Is All Well

I am rarely ever pissed out or disillusioned by the system. I believe members of the system sort things out pretty well and by the end of it imbibe what is necessary and important. Smart people get noticed no matter what. And the not so smart find their niche. At least eventually. But last week I was left sightly perturbed. And this was because the system was changing for the better.

Though it sounds ironic it is completely true. Two incidents occured which were the cause of the disturbance. And both were related to the fact that though the policy makers were trying to push the system towards the better, either due to inertia or incompetence the system was resisting this change.

First incident happened in Pune. I was visiting my cousin's family, which consists of him, his parents, his wife and 2 kids. My nephew, who studies in senior kindergarten, is an extremely smart and talented chap. I was playing with him in the garden and while playing he started singing All is well from 3 Idiots. He sang it till the third paragraph without missing a single word and from what i can understand of music, in tune.

At school he was being taught the spellings of the days of the week using some new high funda system called phonics. Essentially they are taught to spell according to sound of the words. Great! But the concern came from when my sister-in-law started her daily teaching/ homework routine.

Point 1: I thought CBSE banned homework for anyone below class 5. I raised my eyebrow but didn't say anything.


So they start their routine. She asks him the spelling of Tuesday. And he starts T - E _. Before he says anything more my S-I-L asks him is it T-E. He thinks and says T-E and before anyone can react dude gets one tight one on the back and is told its tuesday. So obviously its T-U-E-S-D-A-Y. Dude gets this into his head, and when asked again says T-U-E-S-D-A-Y and writes it down three or four times. Then they go to some other stuff. Just to test him she asks him spell tuesday. And what do you know, dude goes T-E and get another tight one. I see this get pissed and say please don't hit the child. And she snaps back, Well, don't teach me how to teach my children!

I leave the room and say nothing else.

Point 2: In my opinion T-e-u-s-d-a-y sounds as the correct spelling to my phoneticaly challenged brain. And in either case i wouldn't give a fig if I were in senior kindergarten.

My sister-in-law in general is a very nice person. Extremely friendly. She is amongst the people i am closest to , in spite of the fact that I must have interacted with her at any considerable length maybe 10 times in the last 7 years. But she wants to push her child to succeed.

So once she is done with her son she comes over to me and starts a discussion telling me why she thinks she is right. She tells me what I absolutely abhor is a child making a mistake because of his carelessness. He knows the right spelling but is saying the wrong stuff only because he is careless. I tell that is exactly my point. You know he is smart. You know he gets what he is being told. So one day he will know the spelling of tuesday. He will learn all he needs to anyway. So why push him in a brutal manner.

She retorts saying, what you say may seem nice in Utopia, but not in India. If someone wants to shine he cannot afford to be careless. Careless today, careless forever. I was like you are missing the point. A 5 year old kid is expected to be careless. Hell, when the system is trying to change for the better (I mention point 1), when the system is trying to move towards Utopia, why don't we let it move.

She put in a rider as well saying do not tell me not to hit him when he is present. He might lose discipline. I was like you are making the case weaker for you, aren't you. Anyway she continued with her arguments (stuff like when he has the memory to remember songs so well why not spelling) and me offering the usual counters (so you want him to mug stuff. And isn't it a great thing he can remember the songs in the first pace. After reaching heaven why do you wish to be God as well).

Finally I was like we hold completely opposite view on this. And both of us are stubborn. It would be completely pointless to take this argument further. I see you yourself think my system would be utopia and shift to this. Till then you can have your system, I will keep hope for mine.

After this I reach Mumbai. Another nephew (7 standard dude.) comes home and says he has an assignment and needs to download some pictures and stick them onto his book. I am like, Cool! using technology to understand stuff better.

But I think I had the thought a little to early. He opens his book and opened wikipedia. Fair enough. So his assignment was to get examples of various sub classes of chordata and further the subclasses within mamallia. Stil fair enough. So I assume he will enter the class in wikipedia and see what he gets and proceed. But instead he sees some vague example his teacher gave him, downloads and saves. I tell him why don't you search some more. See what wikipedia tells you. I mean you are using technology might as well use it well. He was like you don't know my teacher. I try acting smart, she wont understand. She won't even know or appreciate. So this is better. I insist he search more. So when we get to the sub-classes of mammals he somewhat relents. Searches a bit and uses unique examples. He used a capybara, which are apparently the biggest rodents, instead of the usual rats or squirrels. I was supervising till then. I leave the room, and when i get back he has downloaded giant panda for carnivora. I tell him dude are you sure the giant panda is carnivorous. It after all eats only bamboo and see your teacher has not mentioned it either. He thought about it for a moment, bulbed, thought about his teacher and was about to remove it from his examples when wiki saved him with the fact that the panda are almost completely vegetarian carnivores.

So he continued. For Primates I told him to use my pic. I said I am human enough. He said no, I have already risked being failed by my teacher. I will not do that. I will prefer an Orangutan. I tell fail for what? For learning great stuff?:

At this my brother enters and says don't bug the poor fellow. His teacher surely will not what a capybara is, and won't even care that the giant panda is a carnivore. So just let him be.

I let him be, but felt bad for my cousin and his ilk. Though they are encouraged to use the comp so that they can show off with fancy print outs they are absolutely discouraged from thinking originally. They were using technology worse than the way we were using books.

Surely blaming the system in this case is unfair. Therefore I would prefer it go back to old rigid version. In that case at least the system would have been a nice fall guy. Now all we can do is feel bad that inspite of having so many factors pushing us ahead we are trying to waste away and actually move backward!!!