Dileep Ranjekar's views on child development

It was day I of the congress and amongst many highlights Dileep Ranjekar's talk was one:

I was able to reach the congress venue just in time: thanks to a punctual flight take off and landing by the Indigo (I checked out these folks are equipped with CAT III fog proof systems – I am going to fly on them from hereon, interesting what can turn on the customersJ). It took me an hour to reach the venue JD Tata Auditorium at Indian Institute of Sciences, Bangalore (the aura and the revere of IISc needs a separate entryJ). The conference was inaugurated by Dileep Ranjekar (CEO of Azim Premji Foundation – these were the folks who sponsored the survey jointly done with India Today concluding the dismal inability of even our best schools in educating our nation’s future).

Mr. Ranjekar started speaking wearing a very interesting hat that he had wore in the past – as a HR Manager of the corporate world – the consumer of the product that our education system has produced. The concluding product, as I understand, was an individual (he or she irrespective) who found it very difficult to communicate with others and a lousy team player. Further, Mr. Ranjekar moved on to talk about how the child has changed today? He raised several interesting points on the child of today is different from the past:

1. The child of today is much more fearless: He/she is not scared of his parents or the teachers. Probably something that scares the child of today is the stories that the grandmother may have in waiting. Listening to the story is good as far as the narration is concerned, however, the issue begins when the grannies tries to ask about the moral of the story – Well, the children are not interested in the moral these days, they want instant gratification as much as their parents want – The supermarket syndrome.
2. Socio Economic situation has changed: The social conditions of today have also changed quite dramatically. For instance, the urban children of today grow up in families that are primarily nuclear in nature with both the parents working. Compare it to the times when there were big joint families where 20-25 children were present in a family at one point of time. The children are increasingly spending more time with the electronic gadgets (Television, Computers, mobile phones etc). This has essentially lead to a rise of anti social behavior in children. Further, the economic situation of today has also changed dramatically – people have higher disposable incomes that are getting used for guilt purchases (where a child is compensated with expensive toys for lack of personal time spent with the child).
3. Disrespectful and arrogant: The child of today is increasingly becoming disrespectful to the adults, to the public places, to the society as a whole.

Further, Mr. Ranjekar concluded with couple of interesting points:

He recommended every parent to actively persuade his or her child to believe in God (and he said this despite the fact that he is an atheist). The reason behind this recommendation was the fact that he wanted the children of today to be humble to at least some one – to bow down with respect at least (sounds like an SOS to our society).

Finally, Mr. Ranjekar said that a child is not an empty vessel. There was a view that the child development process is on an assembly line. That myth has been broken. Here, the product is able to contribute to itself. We are realizing that more and more and therefore we need to change our strategy more and more.

After the inaugural speech, I got a chance to catch up with Mr. Rajpal of idiscoveri during the coffee time. He had some interesting suggestions for buildingBlocks^TM and a word of caution as well due to our retail model. We would definitely pay attention to these suggestions as the source is someone whom I have high regards for.

Now the session was moving to individual topics: the first one being child's physique then and now - and we had the star speaker to talk about it. It was a very interactive session and covered quite a few contemporary issues and in order to give it complete justice, I have decided to post a separate entry on this.