Teaching Them to Learn

It is that time of the year. When school bags are taken out of the cupboard and dusted, new uniforms are stitched, stationary bought, notebooks covered with brown paper, holiday homework hurriedly completed. Its school time folks!

The monsoons usher in a new year for children. Gone is the joy of summer vacations – endless TV & video games, getting up late, hanging out at malls and playing cricket in the afternoon. It is now time for homework, tests, grades and tuition classes. The holidays are over kids, let’s get back to the ‘real’ world. It’s my guess that right now there are children all over India dreading the thought of going back to school.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. Learning should be fun and not regimented. Children should want to come back to school. If they have to glance at their calendars and sigh it should be because they miss their friends and teachers and can’t wait to meet them. Not because they feel stressed out at the thought of all the tuitions and exams waiting for them. We take the best years of a human being’s life and turn it into a rat race. I remember my school teachers frightening the hell out of me by saying that if I didn’t do well in my 12^th standard boards I would end up on the road to Loserville. I don’t doubt that they meant well and wanted me to do something worthwhile with my life. But by their lofty standards I bombed in my 12^th and yet life didn’t come to an end. I still went to an engineering college (albeit not a great one), I still got into the stream that I wanted (Mechanical Engineering rocks) and I did decently there (First Class with Distinction). Looking back I think it’s horrible to tell a child that their entire life revolves around one month of exams. What we’re basically doing is taking a young mind and putting it through stress levels that most adults couldn’t handle.

Childhood should be a time of fun. Of learning just for the sake of learning. Of exploring the world without having to worry about grades, admissions and careers. We should encourage children to dream. At some point in our lives all of us wanted to be either cricketers, or tennis players, or writers, or journalists, or musicians, or mathematicians, or fighter pilots. While life may not allow everyone to attain those dreams I think that there’s no harm in chasing those dreams.  A 12 year old child should be encouraged to think that she can become whoever she wants to be. There’ll be a time for the reality checks that adolescence brings, but not now. Not yet.

When I look at my cousin, who is 10 years younger than me, and her friends I realize that the system has allowed them a lot more freedom than people in my generation had. We were told, “Science? Engineer or Doctor. Commerce? CA. Arts? Oh… ummm… See you around”. Luckily that isn’t true anymore. More parents are open to the idea of ‘alternate’ careers. Many schools have counsellors who guide children about the various career streams available. Things are changing for the better but there is still a lot of work that needs to be done. For every progressive school that encourages its wards to be all they can be there are thousands which continue to churn out children who know every lesson in their text books and yet next to nothing about how to deal with the tests that life will put them through.

Right now we simply teach children how to solve quadratic equations, synthesise complex organic chemistry molecules (on paper) and memorise the internal cell structure of microbes. Instead they should learn how mathematics is applied to different fields – geology, automobile engineering, fundamental particle research. They should know of the uses (and dangers) of organic chemistry and how it has shaped our world. Children should be aware that life is a lot more complex than molecules bumping around inside cell walls and that even the best scientists do not fully understand how it works.

Call me an idealist if you want. Accuse me of an ivory tower address, a head in the cloud mentality. But hey, the challenges and problems that our children will inherit from us will be far more difficult than the ones we’ve managed to sweep under the carpet. How about we allow them to enjoy themselves while they can and still try and equip them with the tools that they will need to clear up our mess?

As Cat Stevens said, “I know we’ve come a long way. We’re changing day to do. But tell me, where do the children play?”.