For over two weeks, I had been helping the children of grades 1&2 at my school to learn complex additions (adding with regrouping and carrying forward) in their online classes. I tried to come down to their level of understanding to help them see what was happening when we were adding big numbers. None of my techniques worked. Tired, I went back to the age-old way of solving addition problems. The children and parents took a sigh of relief and had a victory over me. I felt embarrassed and deeply worried at the same time calculating their future failures. Failures, for they borrowed our smarts without questioning; failures, because they lost an opportunity of learning inventiveness; failures, for they missed exploring an avenue of critical thinking; failures, for they might remain just followers.
I was thinking if the school were open physically, the parents would not have had the opportunity to interfere with what we were trying to do with the children. But, I am wrong. How can I discount their partnership in learning? In fact, they are the frontrunners in shaping up their children’s personalities and building their characters. I fall short of my understanding of why parents are so shortsighted. What makes them think and do so?
I am fighting with my own wit and reasoning. It is okay if we just don’t finish syllabi for the year. Children can learn new things a little later. I must not teach them new things because the syllabi say so. I should rather spend time empowering them with critical and possibility thinking and bringing in the right approach to learning. Robbing opportunities of discoveries for completing the syllabi sounds so atrocious.
Conversely, I try to answer myself as to how I could cut my school off from this gigantic education system in which everything is planned as part of the business. Who am I to derail my children’s education and career train running parallel with their contemporaries?
I am in search of such schools that are breaking away from this colossal system for exploring our nation’s children’s true potential to awaken magic powers in them.
I am in search of such parents who would like to relive their childhood and play with their children without worrying about their grades, careers, and future safety.
I am in search of such colleges and universities that are letting their students incubate their ideas and stay inventive with possibility thinking.
I am in search of those organizations that treat humans as assets of their organizations and give them space and freedom to work wholesomely.
I sit back and think hard if it is possible to liberate humanity at its blossoming stage. Yes, it is possible. But, as a community because ‘it takes a village to raise a child.’
However, these difficulties don’t deter me to work with the handful of children at my school because every child is the life energy that can liberate itself. Becoming part of their life journey is my luck.
