Parenting- Part 2

First of all , my thanks to Jasmine for her comments. In my previous post I mentioned the essential qualities a child demands from his/her parents are love, regard and discipline. I've already written about the significance of 'unconditional love'.

Lets move on to the aspect of regard. I think that we should be careful not to over patronize the kid.After all he/she is not a moron or a robot who cannot think on its own. Remember, kids have a very independent thinking and we need to respect that. They need our guidance and not our 'fully cooked' thoughts.Moreover, if we respect the child as an individual, that will , in turn teach him to respect everyone irrespective of his status, education and intelligence.
Coming to discipline, do not leave it to the schools.It is true that the child will get a dose of disciplined life in schools. But it should be started at home itself, where it can be imparted with tenderness.Discipline is like love , without which the child will crumble in testing times.

I have already stated that discipline should be endowed with a touch of independence.Give your child a chance to learn from his own mistakes, rather than correcting him all the time.Also try not to overburden your child with activities and strict routine. Give him time and space for day-dreaming and doing nothing

Eklavya Innovations

I promised earlier to talk in detail about some of the innovations that Eklavya is involved with. I have tried to compile the list and apologize in advance if I missed something:

Eklavya School Innovations:

1. No TV day:

The school observes a No TV day on Thursday and to ensure that it is effective, the children are asked to bring art and handicraft items that are displayed in the assembly. This is a very novel idea and is an initiative from the school to ensure that the children who are the most susceptible to fall prey to the highly intoxicating digital media are kept away from it at least for one day. Further, the usage of incentives for children ensures that they do it for the joy rather than being arm twisted into this. And, this was reflected in the quality of the projects that they were able to come up with.

2. No Tuitions:

The school follows a policy that there would be no tuitions by the children or by the teachers. This again takes care of the extreme stress that some of the students are put to these days by their overly ambitious parents.

3. Low Profile Chief Guests:

This school has a distinct way of celebrating any special day in the school. Instead of calling up some VIP (politician or bureaucrat) to the school, the senior citizens of India are called to the school as chief guests. This serves as two purposes:

1. Ensures that children see real life role models.

2. The senior citizens, who are increasingly seen as the burden on the society, get their due position as the wise of the society.

4. Human Resource Development Program:

This was the first time that I came across the concepts of organizational learning or teacher development within a school environment. I have to be honest that the program was far more effective than all the professional organizations that I have worked at (RealNetworks, Wipro, drugstore and Expedia). Teacher learning had a strong emphasis; there were HRD programs for the bus driver and conductors as well. The programs were implemented both in word and spirit.

5. Research Wing and Taleem:

Eklavya has a professionally managed research wing within the school itself that does research on teaching methodologies, curriculum preparation and teaching aide development. Taleem is an initiative in that direction – the teaching aides, which are developed in Taleem, successfully reflect our cultural ethos, are engaging and above all are successful in teaching children through the medium of aides.

6. Lavya – the counseling Wing:

A group of teachers have formulated a counseling wing amongst themselves. The broad objective of Lavya is to provide counseling support to all the parents. This way the parents and teachers form an inclusive program to take care of the psychological needs of the children of today.

7. Open Libraries:

Eklavya has a concept of open libraries, where the books are not kept inside the closet rather children are enticed to books and encouraged to interact with them.

Obviously, there are many more innovations that Eklavya has succeeded in implementing; however, my three day exposure was able to give me these insights only. One learning for many of Delhi based schools could be that not many of these things are extremely expensive to imitate. So, I would just urge the schools of today to step out of the darkness of ignorance and come forward to be the light of beacon to homogenize our society before its too late.

And on a personal end, the trip was very successful as I have found a living role model in Professor Sunil Handa, who is the founder of the Eklavya foundation.

Parenting - Part 1

Parenting is the backbone of the education system.The education of life starts from home itself. The parents are the kid's first and foremost teachers. I think raising children is the most formidable task in today's time of moral and cultural ambivalence.I guess most of the parents would agree with me on this.
To start with, LOVE, REGARD and DISCIPLINE ( with a touch of independence) are the essential ingredients of parenting.So what do parents have to say on this?
LOVE is the most important aspect of parenting. All parents love their kids. But what the young , impressionable one needs is the 'unbiased love' ; love regardless of his/her abilities & incapabilities. Love your kid just because he/she is yours. This kind of wholesome love will instill self confidence in the kid which will stay with him/her throughout life.
I will write about 'regard' and 'discipline' later. Meanwhile , ponder upon this and give in your critical comments if any.

Eklavya Day I

Every part of my Eklavya experience was extremely professional and innovative -- right from pick up at the Core House to the Roshin Apartments to the bus timings. It seemed as if I was picked up from a civilian world to the military world, where discipline and punctuality have an important role to play. Anyways, I checked into the Roshin apartments at around 8.30 pm and the next thing was to get something to eat. I was fortunate to find a dhaba very close to my apartment and got a chance to eat some really spicy food (the amount of spice in bhaaji was a clear indicator of why Gujaratis put so much sugar in all the dishes they eat ;)).

After getting some grub I got a chance to visit the Tata Sky Mall – my god! These malls were exactly similar to the Safeway stores of the US. Probably, the only difference was that they had jalebi instead of donuts or croissant. Well, the government may have been thinking of stopping FDI in retail, however, I am not sure if they plan to do anything with the domestic conglomerates. BTW, I am also not sure if there needs to be a blanket opposition to the FDI in retail – well, it’s a Pandora box with lots of economic analysis involved so I shall keep that for a different post.

Happy Republic Day

It's after almost four years that I got a chance to celebrate the Republic Day in India (i.e after I r2i'ed). It was a great feeling and especially in a very innovative educational institution like Eklavya, the satisfaction quadrupled.

The chief guests for a change were the grand parents of the school students and not your usual run of the mill politicians or powerful people. Well in some sense it was good as the skit prepared by the senior school students would not have gone well with the politicians.

Anyways, as I have already shared with the school authorities about my experience of Eklavya. I thought I must talk about it very briefly on the blog -- it was phenomenal. All the things that a school needs to provide: experiential learning, physical activities, spiritual learning, civic responsibility is happening here. If someone wants to provide holistic education, you just need to buy a ticket to Ahmedabad and you will say what is the practical definition of that. And, mind you the school has processes in place that ensure that the children are not stressed out at all.

Well, if I continue to talk about Eklavya, I would require 2-3 more posts and I will do that once I get back to Delhi. In the meantime, I wish everyone a very Happy Republic Day.

Teachers as Role Models

I totally agree with the views of Mr.Ashok Kumar, that we should emphasize on the 'holistic way of education' rather than holistic education. It is true that children imbibe more from what they perceive rather than what they are taught. The teachers should be role models for children rather than just messengers of education..The education should be more than just books and assignments and grades. It should be a way of life. I want more people to rope in to give their views.

Better Education For A Better Tomorrow

I get very disappointed whenever I read any newspaper; it is always painted with crime stories. And the most frightening part is the exponential rise in crime, not only by the uneducated strata but also by the so called ‘well educated people’ of society. Why is it so? Is it only the economic disparity which is to be blamed or lack of spiritual and ethical foundation are also responsible for the same.

Have you ever noticed the “Leaning Tower of Pisa” and wondered why it is not straight. Simple; because its foundation was weak and as the time passed it could not stand its own weight. No one wants his/her child to be like the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

We need to give a strong foundation in terms of ‘holistic education’ to the child in his/her early years, so that he can become a complete human being who can face the adversities of life with integrity and come out a winner in the real sense.

off to Ahmedabad

My posts would be again irregular, as I am flying off to Ahmedabad to find more about Eklavya foundation. I have heard a lot from fellow education entrepreneurs like Aakar and Fountainhead on how much they have learned from Eklavya. I am very thankful to Eklavya authorities for giving me this chance to visit their campus and witness the innovation.

Independent workshops

While brainstorming with the team, I started thinking of another way that we can help the parents. I was wondering if we can organize independent workshops (that involve parents or children or both) with specific themes (for example how to work with abusive children or how to handle violence in children).

Personally, I think this idea would be both in demand (given what the state our society is in) and of great value to the society. Let me know what do you think about this.

Spiritual Education

So, I just ended up a discussion over phone with an expert thoughtful educationist. We were talking about buildingBlocks and what it aims to achieve. Upfront, we shared the thoughts on the conspicuous absence of spirituality from education. I am convinced that spirituality needs to play a role in our education system.

I would love to hear what you think about the role of spirituality in education. It's very important for our curriculum team to use your feedback -- so kindly contribute.

tech team fulfills its promise

yes! our tech team rocks and they deliver on what they say. Our new and improved homepage is up, however, the other links would start working slowly. Let us know what you think!

buildingBlocks website design

Finally it seems that we are getting somewhere close to the release design for buildingBlocks website. Yogita just sent me v1 of the HP design. Please feel free to let us know how you feel about our site design.

BTW, our tech team says that we will ship the v1 of the website by eod tomorrow -- so please check tomorrow.

r2i

the title stands for return to India (r2i) -- I was earlier adamant with Yogita that I would not talk about my background and stay in US on this blog. However, everytime I am involved in a decent conversation with anyone about my stay in US and leaving my cozy job voluntarily -- I have to go through this long discussion of whether the decision was 'right'. To me the decision was crystal clear about what I am getting into and more importantly the reasons behind it. However, what sickens me is the simple fact that why can't a person come back to his/her country and be a contributing citizen in the society that helped him/her shape in what he/she is -- is it so illogical afterall?


The other reason that I have given this heading the importance (see the hdr above) is because I do want to share my experiences with others so that everyone understands that India offers a lot of opportunities -- and not only problems. Even if there are problems, who else is more capable to solve then the educated youth of the society.

If you differ in your opinion on this basic premise, please share your opinions.

(BTW, the above picture was taken by Yogita and I on our last day in Seattle).

Ashish Rajpal's views on child development

Ashish of iDiscoveri was no doubt the star speaker of the day – he had just the right phrases, experiences and knowledge that made him an awesome orator to listen to. In addition to all these things, he clearly had the passion to bring change in the ailing education system.

The topic allocated to him was child’s physique then and now. Ashish introduced himself in the same way as I do: A gatecrasher into education; someone who chose this field because of their interest in it. He identified three underlying concerns that made him compile few observations on what’s happening today and finally five recommendations.

Concerns that underlie:

1. Live in a highly divided society: which child are we talking about? It’s no denying fact that India is facing a huge divide primarily rural and urban. The difference is striking that it disturbs everyone. There is so much celebration about resurgence of India, BPO jobs, H1 B visas. However, the same country is facing the dangers (of epidemic proportions) of AIDS and malnutrition.

2. Age of biology: Last century was of physics, this century belongs to biology. No longer can the education hide behind the hypothesis. All the techniques or methodologies that we bring in our classrooms need to be quantified by the biological responses as well.

3. Role of examples: Children don’t listen to you, they watch you closely. What we see in children is nothing but a mirror.
   

Observations about child Physique:

1. Malnutrition: One of the biggest problems with the children of today is that they do not get any representation in the society. For example, where in the minds of the society, politicians, budget are children. 1/6^th of mankind is children; however, they do not get 1/6^th representation in the newspapers, parliament discussion.
   

2. Obesity: Children are fatter, unhealthier, and less able to do things without being pushed for. Close to 1 out of 3 children are obese – probably 2/3 of these obese children are going to be obese adults. The reasons are not difficult to identify. The problem is because of food that they are eating – parents are shoving packets of chips and coca-cola in the hands of their kids. Packaged carbohydrates have one of the most dramatic influences on the make up of the body. The substitution of packaged carbohydrate has come at the cost of carrots, fruits etc. A child who is likely to have one glass of milk is likely to have 2 glasses of coke or soda waters.

3. Problem of labeling: Another issue cropping in today’s society is the problem of labeling kids. Clearly, it’s an easy solution to say that one child is depressed child and here’s the medication (a bunch of sedatives) to fix that. However, this attitude is prone to a failure as we are not eliminating the root of the problem.

4. Lack of open spaces: The rapid urbanization has had the most dreadful impact on the environment and open spaces for the child. Ashish talked about an example of going to get milk in the morning and related physical activity with that. However, in today’s day and age this is really unthinkable. So, this urbanization is definitely coming at a huge price. He further raised a very important point that the problem in the urban infrastructure is going to get worst before it gets any better. He was rightly able to identify that the mainstream schools need to play a very important role in this aspect. This idea had resonance with the new ideas that we are brainstorming at buildingBlocks (where we plan to have the mainstream schools as a key partner).

5. Cut off relationship with nature: Urban children are cut off from nature – almost two generations now. They are suffering from a disease called nature deficit disorder. Ashish also shared few experiences from the Youreka! Program.

6. Role Model: Children of today have mostly the Salman Khan’s or Hrithik Roshan’s or Aishwarya Rai as the role models. This is a side effect from consuming immense dose of television everyday. The problem with this is that these extreme machos and extreme feminism images can lead to a feeling of inadequacy amongst today’s kids, which will result in growth of an insecure individual.
7. Time: Children need time to grow. It takes time to cook a good dish – and parents these days don’t want to be the chef – the main problem.

Finally, Ashish also gave five suggestions to the audience:

1. There is a crying need for schools to teach food habits to children.

2. Get doctors into schools (the practice of science).

3. Making time to play for the children in the school itself: 10 hours a week.

4. Spend a month in the wilderness: A childhood devoid of adventure is a sad childhood.

5. Teacher Training.

I will post details about other sessions as and when I get a chance in the coming week.

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.

where was I? and Indian Montessori Congress

Firstly, I would like to apologize to theSchoolBlog readers for not being able to write about our activities for a week or so. Actually, I was gone on a very important mission and the mission was to find out what’s wrong with the Indian education system at the primary and elementary level. Why do we produce only engineers, doctors and CA’s from our schools and not leaders; why do we produce people who can remember the whole history text book by heart, however, they feel inadequate when it comes to solving a tricky analytical problem; why do the youngsters of today are so impatient and rowdies; why are the school going children of today getting fat and are depressed – Well, the list of grim realities is long, however, as an eternal optimist let me say that as a questioner I was not only satisfied with the answers but I also found some good answers on how to completely eliminate these problems.



So, the thing that kept me busy, for last four-five days, was the Indian Montessori Congress 2007. And everyday I would post about the learning and knowledge that I gained from the congress.

values that guides us

BTW, this video does a good job at describing what are our values*




*Yes! to think differently in the field of education

why not blogging?

I apologize to the visitors of this blog about the reduced frequency of my blogging these days. If I am not blogging then you can assume that I am working to make buildingBlocks a reality. So, if someone asks me my resolution of 2007 -- that's it to make buildingBlocks a reality. You may think that what kind of resolution is this and also advise if this is the right approach to the company or personal life? I am always open to hear about your opinions and also feel free to share your resolutions?