For the love of the word

How the Pre-Texts method helps students engage with text that they’d have otherwise ignored

The etymology for school is “leisure”. As a place of ‘leisure’, it refers to an environment where students can engage with the curriculum without the pressure of learning. But how many students fondly recall their experiences in school or college as being leisurely or enjoyable?

However, this is not a utopian or impractical idea. Take the Pre-Texts methodology, for example. This method of learning transforms the text into art. Students are engaged in a manual activities like drawing, sewing, sculpting, painting and so on, while the facilitator — teacher or parent — reads out a text from a curriculum. As the student internalises the text and manifests it into the art form of their choice, not only is art created but it also becomes a vehicle to encourage students to read. Reading and comprehension is the real outcome.

This simple and scalable pedagogic process has been successfully implemented in Latin America and Africa, where disadvantaged kids are being empowered with a newfound interest in reading and learning. Research has proven that it is equally effective in reducing dissonance and anxiety for learners.

To explore its effectiveness in Indian education, The Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute, Harvard University, has partnered with FLAME University’s Centre for Knowledge Alternatives for a research project on ‘Enhancing Reading and Learning Outcomes through Pre-Text Method in Schools’. Its principal investigators are Prof. Doris Sommer, Ira Jewell Williams, Jr., Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and of African and African American Studies, and Director of the Cultural Agents Initiative, Harvard University, Prof. Yugank Goyal, Associate Professor in Public Policy, and Founding Director, Centre for Knowledge Alternatives at FLAME University and Prof. Shivakumar Jolad, Associate Professor at FLAME University.

Prof. Sommer and Prof. Goyal share insights into the Pre-Texts methodology and the role it can play in promoting a love of reading among learners.

Neuroscience has been trying to teach us what good educators, including parents, know: very little is learned without pleasure and less is retained. D.D. Winnicott, the groundbreaking British child psychoanalyst, promoted play as the vehicle for learning to explore and to love the world.

Centuries of good pedagogical practice and more recent developments in constructivist education confirm that experiential learning works. The implied corollary which Pre-Texts foregrounds is the pleasure that keeps students engaged with the experience.