BUT Y (Why)?!

 

Why do we discourage children from asking questions? Why we do not ask questions to understand a person and his or her worry before we jump in with friendly advice?

My brother once asked me these quite valid and relevant questions:

1. Has our education system failed in its objective of developing us into wise and happy human beings(individuals)?
2. Why do we have so many online and F2F coaching and tutorial institutes mushrooming and flourishing in our country?
3. Have our schools failed to educate us? because the students mandatorily attend tutorial and tuition classes after school from the teachers who teach them at school?

As a school student, I remember my parents insisting on my academic as well as my personality (emotional) development. They did not insist on my topping the class in the exams and fetch excellent marks in all the exams I appeared for.

They did not unduly stress my academic and professional achievements.

We were fortunate enough to study in a school that took care of our all-around development. The school encouraged our complete involvement in studies, sports and physical education.

Personality development meant being educated enough to be a compassionate and socially responsible individual through social services like Girls’ Guide and Leadership Training Service(LTS).

Tuition and Coaching classes were non-existent. Ironically. we had many students and our peers achieving their dreams and aspirations of becoming successful professionals viz. doctors, engineers, high flying government officials, managers and top-ranking officers without the support of any coaching institutes and tutorials.

When I began my career as a teacher, I was sad to see the parents and guardians of the students drag their sick child or ward to school. They did not want her to miss the test/exam scheduled for the day. They wanted the child to achieve high scores and rank in the class exams. I even found parents complaining about the time allotted to extra-curricular activities and excursions, instead of spending the time on academic grooming of their wards.

During my tenure as a teacher, I was more in a learning mode than instructing the students. I also had this heartwarming and novel experience: on the day of the computer science project viva-voce. A team of class ten students lost the floppy disk on which they has saved their computer science project. All their fellow computer science students willingly volunteered to divide the entire programme code of the unfortunate team's project and enter the program segments in their respective computers and then add the segments to get the final programme code of the team's project in place and they confidently did it before the time scheduled for the viva-voce on that day!

I often think, what is the difference between education and literacy? the objective of our education system is to make the student literate and successful professional? or to be educated, happy and responsible individuals?

Isn't the current educational system contributing to a high level of stress and anxiety we experience from our very childhood?

Often, students used to tell me that they had got used to leaving home early in the morning to attend a tuition class, then attend school and again attend yet another tuition class after school before they returned home for the day only to sit down and complete loads of homework or home assignment. This makes me wonder: Can’t the parents give the same amount of money they spend in coaching and tutorial Institutes to the educational institutions educating their children and ask them to effectively fulfil their responsibility in educating the children by helping them in identifying their potential. Enable them to use their talent-their potential to live a happy and successful personal as well as professional life?

Are not the parents and our human society at large, responsible for the unhealthy competition and mindless professional rat race that we are into?

Why the marks and grade oriented education?

Are we not initiated into a life full of stress and anxiety from the time we become students of an educational institution?

Why the yardstick of success is only restricted to the level of material and professional success of an individual?

Though technology has revolutionised communication and supposedly shrunk the world. I wonder whether technological development has made childhood more complicated and competitive eventually making the children lose their natural attributes of love, compassion, simplicity, a curious and pragmatic mind trying to know, understand and appreciate the environment he or she is living in?

A child's innocent amazement, imagination is the basis of any human's lateral, critical and creative thinking skills: are we not depriving the children of their ability? I wonder...

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