Focus on inner strengths

Oly Banerjee, INN/Gwalior, @Infodeaofficial

Life will always be life and it will go on no matter what. But it is upto us to make a difference. And, one seldom gets a chance to do this in today’s ever busy life. This stands more true when it comes our children.

Each child is unique, however onus always remains on travelling the usual path. Since the time a child is born, each succeeding second of his life is fixed, and everybody has to follow the same time-line, that is getting up early in the morning, studying or taking an overview of the topics to be taught in school, reaching the school, passing most of the day’s time there, finally returning home and then going to coaching class.

The whole time of a child’s life passes competing in the race called ‘life’. A child gets so engaged in this daily schedule, that he merely gets any time to discover his inner strengths, the qualities that make him or her unique. Rarely does one see allowing a child to harness these qualities. One big reason is perhaps the zeal to get good marks. For, they are considered a valid testimony of childrens’ performance.

Parents these days want their kids to become ‘the ideal Sharma ji ka beta,’ rather than giving thought to the idea, of trying to bring out their child’s unique ability.

However, the holistic development of a child can never be ignored. One reason why innovations, creative works do not take a front seat in countries like India is perhaps that children are made to travel the usual path. And, are not encouraged to take different paths which help bring out their innate abilities.

But sooner we begin giving room to harness unique abilities of our children the better it is. Singapore is an example worth mentioning in this regard. Paying attention towards the holistic development of a child, one of the best educated country with highly qualified workforce, Singapore, abolished the decade old school ranking system, thus removing any kind of comparison.

According to the Ministry of Education of Singapore, this step has been taken to make the students focus on his or her learning progress and discourage them from overly concerning about comparisons. It stated that ‘learning is not a competition.’

In order to eliminate all sorts of comparison, the mark-sheet will not carry class and level mean, minimum and maximum marks, underlining or highlighting failing marks.

The most devastating time of any student’s life, is the moment, when results are declared, teachers along with the student’s mark-sheets are sitting on a table-chair, to call students along with their parents and to complain about the mischievous things he did during the session, and lauding the exemplary topper of the class.

Everybody in India is expected to be the sheep of the same herd. Singapore has the best education in science and maths in the world, followed by Finland, Switzerland, Lebanon, according to the World Economic Forum, India stands at 37th position, whereas the Indian students no doubt work the hardest spending long hours in school then in coaching centers. Indian engineers have to still face taunts worldwide despite all the hard work they are known to do.

As once C.P. Gurnani, CEO and MD of Tech Mahindra said that about 94% of engineering graduates are not fit for hiring. These giant companies have to build learning centers of their own for generating skilled employees. It is high time we make our children competent by giving enough room for them to harness their innate talents.