PERSISTENCE OR ESCAPISM?

“For every challenge, there is surely a hopeful alternative, that traverse beyond limitations.”

Off lately, I have started feeling that we, teachers and parents, are not preparing our children for the tough life. We have sorted explanations such as – “Why is it necessary for students to calculate manually when they have calculators?”

In real life, today, we have many incidents where we could easily make out that the problem is anger or lack of patience. The root cause for this is actually poor brought up. When the children are young we do not teach them tolerance. Teaching tolerance does not mean delivering a lecture or having a moral class on values. What I am trying to highlight here is that it is good to provide comfort to our children but let us be sure that we are making them tough to face the odds in life.

We often take pride in saying that the children of this generation are Chocolate made. But at the same time we need to acknowledge the fact that elders have a key role in building that easy approach to life. As guardians of the young minds it is obligatory for us to make them comfortable but providing comfort must not preach escapism.

I have met many parents approaching me and sharing their concern that their child is under performing and the possible reason they could find was the child’s involvement in co-curricular and extra-curricular activities. I have seen students who are excelling in academics but their personality, body language does not reflect that. I see them timid and under confident. While, there are some more who are very active in sports, dramatics, dance and music who are able to present themselves effortlessly. Also, to put it straight, I am in no way advocating that the students should participate in activities and can ignore academics. What I want to highlight here is the fact that the co-curricular and extra curricular activities adds to the personality of the child while the academics are equally important to attain success. I personally feel that the participation in activities enhances your social, emotional and cognitive skills. It allows the students to feel responsible for their own decisions, and once a student has learned to own up for his decisions, he learns the basics of life.

One thing is sure, we can’t compare students, even if they are siblings. We as teachers and parents must accept and relish diversity amongst students. My endeavor has always been to promote uniqueness amongst students.

Often, I have witnessed incidents where we as school promote the students but at the same time the student misuses the support of the teachers at school. We create enough preparedness amongst the student to maintain a balance between academics and co-curricular activities. In circumstances when the student is involved in activities, we at school try to provide enough support so that they make up for the loss in academics. But, at the same time it is expected from students that they are keeping a pace with the topics being covered in the class. What we expect from parents is to be watchful that the child is not manipulating the facts. It is imperative to mention here that students might take excuses of being tired and over burdened, but then the role of the parents creep in. In such a situation, a parent must deal cautiously as per the need of the student. Parents must also be aware about the emotional needs of the child at this time and then plan course of action to ensure stability.

It is very easy for parents to accommodate children and either allow them to laze around or simply ask them to quit the activity. Both the situation are dangerous as we teach escapism to the child by doing so. Instead what is expected is that the parents must involve with the child at this time in both curricular and extra-curricular domains. Enquire more about the on going extra curricular activities, try to help child to complete pending work. This would definitely be tiresome for parents for two good reasons, one, because today many children do not prefer parents involvement and consider it as interference, two, because parents have double role to play, both at professional and personal front. Hence, we often see parents avoiding (escapism) this partnership with children leading to larger problems.

We need to accept that the school does not prepares the students for examination only but also creates a conducive environment for enough preparedness for life.

“If we fail to prepare them for life, we would prepare them to fail in life.”

<a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/"><img alt="Creative Commons License" style="border-width:0" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-sa/4.0/88x31.png" /></a><br />This work is licensed under a <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License</a>.