Hey Teacher (& Parents) leave the kids alone!!!

I haven’t written in a while. During this period the world around me went through a lot of changes, Rupee touched 60 to a dollar, gold plunged to an all-time low, Comrade Narayanamurthy was back in Infosys trying to salvage the company he founded by following the Congress policy of, East or West, in kith and kin we trust! Advani flip flopped and flopped for the third time around, once bitten twice shy, they say, but thrice my friend, is almost back in a sty! The reputation of the gentlemen’s game of cricket took a beating when it was compared to a game of chance and not skill. Cricket is no longer associated with the Lords but to Las Vegas

Coming to what made me write this blog after a while. My second daughter all of 5 came back from school with tears in her eye having lost a recitation contest. Though I’m not one of those pushy parents who wants to see his daughter cornering glory, I was devastated, because I had taught her a poem about 10 little tortoises. The poem begins with what 1 little tortoise can do and then goes on to say what 10 can do too in a language 5 years olds understand. It was, what I believed, a perfect amalgamation of counting and literature and very age appropriate. She had delivered it well too.

She lost out to a kid again all of 5 who recited ‘Daffodils’ by William Wordsworth. ‘Daffodils’ is what I learnt in Class 10 and in which I had trouble understanding the following lines even as of today… ‘In vacant or in pensive mood they flash upon that inward eye, which is the bliss of solitude’. Can you imagine a 5 year old narrating this without understanding the state of being in a vacant or a pensive mood or knowing what an inward eye can see or experiencing the bliss of solitude!!!

The parents have encouraged rote learning in this case and the poor child has simply followed it. I can still see the joy & smile in my daughter’s eyes when she enjoyed learning stuff like
……
Three tired tortoises
With feet feeling sore
Along came another one
And that made four.
Four tired tortoises
Just trying to survive,
Along came another one
And that made five.
Five tired tortoises
In a thirsty fix,
Along came another one
And that made six.
…..

My daughter comes to me and says ‘I did not win because I did not say a poem that was long enough with big words in it’ .By big words she means Pensive, Solitude and even bliss. She asks me to teach her poem that is long and with big words in it the next time. I don’t feel sad for my daughter, but for the little girl who won the competition because she was living her parent’s dream and not hers.

This is not a cribbing parent’s sob story of sour grapes but that of a person who believes that the kids these days are being subjected to a different kind of slavery. I’m sorry if that was a harsh word to use but that is what I feel.
The kids these days are living a life not knowing what boredom is. I was bored to hell growing up as a kid. I had nothing to do and hence I was ‘thinking’ on how I can counter boredom. A kid today has his or her day charted out on his / her dad or mom’s outlook calendar with a time limit for everything, even a spare time is well defined. He or she has been denied the joy of ‘thinking’ what to do with their spare time simply because he / she has no right over it. You might have heard of phrases like bored to death or even at some point of time plotted to kill boredom in your childhood, but this is an era of the death of boredom, the death of innocence and the death of nascent creativity. If I mention all this to 5 year olds today, they might even ask me if I have an app for all these.

So all you teachers and parents leave the kids alone…They don’t need no education but some guidance to make them better citizens wherever they live...

Teach them not to be just another brick in the wall but the very foundation of the future!!!