The Education Challenge...

Recently I have taken up the responsibility of imparting education to our Dhobi’s two kids. So far it has been interesting experience. Initially I thought it was going to be a cakewalk. How difficult can it be to teach kids of fourth and fifth standard? After all the kids do attend the local Government school and also claim to go for another tuition. So I thought my role would be to just oversee their progress and to regularly interact with them to ensure that they understood everything.

But it is turning out to be a challenge (a big one at that). To begin with the kids (Neetu, 8 yrs and Rahul, 9 yrs) have no idea of how to study. It totally baffles me how kids of this age group, who are regularly attending school fail to read simple words and sentences. In fact one of them has no clue about matras in Hindi and they attend Hindi medium school. So basically I am having to start from scratch. I feel education system is at fault here. The policy of promoting kids till eighth standard irrespective of their performance is heralding a generation which might be educated but cannot read or write to save their lives. School has basically become a place to pass their time. This education (or rather the lack of it) can only be termed as a big sham and nothing else.

The basic predicament of this particular section of society is that though they realize the importance of education and parents send their kids to school there is nobody at home to ensure that they are actually studying or learning. So logically we need teachers in Government schools to not only teach but to also continuously motivate children to study. Thus it can be argued that we need exceptional teachers and life coaches in Government schools if we are to promote education. Just sending them to schools is just not enough. How 

However, I am amazed by their ability in Mathematics. Both of them are super cool in Maths. They can do sums in their sleep. I am also learning a lot in the process of teaching them. One is that my hindi counting is kind of weak (okay, it is very weak), so I have to keep a printout of Hindi counting in front of me while teaching Maths. This is of course a matter of much amusement in the family.

Like all kids of there age, both Neetu and Rahul are very naughty but the former is quite uncontrollable and will resort to unique methods to avoid English, which she feels is not important in her scheme of things. 

The biggest challenge as I see it is to keep them motivated to study. They tend to lose interest very soon and somehow they feel they can get away by not studying. I try my best but it is difficult to refute messages they are getting at home. To motivate I resort to getting them to color once in a while when they are not in a mood to study. I also bought story books before starting over but then discovered that they don’t know how to read.

These are still early days...let’s see how it goes.