Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Did you ask a question today?

I was reading an article in the newspaper about the release of this book titled " What did you ask at school today?" by Kamala Mukunda. I am yet to read the book, but the title itself sounded very interesting. I read through the excerpts of her interview.

The author says that our education system does not stress enough on concept teaching. Our system is more rigid and stresses more on textbook reading than questioning. She also writes that human brain was not programmed to learn non-innate things like calculus and computer programming but is programmed to learn languages and social communications. Hence she says that a child learns to speak and understand a language well but cannot learn non-innate factors like spellings as easily.

"We give our students knowledge in disconnected chunks, and we expect our students to reproduce knowledge in more or less the same way it was received", writes the author.

That made me wonder if we are'nt making our children into cyclostyle copies or carbon copies of ourselves that is the parents, the teachers and all the other adults with whom they come into contact with or who play a role in shaping their life? The aim seems to be to shape our children into a miniature parent. At school the teacher tries to make her students think and interpret a thought just like she has understood it. This would then mean no originality.

But luckily God has made each child unique. Each one has his or her own level of intelligence. Some are better able to learn by repeatedly going through the lessons while some are able to understand the concept just by going through it once, while there are others who interpret the same concept in a totally different light altogether. Some are very skillful with their hands while some are creative thinkers.

Wouldn't we want some one who is Child I and not Papa II or Mama II?

And every person finds his own calling sooner or later and our world keeps moving ahead generation after generation.

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