Responsible Education
Kamini Mustafi

In today's India, with excessive competitiveness and the constant striving to get ahead, space for true development in children is overlooked. Academic excellence is given far too much importance and the real person, the student, is lost in the process. But strangely enough this so-called academic excellence is neither training nor a skill for reasoning and analysis and presentation but a mere acquisition and retention of information. Effective communication is not being encouraged in the classrooms. Multiple choice questions test knowledge of facts. One-word answers or at the most a phrase, is what is required. What about being able to put thoughts down coherently so that they make sense? What about speaking one's thoughts? What about being able to defend an idea or promote one? What about willingness to enter into an argument about what one feels or thinks? Where does the Indian psyche, which believes that it is impertinent and unnecessarily hostile to be the one who says “No” to someone else, fit in to this? How are we to cope with this pressure of trying to balance ones ideas and ideals with what we perceive to be our social role?

The system as it exists today encourages a gathering of numerous facts, which for all their exhaustiveness have no relevant meaning in the students' lives.

This is the information age and thanks to the ubiquitous computer and the Internet, vast items of information are available easily. All it takes is a little while at a computer. But are we teaching our children how all the information knits together to make sense? Are we teaching them that everything has a cause and effect? Are we letting them see that their actions have an effect on others and how they are responsible for this? And how being responsible means it is important for them to weigh their actions in advance? And because they owe it to the world to attempt to ensure that they fit in as harmoniously as possible?

We have to teach and prove to them how good actions, feelings, thoughts and attitudes have a good effect on others, and also how negative actions, feelings thoughts and attitudes breed and encourage bad reactions. Are we too scared to teach morals and values to children in our homes and schools? Is this because we know that our morals and values cannot stand up to scrutiny? Are we passing the buck hoping that teachers, grand parents, neighbours and peers will address these issues? Are we hoping to buy God off by praying as hard as we can? Are we hiding behind the armour that we are not pure enough to cast stones because we ourselves have faults that we are not willing to correct and so are we hoping, ostrich like, that somehow we will all fit into a great plan of the universe and therefore Kismet and Karma will carry us through?

We are adults by accident. Just because we have grown older and reached the age when we can vote or drink or drive, we imagine we can do whatever we want. We associate adulthood with being free of restrictions. We imagine that this freedom carries with it a freedom from responsibilities. The words “I WANT” are all important. What others want, what we really need, the place we have in this world and what we have to do to maintain or improve our position has become unimportant and is in danger of getting lost.

And where are the children in the midst of all this? Burdened with a meaningless syllabus. Wasting twelve years in school after which they have no real skills. Scrabbling about post school trying to deal with the real world, learning life skills, trying their hardest to make sense of a reality which they haven't been prepared for. Some are surviving at a great cost to their individuality, becoming yes men, relinquishing dreams to make two ends meet. And some - not at all.

Who is responsible?

We are.

Parents who pressurise children to study subjects so that they can fulfill the parents' dreams and ambitions. Teachers who merely teach the syllabus, not taking into account the child's aptitude or interests or who do not think it is worth their while to earn the respect of their students. Schools that keep children in the classrooms till class VIII and then ask them to leave because the grades are not good enough for the school's image. Schools who choose not to offer career-counseling services because of the costs involved.

Why is it that children who cannot get into colleges with the subjects of their choice because of high cut off rates, get admission into colleges abroad and are placed on the Dean's list for academic achievement in their first few months of undergraduate study?

Is this due to outdated education policies, formulated by people who were in classrooms several decades ago, who have no idea of what children think, want and relate to today? Aided and abetted by parents who are bewildered by parenthood and parenting responsibilities, and schools staffed by apathetic teachers just waiting for the bell to ring so they can catch the bus and go home?

How do we deal with this? What will it mean in the years to come?

Who are the people responsible for education? And so who needs to change?

Parents, Teachers, Children, Society?

The Learning Centre: Bishop Cotton School, Shimla – An Essay In Integration

Bishop Cotton School was founded in 1859 and was set up and run along the lines of English Public schools of that day.

In 1997 the school started a centre for mentally handicapped children. Not just children with borderline learning difficulties but for those children who could not go to regular schools. Those who had tried and had been marginalized because they were not able to fit into the school systems. Children with an IQ of less than 80. Children who had been at home watching others get ready in the morning or sitting down to homework in the evening and feeling the difference.

The programme as it has evolved today is as follows.

Children are given admission into school if they can come to school. They have a homeroom, The Learning Centre, where special educators teach them. Their curriculum is the same as the others in school: they have to participate in all activities but at their own level. Academically they are unable to follow the examination schedule and so they are taught and trained to achieve functional literacy. Many of these children have developed poor social skills because they have not interacted with other children in everyday situations.

They have to be guided and taught how to fit into a group and how to interact with others harmoniously and in such a way as to not draw undue attention to themselves. The first days at school are difficult. After having been used to getting the full attention to home caregivers they have to now learn to take turns. To smooth the initial adjustment and to help these children settle into school their mothers are asked to attend for at least a month till the child feels comfortable enough to be without the mother.

Parents have to come to school at least once a fortnight for counseling so that the school and parents address the same problems at the same time. The children of The Learning Centre mix with the other children in school during Physical Education, games and storytelling lessons. They sit with them in the dining hall during lunch and have to follow the rules laid down for meal times.

Children from classes XI and XII spend time teaching and interacting with the Learning Centre Children and so are initiated into the world of those who have less than them. This interaction is timetabled with each older child having to complete a set number of teaching hours with the handicapped.

Workshops and interactions with parents over the years resulted in the parents starting an organisation for teaching the handicapped a vocation. The Learning Centre also runs a foundation course for training teachers. This is recognised by the Rehabilitation Council of India and is certified by Madhya Pradesh Open University. These interactions with parents and teachers have led to five other schools taking the handicapped into their classrooms.

This is something we are proud of as we can now send our children who have graduated from The Learning Centre to regular schools. Over the years this number has amounted to eighteen children. Two of them are now working as assistant teachers and functioning very well in their posts. A point of interest is that it is the small schools, which have opened their doors to include and integrate these children. The larger, better known schools, have not done so yet.

We have found over the years that with the Mentally Handicapped the early learning process is crucial. Those children who come to us when they are four years old have benefited most from our intervention. Children who have been in regular schools and who have not had a special programme to enable them to fit into the class find the class teacher method difficult to handle. Unable to get individual teaching, they lag behind the others. The shame that this brings about marginalizes them and then behavioural problems surface. These lead to more isolation in the schools and with their peers. Then these are carried over into the home and lead to faulty interactions with their parents and siblings. Parents react with super-sensitivity to their handicapped children and try to compensate for what is perceived as deficiencies, in both parents and children. This causes resentment among the siblings and leads to more problems. Modifying behaviour takes hard work on the part of all caregivers, as teachers, parents, siblings and attendants have to present a unified face with regard to handling unwanted behaviour. Once the behaviour patterns are more like that of others, the child can fit into a school near his home. And this is what we have done with our children who have been able to move onto to regular schools in course of time.

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