Thursday, May 15, 2014

Missing Syllabus

Last week, I happened to visit my home town, and one fine evening having a walk with one of my friends, I noticed two buildings in two different lanes. One of them was a XXX Techno school and another was an YYY Olympiad school.  I don’t what kind of difference the name or teaching approach does in those two schools, but a basic thing was missing in both. In fact I have seen many other such schools which do not have any play ground. It’s just a damn building. I really wonder how parents these days are sending their kids to a school which do not have basic mandatory necessities. Is studying math’s or physics or etc matters all the time?? What about rest of subject related to life?

At school we have subjects and sub-subjects, school life is said to be the foundation for living life. But why we don’t have subjects which help us to live life on practical basis. Like How to behave in a group or with a girl/guy? How to make friends? How to chase our dreams? How to know the purpose of our life? How to control anger? How to maintain relationships? How to manage money? How to survive when we start living alone? How to play as a team at sport or work?  It’s a shocking thing that schools nowadays are only bothered about marks in board exams or getting rank in IIT or MBBS.  

I’m not an educationist kind of person to comment on the education system in India, but I do have a minimum knowledge that there are few subjects we need to learn during our school life.  If school is all about marks then, what is point of sending kids there, make them sit at home force them to study for 16hrs daily, that would be sufficient.

OK
I’m aware that I belong to a different generation than kids these days; however school is a place where an individual finds his/her life purpose.  Why every parent forces their kid to become only an engineer or doctor?? Is it only for sake of money? For eg:  What kind of happiness the person gets when he had a serious fight with his wife and got an incentive award at his work place? When a person is unable to learn the practical needs of life, what marks or salary can do??

Making dreams come true is as technical as delivering a project before the deadlines, you do that for an organization then you should do this for your own sake. Few things we don’t learn at school, like listening to own intuition, handling a negative emotions or conflicts or understanding an opposite person whether it is a friend, family or colleague. Learning to concentrate on positive stuff and suppressing the negative ones, to accept love and ignore ego.  And the most important one is to stay and enjoy the present moments instead of rushing all the time.

These skills are far more important both for the individual and society than geography or a third foreign language. They can prevent addictions and illnesses. Most importantly they can make people happy and good.

Of course, it’s not always this simple. People have different backgrounds and starting points to their lives, and they encounter different amount of challenges. But in the end, it all comes down to this: we all want to be accepted, loved and lead a meaningful life.

Why in the world do they not teach this at school?