Ever have one of those days when you wake up and feel a year's worth of PMS coursing through your system? I woke up like that today. It's quite unusual. I may wake up still sleepy or tired or bright and bushy-tailed but rarely grumpy. So from the time I woke up, I was at it with the kids ( they hadn't helped by waking up twice during the night, then we had no power and the inverter conked off so no fan - it's already 33 degrees C here - then they woke up early...) - yelled at Chubbocks to drink up his milk in a hurry since we had to go in to school for his end-of-year PTA meeting, yelled at him when he accidentally ran his tricycle over Puddi's foot ( to his credit I must say she was behind him when he was reversing). Puddi was fractious because she hadn't slept well, with the mosquitoes and the heat, I was snapping A's head off, we got caught in baad traffic on the way to school and negotiated a 5 km distance in half hour, almost late for the meeting and I'm anal about punctuality...Chubbocks picked this morning, when A and I were dog-tired since A had an early morning flight yesterday morning and had woken up at 4am and gotten back at 11pm, to decide that he had to have our help to make a giraffe out of his new Lego set before we went to schoool...Let's just say it wasn't pretty!
Then we got to school and had our rendezvous with his teachers. Both of them always break into big grins the minute we discuss Chubbocks. They told us how he had become a meticulous and neat worker - a change from his first report. They commented that in every session where they discussed sounds and words, they always got the most interesting and unusual words from him. They said he loves performing...well, we could see that on form morning. They said they had almost nothing to 'discuss' since he was doing so incredibly well and that we should be really proud of him. If I had been wearing a hat this morning when I went to the school, it would be several sizes too small for me by now. Whenever I think of the meeting and the report card they gave him, I have the biggest grin on my face.
It just feels so nice to have someone else appreciate the special qualities that you think your child has. And what's nice about Chubbocks's school performance is that it's not as if we've been either pushing him or been all that involved in exactly what he's doing in school. We're actually quite lax, as you will see if you read this. But we do try and encourage him to learn just through simple every day activities - reading him a story or encouraging him to read or paint or build lego models. Most of all, I think it's his own enthusiasm and curiosity that has ended up motivating him to do well and to learn, experiment and enjoy the process. That's actually the most proud-making fact of all.
I wish more schools were like the one we chose, in their teaching methods, in their faculty and in their values. Philosophers have always maintained that formal education should actrually just be the conduit to teaching people how to educate themselves throughout life. If we think back to TZP or remember our own schooldays, I'm sure we can remember those strict teachers - the ones who frowned when you smiled or got sarcastic if you asked a question. There is simply so much emphasis on rote-learning and regurgitation in the average Indian school - as if we were a herd of cows who needed to chew the cud.
I still remember way back in nursery or first grade, that I would get poor marks in some subjects because I had not reproduced the answer exactly from the books but explained in my own words. How thankful I am that my parents realised why this was happening and instead of asking me to 'come first' encouraged me to express myself. Rote learning, particularly in a new and changing world, may be good for some things like the multiplication tables or the atomic table, but for almost anything else, what is needed most of all is a healthy sense of curiosity. No discovery in any age could have been made if not for that.
A recent global study of patents found that of course, as expected, Japan and then the US led in number of patents. The third country on the list was China - yes, the same China which also believes in rote learning and has people mugging up thousands of words rather than alphabets because that's how their language is structured. Even China has realised that in this day and age, innovation and inventiveness is the only way for a country to get and to stay ahead. India had an amazingly low number of patents filed, and I'm not sure why. Our daily life is so chaotic, that I'm sure all of us should have an incredible degree of mental nimbleness in order to cope and survive. But our education system really doesn't encourage asking questions, having doubts or deviating from the beaten path.
Not just from an economic point of view but the fact is, a good education broadens the mind, instills a natural sense of curiosity and makes life more interesting and possibly better, in the long run. I only wish more children in our country had access to this kind of education.
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