MBoSE stresses on critical thinking

SHILLONG: The Meghalaya Board of School Education (MBoSE), which has felt the need for encouraging modern teaching methods in school and critical thinking among students, organised an interactive session for principals on Monday.
Addressing the media after the programme, which was held in the auditorium of the MBoSE office in La Chaumiere, Joint Director M Marbaniang said, “As a state education board we felt it is high time that school principals should be sensitised about modern teaching and to be more efficient.”
He added that the workshop focused on uplifting the skills of teachers and informing them about recent technology.
Marbaniang said the main resource person of the programme was G. Balasubramanian, a renowned academician from Tamil Nadu, who retired as director (academic) in the Central Board of School Education in 2006.
Highlighting the notion of global education and critical thinking, he said, “We want students from the lower primary level up to the higher secondary level to not only learn from textbooks but also realise that they should have the ability to thinking… We want to empower them with the spirit of thinking,” he said. “I feel that the system we have here is different from other parts of the world,” he added.
Marbaniang observed that the orientation programme will sensitise school principals to motivate students to think critically beyond textbooks.
Citing examples of beyond-books education, Marbaniang said students can be asked to write poems on ‘Shillong’ or ‘Ward’s Lake’ and this way students can “come up with different words and phrasings”.