EDUCATION AND CHILD

Once a child of about twelve years old, bent under the over burdened clumsy bag hugely congested by books, sat beside me, while travelling in school bus to Akbarpur. He looked tired and fatigue. He sweated and looked exasperated. With deep and heavy breath, he stretched and straightened himself. His comforting acts discomforted me, but I did not complain. I sat silent with occasional stare to him.

“Be comfortable boy, sit easily and straight way”, I humbly said to him.

He looked into my eyes. His eyes seemed rolling into dubiety.

“What happened, boy, you look a bit puzzled and restless” I politely asked.

He retorted at once as if he was waiting to express his agony.

“Are the elders ever envious of children?” He enquired inquisitively.

“No, not at all, boy”

Struck and affected by his undaunted ways, I quietly answered.

He again prompted to vent, aggressively said, “Why then, they are ever behind us children?”

“No boy, what happened to you?  What elders did to you?” I said.

He simply asked me, "Uncle, why do the elders ever scold us to study and study only?”

What I answered was just simple, "Dear, It’s for your good, so that you may turn into a successful man later on”.

The child again asked, "Does success mean only poking into bulky books and being bitterly beaten by elders?"

I got a bit struck, shivered. How does a child like him seem to be so inquisitive? But I had to do something to satisfy his eagerness. What should I say? How should I answer? Is the child going to be unanswered?

I simply said, "Success which the elders expect for is not the stuff from books and rotes but by which you may really become a man”.

"Am I not a man then, an animal?” he again asked.

Further he asked a bit furiously asked, “Does animal do so much home works? Does an animal read so many bogus books? Does an animal carry such a heavy bags on their backs? Does an animal work hard to pass and fail? Does an animal get punishment on not securing highest in the exams?”

He took up his bag, opened books and showed. He looked withered and wounded.

I wanted to pacify him.

“Boy, we have all to study such books, there is no other alternative”, I patted his back to solace his spirit.

Putting back all his books inside the bag, sadly he said, “Uff…, I will either throw away all of them into the nearby well or burn it into ashes”.

The child’s constant and confident queries again pinched my mind. This made my out of words. I became speechless for a while. I hadn't satisfactory answer for the child. Somehow I diverted his attention toward nearby chocolate shop and returned home. The curiosity of child hovered ever around me. Shame on me, I couldn't satisfy even a child's queries. I felt fool and fragile.

This is not the one and only case which occurred with me. Every day the childhood worth is crushed under threat of chiding and beating by elders all around. The elders don't have much time to think what these children really need. They are forsaken in the care of nurses, maids and others than the tightly busy parents. The elders only think that to grow up them and sending them to school is their only job. They forget that a child wants more than what they usually give so called 'lavish' life.

To admit in costly boarding schools has become a fashion today. We think that we have done wonderful thing after handing over the child in the brutal boarding schools. Where they are so professional and mint money by all means and measures. They make machine out of man by rigid and strict disciplinary rules. Such boarding schools are the factories where products are refined and charged handsomely. And they don’t provide any guarantee or warranty for spurious products. On failure of the child, they rather raise questions in the genetic complexities in the child. They issue a judgment order about the worthlessness of the child. That makes the child disheartened and parents hopeless and broken.

We need to understand the psyche of the child and fulfill all of their requisites physical, mental and social needs. They need love and affection in early to later days than to be sent school in such a tender age. The age when a child requires affectionate and fondling companionship of the parents, he is beautifully equipped with school uniform and lowering bags. The parents aspire so frantic and fabulous things from the child. They can make these children an engineer over night, if it is in their reach and capacity. They see the child of the neighbor, going to school. They find other’s child reciting English poems in such an early age. They throw the innocent and young child into the race of dire competition. The child does not even know what actually a competition is.

All the lanes and streets are full of attractive posters, banners, hoardings and advertisements about nursery schools. There features the high slogans to make the child superman from ordinary being. There features the giggling and playing children in front of the bewitching school building and play grounds. They even attract the parents by huge concession of fees and superb facilities. But such are the another voracious and greedy ways to money minting machines and nothing else.

From an early age of only two years, we start planning and sending the child in LKG, UKG, PLAY GROUP and Nursery schools. We need to rethink what we are going to do. If the child crams few poem’s lines and recite in front him and guests, will that be all and enough for the child. The researches advise the parents to send their wards to school only at the age of five. The psychologists also endorse it. Childhood if once lost can never be regained. So the child must get opportunity to its beautiful childhood. The study and success are life long process. Through our long or short span of life, we have to struggle and strive for survival. At least, the childhood age should be spared from such loathsome things. The child must remain a child until he actually becomes an adult. We dream to make an adult extracting the essence of childhood.

The health of the children too must be in the very pivot, while encumbering his back with boring burdens. In pursuit of easy, quick and big dreams, we throw the health of the children into hazardous situations. From dawn to night, fiercely entangled, wrapped and engrossed into the flipping of the pages of books and burden, their health is most often overlooked and ignored. The soft smile and blithering giggles start fading from their sweet and innocent faces.

Health is the sound state of human mind and body. Moreover his behavior, social terms and ethical values also decide the health of a person. Health is considered above wealth. If wealth we lose, that can be regained by working hard if we have lost our health we will even not be able to work. We become physically and mentally feeble. This restrains us to do anything. And everyone knows that without doing anything we can’t earn wealth.

To keep children healthy and fit in the present world it’s very important that we must give them a disciplined, stress free, loving and healthy life style. We must intensely take care of what we offer them to eat. Even we must take care of how we train and teach them to eat. We must closely focus on their diets having all nutritious ingredients in proportion like fat, carbohydrates, protein, minerals and vitamins for the sake of growth- physical as well as mental. We must rigidly restrain them to take unhealthy, infected and stinking foods. We must avoid any way, the excess use of oil and spices for them. Seasonal fruits and vegetable can also to be given to them .

For the better of the children, we should promote, facilitate and motivate outdoor and indoor games for them. These activities help huge in many ways to build social values, interpersonal relationship and also helps to cope with the challenges whirling around them. That also strengthens them physically, mentally, psychologically and socially.

In the fast moving and busiest age, nobody is free to give time in sports, games yoga and exercises. Due to, the children miss most valuable phase their life to live lightly and pleasantly. The parents have many responsibilities from morning to evening. They even most often are in hurry and hurricanes, and provide the school going tiny tots, mere bread, butter and sauce. This dangerous habit leads these young children to depend on many junk and fast foods which are being sold outside in unhealthy surrounding and stinking places which are highly infective by pests and pleas. To keep our children healthy and fit, the parents have to give sufficient time in such lovable activities and proper healthy life style.

The 21^st century has brought another big revolution in the field of computer and information technology. The life of the children is sure to get affected by them. It’s in the very nature of human being as the man had been very inquisitive about the surrounding. The abundant natural stuffs allure his spirit and compel to cogitate of it. This led to uncountable and extraordinary discoveries and inventions. These have indeed transformed the human life into easy going and comfortable. These are the secrets how the nomadic and savage life was converted into sophisticated civilized one. Despite all these, they too have increased the level devastations and havocs. The world has witnessed the consequent catastrophes throughout ages like world wars that claimed immeasurable lives and properties.

Out of these human strides, the television was quite revolutionary inventions. It shook the very root of human social livings. Now the world has become transparent wherein even the minutes or least important issues are relayed in no time. Moreover it has reshuffled the social pattern and life style. The man residing far on the altitude of the Everest sheds tears for the flood and famine affected people of Kanyakumari.

The television also facilitates an individual to formulate the information about art, music, politics, economy, sports etc.

It’s rightly said that a child learns more from visual output. From the breakfast time to supper at night, there is the only thing being discussed.  

It has also brought few drawbacks along with it. It has affected almost every section of society of all age groups. The young children had been more sufferer than any of them. The television creates certain complications like-

·        Eye sight problems

·        Backbone problem

·        Wastage of time on useless stuffs.

·        Less time remains to study

It has greatly endangered and degenerated the health standard of young children. According to the several surveys done in this regard by multiple agencies and organization, the television maniac among children has not only victimized the young kids but their parents as well. The parents roam about the hospitals to get the better treatment for their children in place of going to their offices.

So the famous saying seems worth mentioning here that ‘Excess of everything is bad’. A child requires sticking to TV only for a short span of time on well devised schedules. The parents should be very vigilant toward them while sitting in front it. Thus television can be the storehouse of information if properly managed otherwise it can devastate the children.

Away from television, the advancement in the field of media and networking, primarily and prominently has gruesomely affected the life of children. Although in modern time media and networking has become an integral part of human life. As breath is important for life so is media and networking for the advanced human race. If they have thousands good aspects, there are thousands bad aspects too. In lack of good judging skill and capacity, they rather fall fiercely in trap of rubbish things. Overuse and lunatic craze of social media like Facebook, Whatsapp, Twitter, Instagram, Skype, Wechat, Linkedin and Youtube have done more wrong and less good. Moreover, the hundreds of foul and filthy websites, offering free porn, dates and insane objects have spoiled the heart mind of the children. That rather distracted, defiled and dampened these children. The untrained and novice to such web magic, the children prance across sites to sites, ending only the exhausted mind, limp body and sloth heart.

The android smart phones have become the individual as well as social need today. It may be a basic need of communication, information and entertainment for the elderly citizens, but it is a wonderful, passionate, dreamy object for the children. The glowing glass tempered, large size, costly, featured and stylish mobile phones are craze, craving and lust of the children. They are so slave of such gadgets and devices, that they spend more time in googling, serfing, chating, watching and doing in them than in books, study, coaching and home works. They prove less good and more bad as they cripple and paralyze the independent thinking, natural behavior and innate growth of the children. Their natural instincts, geniuses and capacities get blocked and stunted. More pitiable and abject situation is when such devil devices fall in their hands in an early tender age. They screen flash, radiation and stare suppress the beauty of their childhood. The age when the loving hands, cozy laps, fondling soft touch and kindred voices should have been there, they are left lifelessly in lifeless such demoniac and deadly devices.

The child should remain a child when it is a child. All hurries and haste to grow into adult is suicidal. The child is a child only and the elders are solely responsible to decide the path, process and progress of the children. The elders are crushed under the materialistic needs, debts and dreams. They could not acquire them, so they start expecting big from these children. They become restless, impatient and garrulous to attain them as soon as possible. In such beguile, belligerent and beastly race, the children become victim. The result is that their priceless phase of childhood is lost to the least.  

The uniqueness of the child must also be dully respected. To compare the worth of a child with other is the most lowly and dangerous blunder of the elderly fellows. By doing this, we elderly people rather lead the children nowhere but towards deadly directions. Childhood once lost, can never be regained. Let the child enjoy its childhood to the full with all fragrances. Childhood is priceless. Even the richest one of the world can’t purchase it. The world’s whole property and prices can’t help on old man to regain his childhood. There are countable few years in childhood to remain free from the worldly bounds, cares and coarsenesses, other side there are copious years to succeed, earn and lavish.

Let the child be merely a child, enjoying all blessings, boons, beauties and bounties of nature, people and world. Let the world wait till he becomes young and adult. Let the world wait till he becomes a mature man. Let him grow on his own way and speed. Let him not face any undue pressure, problem and hurries. Let the world respect the worth of his childhood.