I dont have any kids but this is something I feel very strongly about....the insane way in which kids are brought up nowadays. Firstly, I dont like the way they are hopelessly pampered nowadays and I don't like the way they are "made" to study.
Sample this...I see kids in class V going for 3 hour tuitions after getting back from school. This is madness...I don't think this helps them in anyway. At this age, kids should be going out and playing after coming back from school..after finishing their homework of course. Sending them for tuitions is only going to make them dependent on others and is going to stifle their curiosity and thinking process. Well, I think everyone knows that but no one really cares about it. Curiosity - you don't get marks for it do you?
I think the whole world is conspiring against kids nowadays...no one wants them to play anymore. Our home in Delhi has (or used to have) 8-10 parks nearby. Now, 3 of them have been converted into multi-storeyed temples, 1 into a gurudwara, 1 into church....the list goes on. The ones that are left have been cornered by the oldies. Yeah the oldies...they congregrate into the parks in the evenings and won't let any kids play cricket lest the ball hit them. Of course they refuse to budge from where they are sitting to a different part of the park. Everyone ranging from religious fanatics to oldies have hit upon this great idea...kids don't speak up so let's grab their parks. Well...go home kids...it's not your park any more.
Don't get me wrong...today's parents and grandparents love their kids as they have always done...they are just scared. Scared that their kid will be left behind. Scared that their kid won't make it big. There are fewer kids per families now..1 or 2 per couple compared to 3-4 a few years back..so maybe that has something to do with it. But the solution everyone has hit upon is - let's throw money on them and lets put them in tuitions. Today's parents go all out to make sure that their kid has the best of everything...and the kids grow up thinking they are the center of the universe. No wonder, today's kids are so boisterous.
There is an article I ran into in mint a few days back....Here's an excerpt: "While crossing the border into Delhi’s suburb of Noida, I noticed a massive hoarding for the Millennium School: “Our school has just one child — yours.” Clever, I thought. Until I realized the implication. Already our kids think they are at the centre of the universe, between parents, grandparents, maids and guilty give-ins. Shouldn’t school serve as a place to humble and socialize, to mix with many different kinds?"
I couldn't agree more. I would rather raise my kids with humility, curiosity and lots of play time...and let things run their natural course. There is one role model I can hopefully try to emulate...Atticus in To Kill A Mockingbird.
Monday, June 23, 2008
Blogging
Well I realized that blogging is pretty hard work. Having an idea or thought in your head is fine enough...but then making sure it looks good when it's written down...that the text flows well....watching out for grammar....making sure it says what u wanted it to say...it's all pretty hard work. I am sweating just thinking about it.
Reading someone else's blog and gloating on how much pain the poor sod must have gone through in writing that very crappy post sounds like much more fun. So maybe I will do that for a while.
Maybe I should start making a video blog...like a series of youtube videos. At least I won't have to write anything...it might even turn out to be funny..maybe more funny than some of the crap laughter challenge videos I run into
Anyways...there's another post coming after this. It's disjointed and badly edited but hopefully it gets the point across
Reading someone else's blog and gloating on how much pain the poor sod must have gone through in writing that very crappy post sounds like much more fun. So maybe I will do that for a while.
Maybe I should start making a video blog...like a series of youtube videos. At least I won't have to write anything...it might even turn out to be funny..maybe more funny than some of the crap laughter challenge videos I run into
Anyways...there's another post coming after this. It's disjointed and badly edited but hopefully it gets the point across
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Survival
One of my favorite times at school used to be the annual prize-distribution day. I used to be pretty good at studies when at school, so unsurprisingly I used to be pretty happy on this day after collecting all my prizes (in my heyday I used to take home 10-12 prizes!!). Our school used to hand out books as prizes - I am glad they did that because that’s how my love affair with reading started.
I had just completed my first year at school and had entered class V (this “mystery” will be solved in a later post). That year I won one award – for coming second in my section in class IV. As I sat down after receiving the award, I noticed the book had Hardy Boys written on the front. I was pretty disappointed – I had never heard of the Hardy Boys and I had been hoping for a Famous Five book, the only “novels” I used to read at that time. I turned to the back cover and I noticed a line that read “The Hardy Boys fight for survival…”. Now I was doubly disappointed. I had no idea what survival meant but I sometimes used to see a TV show named Survival and it used to be a very boring documentary on wild animals. Putting two and two together (like a true Hardy Boy), I assumed the Hardy Boys were some kind of animal activists, or at worst animals themselves (like Timmy the dog). I wasn’t really keen on a book about animals.
Anyway, with a heavy heart I started reading it, and very soon was totally caught up in the action. If you have read Hardy Boys when you were young, you know what I mean. I was surprised on not running into any animals in the book, and that’s when I looked up survival in the dictionary.
Pretty soon, I was loaning lots of Hardy Boys books from the school library, and looking forward to receiving them as prizes. The prizes soon introduced me to the Three Investigators, the Five Found-Outers and the Adventurous Four. I devoured them all :)
I had just completed my first year at school and had entered class V (this “mystery” will be solved in a later post). That year I won one award – for coming second in my section in class IV. As I sat down after receiving the award, I noticed the book had Hardy Boys written on the front. I was pretty disappointed – I had never heard of the Hardy Boys and I had been hoping for a Famous Five book, the only “novels” I used to read at that time. I turned to the back cover and I noticed a line that read “The Hardy Boys fight for survival…”. Now I was doubly disappointed. I had no idea what survival meant but I sometimes used to see a TV show named Survival and it used to be a very boring documentary on wild animals. Putting two and two together (like a true Hardy Boy), I assumed the Hardy Boys were some kind of animal activists, or at worst animals themselves (like Timmy the dog). I wasn’t really keen on a book about animals.
Anyway, with a heavy heart I started reading it, and very soon was totally caught up in the action. If you have read Hardy Boys when you were young, you know what I mean. I was surprised on not running into any animals in the book, and that’s when I looked up survival in the dictionary.
Pretty soon, I was loaning lots of Hardy Boys books from the school library, and looking forward to receiving them as prizes. The prizes soon introduced me to the Three Investigators, the Five Found-Outers and the Adventurous Four. I devoured them all :)
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