I have had issues with the education system in this country and the sheer pace at which it forces children through a fixed curriculum. You put in your child into playschool in this country when he or she is still in diapers, still unable to speak, still to develop their gross motor skills to perfection, forget the fine motor skills. And then, the syllabus. And the speed at which it is rushed through before the child is even able to grasp or comprehend what is being taught to him or her.
But yes, the children cope. Or rather, we force them to cope. My son, as you might know from my blog, is struggling. He has issues with attention, with hyperactivity, and I am fully aware of his issues and working with him.
The entire rush at which we start morphing our children into pressurised little studious robots has always had me wondering if there was an option. If there was a method by which I could take his unique interests and integrate them into his studies, considering he was lagging behind awfully in class, despite the fact that he does, blasphemy, go for tuitions after school, and I sit with him and do his school and tuition homework with him every single day.
My search for options lead me to google baba and to Homeschooling. The premise is interesting. I could draw up age appropriate syllabus according to the class my son is in and work on it with him at home. And I discovered on Wikipedia that it is legal in India.
But do I have the courage to withdraw him from organised school and go through the homeschooling experiment, especially in this competitive world where a piece of paper from an educational institution can make all the difference between a career and stagnation? I dont. Honestly, I dont. So I will opt for the happy compromise of having him go to regular school. And working with him at home with a syllabus more suited to his level of comprehension and understanding and willingness to grasp. Without pressurising him as much as I can manage it.
Research conducted by Raymond S Moore in the 1970s revealed that putting children into the education system too early was detrimental to their self esteem. The resultant book, Better Late than Early has a self explanatory title.
What are the advantages of homeschooling? The child gets one on one attention from the parent or the primary care give who is involved as much emotionally as is mentally in the process of educating the child. The syllabus can be tailored to the individual interest of the child and the parent will move up the syllabus is consonance with the speed with which the child assimilates what is being taught.
A group of parents can get together to form a core homeschooling team with each parent taking on a single subject and preparing lessons accordingly, if parents are able to find likeminded parents who share the desire to homeschool their children.
As to the syllabus, it can be developed through interenet downloaded resources, through books and educational DVDs, and text books meant for the level of class the child would be in should the child be in regular school. The flexibility of homeschooling is that, you can take lessons at your convenience. You can speed up or slow down according to the child's mastery of the subject, and you can devote one on one attention to the child.
There are plenty of parents out here who are homeschooling their children as an option to the standardised Brick in the Wall education system we follow. Their children are as intelligent, informed and capable or even better than those who go to regular school.
But homeschooling is not the rosy picture it seems. For one, the parent must have the ability to teach. And that is a natural ability that makes imparting knowledge interesting and fun for the child. The Good Lord knows I have to work really hard on that part. For another, the parent has to be disciplined enough to ensure that they have their study sessions every day regardless of distractions. For another, there is always the fear that the child is not upto snuff when compared with other children their age. The assumption is that school learning is the norm and is therefore better for the child.
The debate includes whether the child will be deprived of peer socialisation, and fail to develop adequate social skills in such a homeschooling setting. And also, when is the child ready and able to join institutionalised education and will the child then feel a misfit. All these questions still are under debate. But the bottom line is that homeschooling is an idea whose time has come, especially with all the parents out here, dismayed with the sheer insensitivity and overload the education system is putting on our precious little children.
I am going to try it out, in my own form, while staying put in the school. Any resources that would help, would be welcome. And any opinions too!
Would you homeschool your child, if you could?
Notable homeschooled individuals?
Numerous historical and current public figures were home-educated[2][56][57]. Some examples include:
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) the 16th President of the United States, received very little schooling, but was an avid reader and taught himself how to read, write, and do arithmetic.[56][58]
Andrew Wyeth (1917), an American realist painter, was taken out of school at young age because of illness, he then received education on art and other subjects from his parents.[59][56]
Bode Miller (1977), an American alpine skier, was homeschooled by his parents until he was ten. [60]
Che Guevara (1928), left-wing guerrilla leader in Cuba, Africa, and Bolivia, and prison commandant and national bank president in Cuba, born in Argentina, was educated at home, mainly by his mother, until the age of 13.[61]
Ernst Mach, Austria, Physicist. Homeschooled until highschool by his parents.[62]
Erwin Schrödinger, Austria, Nobel Prize-winning physicist. Homeschooled until age 10[63]
Elizabeth II (1926), the queen of the United Kingdom, received early education at home, later she attended lessons in constitutional history at Eton College.[64]
George Washington, United States, First United States President[56]
Rosa Parks, United States, civil rights activist, homeschooled until age 11[65]
Sho Yano, United States, child prodigy
Susan La Flesche Picotte, United States, first American Indian woman physician
Thomas Edison (1847-1931) an American inventor and businessman, was taught reading, writing and arithmetic by his mother. Before that he left school after only three months, as he had trouble following the lessons. Most of his other education he received from reading books on his own.[66]
Woodrow Wilson (1856-1924) the 28th President of the United States, was home educated by his father because of the Civil War. When he was nineteen he entered the Princeton University.[56]
Resources: http://www.alternativeeducationindia.net/
Showing posts with label Kiran's Column. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kiran's Column. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Bullying the bully
Its the start of school season and going back to school is probably peppered with a little trepidation for some of our little ones. Trepidation at the impending prospect of dealing with the officially designated bully in school. I know. My son has had a bitter experience with a friend turned bully last week, which has terrorised him so intensely that he is now refusing to go to school. (Details on my blog) Its been over a week now and thankfully, the rains have been bad enough to keep him at home. But it is scaring me. How do I bolster my child's selfconfidence enough to enable him to deal with bullying and teasing on his own, without me being around to defend him or give him security? I am sure many of us parents grapple with these questions everyday.
According to recent studies,about 50 percent of children and adolescents are the victims of some form of bullying during some point in their educational life. According to statistic, one of five children is being bullied regularly by either a single other child or a group of other children who gang up on the victim. Bullying takes various forms from the mild form of teasing, jibes, derogatory comments, threats, to physical aggresion and intimidation. And research does show that contrary to our expectations, bullying does exist in preschool and day care facilities, populated primarily by children under the age of five.
What are the signs by which you know your child is being a victim of bullying in school? A child who earlier loved to go to school but now refuses to go to school is one clear indication that something is drastically wrong at school. A child who clams up when you ask him what happened at school is another indication. A child who pulls out all stops at pretending to be ill with a tummy ache or another excuse to continuously avoid going to school is another. My son has all these. I am terrified because more than the physical scars of bullying, I hate seeing my happy go lucky cheerful son being morose and terrified of going into school. What sort of emotional scars has he received already before I have even become aware of it?
For my son, the bullying has progressed from verbal teasing and physical intimidation to actual pushing and shoving. Pushing down a flight of stairs is terrifying for anyone, adult or child. Not to mention the grave physical danger it presents to the child. It scares me as a mother. No, it terrifies me. Not only is this physically dangerous to my child. It is also affecting him emotionally and psychologically. And short of keeping him at home, there seems to be at the outset, little I can do to protect him.
Over the past week I have been thinking a lot about how I can help my child deal with bullying appropriately, without it progressing to physical harassment and pushing, shoving and such violent behavior. Can I try to keep my child safe from a distance? Short of actually morphing into a fly on the wall ready to grow a sting and bite the child harassing my child? I can only try from the outside to make a difference and this is what I have been doing:
Encourage my child to talk about the bullying experience with me. And getting him to understand why it is happening, and that it is not his fault. In my son's case, it is because he is tinier and quite clueless about what is going on in class thanks to his hyperactivity and attention issues that makes him a soft target for some other children to pick on.
Insist that my son immediately bring instances of bullying to the notice of the classteacher who will deal with it appropriately.
Remove himself from the situation immediately if the bully gets aggressive or call for help loudly.
On no account is he to hit back, or get aggressive with the aggressor.That would be just the trigger needed to put the aggressor on overdrive.
He is to stay out of the path of the bully, and as far as possible remain within sight of an authority figure in class.
He is not to go to the toilet alone. He is to ask to be accompanied by an ayah or an assistant teacher.
Develop a friendship and bonding with other children in the class to enable him to have a support group should he be picked on. This I will encourage and nurture by organising playdates with some other children in the class with whom he gets along well.
Another important thing I have started with him is practicing possible situations with the bully and getting him trained in possible responses. While he is not to fight back or be his "mard ka bachcha' self, he is to make sure the bully knows that the behaviour will be reported to the authorities (aka the classteacher and me) and that the bully can get duly punished for the same. I am trying to build up his self confidence so he can intimidate the bully without getting into the vicious cycle of rewarding aggression with aggression.
If the bully's parents are reasonable people, you could meet up with them to explain your concerns and ask them to speak to their child to desist from such behaviour. In my case, the mother is in complete denial that her son could cause another child any harm deliberately, and so I have not pursued the matter further.
Talk to the classteacher as well as the school coordinator about the issue and your fears. Sometimes, since bullying happens away from the gaze of the teacher, the teacher might not even be aware that this is happening.
Dont make your complaints personal against another child. When you speak, put your concern for the physical and emotional wellbeing of your child over everything.
And finally, I have told my child that he is to come to me with everything that happens in school. I am not judging him. I am not going to ask him what he could have done to provoke the situation. I want him to know that his parents are rocks of support who will do all they can to smooth out the wrinkles in his school life.
What are your suggestions? Have you ever faced such a situation with your child? How did you deal with it? How did your child deal with it? I would love to hear them and try and implement them. Right now, my son needs all the help he can get.
According to recent studies,about 50 percent of children and adolescents are the victims of some form of bullying during some point in their educational life. According to statistic, one of five children is being bullied regularly by either a single other child or a group of other children who gang up on the victim. Bullying takes various forms from the mild form of teasing, jibes, derogatory comments, threats, to physical aggresion and intimidation. And research does show that contrary to our expectations, bullying does exist in preschool and day care facilities, populated primarily by children under the age of five.
What are the signs by which you know your child is being a victim of bullying in school? A child who earlier loved to go to school but now refuses to go to school is one clear indication that something is drastically wrong at school. A child who clams up when you ask him what happened at school is another indication. A child who pulls out all stops at pretending to be ill with a tummy ache or another excuse to continuously avoid going to school is another. My son has all these. I am terrified because more than the physical scars of bullying, I hate seeing my happy go lucky cheerful son being morose and terrified of going into school. What sort of emotional scars has he received already before I have even become aware of it?
For my son, the bullying has progressed from verbal teasing and physical intimidation to actual pushing and shoving. Pushing down a flight of stairs is terrifying for anyone, adult or child. Not to mention the grave physical danger it presents to the child. It scares me as a mother. No, it terrifies me. Not only is this physically dangerous to my child. It is also affecting him emotionally and psychologically. And short of keeping him at home, there seems to be at the outset, little I can do to protect him.
Over the past week I have been thinking a lot about how I can help my child deal with bullying appropriately, without it progressing to physical harassment and pushing, shoving and such violent behavior. Can I try to keep my child safe from a distance? Short of actually morphing into a fly on the wall ready to grow a sting and bite the child harassing my child? I can only try from the outside to make a difference and this is what I have been doing:
Encourage my child to talk about the bullying experience with me. And getting him to understand why it is happening, and that it is not his fault. In my son's case, it is because he is tinier and quite clueless about what is going on in class thanks to his hyperactivity and attention issues that makes him a soft target for some other children to pick on.
Insist that my son immediately bring instances of bullying to the notice of the classteacher who will deal with it appropriately.
Remove himself from the situation immediately if the bully gets aggressive or call for help loudly.
On no account is he to hit back, or get aggressive with the aggressor.That would be just the trigger needed to put the aggressor on overdrive.
He is to stay out of the path of the bully, and as far as possible remain within sight of an authority figure in class.
He is not to go to the toilet alone. He is to ask to be accompanied by an ayah or an assistant teacher.
Develop a friendship and bonding with other children in the class to enable him to have a support group should he be picked on. This I will encourage and nurture by organising playdates with some other children in the class with whom he gets along well.
Another important thing I have started with him is practicing possible situations with the bully and getting him trained in possible responses. While he is not to fight back or be his "mard ka bachcha' self, he is to make sure the bully knows that the behaviour will be reported to the authorities (aka the classteacher and me) and that the bully can get duly punished for the same. I am trying to build up his self confidence so he can intimidate the bully without getting into the vicious cycle of rewarding aggression with aggression.
If the bully's parents are reasonable people, you could meet up with them to explain your concerns and ask them to speak to their child to desist from such behaviour. In my case, the mother is in complete denial that her son could cause another child any harm deliberately, and so I have not pursued the matter further.
Talk to the classteacher as well as the school coordinator about the issue and your fears. Sometimes, since bullying happens away from the gaze of the teacher, the teacher might not even be aware that this is happening.
Dont make your complaints personal against another child. When you speak, put your concern for the physical and emotional wellbeing of your child over everything.
And finally, I have told my child that he is to come to me with everything that happens in school. I am not judging him. I am not going to ask him what he could have done to provoke the situation. I want him to know that his parents are rocks of support who will do all they can to smooth out the wrinkles in his school life.
What are your suggestions? Have you ever faced such a situation with your child? How did you deal with it? How did your child deal with it? I would love to hear them and try and implement them. Right now, my son needs all the help he can get.
Monday, June 9, 2008
Bag to School
School reopens this week for most children in India. And along with the flurry of excitement that comes with entering a new class, comes the thrill of getting to school in their new finery—new uniforms, new shoes, new raincoats and umbrellas, as this is monsoon season. And of course new bags. Yes, this is going to be my topic for this column. The school bag. Whether the fancy ones with Disney and other cartoon characters embellishing their surface, or the plain canvas ones, long forgotten by the urban children but still in use in rural areas. Both with a single fact in common. Packed to capacity with books that often make the bag unbearably heavy to carry. Some children carry close to their own weight in books to school and back everyday. The average weight of a school bag in Mumbai is 9 kilos. And this is without factoring in sports kits and the like.
According to reports that come out in the newspaper, where intrepid reporters accost unsuspecting school children on their way to school, and weigh their bags, some bags weigh as much as 12 kgs. I kid you not. Have these schools not sensitised themselves to the sad fact that they are physically and psychologically making the children beasts of burden, weighed down under studies?
It is a common sight to see parents escorting their children and carrying their bags for them. And almost leaning over diagonally like human towers of Pisa with the weight. How would the child ever be able to carry the bag, one wonders? When the brat was in playschool, he was all of 20 months and he had a timetable, and books to be carried in his bag as per the timetable. Yes, it was a really horrible playschool, but nonetheless. Needless to say, the brat being the brat, half the books were tattered beyond comprehension and the remainder were a mish mash of edibles spilled and crayon work gone haywire, but the fact is that my heart broke everytime I saw him teeter across the building compound his school bag on his little back, almost as big as he was at the time.
Thankfully, his current school only has us send in a spare change of clothes, a tiffin box, and a water bottle, apart from his almanac. Making his load relatively lighter, of course.
But such schools are few and far between. Some schools have tried to alleviate the load of the child by having worksheets instead of rough books. Two sets of text books to be kept in class and at home (But that is an indulgence that the rich can afford). Sharing of textbooks by benchpartners, to reduce the load to be carried into class every single day.
But the fact remains that most children are tottering around like beasts of burden which school bags which could give a good trekking bag a run for its money, and god help you if you get side swipped by one of these. It could knock you out flat to a count of ten.
But jokes apart, what are the obvious problems heavy bags could cause? Back problems for one. Chronic back pain for another. If your child is constantly stating that he or she has a backache, pay attention. And take a good hard look at the school bag. It could be the culprit. I personally know of a case, a 13 year old girl sharing the room with the brat when he was once admitted into a pediatric ward for his febrile convulsions, a child in Standard IX who had developed nerve compression in her spine as a result of carrying a too heavy bag too long and too far, as she lived a long bus ride away from her school. Not pretty. In fact, it was very very scary.
Spine misalignment, wear and tear of ligaments, joint problems, stunted growth and much more are being cited by orthopedics as possible outcomes of consistently carrying around overtly heavy bags. Surely, our children deserve better.
Pediatricians recommend that the weight of the school bag should be no more than 10 percent of the child’s body weight. The bag should be carried on the back with two padded straps resting firmly on either shoulder to balance out the weight. And the school not make it mandatory for the child to stand with the bag during assembly.
For the parent, do check out the weight of the bag you are buying for the child when it is empty. If it is already heavy to start with, dump it, however attractive it may be. Do realize that lunch boxes, water bottles, etc are added weight for the child to carry, in addition to raincoats and umbrellas during the monsoon. Do look for lightweight options to everything. Buy 100 page notebooks for rough work rather than the heavier hardback 500 page versions. Ask if your child can get worksheets rather than books for rough work. Check if sport equipment can be kept in lockers at school.
Do weigh your child’s bag on a regular basis and check in with the school if you feel it is consistently too heavy, and if there are some items which can be reduced.
And last but not the least, do know that the government has stipulated that there is a fixed maximum weight to a school bag, which should not exceed ten percent of the child’s body weight.
The Indian Parliament introduced The Children school Bags (Limitation On weight) Bill, 2006.
The important points of this bill were that the weight of the school bag should not exceed ten percent of the child’s body weight.
Nursery and kindergarten students should carry no school bags.
Schools should provide appropriate lockers in schools for the children to use.
The schools should issue guidelines on school bags.
To quote from the bill:
It shall be the duty of the appropriate Government to ensure that the weight of
the school bag to be carried by a child of particular class shall not be more than ten per cent
of the weight of the child:
Also, as part of the bill come the following stipulations:
(a) the students should use appropriate school bag with several compartments
to balance the weight and broad padded straps for symmetrical distribution of weight
on their spine;
(b) the students should always use both straps for carrying school bags and no
student is slinging his bag over one shoulder;
(c) the students should always keep the bag down while waiting for the school
conveyance or in the school assembly;
(d) the students should bend at knees with back straight while lifting the school
bag.
(e) the students should be told how to pack their school bags so that heavy
items should be close to the body and not carry unwanted items to school.
Schools which are found to be violating this rule, and which have not provided lockers for the children to keep their belongings, will be fined and if recognized, will be derecognized on repeat offence.
The bill has explained in detail the rationale behind its being passed as pasted under:
STATEMENT OF OBJECTS AND REASONS
Small children often have been seen tottering to school with heavy backpacks. The
results of this excessive weight is more serious than ever expected. Some children may
develop a permanent stoop due to the heavy pressure on their spinal cord, which would lead
to permanent damage to their physical structure and back muscles.
It is a medically proven fact that lifting heavy burdens for a long time or distance is not
good for anyone, especially children. In the tender age, bones are delicate and excessive
weight can misalign the spine leading to offensive skeletal and muscle maturity. Carrying a
heavy bag on the back often results in aches in the back and shoulders. Forward bending at
the back makes the work of breathing harder. Children carrying bags weighing more than
10 per cent of their body weight have been found to have poorer lung function.
Yet, life goes on as before for most families even after they hear their children
complaining about pain in back and neck. Growing weight of school bag and its effect on
health of the children has became a matter of grave concern for every parent School authorities
have also been expressing their concern over the issue but nothing is being done to lessen
the burden of school bags.
Along with books, children have to carry their sports and other equipment with them.
If lockers are provided to children in school, it will allow them to leave sports equipment, and
certain books and notebooks in school. Further, the school should issue common instructions
to students in advance which books will be needed and which can be left at home and
teaching the child to put down the bag when waiting at the bus stop, in the assembly, and to
use both straps of the bag, etc. Some schools have adopted a way for reducing the weight of
school bags. They don't send all the books back home. Only those books are kept in the bags
which the students are required to study at home. This has been working very well for junior
classes. Therefore, there is an urgent need to enact legislation for the whole of the country
to save the children from carrying heavy loads on their back.
Hence this Bill.
VIJAY J. DARDA
Additional links
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/443633.cms
Children being children, will be tempted to carry along their entire quota of books every day to ensure that they do not leave behind a single book by mistake. Do keep your eyes peeled to check whether they're overloading their bags more than is essential.
You owe it to their growing backs.
According to reports that come out in the newspaper, where intrepid reporters accost unsuspecting school children on their way to school, and weigh their bags, some bags weigh as much as 12 kgs. I kid you not. Have these schools not sensitised themselves to the sad fact that they are physically and psychologically making the children beasts of burden, weighed down under studies?
It is a common sight to see parents escorting their children and carrying their bags for them. And almost leaning over diagonally like human towers of Pisa with the weight. How would the child ever be able to carry the bag, one wonders? When the brat was in playschool, he was all of 20 months and he had a timetable, and books to be carried in his bag as per the timetable. Yes, it was a really horrible playschool, but nonetheless. Needless to say, the brat being the brat, half the books were tattered beyond comprehension and the remainder were a mish mash of edibles spilled and crayon work gone haywire, but the fact is that my heart broke everytime I saw him teeter across the building compound his school bag on his little back, almost as big as he was at the time.
Thankfully, his current school only has us send in a spare change of clothes, a tiffin box, and a water bottle, apart from his almanac. Making his load relatively lighter, of course.
But such schools are few and far between. Some schools have tried to alleviate the load of the child by having worksheets instead of rough books. Two sets of text books to be kept in class and at home (But that is an indulgence that the rich can afford). Sharing of textbooks by benchpartners, to reduce the load to be carried into class every single day.
But the fact remains that most children are tottering around like beasts of burden which school bags which could give a good trekking bag a run for its money, and god help you if you get side swipped by one of these. It could knock you out flat to a count of ten.
But jokes apart, what are the obvious problems heavy bags could cause? Back problems for one. Chronic back pain for another. If your child is constantly stating that he or she has a backache, pay attention. And take a good hard look at the school bag. It could be the culprit. I personally know of a case, a 13 year old girl sharing the room with the brat when he was once admitted into a pediatric ward for his febrile convulsions, a child in Standard IX who had developed nerve compression in her spine as a result of carrying a too heavy bag too long and too far, as she lived a long bus ride away from her school. Not pretty. In fact, it was very very scary.
Spine misalignment, wear and tear of ligaments, joint problems, stunted growth and much more are being cited by orthopedics as possible outcomes of consistently carrying around overtly heavy bags. Surely, our children deserve better.
Pediatricians recommend that the weight of the school bag should be no more than 10 percent of the child’s body weight. The bag should be carried on the back with two padded straps resting firmly on either shoulder to balance out the weight. And the school not make it mandatory for the child to stand with the bag during assembly.
For the parent, do check out the weight of the bag you are buying for the child when it is empty. If it is already heavy to start with, dump it, however attractive it may be. Do realize that lunch boxes, water bottles, etc are added weight for the child to carry, in addition to raincoats and umbrellas during the monsoon. Do look for lightweight options to everything. Buy 100 page notebooks for rough work rather than the heavier hardback 500 page versions. Ask if your child can get worksheets rather than books for rough work. Check if sport equipment can be kept in lockers at school.
Do weigh your child’s bag on a regular basis and check in with the school if you feel it is consistently too heavy, and if there are some items which can be reduced.
And last but not the least, do know that the government has stipulated that there is a fixed maximum weight to a school bag, which should not exceed ten percent of the child’s body weight.
The Indian Parliament introduced The Children school Bags (Limitation On weight) Bill, 2006.
The important points of this bill were that the weight of the school bag should not exceed ten percent of the child’s body weight.
Nursery and kindergarten students should carry no school bags.
Schools should provide appropriate lockers in schools for the children to use.
The schools should issue guidelines on school bags.
To quote from the bill:
It shall be the duty of the appropriate Government to ensure that the weight of
the school bag to be carried by a child of particular class shall not be more than ten per cent
of the weight of the child:
Also, as part of the bill come the following stipulations:
(a) the students should use appropriate school bag with several compartments
to balance the weight and broad padded straps for symmetrical distribution of weight
on their spine;
(b) the students should always use both straps for carrying school bags and no
student is slinging his bag over one shoulder;
(c) the students should always keep the bag down while waiting for the school
conveyance or in the school assembly;
(d) the students should bend at knees with back straight while lifting the school
bag.
(e) the students should be told how to pack their school bags so that heavy
items should be close to the body and not carry unwanted items to school.
Schools which are found to be violating this rule, and which have not provided lockers for the children to keep their belongings, will be fined and if recognized, will be derecognized on repeat offence.
The bill has explained in detail the rationale behind its being passed as pasted under:
STATEMENT OF OBJECTS AND REASONS
Small children often have been seen tottering to school with heavy backpacks. The
results of this excessive weight is more serious than ever expected. Some children may
develop a permanent stoop due to the heavy pressure on their spinal cord, which would lead
to permanent damage to their physical structure and back muscles.
It is a medically proven fact that lifting heavy burdens for a long time or distance is not
good for anyone, especially children. In the tender age, bones are delicate and excessive
weight can misalign the spine leading to offensive skeletal and muscle maturity. Carrying a
heavy bag on the back often results in aches in the back and shoulders. Forward bending at
the back makes the work of breathing harder. Children carrying bags weighing more than
10 per cent of their body weight have been found to have poorer lung function.
Yet, life goes on as before for most families even after they hear their children
complaining about pain in back and neck. Growing weight of school bag and its effect on
health of the children has became a matter of grave concern for every parent School authorities
have also been expressing their concern over the issue but nothing is being done to lessen
the burden of school bags.
Along with books, children have to carry their sports and other equipment with them.
If lockers are provided to children in school, it will allow them to leave sports equipment, and
certain books and notebooks in school. Further, the school should issue common instructions
to students in advance which books will be needed and which can be left at home and
teaching the child to put down the bag when waiting at the bus stop, in the assembly, and to
use both straps of the bag, etc. Some schools have adopted a way for reducing the weight of
school bags. They don't send all the books back home. Only those books are kept in the bags
which the students are required to study at home. This has been working very well for junior
classes. Therefore, there is an urgent need to enact legislation for the whole of the country
to save the children from carrying heavy loads on their back.
Hence this Bill.
VIJAY J. DARDA
Additional links
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/443633.cms
Children being children, will be tempted to carry along their entire quota of books every day to ensure that they do not leave behind a single book by mistake. Do keep your eyes peeled to check whether they're overloading their bags more than is essential.
You owe it to their growing backs.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
How soon is too soon
(This being India)
The front page of the newspapers today informed me that the draft of the Right to Education Bill has been finalized by the Central Government in India. And the best part about it, our children will start school later. Hallelujah, someone out there has been listening to us, griping and grumbling about how infants were being dragged into the schooling system by unscrupulous elements, at an age when they were still finding the language to inform us that they needed to go to the potty, and more often than not, needed diapering of their yet untrained bottoms before they could be let loose in public situations.
My son started playschool at 1 year nine months. I admitted him late. The term had begun in June. He would have been 1.6 had I started him in as the term started. And of course, out here, there is no concept of admitting a child on the basis of his average age, it’s a wide spectrum that starts from the beginning of the year to the end of said year, which gives children born at the start of the year almost a year’s lead time on the poor critters (like the brat) who have the bad taste to be born at the fag end of the year.
The bill, in its finalized draft state, proposes to fix the minimum age for admission to preschool at 3 years 10 months. The bill prepared by the Human resource Development Ministry says the admission age for Class I should be five years and 10 months before the beginning of the academic year. The brat will be 5 years, 6 months when he gets into Class I. Four months under the cut off date. And he, being wondrously slow as a learner. Any surprises that he is having trouble catching up with the rest of his class.
In Mumbai, though, the age for admission to pre school and pre primary has not been fixed by the state government. What with mamma and toddler classes coming into the picture, I think we’re now rushing off from our maternity leave to get our kids into playgroups and schools, while they’re still suckling at the breast. Okay, I exaggerate a bit. But you get my drift.
Most schools in Mumbai typically admit children between two and two and a half years into their pre school. For Pre Primary, that is Jr Kg, the minimum age needs to be 3 years. For Class I, the current cut off is 5 years. At five years, these kids are writing capitals, lower case, two and three letter words, three word sentences, they know their numbers, the counting, seriation, graphs, ordinal numbers, skip counting till 100, ascending order, descending order, greater than and less than, single digit addition and subtraction already when they move from Jr Kg to Sr Kg, and in senior Kg they will learn multiplication and division.
For the record, the brat just about has got a grip on capital letters, and I do his three letter word revision with capitals. He knows his numbers, but the rest of the stuff is beyond him, and I have not forced him to get into it. He will grasp it, as soon his brain is capable of doing so. And if the rest of the kids in class are doing the portion perfectly, more power to them. They also have an eight to ten month lead over him most of the time.
Also to my delight, comes the sentence, “If any school is found subjecting the parents or children to screening for admission a fine of Rs 25,000 will be imposed. A repeat offence will invite a fine of Rs 50,000. If any school is found guilty of taking capitation, the fine will be upto ten times of what it has charged.”
This spells doom for all the so called “refundable deposits” that most school charge during admissions, which start from the modest Rs 25,000 depending on the school, and go upto a few lakhs for the better schools.
And very interestingly, the days of 50 to 60 students packed three to a bench in the average schools also seems to be done for. Hopefully. The draft has also framed a set of norms for private schools on teachers’ qualifications, student teacher ratio and infrastructural mandatories. Schools without playgrounds, dirty premises, teachers with no proper qualifications (just the proper channels through which they applied for jobs, and worse, underpaid and overworked teachers, and therefore disgruntled and disinterested teachers). They seem to hopefully, among the many factors which will be impacted by this bill, if implemented.
Failure to comply with any of these could lead to a closure of the school. Do we see any harassed parents turning cartwheels on the street?
Of course, this will result in unnecessary confusion and running around to plan babies to meet cut off dates, but it makes infinite sense. And it does give one hope, that maybe, just maybe the education system is slowly and steadily getting rationalized in this country. Now if only someone working on that draft could take a look at the absolutely ridiculous syllabus our children have to suffer through. One brave day I will post a month’s syllabus to give you guys an idea of the utter horror that a four and a half year old has to confront.
The day the syllabus at the pre primary level gets rationalized will be the day I truly will celebrate.
What is the age cut off in your part of the world, folks?
The front page of the newspapers today informed me that the draft of the Right to Education Bill has been finalized by the Central Government in India. And the best part about it, our children will start school later. Hallelujah, someone out there has been listening to us, griping and grumbling about how infants were being dragged into the schooling system by unscrupulous elements, at an age when they were still finding the language to inform us that they needed to go to the potty, and more often than not, needed diapering of their yet untrained bottoms before they could be let loose in public situations.
My son started playschool at 1 year nine months. I admitted him late. The term had begun in June. He would have been 1.6 had I started him in as the term started. And of course, out here, there is no concept of admitting a child on the basis of his average age, it’s a wide spectrum that starts from the beginning of the year to the end of said year, which gives children born at the start of the year almost a year’s lead time on the poor critters (like the brat) who have the bad taste to be born at the fag end of the year.
The bill, in its finalized draft state, proposes to fix the minimum age for admission to preschool at 3 years 10 months. The bill prepared by the Human resource Development Ministry says the admission age for Class I should be five years and 10 months before the beginning of the academic year. The brat will be 5 years, 6 months when he gets into Class I. Four months under the cut off date. And he, being wondrously slow as a learner. Any surprises that he is having trouble catching up with the rest of his class.
In Mumbai, though, the age for admission to pre school and pre primary has not been fixed by the state government. What with mamma and toddler classes coming into the picture, I think we’re now rushing off from our maternity leave to get our kids into playgroups and schools, while they’re still suckling at the breast. Okay, I exaggerate a bit. But you get my drift.
Most schools in Mumbai typically admit children between two and two and a half years into their pre school. For Pre Primary, that is Jr Kg, the minimum age needs to be 3 years. For Class I, the current cut off is 5 years. At five years, these kids are writing capitals, lower case, two and three letter words, three word sentences, they know their numbers, the counting, seriation, graphs, ordinal numbers, skip counting till 100, ascending order, descending order, greater than and less than, single digit addition and subtraction already when they move from Jr Kg to Sr Kg, and in senior Kg they will learn multiplication and division.
For the record, the brat just about has got a grip on capital letters, and I do his three letter word revision with capitals. He knows his numbers, but the rest of the stuff is beyond him, and I have not forced him to get into it. He will grasp it, as soon his brain is capable of doing so. And if the rest of the kids in class are doing the portion perfectly, more power to them. They also have an eight to ten month lead over him most of the time.
Also to my delight, comes the sentence, “If any school is found subjecting the parents or children to screening for admission a fine of Rs 25,000 will be imposed. A repeat offence will invite a fine of Rs 50,000. If any school is found guilty of taking capitation, the fine will be upto ten times of what it has charged.”
This spells doom for all the so called “refundable deposits” that most school charge during admissions, which start from the modest Rs 25,000 depending on the school, and go upto a few lakhs for the better schools.
And very interestingly, the days of 50 to 60 students packed three to a bench in the average schools also seems to be done for. Hopefully. The draft has also framed a set of norms for private schools on teachers’ qualifications, student teacher ratio and infrastructural mandatories. Schools without playgrounds, dirty premises, teachers with no proper qualifications (just the proper channels through which they applied for jobs, and worse, underpaid and overworked teachers, and therefore disgruntled and disinterested teachers). They seem to hopefully, among the many factors which will be impacted by this bill, if implemented.
Failure to comply with any of these could lead to a closure of the school. Do we see any harassed parents turning cartwheels on the street?
Of course, this will result in unnecessary confusion and running around to plan babies to meet cut off dates, but it makes infinite sense. And it does give one hope, that maybe, just maybe the education system is slowly and steadily getting rationalized in this country. Now if only someone working on that draft could take a look at the absolutely ridiculous syllabus our children have to suffer through. One brave day I will post a month’s syllabus to give you guys an idea of the utter horror that a four and a half year old has to confront.
The day the syllabus at the pre primary level gets rationalized will be the day I truly will celebrate.
What is the age cut off in your part of the world, folks?
Monday, March 31, 2008
Excuse me, I’m a birthday momzilla
Kiran's Column
Kiran is an ex journalist, features writer, The Times of India (The SundayReview), The Asian Age and Features Editor at Cosmopolitan India. She now freelances as a features writer and runs an advertising agency in partnership with her husband. You can read more of her at Karmic Kids
I grew up in prehistorical times, when birthdays meant one wore a new dress, one of the three new dresses one got in a year, the other two for Id and Christmas (me being the offspring of an inter religious union), when friends and family came over, invited or uninvited (remember, this was the era before every home even had a telephone, and those who remembered it was your birthday came across in anticipation of a party), the mother cooked the entire day and hoped she wouldn’t run short of food, and generally roped in neighbours and sisters to help her. The father played gracious host, and puffed his cigarettes happily unmindful that he was polluting little lungs, and a cake was cut, wafers and soft drinks distributed for the aam junta, while the really close family friends and relatives stayed back for dinner. No one was invited to. It was understood that they would. These were riotous parties with family bonding, cracking of insider family jokes, and us cousins raising hell, thanks to parents too busy catching up on gossip to really be bothered about us.
And then I had my son. In my innocence, in the first year of his life, I didn’t think much about birthday parties for kids. Sure, I had friends who had had kids already, and I had heard weird rumours of parents planning birthday parties for months on end, and wondered how would it need a month of planning to throw a birthday party. A wedding perhaps, yes, but a birthday party?
Thus happened the brat’s first birthday party, where I called friends and family over home, and had in my innocence, cake to be cut, wafers, cold drinks, sandwiches and the likes of a party which had gone out of fashion three decades ago. Thankfully no one except immediate family turned up.
Things have changed since. The brat began playschool and I began getting invited to “Birthday parties”. I am a quick learner. The next birthday party happened also at home, but I made sure to invite kids, have games, return gifts and a menu. I had still not got into the big league. Getting into nursery into a proper school changed all that.
I still remember my shock and amazement at one of the earliest birthday parties I attended. At a five star venue. With lifesize cartoon characters walking around in keeping with the DisneyWorld theme, chatting up the kids. The older of which were taking their chances in roughing up the poor unfortunates doomed to be hot and stuffy in those costumes. There was a stage like a Disney castle. Girlie return gifts with Minnie Mouse for the girls, and Mickey doing the honours for the boys. And the gifts, a bath towel and robe and fluffy slippers set. It was a scene straight out of Disneyland, and I was left open mouthed. It was here, that I learnt about the concept of party organizers. These were wonderful people, who for a sum ranging from the nominal to the empty your pockets out, came in and organized everything for you. The basic ones came after you had decided on a venue, and sent in their decorating guys to blow up and string up the one gadzillion balloons that make up an integral part of any birthday decoration, along with the theme based cut outs, plus the huge banner declaring Happy Birthday to tyke concerned, personalized with the name which will cost you extra. And sent in a DJ, a games host, a tattoo artist, and a magician to keep the kids entertained for an hour or two while the escorting moms gossiped over the din.
The ones higher on the food chain came in when you decided you were flush with cash and could afford to spend a kings ransom on them. They do a venue recce and charge you for it. They give you theme options with previews of how everything will look like. They will organize a customized return gift. And a customized khoi bag, from which goodies will rain to the delight of scrambling kids below. And they will ensure the cake arrives on time. The customized cake. Not to mention getting in some minor celebrities if you so desire. Basically, you attend the party as a guest. Without pulling your hair out. Give them a month of lead time to organize your venue, your invites, your customized decorations, customized return gifts, and the celebrities. A mini wedding, perhaps? Yes, the budget for some of these dos could run into lakhs and that’s excluding the venue and the food.
Last week I attended a slew of parties which ranged the gamut from a terrace held birthday party (for children??? I was terrified through the entire do), a party held in a mall’s gaming area, which had the hosting mother almost tearing her hair out as kids ran anywhich way to their games of choice rather than going in line from one game to next as she had, in her naivete, imagined when she booked the place, a Pizza Place party, which was crowded, noisy and fun. And probably the least expensive of the lot. The terrace party was the most lavish, with jumping castles, and crawl in tents for the kids, popcorn, candyfloss and coke vending machines, tattoo artist, a magic show, a great spread of food, a DJ spinning tracks for the kids to dance to and a games host to keep them occupied. Hair braiding for the girls, handkerchief making, clay pottery tables, where children can paint on raw mugs which they then take home, a bead corner, where the mother and the child can select the beads and the look they want for a necklace or a bracelet made on the spot. Face painting. Mehndi artists. Theme parties, where hats to the theme or masques are handed out to every child as they enter. Parties where moms are treated to manicures and pedicures in a corner while their kids play. (I loved this one).
Puppet shows. The cartoon characters walking around amiably through the venue, interacting with the children. Name the cartoon character—from the Disney classics Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse to the more contemporary Power Rangers, and the new fangled Ben 10, they’re all available to spice up your party. At a cost of course. I find the children crowd them up and take sadistic pleasure in pummeling them, little rascals, so I’ve never hired them. Plus I find the cost unjustifiable. Hiring so many men and costumes to walk around for a kings ransom seems ludicrous to me.
I have heard of Ipods as return gifts, customized Tshirts, made on the spot with the child choosing the cartoon character he wants on it, and how he wants his name written on it, towels and bedlinen with the guest child’s name on it, and other extravaganzas that make my own humble peak cap and crayons pale in comparison. I insist on return gifts that are age appropriate and not such high value that they break the bank. Call me cheap. One of the nicest, and not too expensive return gifts the brat has received is a handpainted nameplate to his room (unfortunately since he doesn’t have a room to his name, it stays on his cupboard) and a placemat with a PowerRanger and his name on it. One of the worst return gifts was a tshirt that proclaimed "I attended ______'s birthday party." Thankfully, the maid's son had no qualms about wearing it.
I have wisened to the art of throwing a birthday party now. But, I am lazy. I dont do a home party anymore. The first two years have taught me a lesson. Its too much time and effort, and is always never appreciated. Having said that, one of the best birthday parties I have attended had a mother empty out her living room of all furniture, call in a games host and a tattoo artist, and order in burgers and french fries and Coke from the neighbourhood McDonalds. The kids loved it. I book a venue, with snacks rather than dinner. The party is always evening, five to seven thirty. Too early for dinner. And the children are generally too worked up running up a storm to have any dinner. I refuse to have the party in the house if more than five children are involved, I know I will throw my back out cleaning up before and after the party. I call a birthday party organizer. I tell him what my theme is for the decorations. Last year, I did a Noddy theme, in keeping with the current favourite character the brat swore allegiance to, and this year, Spongebob was my theme du jour. I order a birthday cake make in the likeness of said cartoon character. I scour the umpteen birthday shops for decorations and khoi bags made with said character as motif. I also select a return gift, which is within a fixed budget. Nothing anywhere percentage wise even near ipods and such like. The party organizer is told what colours the balloons need to be, and what cartoon character needs to go up on the walls of the venue, he can be relied on to arrive an hour before the party starts and get everything done and spanking spiffy, before the hordes trickle in. The cake is delivered at the venue, always, which, except for some minor glitches like this time round when the venue manager decided to keep the cake in the refrigerator and not inform us that it had arrived, leading to increasingly panic striken calls being made to cake place, which kept insisting that the cake had been delivered. I don’t have a DJ. They insist on playing music at ear threatening levels, and switching off all the lights, which scares me, given the brat’s penchant for disappearing into the darkness. And I am sure, all mothers feel the same. I have a tattoo artist. And a games host. No magic show yet. The brat didn’t appreciate it until this year, when I find he is now sitting through them, so maybe I will have a magician next year. I donot have candyfloss vending machines, since the candyfloss ends up in everyone’s hair and on their clothes.
I try to keep it as simple as I can. I wonder how long before the pressure to up the ante sets in. What are your experiences with birthday parties?
This post by Kiran of www.karmickids.blogspot.com
Kiran is an ex journalist, features writer, The Times of India (The SundayReview), The Asian Age and Features Editor at Cosmopolitan India. She now freelances as a features writer and runs an advertising agency in partnership with her husband. You can read more of her at Karmic Kids
I grew up in prehistorical times, when birthdays meant one wore a new dress, one of the three new dresses one got in a year, the other two for Id and Christmas (me being the offspring of an inter religious union), when friends and family came over, invited or uninvited (remember, this was the era before every home even had a telephone, and those who remembered it was your birthday came across in anticipation of a party), the mother cooked the entire day and hoped she wouldn’t run short of food, and generally roped in neighbours and sisters to help her. The father played gracious host, and puffed his cigarettes happily unmindful that he was polluting little lungs, and a cake was cut, wafers and soft drinks distributed for the aam junta, while the really close family friends and relatives stayed back for dinner. No one was invited to. It was understood that they would. These were riotous parties with family bonding, cracking of insider family jokes, and us cousins raising hell, thanks to parents too busy catching up on gossip to really be bothered about us.
And then I had my son. In my innocence, in the first year of his life, I didn’t think much about birthday parties for kids. Sure, I had friends who had had kids already, and I had heard weird rumours of parents planning birthday parties for months on end, and wondered how would it need a month of planning to throw a birthday party. A wedding perhaps, yes, but a birthday party?
Thus happened the brat’s first birthday party, where I called friends and family over home, and had in my innocence, cake to be cut, wafers, cold drinks, sandwiches and the likes of a party which had gone out of fashion three decades ago. Thankfully no one except immediate family turned up.
Things have changed since. The brat began playschool and I began getting invited to “Birthday parties”. I am a quick learner. The next birthday party happened also at home, but I made sure to invite kids, have games, return gifts and a menu. I had still not got into the big league. Getting into nursery into a proper school changed all that.
I still remember my shock and amazement at one of the earliest birthday parties I attended. At a five star venue. With lifesize cartoon characters walking around in keeping with the DisneyWorld theme, chatting up the kids. The older of which were taking their chances in roughing up the poor unfortunates doomed to be hot and stuffy in those costumes. There was a stage like a Disney castle. Girlie return gifts with Minnie Mouse for the girls, and Mickey doing the honours for the boys. And the gifts, a bath towel and robe and fluffy slippers set. It was a scene straight out of Disneyland, and I was left open mouthed. It was here, that I learnt about the concept of party organizers. These were wonderful people, who for a sum ranging from the nominal to the empty your pockets out, came in and organized everything for you. The basic ones came after you had decided on a venue, and sent in their decorating guys to blow up and string up the one gadzillion balloons that make up an integral part of any birthday decoration, along with the theme based cut outs, plus the huge banner declaring Happy Birthday to tyke concerned, personalized with the name which will cost you extra. And sent in a DJ, a games host, a tattoo artist, and a magician to keep the kids entertained for an hour or two while the escorting moms gossiped over the din.
The ones higher on the food chain came in when you decided you were flush with cash and could afford to spend a kings ransom on them. They do a venue recce and charge you for it. They give you theme options with previews of how everything will look like. They will organize a customized return gift. And a customized khoi bag, from which goodies will rain to the delight of scrambling kids below. And they will ensure the cake arrives on time. The customized cake. Not to mention getting in some minor celebrities if you so desire. Basically, you attend the party as a guest. Without pulling your hair out. Give them a month of lead time to organize your venue, your invites, your customized decorations, customized return gifts, and the celebrities. A mini wedding, perhaps? Yes, the budget for some of these dos could run into lakhs and that’s excluding the venue and the food.
Last week I attended a slew of parties which ranged the gamut from a terrace held birthday party (for children??? I was terrified through the entire do), a party held in a mall’s gaming area, which had the hosting mother almost tearing her hair out as kids ran anywhich way to their games of choice rather than going in line from one game to next as she had, in her naivete, imagined when she booked the place, a Pizza Place party, which was crowded, noisy and fun. And probably the least expensive of the lot. The terrace party was the most lavish, with jumping castles, and crawl in tents for the kids, popcorn, candyfloss and coke vending machines, tattoo artist, a magic show, a great spread of food, a DJ spinning tracks for the kids to dance to and a games host to keep them occupied. Hair braiding for the girls, handkerchief making, clay pottery tables, where children can paint on raw mugs which they then take home, a bead corner, where the mother and the child can select the beads and the look they want for a necklace or a bracelet made on the spot. Face painting. Mehndi artists. Theme parties, where hats to the theme or masques are handed out to every child as they enter. Parties where moms are treated to manicures and pedicures in a corner while their kids play. (I loved this one).
Puppet shows. The cartoon characters walking around amiably through the venue, interacting with the children. Name the cartoon character—from the Disney classics Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse to the more contemporary Power Rangers, and the new fangled Ben 10, they’re all available to spice up your party. At a cost of course. I find the children crowd them up and take sadistic pleasure in pummeling them, little rascals, so I’ve never hired them. Plus I find the cost unjustifiable. Hiring so many men and costumes to walk around for a kings ransom seems ludicrous to me.
I have heard of Ipods as return gifts, customized Tshirts, made on the spot with the child choosing the cartoon character he wants on it, and how he wants his name written on it, towels and bedlinen with the guest child’s name on it, and other extravaganzas that make my own humble peak cap and crayons pale in comparison. I insist on return gifts that are age appropriate and not such high value that they break the bank. Call me cheap. One of the nicest, and not too expensive return gifts the brat has received is a handpainted nameplate to his room (unfortunately since he doesn’t have a room to his name, it stays on his cupboard) and a placemat with a PowerRanger and his name on it. One of the worst return gifts was a tshirt that proclaimed "I attended ______'s birthday party." Thankfully, the maid's son had no qualms about wearing it.
I have wisened to the art of throwing a birthday party now. But, I am lazy. I dont do a home party anymore. The first two years have taught me a lesson. Its too much time and effort, and is always never appreciated. Having said that, one of the best birthday parties I have attended had a mother empty out her living room of all furniture, call in a games host and a tattoo artist, and order in burgers and french fries and Coke from the neighbourhood McDonalds. The kids loved it. I book a venue, with snacks rather than dinner. The party is always evening, five to seven thirty. Too early for dinner. And the children are generally too worked up running up a storm to have any dinner. I refuse to have the party in the house if more than five children are involved, I know I will throw my back out cleaning up before and after the party. I call a birthday party organizer. I tell him what my theme is for the decorations. Last year, I did a Noddy theme, in keeping with the current favourite character the brat swore allegiance to, and this year, Spongebob was my theme du jour. I order a birthday cake make in the likeness of said cartoon character. I scour the umpteen birthday shops for decorations and khoi bags made with said character as motif. I also select a return gift, which is within a fixed budget. Nothing anywhere percentage wise even near ipods and such like. The party organizer is told what colours the balloons need to be, and what cartoon character needs to go up on the walls of the venue, he can be relied on to arrive an hour before the party starts and get everything done and spanking spiffy, before the hordes trickle in. The cake is delivered at the venue, always, which, except for some minor glitches like this time round when the venue manager decided to keep the cake in the refrigerator and not inform us that it had arrived, leading to increasingly panic striken calls being made to cake place, which kept insisting that the cake had been delivered. I don’t have a DJ. They insist on playing music at ear threatening levels, and switching off all the lights, which scares me, given the brat’s penchant for disappearing into the darkness. And I am sure, all mothers feel the same. I have a tattoo artist. And a games host. No magic show yet. The brat didn’t appreciate it until this year, when I find he is now sitting through them, so maybe I will have a magician next year. I donot have candyfloss vending machines, since the candyfloss ends up in everyone’s hair and on their clothes.
I try to keep it as simple as I can. I wonder how long before the pressure to up the ante sets in. What are your experiences with birthday parties?
This post by Kiran of www.karmickids.blogspot.com
Monday, February 25, 2008
Two new Monthly Columns at DMC
Two of our very own members have very kindly agreed to do monthly columns for DMC.
Roopa Unnikrishnan, a very talented Mom of 4 year old twins, a Rhodes scholar currently residing in NYC, a world class rifle shooter and India's prestigious Arjuna award recipient among several other honors is going to do a column on "Modern parenting: nurturing and educating in the context of the news cycle".
In a single sentence she says "I'll most probably reflect on something in the news that makes me think of the role of mothers in the family and in their childrens life."
You can know more about Roopa at http://www.roopaonline.com/
Kiran Manral, the charismatic and glam Mom of a energetic 4 year old, lives in Mumbai and is very involved in her son's education and activities. Her column will involve the various aspects of edication, trends for kids in India. Her first column on Nursery admissions is already out at DMC
You can read more of Kiran at Karmic Kids
Please welcome these members and give your inputs to their columns.
Roopa Unnikrishnan, a very talented Mom of 4 year old twins, a Rhodes scholar currently residing in NYC, a world class rifle shooter and India's prestigious Arjuna award recipient among several other honors is going to do a column on "Modern parenting: nurturing and educating in the context of the news cycle".
In a single sentence she says "I'll most probably reflect on something in the news that makes me think of the role of mothers in the family and in their childrens life."
You can know more about Roopa at http://www.roopaonline.com/
Kiran Manral, the charismatic and glam Mom of a energetic 4 year old, lives in Mumbai and is very involved in her son's education and activities. Her column will involve the various aspects of edication, trends for kids in India. Her first column on Nursery admissions is already out at DMC
You can read more of Kiran at Karmic Kids
Please welcome these members and give your inputs to their columns.
Nursery admissions? Get ready for the battle
Kirans' Column
It’s a battlefield out there, and the foot soldiers are two and a half to three year olds, goaded by their parents’ anxiety for them to make the cut. After all, if they manage to make the grade into the ‘hallowed and preferred school’ they can then take it easy till they pass out of their tenth standard and then struggle for admission to their ‘hallowed and preferred college’. The rat race begins early here.
I got my first taste of it, when the brat was born. “Where will you get him admitted to playschool?,” asked a wellmeaning friend. “Ehhhh?” I went, typical of my total lackadaisical attitude to most competitive things in life. Yes, the brat inherits that from me, he’s not about to win any races, much to his father’s disgust. But then I digress. “You have to register in a good playschool right now,” she informed me. “Or their batches will be full up by the time he needs to start.” And when would that be? I wondered aloud. “When he is one and half years. In June. Regardless of his actual age.”
True to form, I didn’t bother. Until various issues (his speech lag, suspected autism spectrum disorder, which thankfully has been ruled out now, and his other developmental delays) had the clinical psychologist evaluating him tell me that I should put him in playschool for him to be able to interact with other children his age. Yes, he didn’t get a chance to interact with children, the building we lived in had no children, and all his cousins were in different cities. We went to the parks and the malls, where he clung to me for dear life and refused to be set on the ground.
Therefore, I trotted off to the best playschools in the vicinity. “Sorry maam. You’re too late. We registered for this batch last year. We had our interviews and everything last November.” I flipped onto the rubber floor in sheer shock. Interviews??? Nonetheless I kept trying at every reputed place, and school in the radius of one kilometer, until I settled on a playschool and nursery run by an elderly Parsi lady, which wasn’t one of the fancier ones, but a simple one with no place for the kids to run around. And benches and chairs where she expected two year olds to sit and sketch and repeat nursery rhymes. And identify fruits and vegetables. It was horrible. My mistake. My only criterion for selecting it being it was two buildings away from home.
Then, the realization that I needed to get the brat into someplace nice, where trained and professional teachers could handle him with the kiddy gloves and care he needed. And the search began again. The parents around me were enrolling their kids in classes that conducted mock interviews to help the child get through the interview process for nursery admissions in reputed schools. My son wasn’t even talking coherently. He had a chance in hell of making it through the interviews.
I applied to five schools. The procedure was standard.
The kids were taken into a room made to play with random toys placed before them, we parents were asked to stand separately, a teacher asked them some questions, they were expected to answer correctly and rapidly.
They were evaluated on how they played with toys, and how fast they put together three to four piece jigsaw puzzles.
We were called in, and interviewed. Our educational qualifications attested by our certificates. Our fluency in English judged. Our current professions scanned and we sitting through an interview with some random pre primary coordinator who must have never gone beyond graduation and teacher training. It was ridiculous.
Finally, one school granted the brat admission. Only because he had gone for the interview running a fever and his disinclination to be a performing monkey gave him the benefit of the doubt. He was two and a half. He didn’t even know the meaning of the word vehicle, how could he be expected to sort out the vehicles from a bunch of random picture cards. All he did was fling them around. Kids of friends were mugging up the alphabet. Learning the names of the President and Prime Minister of India. Learning about the solar system and the planets. Anything could be asked. One child I know was asked “What is Reliance?” The mother, a dear friend tells me, “I stood up and took my child and walked out.”
Learning the recitation of nursery rhymes. Getting a crash course in training for the ‘nursery interview’, in fact some classes even surreptiously claimed that they had an insider connection for guaranteed admissions. Classes. For training to get through nursery interviews. I was in total and complete shock and disbelief. But then, the school we got admission into had us pay a donation. And when I went to collect the receipts for admission, I saw a child from Mont 1, the class the brat would be in when he would join, being made to stand outside the class as a punishment. The tiny fellow was roaming around unsupervised and no one watching him.
I reached home and cried, and asked the husband to try again at the school I wanted. We had been summarily rejected here already. Needless to say, we had already spent a pretty packet on all the application forms, registrations, etc. I wondered how a salaried person would cope, just filling out forms was so expensive, forget the paying of the fees.
So we tried again. Digging out all the connections we could find. And admission was granted. Thanks be to the Lord. But my blood still boils.
Taking two year olds away from their parents and making them answer inane questions in English which is probably not even their mother tongue is laughable.
And why do all the schools assume that a docile child who sits and does the activities asked of them is an ideal candidate for admission? Are they looking for dispirited zombies.
And worse, and to my mind, the most blasphemous of them all, how dare they judge such little children? How dare they assume they have the right to divide the children and reject some and take in some others based on some arbitary concept of guidelines?
Yes, the law has banned interviews in Delhi, but they continue under the guise of interactions, which are nothing more than interviews under another name. Mumbai parents aren’t so lucky.
Here are some links which I am sure will get your hackles up too.
http://www.theindiancatholic.com/report.asp?nid=9670
http://www.livemint.com/2008/01/25235028/Nursery-admissions-It8217s.html
http://www.expressindia.com/news/fullstory.php?newsid=67429
http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?newsid=1141507
http://www.delhiscoop.com/comments/2008/1/27/5212/99913/0/post
Let me know your experiences. Your opinion. And what you feel about this.
(This post by Kiran of www.karmickids.blogspot.com)
It’s a battlefield out there, and the foot soldiers are two and a half to three year olds, goaded by their parents’ anxiety for them to make the cut. After all, if they manage to make the grade into the ‘hallowed and preferred school’ they can then take it easy till they pass out of their tenth standard and then struggle for admission to their ‘hallowed and preferred college’. The rat race begins early here.
I got my first taste of it, when the brat was born. “Where will you get him admitted to playschool?,” asked a wellmeaning friend. “Ehhhh?” I went, typical of my total lackadaisical attitude to most competitive things in life. Yes, the brat inherits that from me, he’s not about to win any races, much to his father’s disgust. But then I digress. “You have to register in a good playschool right now,” she informed me. “Or their batches will be full up by the time he needs to start.” And when would that be? I wondered aloud. “When he is one and half years. In June. Regardless of his actual age.”
True to form, I didn’t bother. Until various issues (his speech lag, suspected autism spectrum disorder, which thankfully has been ruled out now, and his other developmental delays) had the clinical psychologist evaluating him tell me that I should put him in playschool for him to be able to interact with other children his age. Yes, he didn’t get a chance to interact with children, the building we lived in had no children, and all his cousins were in different cities. We went to the parks and the malls, where he clung to me for dear life and refused to be set on the ground.
Therefore, I trotted off to the best playschools in the vicinity. “Sorry maam. You’re too late. We registered for this batch last year. We had our interviews and everything last November.” I flipped onto the rubber floor in sheer shock. Interviews??? Nonetheless I kept trying at every reputed place, and school in the radius of one kilometer, until I settled on a playschool and nursery run by an elderly Parsi lady, which wasn’t one of the fancier ones, but a simple one with no place for the kids to run around. And benches and chairs where she expected two year olds to sit and sketch and repeat nursery rhymes. And identify fruits and vegetables. It was horrible. My mistake. My only criterion for selecting it being it was two buildings away from home.
Then, the realization that I needed to get the brat into someplace nice, where trained and professional teachers could handle him with the kiddy gloves and care he needed. And the search began again. The parents around me were enrolling their kids in classes that conducted mock interviews to help the child get through the interview process for nursery admissions in reputed schools. My son wasn’t even talking coherently. He had a chance in hell of making it through the interviews.
I applied to five schools. The procedure was standard.
The kids were taken into a room made to play with random toys placed before them, we parents were asked to stand separately, a teacher asked them some questions, they were expected to answer correctly and rapidly.
They were evaluated on how they played with toys, and how fast they put together three to four piece jigsaw puzzles.
We were called in, and interviewed. Our educational qualifications attested by our certificates. Our fluency in English judged. Our current professions scanned and we sitting through an interview with some random pre primary coordinator who must have never gone beyond graduation and teacher training. It was ridiculous.
Finally, one school granted the brat admission. Only because he had gone for the interview running a fever and his disinclination to be a performing monkey gave him the benefit of the doubt. He was two and a half. He didn’t even know the meaning of the word vehicle, how could he be expected to sort out the vehicles from a bunch of random picture cards. All he did was fling them around. Kids of friends were mugging up the alphabet. Learning the names of the President and Prime Minister of India. Learning about the solar system and the planets. Anything could be asked. One child I know was asked “What is Reliance?” The mother, a dear friend tells me, “I stood up and took my child and walked out.”
Learning the recitation of nursery rhymes. Getting a crash course in training for the ‘nursery interview’, in fact some classes even surreptiously claimed that they had an insider connection for guaranteed admissions. Classes. For training to get through nursery interviews. I was in total and complete shock and disbelief. But then, the school we got admission into had us pay a donation. And when I went to collect the receipts for admission, I saw a child from Mont 1, the class the brat would be in when he would join, being made to stand outside the class as a punishment. The tiny fellow was roaming around unsupervised and no one watching him.
I reached home and cried, and asked the husband to try again at the school I wanted. We had been summarily rejected here already. Needless to say, we had already spent a pretty packet on all the application forms, registrations, etc. I wondered how a salaried person would cope, just filling out forms was so expensive, forget the paying of the fees.
So we tried again. Digging out all the connections we could find. And admission was granted. Thanks be to the Lord. But my blood still boils.
Taking two year olds away from their parents and making them answer inane questions in English which is probably not even their mother tongue is laughable.
And why do all the schools assume that a docile child who sits and does the activities asked of them is an ideal candidate for admission? Are they looking for dispirited zombies.
And worse, and to my mind, the most blasphemous of them all, how dare they judge such little children? How dare they assume they have the right to divide the children and reject some and take in some others based on some arbitary concept of guidelines?
Yes, the law has banned interviews in Delhi, but they continue under the guise of interactions, which are nothing more than interviews under another name. Mumbai parents aren’t so lucky.
Here are some links which I am sure will get your hackles up too.
http://www.theindiancatholic.com/report.asp?nid=9670
http://www.livemint.com/2008/01/25235028/Nursery-admissions-It8217s.html
http://www.expressindia.com/news/fullstory.php?newsid=67429
http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?newsid=1141507
http://www.delhiscoop.com/comments/2008/1/27/5212/99913/0/post
Let me know your experiences. Your opinion. And what you feel about this.
(This post by Kiran of www.karmickids.blogspot.com)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
