Sometimes back, I was talking to
an Educator friend (who thinks Educator word is a better representative of his role
than teacher) and our discussions turned towards the memorization problem of
our education. When I asked him whether he understood the gravity of the crisis
I realized that he did not even understand the concept of memorization. He was
taking this in literal sense when the issue is relative (IQ vs Memory).
So I gave him the example of my
son-my 7 years old son who has almost 200 car toys and remarkably he remembers the
source of each and every car. Sometimes he comes to me with a car and tells the source like that car I had bought for him when he was crying after he got
his vaccination. And almost every child has this type of memory because they
have fewer things to take care off and they are busy and wander in their own
fantasy world. So is there any need to check and test their memory? They are
already demonstrating that they are good in remembering things so is there any
need to waste their precious time in proving that they have good memory. In
fact best way to enhance their memory is to expose them to newer phenomenon
routinely especially the things they like and prefer.
But in our schools, most of the
study and time is oriented towards making them remember things and then more
time is wasted in testing the same (exams/tests) when it serves no purpose and
there will be minimal reward in their future life for the use of memory. What
is the purpose in asking a 1st /2nd standard child to
memorize a story and then taking exam/test of the same? By taking exam we are
testing the memory only (which is not required at all at first) but there is no
test to see whether he can apply the understandings/learning of the story in life
or situations.
We humans build opinions when we
see and comprehend things relative to us like when a child sees how bad he
feels when his friend does not share the chocolate with him and this lays the
foundation of opinion about sharing things with others. We can’t understand
that which does not have its existence relative to us. Like can we make a child
understand what is love? Why people die for love? No, we can’t because a child with
his present physical and emotional development stage can’t comprehend this
just like we can’t comprehend what our Sages/Gurus/Rishis mean when they urge
us to rise beyond our present consciousness level to higher spiritual level to
experience the vastness and greatness of life. We can’t comprehend when they
say there is no death…when they die for the virtue.
So the consciousness and wisdom
of a child is developed when he is exposed to the different phenomenon of the
world. He makes his inferences about the phenomenon based on his present state of consciousness.
So we can direct our efforts in channelizing and exposing them to the phenomenon which is relevant to them like love story movies are worthless for them, English grammar is useless for them (they learn languages on their own with much more efficiency), General knowledge books are useless for them (I have seen questions about MS Dhoni in GK Book for 1st standard!!). But cartoons like Doraemon are much more helpful (even better than schools) as a child can relate to it as he lives the same type of life…his dreams are same. My son that day asked me about the time machine which Doraemon has and asked me whether he could meet his grandfather with the help of that machine by going back in time. I was surprised that he could understand the linear flow of time (although we are not sure about the linearity).
So we can direct our efforts in channelizing and exposing them to the phenomenon which is relevant to them like love story movies are worthless for them, English grammar is useless for them (they learn languages on their own with much more efficiency), General knowledge books are useless for them (I have seen questions about MS Dhoni in GK Book for 1st standard!!). But cartoons like Doraemon are much more helpful (even better than schools) as a child can relate to it as he lives the same type of life…his dreams are same. My son that day asked me about the time machine which Doraemon has and asked me whether he could meet his grandfather with the help of that machine by going back in time. I was surprised that he could understand the linear flow of time (although we are not sure about the linearity).
Every child understands and uses
mathematics in his life but with things with which he is associated. You
give them 5 cookies and takes away 1 and they can tell how many are left very
easily as compared to the effort when we ask them to solve this one paper
(5-1=?). Now, these numerical alphabets are foreign objects for them which they
do not use in their daily life. Also, our mind thinks and understands
phenomenon in pictures (we may not realize this but whatever I am writing here
we are seeing a picture for every word/emotion in our mind running like a
movie) so their mind can comprehend 5 cookies lined up on a paper but then
cannot comprehend that “5” represents the count of anything numbered 5. For
them it is a picture only but we still try to teach them math in this way only.
I have seen the use of five things along with 5 but I feel whether we need to
teach and force mathematics on them in this boring way or in a way which they
use in their daily life.
IQ is about
application of Data/Knowledge
At present, in our schools
children (7-8 years) are being forced to sit for 7 hours studying GK, Grammar, and
EVS which are useless for them. When I put my son to a Nagpur school they have
asked us to bought books on some 7-8 subjects. But CBSE rules provides for only
3 subjects: Hindi, English and Maths but there were extra subjects like GK,
EVS, Science, and English Grammar and all these are strictly prohibited by
court, NCERT and CBSE. Even the honorable Madras High court Judge was shocked
and surprised to note that Grammar and Computer science have been studied in
class 1. To teach these useless subjects children are being forced to sit for 7
hours in schools. I raised the issue with the management of the school and to my
surprise they replied that the curriculum and time is just like other schools in
the Nagpur and it is the benchmark. But I told them that the benchmark is
decided by CBSE/NCERT not by schools. For this they had no answer.
I immediately realized that they don't have the IQ to understand the uselessness of forcing these books on
small children. I have seen these schools shouting “IQ-IQ” all the time in
their promotions but after my interactions with so many of them I have realized
that they do not understand this at all. I asked about this to so many
educators I have met and their fully confident answer was that it is about the
intelligence. But how and why-they do not have any clue at all.
Once I gave one example on this
to some of my friends. I am detailing the same here. I am an investor and pick
stocks after detailed study about the business. I was having one stock- Praj
industries ltd which is one of the most innovative company in India and their
main business is to set up plants to produce Ethanol from Molasses/sugarcane
which is called 1st generation Bio fuel. Then they were focusing on
producing 2G bio fuel from the bio wastes like Wood chips, rice husk etc. So
one day I was sitting with some of my friend and we were discussing this issue
and then one of my friend said that 2G bio fuel may not be possible as there is
no technology to extract or synthesize fuel from grass, wood etc.
At that time I had done the study
of Enzyme industry for finding a stock related to enzymes. I had also completed
the study of Dairy industry. So at once something flashed in my mind and I told
my friend that this activity of extracting energy from wood, grass is already
being done. My shocked friends asked where. I told them about the cow. A cow
uses special set of enzymes to convert the tough and complex matter like
cellulose into energy so we can also extract these enzymes from them and use
the same for 2G fuel. It is just like we extract rennet from the stomach of
calves for making cheese. We later checked and found that research for 2G bio
fuel is indeed based on enzymes from cow stomach.
So study about the enzymes and
their role in our life is just DATA but when we use them for the solution of
the problems then it is about IQ. Intelligence is the use of the data. I always
say that Data is God and advise all to absorb as much data as they can. But
data for me is not about the Birth place of Lord Buddha. I refer data about the
name of a player, awardee, birth place, book writer etc. as “Spatial Data” and
most of the time it is useless in the context of our life. But what Lord Buddha
preached, his experience about the life and world is something which can’t even
be valued. Because just the words of a person like Lord Buddha can transform
the life of anyone just like he did for “Angulimal”. So the data about what our
world is and how it behaves the way it behaves is most important for our life
and I call this as “Essential Data” and the data which we can gather by
comprehending the teachings of persons like Lord Buddha, Mahavir, Krishna etc. is “Transformational Data".
So when we have the data about
how the phenomenon of the world behave then we can use that data for our use or
for solving or for betterment of our life whether it is about electricity or
medicines. Human first understood what electricity is and how it behaves and
then with this data they had been able to produce the electricity on their own.
This is IQ. IQ is more related to the use of knowledge rather than superficial
knowledge. Use of knowledge requires deep understanding of the concept and
factors affecting the behavior and outcomes which is very different from “surface
scratching” teaching methods of our schools.
Our Brain has this amazing
capability to create new insights, extract innovative ideas from the unknown in
a flash but it happens when we have the data for processing in our mind, when
our mind is filled with the essential data…data about how phenomenon works here
in this world and most of the times our brain appears to create these insights
on its own…in auto mode.
And the sad part is that our
schools focus on imparting data only (that too “spatial data”) and very little
effort is put on devising study material and method to promote and enhance the
use of data by children for finding solutions of the problems. With our current
low standards of imparting study in schools, most of the times they end at
teaching “Essential data” as “Spatial Data” just like when they ask students to
memorize the formula for calculating the area of a circle (πr2)
and the derivation is never explained to them.
And if we can try to
look beyond the apparent then we can see that the primary function of current education
system is not to enhance the skills of students but to certify what they
have-memory, intelligence etc. At present, a student is brilliant because he is
brilliant on its own and there is no contribution from the school. Our schools just
can’t enhance the intelligence of a poor child. There is no method and efforts
to develop intelligence. So in essence, our schools are just certifying which student is brilliant,dumb or average.They are a testing platform
only and there is no value addition from schools in the intellectual development of an average student. We all can remember how our
poor school friend from 5th standard was poor even in 10th
standards. I have seen people performing well in studies once they are out of
school because after schools they were able to utilize their time much better
on their problem areas but still the loss of most creative and productive
period of childhood can never be replaced.
Our current education
system can never create revolutionary innovators. Sometimes, Indian education
system appears good due to individual brilliance stories but system itself
doesn’t contribute much to create and develop brilliant brains. The contribution
of our schools in creating and nurturing the brilliance is insignificant. These
individuals could have written their destiny even in sheer darkness.
For the current sorry
state of our education system is due to many reasons but surprisingly one of
the reasons is- NCERT, the failure of NCERT in developing the qualitative aspects
of education and content. There is big hue and cry every year about compulsory
sourcing of NCERT textbooks by CBSE schools and it appears that only mandate of
NCERT is to produce cheap textbooks. However books publication was never the
mandate of NCERT. NCERT was set up in 1961 to assist and advise the Central and
State governments on policies and programmes for qualitative improvement in
school education. Its main focus areas were research related to school
education and the publication of “model” textbooks. As we can see the mandate
was “to publish Model books”. It was never of “Mass publication of books” as it
is thought of.
However the government
is using the tax payers' money to subsidize the paper cost which is used by the
NCERT books and therefore being made cheaper. The government is subsidizing it
to the end students by using the tax payers’ money. So, as we can see taxpayers
are paying for the cheap books and it is not that they are producing it
cheaply. That’s why I sometimes feel that it is better for NCERT to stick to
its original mandate of research in improving the quality of school education
rather than wasting time on publishing millions of books and wasting time on
supply chain.
Excessive
Useless study material and study time
When I was looking for a suitable school for my son in
Nagpur I was shocked to see that all the schools were forcing excessive useless
study material and excessive school timings on small children. How can a small
child of 7 years afford to spend 7-8 hours in a controlled tiring environment in
a school daily and then after that hope to enjoy their golden childhood. I have
seen parents sending their children to tuition even when they already wasted
7-8 hours already in school. This is injustice and torture beyond imagination.
Due to long school hours a child
is not being able to take food properly plus food always gets stale/cold during
these long hours. After the poor child comes back home after putting 7-8 hours
he is always very tired. This affects his playtime and sleeping pattern very
badly as they are supposed to get up at 7 am which is not good for children as
their body clock and sleep/rest pattern is different. Most of the children I
have seen take school as some type of jail which they have to endure somehow
and this is not good at all for the long term intellectual growth of a child.It is surprising that in spite of
the regular intervention by high court still the schools are being allowed to
play with the rules and the lives of small children.
This forcing of extra subjects by
the school is the main cause of extended hours (or torture not study). Because
even if we take 45 minutes for 3 subjects as prescribed by NCERT/CBSE the total
study time will be 135 minutes plus 15 minutes assembly and another 1 hour for
play and food break will make it approx. 250 minutes (4 hours) but now they are
put to endure school for 7 long hours and this becomes 8-9 hours due to
travelling times in larger cities.
A child learns and absorbs the
world best when he is a free spirit without any stress or pressure. Class rooms
are not the best way for this as a child learns by visuals and real life
phenomenon not through empty words. So the need is to give them proper
environment, free time in real life for the observation and visualization not
trapped in the class rooms like prisoners.
We still have in our education system
the wrong notion of “Population syndrome” where we perceived more people as
good (for earning more income) but ended up being a highly populated country devoid of even most basic
amenities. The same mentality we are following for child education thinking
“more is better” while it is common sense that burden of books kills
creativity, ingenuity, Natural flow of thinking and natural talent. Numerous
studies have shown that the education standard is one of the true indicator
(Other is health) of economic development in a country and it is sorry to see
that India is lacking both.
So our schools need to throw away
the herd like mentalities and try to bring in innovative models for imparting
knowledge…schools should play the role of more of a medium (Channel) through
which the students absorb the knowledge than a heavy burden which only forces
students to struggle for walking straight on a tight rope with heavy burden on
their heads.
PISA moment
for India
A young man has the
responsibility for his own action and life but a child is the responsibility of
the parents, school and society and we try to fulfill this responsibility by
putting them for long painful hours in school. In fact, this “More is good “
mentality has polluted our education system so much that India occupied 73th
place among of 74 countries participating in PISA (Program for International
Student Assessment) test (the last one in which India participated).
PISA survey is conducted by the Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development (OECD) to test education systems by comparing the test
performance of 15-year-old pupils. Indian education planners were shocked at
the poor standing and cited reasons like language problems of Indian students
which was not even a face hiding excuse since many other non-English speaking
nations like China emerged as winners. Besides, there is not much role of a
language in Mathematics.
Students from Singapore, Japan,
Taiwan, Vietnam, and China (Hong Kong, Macao, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangdong, and
Jiangsu province) were among the top performers. Over 540,000 students, from 70
countries, participated in the tests. The two-hour test not only evaluates the
cognitive skills of students in science, math, and reading, but also assesses
their ability to solve problems in new and unfamiliar conditions (as I have
explained earlier the IQ). The approach of PISA “reflects the fact that modern
economies reward individuals not for what they know, but for what they can do
with what they know.” All this implies creativity, free and natural thinking
process, long rooted culture of understanding the problem and concept not just
memorization and we know that our education system fails big time in
inculcating and motivating these traits. Due to embarrassment India did not
participated in the 2012 and 2015 survey. At present India is thinking of participating in 2020 PISA test and i think this apprehension is a tight slap on the face of our so called great educators who are basking in self glorification.
Success of
innovative education system of Finland-An eye opener for India
Countries like Denmark and Finland
have with their focus on creativity, innovation and continuous restructuring
created an environment where children take schools a place of enjoyment and
learning not as some type of Jail and this has resulted in the children of
these countries achieving big in their life and these are some of the happiest
countries in the world. Recently, the success of Finland in raising their
education standards has made even the likes of USA to follow their approach.
Finnish students have been turning in some of the highest test scores in the
world. In PISA tests, Finland has ranked at or near the top in all three
competencies on every survey since 2000. Earlier world over, the education system
of USA, Germany and France was considered the best but the success of Finland
in PISA tests continuously shocked the entire globe.
The likes of China, Taiwan has
done well but even in these countries children are being made to sit for long
hours in schools. These countries are now finding that their children are
unhealthy and devoid of energy due to excessive brain drain and long school
hours. However Finland has achieved the success in education in much better and
healthiest way. Finland has achieved this remarkable progress just in a span of
10 years.
In Finland they do the
opposite-children are assigned minimum homework (half an hour only) and most of
the school time is used for creative play outdoors. There are no regular
exams/tests for evaluating the students in fact they have one test after the
end of high school taken at the age of 16 which may be equal to our
matriculation test. Unlike our great indian Educators they were first to
realize that tests/exams make students and teachers to focus on the narrow
syllabus and focus is just to pass the exam so this leaves minimum scope for
learning, creativity and enjoyment. In Finland, there are no lists of top performing
schools, students and teachers.
My son asks me how power plant
produce electricity, how AC cools the room, how lemon grows on the tree in our
apartment…..so just like every child he has a lot of question about “how the
phenomenon works” but we want them to spend their time in watching aimlessly at
class room blackboard for hours and absorb the common study content which tries
to fit all the children with varying choices and passions into same box.
Our schools take all the children
as a commodity and there is no focus on individualization. This fact when I
brought in front of management of my son’s school they were looking at me
aimlessly and I understood that they were incapable of understanding this. But in
Finland teachers create their own tests to assess every child. A master's
degree is required to enter the profession, and teacher training programs are
among the most selective professional schools in the country while in India
most of the people choose teaching when they do not get employment elsewhere or
when they himself were average students (But indeed there are some brilliant
teachers because exception is general). I have seen some of the dumbest (academically)
persons working as school teachers and even head of school.
The main idea behind the
education system in Finland is to provide same education to every child
regardless of financial, family or geographical background and the aim was not
to make children Job ready but on social equality. So there are no private
schools and children are given healthy meals, psychological counseling, and
individualized student guidance. But
most startling achievement is that the difference in the top preforming and low
preforming students is lowest in Finland and similarly no other country has so
little variation in results across schools. So as I was pointing out earlier
that our schools have no value addition in the intelligence of students but
Finland has proved that they can do it.
So Finland has proved that it is possible to achieve excellence by
focusing not on competition, but on cooperation, and not on choice, but on
equity.
In Finland, schooling starts at the age of 7. I have seen Indian parents sending their kids to school at the age of 2-3
years which pains me. We sent our son to Pre-nursery school at the age of
4 that too for 2-3 times a week for some 2-3 hours just to play but no study. We
sent him to school when he was 6. In Finland Science classes have only 16
students so that all can focus on practical experiments in detail. School
timings are only for about 4 hours (which I want to see in India also and I
failed to make our so called educators understand). Their school starts around 10 am as they also understand that early school timings inflict severe damage to the health of children.
The national curriculum is only broad guidelines and so teachers are required to use their creativity and innovation to devise the learning methods for each and every child individually. That’s the reason that some of the brilliant academic minds choose teaching as a profession in Finland and they are respected and enjoy the status just as doctors and lawyers. Finland publishes highest books every year and Finnish people are avid readers. Helsinki the capital of Finland was declared the city with the most honest people.
The national curriculum is only broad guidelines and so teachers are required to use their creativity and innovation to devise the learning methods for each and every child individually. That’s the reason that some of the brilliant academic minds choose teaching as a profession in Finland and they are respected and enjoy the status just as doctors and lawyers. Finland publishes highest books every year and Finnish people are avid readers. Helsinki the capital of Finland was declared the city with the most honest people.
The focus on Finland on improving
the quality of their education has begun to show results as in 2017 Finnish
startups received highest venture capital by GDP share in Europe. They have
most innovative startups like Solar Foods has developed a product named “solein”,
which is an edible protein produced without any current agricultural systems
and its environmental impact is ten to one hundred times lower than soy or
meat. Another startup Sulapac has developed an award winning material from wood
chips and natural binders to replace plastic. Then another startup Spinnova
transforms cellulose into textile-ready fiber without dissolving processes or
harmful chemicals, using 99% less water than the cotton value chain. Spinnova
won Fast Company’s World Changing Ideas Award. These are just few of the
startups they are creating. Our Nokia is also a Finnish company.
Most important thing, Finland is
a country which has forest products as major exports so one would think that
they must have destroyed all of their forests like we are destroying. Now the
fact, 74% of the area of Finland is covered by forests just like Bhutan which
have in their constitution to have minimum 60% forests. In Europe, Finland is a
"forest giant", there being over sixteen times more forest per capita
than in European countries on average.
The amount of timber in their forests would make a 10-metre wide and
5-metre high wall around the globe. Finland has ensured this by growing more
trees than they are cutting every time. This wisdom and care is possible because
of the high education standards unlike India where we consider The Ganga river
as holiest and our Mother but still pollutes it like gutter so can we say that
our education system has made us more civilized, aware, full of wisdom and
compassion? The answer we all know without even any need to study anything.
You all can check more
interesting details about the success of Finland education system by googling
it.
Finally a
Homeschool for our Son
There were many big and expensive
schools in Nagpur but they were also suffering from the same disease-no
understanding of education and children. So we were helpless and chose a school
which looks like having some sanity. But their only sanity was that they never
forced us to send our child to school daily as we started sending our child
school every alternate day in order to give him time to recover and rest.
Our only hope was that may be he
would be able to like the school which he did to some extent but the main issue
was the excessive school timings and unnecessary study of GK, Grammar and EVS
which was total wastage of time for a 1st standard student. We
realized that he was always very tired in the evening, lack of energy,
disorientation, irritation, frequent stomach problem and Nausea. This I have
seen with almost every child.
So we decided that all this
torture is not good for our child and I met/wrote to the school principle many
times and explained the situation and the fact that they are breaking the rules
of CBSE/Court/NCERT by forcing these extra books and extra school hours. But
they were limited by their wisdom (and IQ level). This is not the story of that
particular school….everywhere is the same situation…all over India. I asked
them what is the purpose of teaching these small kids the English grammar? What
is the usefulness of teaching them about the vowels and consonants? I even
challenged them that even their teachers do not understand the concept behind
Vowels.
We do job for 8 hours a day and
time for us moves very fast. As we can see that years are passing like months
once we cross 30-35. But time for a child moves very slow…extremely slow. We
all can remember our life at school and college and those 10 years (until graduation)
seems like 50 years to us if we compare the current speed of movement of our
time. There are some strange theories which say that this perception of time
(moving fast or slow) has its roots linked with the ratio of time interval to
the total life span we have been alive. Like for a 10 year old young boy, one
year is a long period of time since one year is 10% of his total life so far.
But for a 50 year old this one year is just 2% of his total life. So no doubt
we can see here that 10% is more than 2% I explained this to the principal that
7 hour for a child are equal to some 20 hours of ours and this is what Einstein’s
theory of relativity is all about and as a teacher they can better understand
this but they could never as they suffered from intellectual myopia.
Once the school principal told my wife that we needed to up the ante for our son as he was lagging behind in
studies. But these great educators could not see that first of all they failed to do
something when they were fully aware of the problems our son was facing. They
were breaking the rules of court/CBSE and could never muster the courage to
answer any of my emails about these issues because in essence they lacked the intellect to
comprehend these intricacies of human mind and growth. They could not gather the courage to accept that all these unnecessary books, long school timings are just a ploy to fetch higher school feel from parents..who will pay them such hefty fees if not for these long hours and number of books. They are doing this injustice to small children and ruining their golden period of learning with all sorts of garbage. How? Because their customers-the parents are not aware of anything...they are dead illiterate when the issue is to choose quality over quantity.
Our son loves drawing and draws
the shapes with great accuracy and drawing is just like writing alphabets or
words because these alphabets are nothing more than drawing shapes…as one can
see “O” is a circle…”A” is a triangle. So we promoted our son to drawing and he
could learn writing alphabets very easily without much effort on our part. Our son
is very fond of things like Trains, Air conditioners, cranes, road rollers etc.
and he likes writing the names of various AC’s like Onida, Samsung, Panasonic
and he memorize these words without much effort when he was 6. So I tried
explaining this to the school that “A” for Apple is not the only way to teach. “S”
for Samsung conveys the same idea…for him “S” means Samsung or Shatabadi
express. The purpose of “A” for Apple is not to teach him about the Apple but
to make a child aware of the Sign (A) and related things because apple is not
the only word to start with “A”…there is Ant…there are thousands. So no teacher
can say that “S” only means Sun or Strawberry.
I still see parents putting their
children to pre-school etc. at the age of 2-3. Actually early schools were
discovered when both husband and wife used to work in the early dawn of industrialization
and these pre-schools were required to take care of children. But there is no
such situation now. Even when mother is a housewife and is well educated they still send their child
to school at very tender age of 2-3 years and there is great risk to their
mental health because 8 out of 10 children feel like in foreign territory and
remain fearful. They yearn for home and mother continuously and this dis-orientation of mind is very dangerous.
These days we see so many children suffering from eye disease and they have to use spectacles. Now doctors have realized and confirmed that this is due to reduced exposure to sun light and focus of the children on near sight objects and they use their eyes to see far sight objects very less. This happens as they spend most of their times indoors in schools, then indoors at home and tuition and then TV and mobile phones. So this makes their eyes to suppress the growth of eye ball resulting into Myopia. They have listed sun light as the best remedy and prevention for this. This has taken the form of epidemic in countries like China where they have put excessive pressure for academic performance. Even in China the problem is severe in cities not in villages where the focus on education is still far less.
These days we see so many children suffering from eye disease and they have to use spectacles. Now doctors have realized and confirmed that this is due to reduced exposure to sun light and focus of the children on near sight objects and they use their eyes to see far sight objects very less. This happens as they spend most of their times indoors in schools, then indoors at home and tuition and then TV and mobile phones. So this makes their eyes to suppress the growth of eye ball resulting into Myopia. They have listed sun light as the best remedy and prevention for this. This has taken the form of epidemic in countries like China where they have put excessive pressure for academic performance. Even in China the problem is severe in cities not in villages where the focus on education is still far less.
So left with no other option, we
thought and finally decided to teach our son at home. There are some innovative
alternate schools in India and some intelligent fellows are trying to teach
students in a better engaged and joyful way where learning is a play but we
could not find any such school in Nagpur otherwise that could be an option. So these
days our son is living a happy and relaxed life. I am a chartered accountant
and my wife is a merit holder in Masters in geography and I feel our son could
not find better teachers. These days so many parents are becoming aware of the
uselessness of our school education system and Homeschooling is fast catching the
imagination of many parents in India. In fact, this is the highest growing
education system in USA.
Even Government recognizes the value of homeschooling in india and recently Maharashtra Government launched Open SSC Board for homeschool students under which homeschool children can give exams for 5th std at the age of 10, for 8th Std at the age of 13 and for 10th Std at the age of 15. And if by the grace of God we could find any school imparting engaged and torture free learning then we'll put our son into that school...so the search is still on.
Not to Bring school at home while Home-schooling
Even Government recognizes the value of homeschooling in india and recently Maharashtra Government launched Open SSC Board for homeschool students under which homeschool children can give exams for 5th std at the age of 10, for 8th Std at the age of 13 and for 10th Std at the age of 15. And if by the grace of God we could find any school imparting engaged and torture free learning then we'll put our son into that school...so the search is still on.
Not to Bring school at home while Home-schooling
As our son is very fond of
Cranes, Trains, Power plants, cars etc. so we bought as many toys for him as much
we can and he has large collection of toys on which he uses his creativity to
make structures and build stories and narrate those to us. These days he is a
free and relaxed soul and taking his interests in various activities like martial
arts etc. For building his interest i have built my own gym at home so that he
can see me doing gym and can relate himself. Most of his study time now is focused
on "how" of this universe like how the things he likes works like he
asked about goods train and we explained the same to him in detail-like we need
transportation for carrying food, coal, cement etc...giving him the example of
Chips (which he loves) which are produced in Gujarat but delivered to Nagpur in
Trucks and now he explains the meaning of “Distribution” to others. He goes to
see a nearby power plant almost 2-3 times in a week where he stands for half an
hour watching and asking questions on its working. For us this is his schooling…much
near to reality and involved.
So while home schooling we have
tried not to bring "school at home". So we are not following just the
regular textbooks for his study because as i have explained earlier most of the
times they are just one dimensional. So we are exposing him to all sorts of
phenomenon of the world so that he gets the exposure to various things of
life/world and we are just watching him from the edge to see what can be his
motivation for his future course of action in life. That motivation can be
science, space, medicine, sports, art, construction etc. So we try to expose
him to variety of Data in a relaxed and enjoyable manner. Like, he loves his
mother the most and one day he told me that he was very worried that one day
his mother would also get old. So seeing his interest, I tried to explain him
the role of DNA/Genes in controlling and directing our bodies and told him that
he could make his mother forever young if he could learn how to control the
genes responsible for old age. He got really interested and I showed him the
diagrams of DNA and how such vast amounts of data is stored in every cell of
our body. Actually, if we can see at this age he can’t understand all these to
the core but here the focus is to check and develop his interests. When we love
something…have passion for something then learning becomes a play not a burden.
I have a small Gym at home and he
sees me doing gym and he also loves physical activities the most whether it is
running, cycling, wall climbing etc. but now after seeing me in the gym he
likes doing push-ups and barbell curls. He can standstill between two doors on
the sheer strength of his arms. So, we explained him the role of nutrition in
the growth of our bodies and now he understands the role of Protein (in muscle
building), carbs, fat and Vitamins in our bodies. He understands the danger of
hydrogenated vegetable oils used in processed foods like chips etc. and he has
left taking cold drinks, Frooti, most of the junk foods. He uses these only occasionally
now. For developing his reading skills, we encourage him to use real life
examples like reading the ingredients of the Chips bag. He can read, spell and
write long and complex words like Palmolien, hydrogenated vegetable oils. For
language & reading, we encourage him to imagine/create his own stories and while
he narrates his stories we type the same for him. So he tells stories about how
he and Doraeman save a child in a train accident. Then we make him read the
story and as he has created it so he reads and understands words very easily.
But here the biggest difference if one can see is-He loves and enjoys reading and studying this way…for him this is not stress of education but a fun activity…and this is the only and best way to learn things and this joyful learning is the thing which keeps us motivated and full of life and energy even when we are old. Learning is not a phase but a vision. But no school in India understand this way of teaching as for them children are commodity and they impose only one learning method on everyone.
As one can see here there is no
limit on learning. He can learn what he loves/likes or wants to know. and it
is not confined to the borders defined by books and this really surprise me
sometimes why most of the parents can't see the narrow range of school books. Our
son just like other children wants to know how it rains, how trains operate, wants
to play as long as he wants…but our schools forces them to not to ask anything
beyond books and instead of playing watching real world they should sit in a
narrow dark classroom watching and listening in which he is not interested at
all.
School- a Partner in understanding and choosing the way of Life
School- a Partner in understanding and choosing the way of Life
I have always believed that we
are here as part of our journey and this is not our first life. Because if we
can see then we can realize that we are born with some of the behavior aspects
of our persona like bravery, kindness, fear, will power…we were like this since
our birth and we do not seem to done something in this life to acquire these
attributes. We and our siblings are part of the same family…raised in the same environment…but
yet we are all very different by nature, have different views, aspirations…why?
Because we are all just continuing our journey from where we have left the same
in our last attempt. Some children learn the music at very early age, some
understands complex studies, some demonstrates amazing memory…these are all
signs that we are starting the journey from where we have left last time in our
last life.
So the most important thing in raising the children is to understand their path, their inclinations, their aspirations and creativeness through which they will express themselves to this world. To understand their path we need to observe them with open mind and not to impose our useless notions onto them. Parents do not know how many brilliant artists, scientists, musicians they have killed. Creativity is the biggest worship of this life and its only purpose…creativity enable us to transcend the realm of mind and comprehend and absorb the real essence of this life which fulfill our purpose of being here and prepares for the next much higher layer of life.
So the most important thing in raising the children is to understand their path, their inclinations, their aspirations and creativeness through which they will express themselves to this world. To understand their path we need to observe them with open mind and not to impose our useless notions onto them. Parents do not know how many brilliant artists, scientists, musicians they have killed. Creativity is the biggest worship of this life and its only purpose…creativity enable us to transcend the realm of mind and comprehend and absorb the real essence of this life which fulfill our purpose of being here and prepares for the next much higher layer of life.
No child likes the school. The happy
faces we see in schools do not enjoy the learning they were getting from school
and they are happy because of other reasons like friends or play time. Also
most of them after being forced into this daily accept this as part of their
life but this also ensures the end of learning and purpose of life. Parents
think that sad children in school are natural because they were like them in
their childhood also but if they have any wisdom then they can very easily see
that even their life was centered around job and career and they never enjoyed
and relish what is real life…the flowers were never blossomed…they could never
sing the song for which they have come to this world…and one day they will left
unmanifested, unexpressed, unpronounced and unsatisfied. But they think that
eating tasty food, gossiping, watching movies, having a car and house is the
only aim of life and they feel that only this much fulfillment is possible in this
life and our world (Tier-3 level). They can never understand what it feels like
to create something…anything…music, a song, a story, an idea, a scientific
discovery, spiritualism, occult…there is so much beyond our obvious world and
so much to achieve and feel the bliss of having this beautiful time here until
our death.
Death is inevitable yet all our
efforts in our life are centered towards our survival only…very few have the
strength to live out and put efforts for their dreams. Our sages like
Vivekananda try hard to make us believe that what we are valuing as life is
just worthless. They cry but we even go to them to get blessings to fulfill our
worldly desires. I have heard many such stories where an enlightened person has
said that his biggest sorrow is his incapability to make other people believe
that our life has much superior purpose and structure. Once one of my friend
remarked that it is due to death that life and all our efforts/hard work looks
nonsense and foolish as at the end there is only this painful death. But i told
him that may be we are taking and seeing it this way because reality may be
that the ultimate aim of our life/efforts is just to get READY for this most
important EVENT we call DEATH because there appears nothing much worth of this
life...it appears and is low grade. So maybe we should think of welcoming this
Death with hope rather than despair. May be Death is the only ultimate “Test” of
our life but most of us passes the school test and due to passing this useless
test we fail miserably in the ultimate Death test.
