The book Introduction to Rational Inquiry by KP Mohanan and Tara Mohanan seeks to help learners from Grade 8 onwards to develop the capacity for critical thinking and inquiry across academic disciplines. Rather than teaching subject-specific content, it equips readers with the foundational tools of academic intelligence — observing, classifying, defining, reasoning, explaining, justifying, and debating — skills that cut across the boundaries of science, mathematics, the human

Authors: KP Mohanan and Tara Mohanan The purpose of this document is to help secondary school students: ~ go beyond the mechanical skills of calculation to produce correct answers without the foundational understanding and abilities; ~ understand the concept of equations in arithmetic, and other related concepts; and ~ develop the ability to reason using equations. Our hope is also that the discussion here would help parents and teachers to guide primary school stude

In some of the previous Saturday Conversations, we discussed the role of assessment in shaping what students learn in an educational program. The conversation in this video examines is on the CBSE science examination 2026 as a case study. While various policy documents in India talk about the need for higher order cognitive abilities in school education and higher education, all that CBSE examinations continue to be largely limited to testing (a) the memorization and reproduc

This conversation was triggered by the Aeon article, “How to be a Genius,” by Craig Wright ( https://aeon.co/essays/what-can-we-learn-from-the-secret-habits-of-genius ). The discussion evolved into: “Helping the young develop valuable mental capacities.” The terms genius, prodigy, gifted person, and talented person denote individuals that society recognises as highly capable along some dimension of life — music, painting, dance, mathematics, physics, technological inventions,

Though the topic for discussion was the purpose of education as discussed in the YouTube video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qT6kluPH1s the conversation evolved into a discussion around ways of incorporating inquiry in the current education system and the challenges involved. The link for the youtube video of the discussion can be found here https://youtu.be/GIB_7BjvUPY The summary of the conversation can be found here

The conversation on 14 March explores the origin and history of written examinations in systems of education, as a way of understanding the implicit purpose and function of education, by examining the broad outline of the evolution of the system of institutionalised education from the ancient times to the modern times. Within that broad outline, the origin and evolution of the system of written examinations is only one of the strands of the curricula of institutionalised educ

K. P. Mohanan, Tara Mohanan 1. Analogy Analogy is a pair of wings to fly across apparently dissimilar terrains. The above sentence is...

K. P. Mohanan Intellectual skepticism ought to be one of the most important aspects of our education system. Our experiences in the...