Who brings up your child?

Who brings up your child?
Class X Board exams

Class x board exam

Past two months I was off the writing and got busy with the school of great repute! This time it was class X and IX! This is the first year when the board exams start for class X after a gap of good seven years. This is a panic situation for the parents and teachers who have not dealt with the board exams earlier.

Teaching these classes was an eye-opener for me.In these ten years when I left school teaching to coaching the class XI and XII students made my perception different. There are few inherent weaknesses that have cropped in in these few years! Many issues have cropped up.

In my opinion, it is initiated with the status symbol- a full-time maid! 

Well, many a time the maid is responsible even for feeding and making the food for the child.The child grows more in the shadow of the maid who is hardly educated rather than parents or grandparents.The most impressionable years of the life and the age of maximum rate of learning is molded by an uneducated person.

Next, as the child grows, when he is hardly learning the alphabets or is in the primary classes the educated parents start sending the child to a teacher for coaching! It surprises me! The child needs to play and be educated but he is either in the coaching center or with the computer game! This is an intellectual kill recipe for the child! 

I think the schools ought to have an extensive system. Working parents can do their work peacefully and the child is also taken care off! The schools can have an extended time where the different set of teachers can make them play games and make them do the homework and the added cultural activities.This is a prevalent practice in South Korea and China.

The result of all this is seen as the child approaches class X and IX. 

The very few basic things that existed ten years back have completely disappeared! The oral arithmetic and the learning of the tables is hardly a norm. Children of class X find difficult to algebra and arithmetic orally. Self-study is almost non-existent for the kids. Hence no longer there are discussions on the dining table about the laws of Physics or mathematics in nature! For them, education is like running from school to coaching and back.They barely complete the work shoved upon them by the tutor and the teachers in the class! The child gets confused. Things should be in sync. He will never know what to focus and finally, he is like a shuttlecock thrown from one point to another and never settles to learn.

Please, do not tell me the course is too much or the pressure is too much. The syllabus has not increased. The only change that has taken place is that kids are no longer in the habit of learning the complete book comprehensively. They got out of this habit because of the CCE system introduced by our ex-minister Kapil Sibal. This experiment has ruined the learning process, the kids no longer are able to deal with the comprehensive learning. One cannot make them capable of dealing with all this in one year! This requires years of the training of the mind. That's the reason the annual exams were compulsory for ages.

Sadly the method of the teaching continues to be lecture method. There are several open resources present. They are developed by NASA BBC and many of the IVY leagues.They are for the benefit of the society. I wish we start using them at least till class VIII for a more creative and analysis based education. 

Another important point is a hunger for the knowledge is been replaced by the hunger for the marks. Well, this is very pragmatic! But, does it work in life? The students from various parts of the world are doing very well. The mathematics, pure sciences in the eastern Europian countries have taken a giant leap. We are falling short. The complete package of education in South Korea and China is amazingly competitive. They can beat us hollow in no time. We must ensure that our kids start learning more. The Europe and USA education system need not be emphasized for their creativity and exposure to the reach the limits any day!