Disclaimer : This is from my experience with the particular schools which my son has attended in India and Poland. I am not generalizing anything. It is just my opinion. Having written this a few months ago I felt the need to share it with more people as I see children & school related news (of course not in good notes) surfacing in Indian news channels again.
------------------------------------------------Written in June 2014----------------------------------------
I do not hold a doctorate in
child psychology. But my study and thesis is underway as my son turned seven
years old and as I learn to grow up as a seven year old in my thirties. We
moved to Poland and my son started going to a Montessori school. He was in the
3 to 6 age group. For people not familiar with Montessori, classes here are not
graded as class 1 or 2 but as groups based on age 3 to 6, 6 to 9 and so on. The
logic being older children will exhibit leadership skills and care for the
younger ones and the younger ones will have role models to look up to and the
whole class would work as a close knit team. What followed was a wonderful
surprise as my son got settled into the school and started enjoying himself.
Soon it was the end of the
academic year and my son was graduating from the pre-school to go to the
elementary school. On this special day just a couple of weeks ago, I wrote a
thank you note for the teachers. A few lines from that long note goes like this
“Every teacher in his class is like an angel to me. All these children who
graduated today and the ones who would graduate in future (from the school) may
get into different careers in their life. But, their roots would be the same,
nourished by the same key values of life. I have never seen one low moment in
any of the teachers in all my visits to the school. Your smiles keep the
children smiling. I admire the balance you have to let children do what they
want and yet not do things which they are not supposed to. And the icing on the
cake is all this happens without any shouting, screaming, punishments and
crying.”
I had to open this discussion at
some point about getting back to India after a couple of years. I thought it
would be a happy occasion and slowly started the topic. ‘One day we may go to
India after such a graduation to follow the next level there.’ I was not
prepared what came after. The bright summer evening turned to a grim and gloomy
long evening. Over the next hour my son told me the secrets about the Indian
school he attended till 2013 September. A posh south Bangalore school which we
had believed that had the best team of teachers who were kind and caring
towards children.
He said how his language teacher has scared him that he will
not leave school and will be locked inside his classroom if he does not get to
write a few letters the right way. How another teacher would scream and not let
children visit the rest room. And how at the age of six he would escape from
the class and roam in the corridor. When caught by Ayyas, he would say that he
was out to visit the toilet and get into the toilet. He woud wait for the Maths
and English periods and would get into the class only for those as those
teachers were kind and smiling.
He is an amazing kid who loved to
go to school. As a working mother, I had created a comfortable environment for
him during his early years to meet people and explore. Things changed when he
got into class 1. The school hours were longer. From getting back home at 12:30
pm it was 3:30 pm. Unfortunately due to an extended holiday, he missed the
first week at school which was kind of a settling time for the new routine. We
got back to school a week after the school reopened in June 2013. Every day he
cried to go to school. Having worked in Education sector all my life, I thanked
myself for being able to see the issue as a whole. We discussed. And we agreed
that may be it is easier for him to start with the 12:30 timing and then slowly
move into to longer schedule. I even consulted a counsellor alone to see if I was
not being over sensitive. She said I am taking the right approach. But her only
query was with all this understanding why did I put my child to a regular
school instead of the handful of alternative schools available in Bangalore.
Thankfully when I went to the Principal with this strange request, she was
accommodative. I also put in a word how it can be helpful if teachers try to
get children to a comfort zone before forcing them to complete tasks like task
masters. My list obviously included niceties like smile, hug and positive
affirmations.
It took us two weeks. I went to
school every day along with my son. Stayed in the school and volunteered to
fill in for absentee teachers, completed a project in their library. But after
that he was okay to go to school. I got busy with planning the move from India
to Poland. From July to September school went on with no crying in the morning.
Nine months later, I hear my seven year old saying ‘I had to do something on my
own because no one was understanding. I wanted to do it that way because they
were rude. Their words hurt me.’ I asked him why he did not share this with me
all this time. He said, ‘I know that you tried. You spoke to the Principal and
the teachers. What more can you do if they do not understand?’ I could not
trust my ears. I had to hold back my tears to hear his point of view this time
around when he is open to speak to me.
I persuaded, ‘but why are you
okay to tell it now?”. He said, ‘I can see the difference. And I do not want to
go back to the same school again.’ I pondered ‘there may be other schools and
we need not go to the same school again’. He looked straight into my eyes, held
my hands as though he was in deep distress, ‘Amma, when I say this you should
believe me.’ He rattled a dozen names of his Indian friends from the apartment
complex and said, ‘all of us had problems. They went to different schools. But
all of us were unhappy.’ As tears rolled down his cheeks, ‘we just had to go to
school to read. Then only we will get to go to college and then only we can
have good jobs.’ Oh my goodness. My heart was sobbing. I could feel my pulse
raising.
What are we forcing our children
to be? Is this the thought process that a six or seven year old had to go
through? The next thing which came after the next couple of weeks was more
shattering. All the heaviness in my heart evaporated in thin air when I read
about the heinous crime against the 6 year old in a Bangalore school. My search
of empathy towards children by teachers seemed to be a far cry. My son
classifies raising voice as “rude” and unpleasant gestures in face as
“impolite”. I will not accept if someone says he is too sensitive or I am
protecting him from the true world. May be the sensitivity level of our kids
are taken as advantage to impose unpleasant things on them with the belief that
children may not voice them to parents and parents may not take them seriously.
It all begins at home, saying
please, giving a smile, trying to empathise the problem with the child than to
give him/her solutions from our parental world. Next time when your child hurts
himself, do not justify why he had to be hurt for what he did and smear the
ointment on his wound just to put a tick in your responsibility chart but sit
next to him and calmly say that you can understand it hurts and maybe the
ointment would help. I see my son as a young adult. I am curious about each
thing he does, the way he observes and I bet when you care it comes back in
abundance. We cannot call the teachers to participate in this if we do not
begin this journey to empathise as a parent. I would like you to take a
sneak-peak into what my son had to say.
This is one of those Friday
evening conversations in the bed. He gets to sleep with us on Friday nights. He
enquired how long I had to carry him in my tummy. I said about 9 months. He
knows multiplication now. So, he quickly got into calculating the number of
days. Then he said that he could recollect his photo as a just born and went on
to say, “But even that small baby is too big to be inside someone’s tummy.” I
acknowledged and said “Yes. Even I wonder how you managed to squeeze yourself
and stay there.” He thought for a while and said, ‘I think it would have been
more difficult for you than for me. I am not sure if I hurt you when I was
inside your tummy. But sorry because I did so unknowingly.” We hugged each
other in silence for the next few minutes. As a mother the reach of my empathy
may just be to my own child. Teachers have a wonderful opportunity to influence
hundreds of children. As a kid I used to believe that my teacher is always
right. May be I did not have a reference point or benchmark. Today children
know what is right, what is wrong and they can slot the teacher into categories
based on these reference points. Many children know how much they pay to the
school and the teachers get paid from the fees that students pay. The school
Managements and teachers have a long way to go about treating their customers
in the right way. Parents also need to understand the fact that sticking to the
extremities of “my child is only right” or “the teacher is always right” may
not help. They need to talk and understand and apply problem solving skills
just like they do professionally at work.
Right environment at school is
critical and basic for a child. And for God’s sake, it is just not the
infrastructure of centrally air-conditioned schools. Values are taught by
actions. Let us begin at home but demand it at schools. Else, it may not be
long before students start finding their own solutions. My pains are not a bit
lesser than each one of you there in India. Be there for your kid.
Read the story of a mother who stood by her child against all odds.
http://www.ndtv.com/article/blog/at-3-she-testified-about-her-rape-now-she-needs-a-school-608388?pfrom=home-topstories