One more thing I like in Teach For India is the variety of people in the organisation. Each individual comes with a unique geography, history, economy and philosophy. Before coming here, all my friends were engineer, doctor or teachers. Here I come across people who studied law, psychology, worked as a journalist, worked as a volunteer in commonwealth games, artist and at the same time they are avid runner, passionate biker and ardent trekker. And I have stopped counting the number of people who run marathons. It’s sort of an eye-opener for me. There are so many things we can do other than just sitting in a cubicle and repenting.
Talking about people, I had a different experience last December. We had a retreat in Ahmedabad in end of December. We closely watched the work of another NGO, Manav Sadhana(an NGO based in the Gandhi Ashram, Ahmedabad, is dedicated to the upliftment of the underprivileged through love.). They are working there for last 22 years. And we could actually see the outcome their hard work. I spent a day with a Manav Sadhana volunteer, Anita Behen. She is in charge of an anganwadi (Child Care Center) in a slum which houses 200 families. Anita behen takes care of 30-35 children aged 3-6 from 11am-3pm 6 days a week. I took a stroll through the community with her. And I was surprised to see the clean roads and houses there. Anita Behen also gives advice to the pregnant women in the community. But she said convincing people for family planning is the biggest challenge there. People want at least two sons. Their logic: If one boy does not look after us, the other one will. The father spends up everything he earns in alcohol. So the mother hands over the younger ones to the eldest sibling (5-6 yr olds) and goes out for work. That’s why most of the children don’t even go to primary school.
But how better is the situation for people like Anita Behen? Well, hardly any better. In a country where people are obsessed with the male child, we saw examples of just how unwanted the female child is. Girls don’t even get a mention when people visit their families. Almost all of us had the same experience with different families we stayed with.
Coming back to my kiddos, one thing we realize is that it does not matter how well a child does in academics, if he/she is not a good person. One of my girls stole my pouch the other day. After 3-4 days my pouch was discovered in her bag. She confessed after a long time. But I could not see any sense of repentance in her eyes. Her mother told me that she knows her daughter has this habit. Then she asks me how she is doing in studies. I just wonder what to say. I tell them moral stories, I give them scenarios and ask what is good and what is bad, but I don’t know how I can teach values. Home is always the first place where children learn these things. And that is not the best place always.
The other day I met the mother of my brightest kid for the first time. The lady told me about how great her son (who is in 3rd standard in my school) was in studies and everything. But her daughter is not that good. I was shocked. I tried to convince that her daughter is superbly talented too. There are some parents who are too nosy. They call me up at every trivial instance (e.g. the kid was talking in the middle of a lesson and I asked her to sit on the floor as punishment). And there are some who don’t have any interest in what their children are up to. For example, a mom did not give lunch box to her son for a week for no good reason until I called her up. Another kid got hurt while playing and I called the parent to take him home. No one came.
As I go to the second year of my teaching, I don’t really want my children to get 80% in Maths or read 10 new storybooks. I just want them to be better people. I know there is no definition of a good person or no teaching method to teach values. I don’t really know how I would do that. But one thing I know for sure is, if not now, it would be too late. I see some higher standard students and feel awful. They don’t respect anyone, they don’t care about studies or parents or anything. All they love to do is hang out and pass comments on passerbys. I don’t want to see my kids there after 4-5 years. No one can stop them from doing it if does not come from within. Life is not easy. They will choose their own destiny. And the easier way to reach destiny is always the wrong way. Would they understand?
1 comments:
There are three persons, from whom the children learn almost everything in the beginning of life. They are said to be father, mother and teacher. The surroundings are also said to be the main affecting factors of one's basic character. It's true that, the childhood is the perfect time of building the moral character and giving the lesson of values in life. In our study courses, we have great peoples' life story, we have The Ramayana, The Mahabharata and other moral stories to learn values. But, it’s not only study courses, which can create awareness. I think we do learn faster, when we visualize something. Therefore, it’s very necessary to create an atmosphere of high values and greatness by the elders around a child. It means we should act ourselves in such a way, which can make some impact in the raw brain of a kid. When the society is affected with harmful viruses, how can our children stay out of that?
What I want to say is that a child can only flourish in a good environment. They are our future, we need to protect them. We need to safeguard them from being poisoned. If we don’t keep a piece of steel in an appropriate atmosphere, it will obviously get rusted.
I admire that, what my friend is doing right now, is great a job. Very few among us can dare to do such things. So, it’s not a suggestion to her. It is only what I think that, teachers are the builders of nation. We have to wipe out all our ugliness from the society. When we take the decision to teach the kids of illiterate people, we have take care about them also. We need to provoke them to maintain a good environment at home for the sake of their own children. We can arrange some awareness programme for them. If we can teach their sons & daughters, we can also make them conscious.
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