Hi guys,
Hope you all are having a top year till date and if so I have no intentions of changing that with this blog.....
but seriously, having read , heard and expressed my opinion on illiteracy , I have come to a few conclusions which I hope would help in ending the dilemma that I have so often faced.
Let me start by citing a few examples that come to mind , say while watching a sports activity that we, Indians often compare how well the opposition can fall and recover while we rarely match up to the athletic ability. The standard response to such an observation would be Indians are more academically inclined and are highly placed the world over be it in the field of science , finance or medicine, no denying that fact .
How many of us can remember being told that if you want to play a game and that is besides your school work that you should be sticking to one game and if you are not , you are being very fickle. Remember? ring a bell somewhere? the child is fickle but it is so because its brain is learning at the time and wants to absorb more , know more , don't stop this process, its natural , we must abolish early specialisation of any kind.
How about firstly teaching a child to jump , run , hop , skip , fall and get up as part of the kindergarten syllabus?
you might say whats there to learn ? oh but there is a lot to learn how many of us know the right running technique?I am sure not many of us do. If a child is not taught these basic skills properly they may not execute the slightly advanced skills properly, get laughed at , discouraged even ridiculed in some cases and drop sport altogether. We need to understand that being literate is not being able to read and write but also performing basic skills correctly being 'physically' literate is also a necessity the sooner we realise the better, agree? no? answer me this , do you write more or walk more in your life? do you read more or breathe more ? in times of stress the " I/you need to relax" phrase is abundant , how many of us know how to relax? well when we breathe , walk and relax more than any other basic activity why aren't we taught the techniques to these enormously important skills ? Children must be taught these skills, at an age when they learn to read and write a foreign language and get very good at it , imagine the range of progress we could achieve by teaching these skills them .
The magnitude of potential is exciting ........yes learning letters, words and sentences is important but breathing , walking , running and relaxing is paramount......again, Just Thoughts.
Hope you all are having a top year till date and if so I have no intentions of changing that with this blog.....
but seriously, having read , heard and expressed my opinion on illiteracy , I have come to a few conclusions which I hope would help in ending the dilemma that I have so often faced.
Let me start by citing a few examples that come to mind , say while watching a sports activity that we, Indians often compare how well the opposition can fall and recover while we rarely match up to the athletic ability. The standard response to such an observation would be Indians are more academically inclined and are highly placed the world over be it in the field of science , finance or medicine, no denying that fact .
How many of us can remember being told that if you want to play a game and that is besides your school work that you should be sticking to one game and if you are not , you are being very fickle. Remember? ring a bell somewhere? the child is fickle but it is so because its brain is learning at the time and wants to absorb more , know more , don't stop this process, its natural , we must abolish early specialisation of any kind.
How about firstly teaching a child to jump , run , hop , skip , fall and get up as part of the kindergarten syllabus?
you might say whats there to learn ? oh but there is a lot to learn how many of us know the right running technique?I am sure not many of us do. If a child is not taught these basic skills properly they may not execute the slightly advanced skills properly, get laughed at , discouraged even ridiculed in some cases and drop sport altogether. We need to understand that being literate is not being able to read and write but also performing basic skills correctly being 'physically' literate is also a necessity the sooner we realise the better, agree? no? answer me this , do you write more or walk more in your life? do you read more or breathe more ? in times of stress the " I/you need to relax" phrase is abundant , how many of us know how to relax? well when we breathe , walk and relax more than any other basic activity why aren't we taught the techniques to these enormously important skills ? Children must be taught these skills, at an age when they learn to read and write a foreign language and get very good at it , imagine the range of progress we could achieve by teaching these skills them .
The magnitude of potential is exciting ........yes learning letters, words and sentences is important but breathing , walking , running and relaxing is paramount......again, Just Thoughts.
Ranjya, as usual well said !!! i think people disregard these " Basic skills " as they might be feeling, they are not so important in future life. If we look at our whole education system, is it not like a factory model ?? each of us has a batch number.....and i gues also an expiry date :), what we are taught in schools is more often than not just stuff that's going to be pretty useless in the "real" world. who cares when the battle of waterloo was fought, or who was Gardibaldi and all this kind of stuff that was filled in our brains and still is being done in schools.
ReplyDeleteHow many schools encourage creativity and freedom of expression?? Schools have become more or less molding grounds for stereotyped by products.
We are the very same people who invented zero, and maybe also gravity, speed of light much before westerm world but where has this creativity gone ?? why are we looking always towards the west to learn new things...i feel one of the reasons is that we are not encouraging learning basic skills and smothering any creativity.
Ranjit,
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely agree with you. It's a well known fact that children in India are pressurized right from a very young age nowadays. Some kids are able to handle it and some are not and then we hear about so many cases of suicide by adolescents. I think schools should implement lessons on relaxation techniques, stress management exercises like yoga, breathing control. Some schools do have them but not sure how well they implement it.