timely action.
We know from the nature of the human body, those organs that are exercised most in childhood grow best. Besides taking care of the child’s health, she should be provided knowledge about healthcare. Through various means, a child should be given information about the components of the human body and the need and means to keep them healthy. Once such knowledge is in a child’s mind, she is highly likely to be conscious of health throughout her life.
Simply imposing rules like, ‘do this and do not eat that’ will be tolerated, or resisted, and forgotten over time. But, if the rules are presented as methods to prevent something bad happening to the body and improving the abilities and capabilities, such knowledge is likely to have a lasting and positive impact on a child.
From a personal health, a child might be able to project the knowledge to the health of the society and the environment as she grows.
Geography
Once a child begins to understand her room, her home, and so on, it is time to introduce to her, which is her street, her village, and progressively larger geographies. The geography contains resources that benefit her in several ways. These features should be used to help her learn what the geography is about. The local hills, streams, fields with crops, streets with homes, and farms with animals should be part of her geography lessons. Each feature has a unique characteristic and the child should be able to extrapolate them to other features prevailing in other locations. Thus, she will be able to learn the geographies of larger units, such as the country, the globe, and the universe.
Security
A child starts to develop attachment to certain objects, usually her bed, stroller, and toys. She likes not to be separated from them, which is the beginning of the security response. At appropriate times, she should be informed about possession and dispossession of items without scaring her. By instructing her about how much effort is required to get possession of items, she should be enabled to understand their value. Thus, security may be understood in terms of protecting value. Thereafter, the value of various items that are physical, mental, cultural, and spiritual can be introduced. In parallel, she should learn the means of protection and her individual responsibility for protection versus when it is the responsibility of others.
Sport
Sports, games, and workouts are essential for the wellbeing and growth of the child. An infant might start playing with her physical and virtual toys. But soon, she will start playing with other children. These activities offer great opportunities to learn about the roles in each game, the level of participation, expectations of outcomes, thought and decision making processes, and the meanings of results. Games allow children to understand the meaning of work in a team. They will get an opportunity to learn their own limitations, interests, and aptitudes. As they progress in sports, they will learn about competitiveness as well as cooperation. They will understand goals and the means to accomplish them progressively. It is important for parents to realize that winning the medals is not the end but understanding the process helps the child to learn valuable lessons for her future life. Sports will improve health and increase a child’s physical as well as mental capabilities when she is properly trained.
Mathematics
It is said that when one of the toys out of a set of toys is taken away from a child, she recognizes and it is considered the beginning of mathematical capability in a child. A mother may plead with the child to eat one more spoon of the vegetable pudding. A father may agree to give the child one more cookie if she sleeps early. These are subtle introductions to mathematics and its early utility. A child’s knowledge of arithmetic is the important foundation to her later life. She may be encouraged to count the number of books on the mother’s bookshelf, number of houses on their street, and such interesting exercises. When she goes to ice cream store, she may start learning about tables displaying menus and prices. She can learn comparison and concepts like equal, greater than, and less than. As she moves around town, she can learn shapes as unannounced introduction to geometry. When she goes to a store with items that she may not be familiar with, that can be the beginning of X, Y, Z in Algebra. Parents should encourage children to join them in their accounting and bookkeeping chores (assuming that they do these chores). It will give the child introduction to accounting, budgeting, and responsible spending. Games like Monopoly are good to teach about money and transactions but parents have to be cautious that children may not consider real money as a game and that they can always do better the next time.
Creativity
It is very important for parents to encourage their children to engage in activities where they come up with new ideas. It starts with thinking about a situation and a way something is currently done and evolving a new way of doing the same. It is critical to present common items that have many different designs. If children realize that they were the results of creativity of some people before those items existed, children will realize that creativity is always possible. It is just a new way of doing something or a new arrangement.
A child can be encouraged to identify different ways of going from home to school. They may come up with new ways. Of course, they can be helped to evaluate the merits and demerits of the different ways they came up with. Results of such evaluations may help them why we generally see only some solutions and how occasionally, new solutions overtake old ones.
New ways of expressing a statement will help them in language and communication. Games have to be played according to the rules laid out for a particular game. But, not all people have the same capabilities and abilities and different standards are created. Children should be allowed and encouraged to evolve new rules in a given game, and new variations of games; it is only a game. They should realize that the goal is fun for all and none should feel cheated. As children develop such skills, they may become better administrators, managers, and leaders who recognize the ultimate goal(s) and not be bound by the method laid by predecessors.
The key in childhood is to let them be open to thinking of newer ways of doing any activity. This will allow them to become creative in later life.
Culture
Children follow their parents in terms of how they live in a society. The way parents behave and interact between themselves and with other relatives, friends, and visitors would influence the children. Children pick up their language, reaction to situations, and mannerisms from parents. As children interact with other children at school, play grounds, and social meeting places, they tend to follow the group. As learners, children may be attracted to what is new and discard the old methods they have learned. Thus, parents determine the exposure that children get. Therefore, it is important for parents to expose children to groups that focus on good behavior, courteous and pleasant interactions, and high values. Arts, music, dance, literary activities, plays, and social service are some of the activities that would encourage children to expose their minds to pleasant experiences while imposing discipline. These activities would teach them the idea of group performance in addition to individual accomplishment. Children would learn and gain the ability to appreciate people and societies with culture. At the end of the day, it is culture that relaxes and soothes the mind. Early exposure to cultural activities is likely to improve their talents. Of course, one has to realize that certain innate talent is necessary to excel in culture.
Religion
As the world becomes intensive in science and technology, people tend to think that we are and we can be the masters of the universe and the cosmos. In reality, every time, we face a disaster, we think of our faith and get back to our beliefs. We seek relief that physical and psychological structures cannot yet offer. Faith comes to rescue and we recover and life continues. Hence, children should be involved in their religion that discusses nurturing and love rather than hurt and hatred. Religion may offer to them an alternative explanation for some intriguing situations that other disciplines are not able to answer.
Education or learning starts from the time of birth. Initial learning may be up to nature. A time comes when parents and society have to take responsibility for a child’s learning process through education.
Parents, relatives, and friends begin to admire the physical and mental features of a child. That is good. But, as children grow, their physical and mental faculties grow based on the environment in which they were brought up. A child’s interests, attitudes, and behaviors are molded by the environment.
Rich people and middle class people decorate the room in which a child is brought up with the hope that it influences the child’s character as he/she grows. They buy toys, games, and musical instruments that engage, calm, and educate the child. The middle class in the West leave the children in front of the Sesame Street program. There was a time when American children started their day with Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood. All that is fine, perhaps! But, a time comes when the real education starts. The nursery schools and Kindergartens in the West take care of it. They are supplemented by the Sunday schools. They are OK for the West – at least so for the upper and middle cast children.
India needs its own system owing to its unique characteristics. I am making an attempt to suggest a framework to develop a system suitable for India with its diversity in many areas.
What do we mean when we say that a baby or a child is growing? It is the growth of the physical body as well as the mental faculties and attitudes. Those muscles in the body that are exercised most are the ones that grow best. This is evident when we see one child is able to run fast while another child can digest a lot. Yet another child can begin to sing or read small books. Some children pick up slang fast and pick up fights frequently for no cause. This should tell us that we should get the child to exercise her physical and mental muscles gently, regularly, and progressively in the proper direction.
A child’s natural urge to explore self and surroundings would suggest what she likes to learn and how she likes to progress. These trends should guide us in how we structure the teaching and learning system at Level 1- the early childhood.
Figure 1 shows the natural progression of the space (geographical entities) that a child and a person should explore over time. A child is naturally interested in self. It is not my intention to say that a child tries to learn about herself. A child responds to impacts on herself. She cries when cold air or hot air impinges on her. She gets startled when a sudden loud sound hits her ears. She likes to eat certain items and dislikes certain others. She laughs when tickled. In a short while, she may even respond to her name. She starts to develop tastes for certain toys and even becomes used to them (addiction comes later on!). At a young age, a child learns ownership as she likes her own bed or own utensils. At a certain age, she knows if one out of a certain number of familiar toys is removed from her sight. That is the beginning of her talents in mathematics, economics (ownership), and defense of property.
Figure 1: Space (Geographical) progression natural for a growing child.
As the child grows, she starts to recognize mother, father, and the family, in general. As the child goes about her surroundings, she begins to recognize her home, street, and village. This learning process should instruct us to enable the child to move progressively with age to learn about expanded spaces as shown in Figure 1. Thus, teaching them about global things before local things is unnatural. It is meaningless to sing the nursery rhyme, “Pussy cat, Pussy cat, where have you been, I have been to London to look at the Queen.”
Figure 2 shows a list of subjects (not in any ranking order) that a child will find it natural to learn as she grows. The first time a child cries, it is conveying to the parents and the delivering nurse that the child is live and ready to enter this world. Later on, when she is all cleaned up and wrapped up warmly, she smiles and conveys her contentment and happiness. The child starts with those binary means of communication (crying and smiling). Gradually, she starts her own language which parents and siblings try to make sense out of but the child starts to adapt herself to the language of the family, called the mother tongue. Society has to learn that it is best to provide an environment where the child learns about the environment in her mother tongue. The child follows certain routines dictated by the parents and other caregivers. Initially, she may express (remember she has a language and ability to communicate) some disinterest, distaste, and rejection, but soon follows the rules and regulations imposed by parents. She sleeps on time, has meals at regular intervals, has playtime, and so on. She learns the laws of the self (body) and the family. It is noteworthy that on many an occasion, it is the parents and nurses that may relax their rules and give conflicting signals to the child. Of course, the child shows some definite creativity to do her own things while behaving within the rules laid out most of the time.
Figure 2: Subjects Appropriate for a Growing Child to Learn.
The child starts to learn about the parents, aunts, grandparents, baby care givers, family, and friends as the first lessons in history. She likes her family dog but cringes when the neighbor’s Pitbull barks loudly. While she is willing to pat her family dog, she is careful about the cat as her expression of personal security.
We know that those muscles which we exercise most are the ones that grow strong. As stated before, the child exercises her vocal muscles the most. Of course, she has been kicking her legs and waving her hands even while she was in the mother’s womb, those limbs grow fast to make her mobile (to topple, tumble, crawl, walk, and run). Such exercises are important for a child to be ready to grow into an amateur or professional sportsperson, or athlete at school and college. A child should be exposed to reading, watching, listening, and speaking so that the important organ called the brain also grows. It is not uncommon to observe leaders in every field who, in their childhoods, have been avid readers of books, listeners of stories from their mothers and teachers, speakers at debates and elocutions, and writers at every level of the school. Parents and guardians do well to support and encourage children to exercise their brains so that they grow their memory capacity and long term retention of what was learned, culled, and stored. It is very difficult to seek the brain to do much if it did not build itself during child’s growth stage. Since the brain does both keeping memory as well as processing, both kinds of exercises are important for children of every age.
A child outgrows her clothes as well as her toys and books. She explores new geographies, and new tricks showing her curiosity and creativity. It is again instructive to parents and teachers that putting children in a box does no good for their growth. The child should be exposed to the local culture albeit some screens and filters may be placed (like training wheels on a bike) so that she is exposed to what is considered good and classic culture but not to indecent and immoral behaviors and attitudes. Participation in activities in arts and fine arts are likely to direct the child into good culture, discipline, and team work.
While the child would learn that following certain rules set by the parents would be beneficial to her as they reduce time-outs and yield an occasional ice cream and frequent pats on the back from dad. Exposure to religion and stories from the epics could instruct a child that there is more than the home and immediate surroundings but a wider cosmos to be aware of and to follow its moral tidings.
We will discuss how the subjects and horizon fit together as a child passes through adolescence and youth and gets graduate diplomas from various levels of schools. This is shown in Figure 3.
In my childhood, I learnt about goldmines in Coolgardie, and Kalgoorlie in Australia, prairies in America, Merino wool in New Zealand, and cricket in England, among a few other strange factoids in our history, geography, and other classes in our schools. Of course, we memorized the facts to pass the tests and escape caning from the teachers and mockery by older cousins and rebukes from uncles. But, we had no clue about the gold, the games, or the places. The saddest point was that we had no inkling about what was available in our village and district, games played locally, the origin of our village, how people lived in the village, and so on. It did not occur to us that our family had a history until our children started asking us questions about our ancestry to write their essays in their schools in Australia and America. What a pity that our (Indian) school curriculum removed our history, geography, economy, culture, and religion from our conscience!
I wish that they had a curriculum of the following type when we were children. Perhaps, Indians should launch such a curriculum.
Figure 3: Study of subjects and the extent over time.
Subjects and Descriptions:
Language:
Parents should be communicating with children in their mother tongue such that the baby develops good expression in that language. For good communication, a child has to have good command of the language in terms of its structure, vocabulary, and meaning with respect to context. Then, the child should know the domain of the conversation. Then, there is the body language. Finally, there is a script for the language. As the child grows, she should know that there are other languages used by other people. The child should be curious to learn those languages in order to converse with the other people, and to appreciate the richness and beauty of those languages also.
Society should introduce to the child various other subjects via voice, text, pictures, and action, i.e. via listening, and watching modes.
Language is for communication among people, among generations, and between people and animals, and machines. It is to express data, information, knowledge, commands, and wishes. It is to entertain, excite, motivate, and guide people.
Communication:
A child should be encouraged to communicate. Parents love it when their baby begins to say some words. That is good but the child is not a parrot just to regurgitate what she listens to. As she grows, she should begin to understand the meaning and intent of words, commands, and speech. Likewise, she should be able to translate her wishes and thoughts via her speech. The more the muscles involved in the speech process are exercised, the stronger they get. Since communication involves the thinking brain, it also gets exercised. But, there must be a balance between the content in the brain and the conversation. This aspect requires that the child should be a quiet listener (for a part of the time) so that the hearing, listening, and filling the brain with content can occur. As we now know, it is not just data that a child’s brain should hold. It is data, information, methods to process the content, indexing, computation, generating new constructs from the basic information (imagination and creativity), developing links, and finally using the generated forms to convey as speech or writing or art.
Communication is not an isolated action. It is in the context of other factors in life. Thus, as part of culture, law, and discipline, a child should learn the occasions that are right for her to speak and when she should not.
A child should be introduced to information via speech and texts gradually covering various subjects to gain understanding the local to global scenes such that the child can connect the physical objects and actions to language.
Use of extremely foreign names and concepts in stories will not provide context and association whereas local names will allow a greater understanding for the child. Perhaps, this may be the reason why our elders used animals in children’s stories as the children were also exposed to animals in real life. Of course, currently, children see only plastic replicas of animals and trees as we have been exterminating the real live animals and trees or keeping them in zoos, aquariums, and nurseries. Again, the behaviors of the captive animals do not fit the prior descriptions of animals. There is no predator and prey in a zoo as they are all fed on welfare.
Law:
A child is expected to obey the laws that the body imposes on her in terms of her food, sleep, sanitation, and activity or playtime. Essentially, these are the rules imposed by nature. Those rules are followed by the family’s rules. Rules are generally for the welfare, safety, and well-being of the child and family.
As the child gains more autonomous mobility, she will come in contact with other children and adults in other environments, such as play pens, parks, sandlots, swimming pools, grounds, nurseries, kindergartens, and schools. At that stage, the rules laid out by the controllers of those environments will come into play. It is important if the child can learn that the rule is not arbitrary but it is in the interest of her own safety and wellbeing (i.e. not getting hurt, not feeling pain, or not falling sick). If a child learns during her childhood that rules have been laid for good reason, she is highly likely to understand the rationale for rules as an adult and respects and follows them sincerely throughout her life.
New rules apply with time as the child grows and moves in the village, the town, the district and so on into the larger geographies. For example, the rules at mealtime are likely to be different at home versus the school, versus the picnic grounds. Every game has its own rules of play and conduct. She will also realize that there are specific rules for organizations and for people in their various roles. Of course, she will expect them to follow the rules laid down for them. Through proper understanding of the systems, she will realize why the others cannot do certain things the way she would wish that they do certain things.
Hence, schools have a responsibility to teach children about the laws within each theater and ultimately in the nation and the globe. Together with the rules are the people responsible to enforce them (conductors, directors, and police) and those (judges) who dispense justice (punishment or compensation) when the rules are broken. If children understand these principles about law and gain respect for the laws in an orderly society, there will be fewer law breakers in later stages. They may also become good rule makers as adults.
History
Learning history starts at home when a child learns who her parents, grandparents, relatives, and various service providers are. A local grocer may provide the ingredients for the food in her home in her childhood, while Amazon or Flipkart may provide most goods for her in her adult life. She may realize that her classmates are constantly competing to gain the teacher’s attention, while she may realize later on that competing companies are arguing to sell their raw materials to a big buyer.
A child would see history as a sequence of events in the lives of people in villages, towns, states, and countries. Neither all events are recorded, nor everything recorded are necessarily objective. It is akin to children’s reports to their parents about happenings in the school and at playgrounds. Of course, the aim is to record events of significance and in a concise manner. The objective is to learn to characterize people and groups such that the lessons of history can guide people in their manner of conduct in the future.
Once the purpose of history is thus understood, children can learn progressively the history of their own family, the village, the country, and ultimately, the globe. They would develop a logically connected idea of what events have shaped the world as it exists today and how they might conduct in the future to make the world and the planet a better one for tomorrow.
Health
Parents take care of a baby’s health and make sure that she gets nutritious food and lives in a sanitary environment. They take care of the inoculations and vaccinations. As they let the child venture outside, they keep cautioning her about the precautions and consequences of violations. Various parties, such as parents, child minders, healthcare providers, teachers, and coaches, who watch the activities of the child, should be noticing any deviations in health and providing feedback to parents for timely action.
We know from the nature of the human body, those organs that are exercised most in childhood grow best. Besides taking care of the child’s health, she should be provided knowledge about healthcare. Through various means, a child should be given information about the components of the human body and the need and means to keep them healthy. Once such knowledge is in a child’s mind, she is highly likely to be conscious of health throughout her life.
Simply imposing rules like, ‘do this and do not eat that’ will be tolerated, or resisted, and forgotten over time. But, if the rules are presented as methods to prevent something bad happening to the body and improving the abilities and capabilities, such knowledge is likely to have a lasting and positive impact on a child.
From a personal health, a child might be able to project the knowledge to the health of the society and the environment as she grows.
Geography
Once a child begins to understand her room, her home, and so on, it is time to introduce to her, which is her street, her village, and progressively larger geographies. The geography contains resources that benefit her in several ways. These features should be used to help her learn what the geography is about. The local hills, streams, fields with crops, streets with homes, and farms with animals should be part of her geography lessons. Each feature has a unique characteristic and the child should be able to extrapolate them to other features prevailing in other locations. Thus, she will be able to learn the geographies of larger units, such as the country, the globe, and the universe.
Security
A child starts to develop attachment to certain objects, usually her bed, stroller, and toys. She likes not to be separated from them, which is the beginning of the security response. At appropriate times, she should be informed about possession and dispossession of items without scaring her. By instructing her about how much effort is required to get possession of items, she should be enabled to understand their value. Thus, security may be understood in terms of protecting value. Thereafter, the value of various items that are physical, mental, cultural, and spiritual can be introduced. In parallel, she should learn the means of protection and her individual responsibility for protection versus when it is the responsibility of others.
Sport
Sports, games, and workouts are essential for the wellbeing and growth of the child. An infant might start playing with her physical and virtual toys. But soon, she will start playing with other children. These activities offer great opportunities to learn about the roles in each game, the level of participation, expectations of outcomes, thought and decision making processes, and the meanings of results. Games allow children to understand the meaning of work in a team. They will get an opportunity to learn their own limitations, interests, and aptitudes. As they progress in sports, they will learn about competitiveness as well as cooperation. They will understand goals and the means to accomplish them progressively. It is important for parents to realize that winning the medals is not the end but understanding the process helps the child to learn valuable lessons for her future life. Sports will improve health and increase a child’s physical as well as mental capabilities when she is properly trained.
Mathematics
It is said that when one of the toys out of a set of toys is taken away from a child, she recognizes and it is considered the beginning of mathematical capability in a child. A mother may plead with the child to eat one more spoon of the vegetable pudding. A father may agree to give the child one more cookie if she sleeps early. These are subtle introductions to mathematics and its early utility. A child’s knowledge of arithmetic is the important foundation to her later life. She may be encouraged to count the number of books on the mother’s bookshelf, number of houses on their street, and such interesting exercises. When she goes to ice cream store, she may start learning about tables displaying menus and prices. She can learn comparison and concepts like equal, greater than, and less than. As she moves around town, she can learn shapes as unannounced introduction to geometry. When she goes to a store with items that she may not be familiar with, that can be the beginning of X, Y, Z in Algebra. Parents should encourage children to join them in their accounting and bookkeeping chores (assuming that they do these chores). It will give the child introduction to accounting, budgeting, and responsible spending. Games like Monopoly are good to teach about money and transactions but parents have to be cautious that children may not consider real money as a game and that they can always do better the next time.
Creativity
It is very important for parents to encourage their children to engage in activities where they come up with new ideas. It starts with thinking about a situation and a way something is currently done and evolving a new way of doing the same. It is critical to present common items that have many different designs. If children realize that they were the results of creativity of some people before those items existed, children will realize that creativity is always possible. It is just a new way of doing something or a new arrangement.
A child can be encouraged to identify different ways of going from home to school. They may come up with new ways. Of course, they can be helped to evaluate the merits and demerits of the different ways they came up with. Results of such evaluations may help them why we generally see only some solutions and how occasionally, new solutions overtake old ones.
New ways of expressing a statement will help them in language and communication. Games have to be played according to the rules laid out for a particular game. But, not all people have the same capabilities and abilities and different standards are created. Children should be allowed and encouraged to evolve new rules in a given game, and new variations of games; it is only a game. They should realize that the goal is fun for all and none should feel cheated. As children develop such skills, they may become better administrators, managers, and leaders who recognize the ultimate goal(s) and not be bound by the method laid by predecessors.
The key in childhood is to let them be open to thinking of newer ways of doing any activity. This will allow them to become creative in later life.
Culture
Children follow their parents in terms of how they live in a society. The way parents behave and interact between themselves and with other relatives, friends, and visitors would influence the children. Children pick up their language, reaction to situations, and mannerisms from parents. As children interact with other children at school, play grounds, and social meeting places, they tend to follow the group. As learners, children may be attracted to what is new and discard the old methods they have learned. Thus, parents determine the exposure that children get. Therefore, it is important for parents to expose children to groups that focus on good behavior, courteous and pleasant interactions, and high values. Arts, music, dance, literary activities, plays, and social service are some of the activities that would encourage children to expose their minds to pleasant experiences while imposing discipline. These activities would teach them the idea of group performance in addition to individual accomplishment. Children would learn and gain the ability to appreciate people and societies with culture. At the end of the day, it is culture that relaxes and soothes the mind. Early exposure to cultural activities is likely to improve their talents. Of course, one has to realize that certain innate talent is necessary to excel in culture.
Religion
As the world becomes intensive in science and technology, people tend to think that we are and we can be the masters of the universe and the cosmos. In reality, every time, we face a disaster, we think of our faith and get back to our beliefs. We seek relief that physical and psychological structures cannot yet offer. Faith comes to rescue and we recover and life continues. Hence, children should be involved in their religion that discusses nurturing and love rather than hurt and hatred. Religion may offer to them an alternative explanation for some intriguing situations that other disciplines are not able to answer.
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