Skip to main content

Children - no more childlike?



The above is a real picture of the condition of school education in India.  A front page report in the Delhi edition of The Hindu (13 Nov 2013) carries the photo from a teacher training institute in Dharwad.  The institute (DIET) which trains primary school teachers has only one student, and 6 teachers.  The previous batch had just two students.

The Times of India carries another report on the same day: 'Need Parenting Help? Call a Coach.'  More and more parents are turning to experts for advice on how to deal with their children!

Why have children become such a problem that parents need expert advice
and teachers seem to be terrified of them - so terrified that teacher training institutes are running the danger of shutting down?


Labels:

Comments

  1. jahidNovember 13, 2013 at 5:14 PM

    Kalyug hai Sir, ghor Kalyug :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalNovember 13, 2013 at 5:56 PM

      Jahid, I would like to see Kalyug from a secular, scientific view and use the concept of entropy: nature tends from order to disorder. The more evil is allowed to creep in, the quicker will entropy be. We allowed too many undesirable things to children... Now they think getting elders shut up in jail is their right!

      Delete
  2. AnonymousNovember 13, 2013 at 5:48 PM

    This is really a Sad State of Affairs...Until and Unless Childrens knows the importance of Education,How can our Country Prosper...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalNovember 13, 2013 at 5:59 PM

      Children are like clay, Harsha. It is up to the adults in their life to mould that clay. But adults like teachers have been rendered helpless by various systems.

      Delete
  3. JeevanNovember 14, 2013 at 1:34 PM

    Oh my God! This is terrible. A noble profession on it's way out?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalNovember 14, 2013 at 6:36 PM

      Teaching is too old a profession to become extinct! But at what level will it survive? Who will be the people that carry it forward? These are questions worth asking.

      Delete
  4. drchinmoyhazarikaNovember 14, 2013 at 7:54 PM

    Traditional "moulding" does not work as it did before. The "moulding" need not be onto children alone, the "moulders" may need to be moulded too. Hence, it becomes such that the would-be teachers know what to mould the children into.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalNovember 14, 2013 at 10:39 PM

      "Moulding" is not perhaps the right imagery, Chinmoy. It's a very old concept that I borrowed for convenience's sake. Pruning would be a better imagery. The gardener should know when to prune, how to prune and which parts to be cut off.

      The idealism apart, would you ever be willing to be a teacher? :)

      Delete
    2. drchinmoyhazarikaNovember 18, 2013 at 10:57 PM

      I already am :)

      Delete
  5. UnknownNovember 15, 2013 at 5:48 PM

    This is quite depressing.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalNovember 15, 2013 at 6:05 PM

      The actual situation in classrooms and school campuses is even more depressing, Pankti. Unfortunately I can only write in analogies and riddles. My next post will be on the same theme but written against the background of Golding's novel, 'The Lord of the Flies'.

      Delete
    2. UnknownNovember 15, 2013 at 6:20 PM

      I look forward to it.

      Delete
  6. Jeena R. PapaadiNovember 15, 2013 at 10:31 PM

    I thought youngsters were not interested in the teaching profession because of the unattractive remuneration compared to the other (popular) professions.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalNovember 16, 2013 at 6:53 AM

      It's a complex situation, Jeena, as complex as most social problems are. The remuneration is just one dimension.

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Ghost of a Banyan Tree

  Image from here Fiction Jaichander Varma could not sleep. It was past midnight and the world outside Jaichander Varma’s room was fairly quiet because he lived sufficiently far away from the city. Though that entailed a tedious journey to his work and back, Mr Varma was happy with his residence because it afforded him the luxury of peaceful and pure air. The city is good, no doubt. Especially after Mr Modi became the Prime Minister, the city was the best place with so much vikas. ‘Where’s vikas?’ Someone asked Mr Varma once. Mr Varma was offended. ‘You’re a bloody antinational mussalman who should be living in Pakistan ya kabristan,’ Mr Varma told him bluntly. Mr Varma was a proud Indian which means he was a Hindu Brahmin. He believed that all others – that is, non-Brahmins – should go to their respective countries of belonging. All Muslims should go to Pakistan and Christians to Rome (or is it Italy? Whatever. Get out of Bharat Mata, that’s all.) The lower caste Hindus co...
121 comments
Read more

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
44 comments
Read more

Romance in Utopia

Book Review Title: My Haven Author: Ruchi Chandra Verma Pages: 161 T his little novel is a surfeit of sugar and honey. All the characters that matter are young employees of an IT firm in Bengaluru. One of them, Pihu, 23 years and all too sweet and soft, falls in love with her senior colleague, Aditya. The love is sweetly reciprocated too. The colleagues are all happy, furthermore. No jealousy, no rivalry, nothing that disturbs the utopian equilibrium that the author has created in the novel. What would love be like in a utopia? First of all, there would be no fear or insecurity. No fear of betrayal, jealousy, heartbreak… Emotional security is an essential part of any utopia. There would be complete trust between partners, without the need for games or power struggles. Every relationship would be built on deep understanding, where partners complement each other perfectly. Miscommunication and misunderstanding would be rare or non-existent, as people would have heightened emo...
9 comments
Read more

Tanishq and the Patriots

Patriots are a queer lot. You don’t know what all things can make them pick up the gun. Only one thing is certain apparently: the gun for anything. When the neighbouring country behaves like a hoard of bandicoots digging into our national borders, we will naturally take up the gun. But nowadays we choose to redraw certain lines on the map and then proclaim that not an inch of land has been lost. On the other hand, when a jewellery company brings out an ad promoting harmony between the majority and the minority populations, our patriots take up the gun. And shoot down the ad. Those who promote communal harmony are traitors in India today. The sacred duty of the genuine Indian patriot is to hate certain communities, rape their women, plunder their land, deny them education and other fundamental rights and basic requirements. Tanishq withdrew the ad that sought to promote communal harmony. The patriot’s gun won. Aapka Bharat Mahan. In the novel Black Hole which I’m writing there is...
61 comments
Read more

A Lesson from Little Prince

I joined the #WriteAPageADay challenge of Blogchatter , as I mentioned earlier in another post. I haven’t succeeded in writing a page every day, though. But as long as you manage to write a minimum of 10,000 words in the month of Feb, Blogchatter is contented. I woke up this morning feeling rather vacant in the head, which happens sometimes. Whenever that happens to me but I do want to get on with what I should, I fall back on a book that has inspired me. One such book is Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s The Little Prince . I have wished time and again to meet Little Prince in person as the narrator of his story did. We might have interesting conversations like the ones that exist in the novel. If a sheep eats shrubs, will he also eat flowers? That is one of the questions raised by Little Prince [LP]. “A sheep eats whatever he meets,” the narrator answers. “Even flowers that have thorns?” LP is interested in the rose he has on his tiny planet. When he is told that the sheep will eat f...
8 comments
Read more