A CHILD'S WORLD !

As I was reading a book and slowing retiring to sleep this Saturday afternoon, I felt a sudden rush of activity in my home. It was Bitto, as he is fondly called in our apartment, a one and half year old boy whom his mother brought to our home. I and my sister are fond of kids and this fact is well noted by Bitto’s mother.

My sister brought him to the room where I was sleeping and I immediately jumped onto my feet to take him into my hands. I started to jump, laugh, dance and cry with him. Kids fascinate me. It just takes a sight of a kid for me to turn into one. Their energy, inquisitive nature and memory simply amuse me. How wonderful it would be if we could retain some of the qualities of a child forever?

He started to pull all the things around him and was exploring all possible ways of dissembling objects. He had a special affiliation for pressure cookers. His mother always talks about him playing with them. So, I took him to the kitchen and let him spot one. He carried it all the way to the hall where his mother was seated and I followed him. I brought some more utensils and joined his party even as my mother was worried about us damaging the cooker and messing up the whole place. We played for some time and it was time for him to have his afternoon nap.

After he left for his home, I got back to reading the book and within few pages of reading I came across this paragraph – “The single most important contribution education can make to a child’s development is to help him toward a field where his talents best suit him, where he will be satisfied and competent. We’ve completely lost sight of that. Instead we subject everyone to an education where, if you succeed, you will be best suited to be a college professor. And we evaluate everyone along the way according to whether they meet that narrow standard of success. We should spend less time ranking children and more time helping them identify their natural competencies and gifts, and cultivate those. There are hundreds and hundreds of ways to succeed, and many, many different abilities that will help you get there.”

How true I thought.

I pictured Bittoo having to attend a school in a couple of years from now and having to going through the same rigors which millions of other children go through and felt a little uneasy about it. I thought, at the cost of being cynical, that though he might do well at school, there are equally good chances that he might not realize his true interests. The fact that our education system is so narrow minded bothered me.

Sometime back I was reading an article in Hindu ‘The inclusive world of children’ where the author talks about our rotten education system. There he talked about bright little children going to school with all eagerness and returning home with the sparkle in their eyes squashed. He said ‘As parents and as educators we take a child who is, and measure him against some mythic “typical” child who does not actually exist. And the child in question, the living, breathing, quirky little child in front of us slowly disappears.’

The author questioned why should any child’s first encounter with organized education be fraught with anxiety(he was referring to the admission policies of schools) and why should any child be asked to swallow the idea that he/she isn’t good for any school. He accused rightly that our classrooms are not communities for learning but arenas where competitors vie for prizes and that children are not encouraged to acquire knowledge for its own sake but for points.

I think he is right in saying that we treat syllabus as tenets and can never be tampered with. Learning is not a competition and children can take part in activities according to their capabilities not according to a preset notion of what they should be capable of. How can we expect same things from each child? How can we expect every child to be good at everything in school? If a child isn’t performing well, he is humiliated; teachers turn mean, saying things to him unacceptable for adults.

The author finally said that children should not be praised for intelligence but for their effort. He says ‘Intelligence is not in anyone’s control – why praise for it? Effort is. And effort almost always trumps intelligence.”

I understand that the issue is very complex and that there is a lot of scope for discussion. It is good that movies like 'Taare Zameen Par' are being made and that many articles are being written in magazines and newspapers to address the problem. This is too short a space to put in all my thoughts but I would like to conclude as follows-

The root cause of the problem lies within our education system and with the attitude towards education. It is the responsibility of both parents and teachers to put in an effort to explore and identify the true strengths of a child. And a proper education system is a requisite for facilitating the process so that a child identifies his prowess very early in his age and will be in a better position to make career choices.

Open to your comments !