It’s a common observation of teachers that often, when a teacher asks a student to repeat what he has taught the class, the student stands blacked out. Some teachers, unbehoovingly, make fun of such a student. Yes, there are teachers who understand that the student must have been preoccupied with a more potent thought. Definitely, the human mind can nurture only one thought at a time.
Some researchers suggest that because of diluted attention, students fail to recall the experience of seeing or listening to the information because it was not encoded in short-term memory.
Digital sleepwalking – mindless use of digital platforms – has shortened the attention span of children. Doomscrolling makes scrollers impatient for anything lengthy and multidimensional. They start fidgeting. The mind’s linear functioning on socials slows down the cognitive processing and retrieval of information.
The drab lecturing pedagogy is rampant in our institutions. Hook openings and contextualising lessons with students’ lived experiences engage them on both physical and mental levels. Pedagogy must be structured to answer the questions students want answered. Thinking and attention will get aligned. After all, ‘memory is the residue of thought.’ Break the lesson into short chunks to avoid the overflow of working memory.
One principal boasts of the strict discipline in his school. He has issued orders to the teachers that when a period nears its ending, the next period teacher must stand waiting outside the classroom. The intention is not to let students have those few moments of leisure. Running a classroom like a panopticon is educide – the murder of education.
In the education system of Finland, after every study period of forty-five minutes, students are given a break of fifteen minutes. The idea is to allow students to refresh themselves for the next period. Compare this with our sedentary learning environment where infrastructure doesn’t allow even a midday break.
When students have to sit for nine periods at a stretch, each of forty minutes, on the wooden chairs or desks, leaving no time and space to allow them to refresh themselves, it is but natural to act zombies during lectures. To break free from the grind, they make mischief, whisper to each other, or talk through body gestures.
Attention is a limited resource. However, selective attention is a spotlight; inattentional blindness leaves the rest in darkness. Attention fogging is aggravated by the poor socio-economic circumstances of the students. In public schools, the students most of the time attend classes without having their breakfast. As some students work menial jobs post-school, they have to deal during the class with the traumatic thoughts of unhealthy workplaces.
Teachers must be dexterous enough that they deliver their punch line after getting the undivided attention of students. After every period, a teacher must offer breathing space to students to prepare them to listen to him. In the lecture method, the teacher must give time to let students masticate and assimilate what he has taught.
Some teachers repeat without pause, disallowing students to let anything sink even in their short memory. The bumper-to-bumper running of periods does not leave space for short discussions among students to get their grey areas crystallised. It also promotes among students the habit of learning by rote to avoid punishment. Short stints of mindfulness and deep breathing can reset overstimulated teachers.
Leisure is a fundamental right of children. It prepares them for the next task. Students must have a choice of what to do during breaks. It is the comic relief of Shakespearean masterpiece tragedies, which saves the viewers from becoming bored because of the surfeit of tragic feelings.
To engage students in classrooms and make the lectures productive, a teacher will have to ensure what takeaways he holds for students. Does he really want to give them anything constructive and beneficial? The purposeful involvement of both teachers and students can glue their attention towards each other.
