Saturday, April 7, 2012

Dhoni – Not out but education system bowled

After a long time, I had a satisfaction of watching a good movie (Good in the sense of concept), after watching movie I felt so light, though most of the screen play is cinematic (dramatic), but the core message is what good, it is good to see such movies (3 idiots) now a days.
Prakash Raj, has lived in his character as a middle class father, though there is little exaggeration, of middle class father, which pictures his honesty, diligence and his struggle to run the family. Karthick character exactly resembles most of the student’s life of this era especially in India yes it is only in India (as far as I know) where parents decide the student’s career.
I recently had a similar situation, to admit my nieces in a school, for 1st and 3rd std, each school has different syllabus, I was surprised, I know there is state board, CBSE board and few schools even have international board but they had additional syllabus along with state/CBSE syllabus. I don’t understand why that is required for primary school education. Sarcastic thing is they don’t have any moral education, any ethic classes such as to keep their dwelling place clean and all. There was an interview to my sister and brother in law, since I was accompanying them, I too was interviewed. We were asked whether we can afford for tuition, special classes (there is a catch of special fee) and we should spend minimum 4-6 hours with kids, in helping them in home work and all. One thing I don’t understand here is why am I sending kids to schools, if I need to have a tuition, special class and 4 hours of tutoring at home, then what is the need for school? I didn’t kept this question with me, I shot it out to principal and correspondent, I got a strong reply, that there school produces 100% result and it is prestigious (I think they meant premier) intuition and that’s the reason why we are there to admit our kids, and I said that’s fine why it has to be so stringent for primary classes, reply I got was even more pathetic, they said it is competitive world, and they are training kids from the beginning for tomorrow. That’s where I lost my control, and asked them is your institution is as prestigious as IIM’s and IIT’s , as I don’t think they produce 100% results every year, how prestigious are you when kids are producing results due to tuition, special class and tutoring at home, first why do they need special class when class are already there? I even asked them do you teach any tricks or techniques to learn things, like in mathematics teaching tricks for fast multiplying and all, they don’t even have any clue of what I’m talking? It seems all they teach is how to memorize things and vomit in papers during exams. There is no work shop for kids to learn things on their own, to understand subjects, and school is primarily targeting on kids memorizing power and not to their understanding capabilities, so that they can memorize things and vomit when asked/required.
I walked out of the room after saying, as your demands are unethical I can’t expect my kids to learn ethics from you, your morality sucks so I can’t expect that from my kids and the worst part is neither you nor your teachers know anything beyond books, even in that none of you know what is in the books. They attacked me asking how can I say that? There teachers are well qualified and highly educated for their role. Then I asked the principal (an ex math’s teacher), we know 9 is a magical number, can you give me one example to prove that? To my surprise he was not able to answer my question. And he was teaching mathematics to students for almost 10 years, I was not asking him to prove any theorem here, it was such a simple question for his cadre.
There is no need for the rest of the story, we didn’t got the admission there, I’m not regretting for that in fact I’m happy that my nieces will not be a book worms of this generation, I bought some books for my sister (Vedic mathematics and some puzzles for kids) to entertain my nieces with it, so that they don’t feel the pressure of learning but to get the essence of it.
In fact many who reading this, will think that I’m a stupid, arrogant and brutal person, for denying education from premier intuitions to my nieces, to the fact I’m not, how many of you know that there are thousands of kids in Chennai from well to do family don’t do their primary education in schools instead, they stay at home and learn subjects through private tuition's or becoming members in British council and all. I’m not saying it is affordable to everyone, but it proves at least that education is available even outside the schools. When it comes to the question of affordability, schools are now a day’s becoming more expensive, that those days are not so far that even middle class families have to forfeit their education.