Educating Our Children

Are we losing out in educating our children ??
Are we producing a generation of marks scoring machines ???

I returned home in the evening after a grueling day at work.
I was exhausted and irritable what with the tussle with the boss.
My 12-year-old son sheepishly approached me to sign his marks card.
One look at the scores and my temper flew.

'Why can't you concentrate and read?' I bellowed.
'Can't you keep what you read in memory and take good marks?'

Looking straight in my eyes, my son retorted,'Can you or mommy teach me how to concentrate, and what I should do to improve my memory capacity?My teachers at school say the same thing, but nobody tells us how or what to do.'

Have you also been in a similar situation like this before ?
It is so easy as adults to admonish a child or student to concentrate and memorize what they read. But if they turn back and question 'How to do it?', we are at a loss to answer.

Life skills like any other skills requires constant practice to hone it.
People have the tendency to take these skills for granted and over a period of time it rusts from lack of practice.

Children on the other hand have lot of opportunities to practice in their daily interaction and learning and they retain their skills at Memory and Concentration.

But parents, elders and teachers curtail even this to keep up with the competition and with sole aim of scoring good marks.

Children are constantly discouraged to stop playing, conversing, playing outdoor games and spend their quality time the way they want. They are forced to sit tight in their room and 'read' lessons.

Such lack of exposure and lack of inter-communication leads to obtund life skills in the present generation of children. Many a group of educational institutions like Euro Kids have seen through this malady and are now encouraging children to be what they want to do best, play with toys and not bother about forcibly mug up rhymes, exams and scores

Life skills thus form the very foundation of the structure a child / student is in the process of construction. If the foundation is sound, he can raise floors related to knowledge, job, career, profession, money, power etc, and be successful.

Basic Skills are inbuilt perception and awareness in an individual. They take the form of ability, adaptability and application.

Abilities

  • Memory
  • Concentration
  • Comprehension
  • Logical reasoning
  • Divergent thinking
  • Willingness to learn
  • Abstract reasoning

Adaptabilities

  • Frustration tolerance
  • Time consciousness
  • Locus of control
  • Need for achievement
  • Seeking responsibility
  • Motivation
  • Objectivity

Application

  • Goal formulation
  • Planning
  • Executing
  • Foresight
  • Self regulation
  • Leadership
  • Maturity

Education is not just the abundance of information in the brain which probably runs riot and incomprehensive. What is required is channeling this information to form character, to strengthen and expand the intellect so as to make an individual capable of independent sustenance.

Ninety percent of an individual's force of thought is wasted without these basic skills and therefore constantly tending to commit blunders.

A trained mind with perfect basic skills seldom makes a mistake.
The only way to retain and sharpen the existing basic skills is to keep up the practice and be detached about the consequences. One ounce of practice is worth thousand tones of big talk.
The question arises now as to whether these skills are enough for our everyday living.

WE ARE NOT TALKING ABOUT SURVIVING BUT ABOUT THRIVING.

As Swami Vivekananda said, 'The essence of education is concentration of mind, not the collection of facts. If I had to do my education over again I would not study facts at all. I would develop the power of concentration, memory and detachment and with this perfect instrument I could collect as much facts at will'.

Information processing happens at a macro level in the brain. Each detail is recorded in the brain in association with the existing information. To use memory and concentration a student should learn to exercise various regions of the brain. Memory is measured in four different ways: Recognition, Recall, Relearning, and Reintegration

Emphasis on evaluation of these life skills should be a part of curriculum in education. Products and literature on enhancing them should be included. Constant practice in day-to-day life should be encouraged as long as one is fit to function.

MindPower Solutions is a group of professional psychologist, behavioral scientist and educationists and have dedicated themselves to find a suitable solution for this.

After 18 years of research and validation in various schools at Bangalore involving nearly 4000 students, the psychologists and educationists have devised some basic psychometric games.

The software modules are six and are built on the premises of connections elucidated by neuropsychologists related to these skills.

MindPower Solutions has now ventured to take this forward to the community at large by taking advantage of the development in the field of computer technology.

These psychometric games have now been developed on web based Visual basic platform to produce versatile software for universal application. These games are fun to work, but at the same time benefits the student to learn the techniques of memory. Also, by constant practice they can now sharpen their skills.

ARE WE PRODUCING A GENERATION OF MARKS SCORING MACHINES ??? .

Author: Dr.Nagendra prakash
e-mail: basicskills@gmail.com