There is more to me than meets the I

Education and learning

2009-07-22T01:39:00.004+05:30

Have you, as a parent, ever stopped to ponder, what it is you are looking for in an education when you send your child off to school? There is no other aspect of our lives in which we have become more mechanical and laid back than education. A couple of decades ago, education, which went hand in hand with learning, was a very individual need. Education was based on family values, family and individual aspirations etc. I remember getting cent percent in Math in my board exams in the 11^th grade (at that time boards were in the 11^th as there was no 12^th grade). Based on my results I was encouraged to apply for a Commerce degree in any of the good colleges in my city as it would have been a comfortable walk-through. But, I chose to do a degree in History as that was where my leanings lay. At that time, my marks or percentages did not dictate what I did in life. Unfortunately, that is not the case today. The individual’s choice does not matter. And therein lies the problem. With education being so expensive, it is such a waste to spend so much time and money on doing something that one did not want to do in the first place. No longer is it what you want out of an education. But what education can get out of you? The confusion between the subject and the object is the reason why education is such a debated topic today. And to add insult to injury, the people involved, primarily the student and the parent has little or no say in the matter.

Another one on recession!!

2009-02-06T15:32:00.013+05:30

At the cost of sounding boring and repetitive, I will say that this recession thing seems to have got the better of us. Even me. Now one would wonder why me. I bored housewife, homeschooling her three children, bearing the brunt of her husband's joblessness, and watching her dog grow old. Well, it has hit me too. Why? I have been forced to reduce my jaunts at the supermarket to once a week where earlier I would go there when the fancy took me and when I was bored. I would walk the aisles of the supermarket as one would walk a botanical garden. But, I cannot do that any more.

I am forced to cook more often, something I absolutely detest and have had a dislike for since god knows when.

But look at the brighter side. I finally have something in common with Bill Gates! Now, now. Let's not get into semantics. We both are victims of recession!

Honestly, I hate the word victim. It reeks of losing, giving up before putting up a fight etc., etc.

My husband does not feel that recession has hit him. Reason? We were constantly in a state of recess.

The recession must have come as a breather for all those who have been struggling to make it in life but did not. After having spent all their lives convincing the world it was 'destiny' and abusing poor Destiny for all the ills in their lives, Destiny found a breather when they found a new 'reason'. Recession. We can rattle off all the statistics we pick off the dailies and the news channels to convince ourselves that we are not alone. But, are we really not alone? I think we are. Because we human beings all react differently to the same word. What is 'being broke' for you may not be the same for me.

The objective of this post is not to sound morose but think aloud. Sorry for using you to bounce it off!

Dress Code in Colleges

2008-06-13T02:08:00.003+05:30

What is it with people who have suddenly taken to moral policing? Suddenly we want to control…….others, of course! So much so that even our educational institutions are giving more importance to discipline and dress code rather than imparting an education. Today, the so called educationists have taken over the role of the parents too. And what is more surprising is that parents do not seem to mind it. Don’t they realize that by doing so their own children are going to be brought up with someone else’s moral values and ethics? Are they really alright with that? I am not. In any case I think the schools and colleges should concentrate on what they are being paid for, which is educating our young and not dilute this with things that are the domain of parents.

A cousin of mine went to an Ivy League University to do his Masters in Business Administration. Since he had some work experience prior to joining this course, he was offered to give a guest lecture to the junior students. I remember him recounting to me his first experience as a lecturer. When he entered the class he was shocked to see students sitting with their feet up on the desks, sipping coffee and biting into sandwiches. There were hardly half a dozen students and he was expected to lecture them. This is back in the 70s when I was a high school student myself. Of course, my first reaction was envy. Why could we not have colleges like this in India? But I also wondered how much would a student learn this way because I was conditioned to believe that one has to pay attention to every word uttered by the teacher, there has to be a certain decorum maintained in class, not only out of respect for your teacher, but also because it helps one concentrate. But the cousin told me that not everyone can get into a college of such repute and the students who get in are there because they have worked to get there and want to be there. And if they want to do well and pass out with good grades, it is up to them to work for it. It is not the job of the tutor to motivate them. They have to motivate themselves. Also, grasping and learning has nothing to do with dress, posture or decorum.

So, coming back to all this hullabaloo about dress etc. in colleges over here, I think the educators need to do a rethink and find out if they are implementing all these codes because it makes a difference to the score cards of the students or are they taking their authority too far. On one hand our children should know what they want to become in life before they hit high school. On the other hand they are not free to choose what to wear well into adulthood! A irony of sorts, I would say.

A student's perspective

2008-06-08T01:44:00.005+05:30

My oldest daughter had an assignment to write a composition on a topic of her choice. The topic she chose was ‘My journey as a homeschooler’ which I have posted so that others can get a feel of homeschooling from a homeschooler’s perspective:

When my parents decided to homeschool us five years ago, my siblings and I were somewhere close to devastated. The thought of not going to school was incomprehensible. It took two years for us to start studying at home diligently. Since then it’s been only an uphill climb to becoming more independent, confident and successful. Today we believe that homeschooling is the best thing that happened to us.

The beginning of this journey was not easy. We had to learn how to study by ourselves because we had no one to push us. We had to get used to not wearing a uniform and getting into “school mode.” Studying in our pajamas was definitely odd! It took time to get used to the television noise from the next room and to pay attention to what we were reading without sitting in a classroom full of students. As a result, we lost out on 6 months.

As time went on, we learnt to do all those things with ease. Most of all, we learnt to self-motivate ourselves. We became self-learners, although we had the occasional slip where we would not be able to concentrate at all and would spend the whole day “pretending to study.” We learnt to study only from books and the internet and taught ourselves how to take quizzes and tests. Our mother would spend almost the entire night downloading material from the internet and printing it out so we could study in the morning. It wasn’t very easy to concentrate on all that work when we were still sitting in our pajamas.

Getting used to homeschooling was not the only problem our family faced. The decision we took to educate ourselves at home brought about a lot of mixed reactions from the outside world, including family and friends. When asked which school we go to, we would tell them that we homeschool to which they would respond by either laughing or seeming extremely baffled. My family has faced a lot of criticism for the decision we made. People have accused us of being “uneducated” and “uncivilized.” They have claimed that we are and will grow up to be anti-social because of this decision. It was hard in the beginning but then we got used to it. As we made progress, we realized that we could prove the outside world wrong.

Today, we are self-motivated, educated children who are still climbing up the ladder to success. We realized that we have proved the world wrong. We still face negative reactions when we are in the outside world but it doesn’t faze us any more. Compared to school going children, we are able to adjust more easily to the outside world and in a social circle. We are respected for our intelligence. Homeshooling has been the best thing that ever happened to us and we will never regret the decision taken five years ago!

Meaning of education

2008-06-04T01:10:00.000+05:30

This is what I came up with when I did a search on the internet to find out the dictionary meaning of the word education:

“…the act or processes of imparting or acquiring general knowledge, developing the powers of reasoning and judgment, and generally preparing oneself or others intellectually for mature life.”

When asked why I chose to homeschool my children, I cite this meaning and ask them if this is really what a majority of the schools are doing today. Everyone is entitled to their personal interpretation, and their own adaptability of what a school does for them. But I found most of the schools amply lacking in the ability to teach children life-skills and powers of reasoning and judgment, which is to become an integral part of their lives in adulthood. Added to this was the burden of too much book knowledge, which was not going to help much as they embark on their different life-paths, whatever that may be. Of course, it didn’t help any to know that what you do in life has a whole lot to do with percentages. This is despite the fact that based on research conducted, it was found that a student who passed out with a whopping 98% did not fare better in life than a student who, let’s say, procured a decent 60%. The only use of the 98% was to secure a seat in college.

So, if the education system is no longer a stepping stone to a worthwhile career or life-path, what role is the current education system playing? As parents, how many of us have actually sat down and asked this question. In fact, when was the last time anybody questioned the role of education in a child’s life.

My daughter's first date

2008-06-03T01:11:00.000+05:30

Well, my 16 year old daughter went on her first date today. In fact, it is the first time she has ever liked a boy. Mighty excited and thrilled that she has left her thumb sucking days behind her and truly become a teenager. Or that’s what she thought. Of course, her role model is her 17 ½ year old sister who had a first boyfriend (if one may call it that) at 15. But after she came back, there was a big turn around in her attitude. Somewhere she was feeling the pangs of having left her childhood behind her and having ‘become like any other teenager’. ‘Mom, I am tainted. Help me, there is nothing different about me any more’…… and so on! Of course, it was all in good humour because I caught her ever so often blushing at the thought of the afternoon she had spent with her beau.

Feed your minds for a good cause

2008-05-31T01:42:00.001+05:30

Looking for an easy way to keep your kids sharp over the summer months and also help fight world hunger? Then FreeRice.com is for you. For each word you answer correctly, they donate 20 grains of rice through the UN World food Program. From its launch in October 2007 until May 27, 2008, Free Rice has raised 34,551,828,550 grains of rice and fed people in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Uganda and Nepal.

So what are you waiting for? Start answering vocabulary words and watch your bowl fill with rice. Your kids can spend the summer feeding their minds and feeding hungry people all over the world. Then, why not work it into your homeschool curriculum for next year? It's free, it's fun and it's a great cause!

+s and -s

2008-05-30T01:46:00.002+05:30

One of the best and obvious advantages to homeschooling is the speed at which the children learn and the amount they learn. I have realised that, left to themselves, children learn a lot more than through a structured approach. In fact, is that not the case with all of us? That is why adults seem to make better learners. Because once they get out of structured learning, they find themselves more motivated to learn since they are doing it for themselves rather than being told to do so.

Another advantage that I have seen is that since the children are not under any kind of pressure, they seem to outsmart themselves all the time. In fact, they enjoy the competition from within. In a formal school environment, it is always an issue of superlatives. Who is the best! Here it is more comparative. It is 'have I done better than last time?' And, I think, that is so important.

If there is an offside to homeschooling then the only thing I noticed when we began learning at home was the lack of discipline. But, again, I was viewing discipline from my definition of it which is largely influenced by the school system and the educators therein. But it did not perturb me very much since I knew they were going through their period of adjustment to a new way of learning.

Do the kids enjoy this kind of learning? I think they do a lot. Humans hate structure even if we have accepted it as part of our lives. But we are always striving to fight it. So, the children too are enjoying the flexibility of learning what they want, when they want and in the manner that most appeals to them. But, being animals of habit, I have encouraged a schedule since, after all, one day they will need to fit into this world.

Self motivation in a homeschooling environment

2008-05-28T12:49:00.002+05:30

One very important debate on homeschooling has to do with socialization. I am often asked how I ensure that the children are not missing out on a social interaction which is an integral part of our formal school system. I think in all our discussions on socialization/learning/future plans etc., we are missing out on one very, very important aspect/outcome of home education. And that is where our own formal schooling comes to the forefront. Home education is all about self-learning. That is what we wish to achieve with the children. We are still thinking mainstream when we say that WE need to teach them or motivate them. That is the fundamental problem with formal schooling. The motivation is completely external. Hence the unhealthy level of competition. That is the only way teachers, schools and parents are able to keep their children motivated. What we need to emphasize upon is self-learning, self-motivation and self-achievement. And those are not learning tools. Those are values we need to put into our children from the start. In fact, I know home-educating teenagers who are setting their own goals, deadlines and schedules and are doing it all on their own with both parents at work.

Getting started with homeschooling

2008-05-26T16:13:00.004+05:30

We began homeschooling our children five years ago when our oldest daughter was 13 years old, followed by the second daughter who was 12 and our son who was 7. It was a well deliberated decision and we had taken 2 years over it before actually starting it. Believe me when I say that we have never looked back and regretted that decision. In an environment where competition is getting an ugly connotation and is undermining performance, it was the best thing we could have done for our children. Of course, it did not come with its share of hiccups and are-we-doing-the-right-thing kind of emotions. The cross-eyed looks we got from family, friends and neighbours just made it worse. As time went by and all of us fell into a ‘routine’, we were glad we had the ‘guts’ and the ‘gall’ to ‘fight’ the system and take off on a path which was self designed and self motivated and not dictated by the phrase ‘the done thing’.

The children have become independent learners and responsible. Learning is no longer something that has to be achieved with someone else in the driving seat. They recognize the fact that learning is something which is the basis of all self-advancement and hopefully in the years to come will translate into success. Success as they perceive it. And hopefully as we perceive it. I will write the lessons that I have learnt and the questions that have cropped up in our short journey of homeschooling, maybe in a future post

It is so boring!

2008-05-25T00:52:00.004+05:30

You know one of the problems with us as parents is that we have begun to give too much relevance to every comment that our child makes. When we were growing up, our parents more or less ignored/left us to our own limited resources and what to do with it. That is a perpetual argument I have with my 3 children. Today we cater to our child's every whine, be it for material things or emotional. Our children are growing up in a world where the solutions to all their problems are given by some one else. They refuse to think for themselves. Now take a simple thing like 'I am bored'. I hear it all the time from my children. I don't remember ever going to my parents with that complaint. Not because I was not bored. But because I knew it would not be heeded. So what did I do? Or what did we do? We went around finding ways and methods to keep ourselves occupied. We learnt to explore.

A couple of months ago we got new individual wardrobes made for our children and each of them wanted to go shopping to buy stuff to decorate their respective cupboards. I told them to make them at home rather than buy it off the shelf at a store. They found it difficult to come up with ideas. And then I showed them a couple of things I did as a child by cutting up cardboard boxes and making them into trinket boxes etc and they loved it. That is when it struck me that all innovation, experimentation etc is borne out of one simple emotion. And that is boredom! Today we don't allow are children to get bored. I think we should. That made me completely change my reaction to that comment. Of course, there was a tough period when they could not understand me. But, now slowly they have stopped complaining. They try to keep themselves occupied.

Let's start young

2008-05-22T01:16:00.003+05:30

Everyone is talking about blogging and so I decided to try my hand at it. I do not write well and am terrible at putting my thoughts on paper....sorry, putting my thoughts in writing. I can express them very well in words, verbally. Though, ever so often, the right words elude me. But, I seem to cope fairly ok. So, please excuse me, if I ramble or bore you, who out of sheer boredom, have stumbled upon my blog.