Recently, I went to visit my uncle in Bangalore. While I was there my aunt was helping my niece with her home-work for the day. She is in kindergarten right now and my aunt was teaching her a few spellings. To my surprise, what she was teaching was quite different from what I had learnt. Instead of saying 'C' 'A' 'T' cat, she said 'ka' 'ae' 'ta' cat . On questioning, she laughed at how out-dated my awareness of education was and later added to my knowledge that a lot of top schools employ this method of teaching now. Gone are the days of A B C D, now is the time of Aa Bah Ka Duh. She said that using this method, children don't have to memorize spellings, most spellings will be obvious to them. Isn't it strange that most words starting from C are pronounced as if starting with K e.g. cat, call, computer, etc. So, its better to teach children to pronounce it as Ka. Isn't this brilliant!!
Later on while watching the movie Tare Zameen Par, I was amazed to see that Aamir uses the same method to teach the kid. It just shows how popular this concept is, at least among the educationists. But, when we look around, how many schools do we find employing this method? I see none save a few very good schools. In Pune, I would guess 3-4 schools may be using it but, what about the rest? In my hometown Solapur, there are 2 convent schools, both highly reputed but none of them uses this method. When I met a friend who is a teacher in one of the convent schools in Solapur, I asked her about it. From the discussion we had, I gathered that the only reason is the lack of will of the staff at the schools to put in the time and effort required to learn and implement it. The teachers of kindergarten are already under a great pressure to ensure that all the kids study well and clear the exams. 100% result seems to be the only driving force for them. Trying out this method will bring uncertainty in the results for the first 1-2 years and require laborious efforts from the teachers to teach it to children as well as create awareness among the parents.
It is a well known fact in management that the people actually implementing plans and ideas always tend to resist any kind of change in the modus operandi. But, they fail to understand that in the long terms such changes simplify things for them also. Education is a serious affair and all methods for simplifying or improving it should be implemented at the earliest. When I see the lives of today's kids I pity them because, they are so pressed for time attending schools, tuitions and watching cartoons that they have little time to play, little time to travel, little time to get a hands on exposure to the outside world. But, in this age of competition, one cannot help it.
The betterment of our future generation is the responsibility of all of us, the society, the parents, the school authorities. We should strive for innovation in education for its advancement. How soon the school authorities take note of this is a matter to be watched but, the parents of the kids should definitely voice their opinion to the schools. It may be a very small contribution to the society or the future generations but we must keep in mind:
Little drops of water;
Little grains of sand;
Make the mighty ocean;
And the pleasant Land.
Ring a bell? Agree with me? Disagree with me? Leave a comment.....
Author:Vj
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