BRINGING UP CHILDREN
The challenges of bringing up our children in an increasingly turbulent world demand that parents and educators throughout the world unite and strive for ways to inculcate peace and brotherhood across the world.
Arvind Dhondphale is an Educator and associated with Alternative School “The Peepl Grove School”.
[dropcap]C[/dropcap]reativity and creative thinking are the gifts that humans have been endowed with. And when it’s combined with intelligence it creates wonders. If it goes uncontrolled it may create unnecessary problems which spread in society because of the influence.Media is one of the powerful sources of the influence. Modern society has various forms of media. It needs constant support of monetary power to run without disturbance. Many people’s bread and butter are dependent on this. And it is here that creative thinking comes into action. It’s like creating something intellectually and using the media to spread it without thinking about the long term results and influences of it. Intolerance is such creativity by some people working in the field of media!
The school, in which I work now, is situated in deep interiors of Andhra Pradesh. I get regular chances to be with all types of villagers, live with them and work with them. It’s at the grass root level. I was born and brought up in a city like Pune and later shifted to Bengaluru, from metropolitan city life I moved here around eight years ago. So I have an idea of city life and now also a village life. As a graphic designer I have seen the field of media from close proximity.
Challenges of Bringing up Children
News channels and newspapers spread news of communal disharmony with the help of violent words and convey a half-truth of the situation. In this practice they try to highlight the so called enmity of two particular communities like Hindus and Muslims.
When I was in Bengaluru, I came across so many people who started hating other communities after they started going to church. Those people used to come to us also and use to talk to us in the shallow sweet language. Any sensible person can easily make out. And it happens with slow pace that’s why it’s also famous by the term slow poisoning. The same media will not talk about it.
So our prime action should be to save our children from the influence of media and the people who support these kinds of discussions in the media. Secondly, we should save our children from hypocritical intellectuals who use these media as their medium. But actually they have to keep doing it because playing with the words is their bread and butter.
People are actually living their life very peacefully and happily.
Keeping children away from media which has become commercial is really a big challenge. Instead of questioning the history written by the Mughal emperors according to their wish and these hypocrite intellectuals praise the history written from the Mughal emperor’s point of view and easily forget to bring out the true stories of the heroes emerged from the soils of this very nation. For this these so called intellectuals even change the meanings of these words like ‘Tolerance’ and ‘Intolerance’ according to their convenience. Any way I should not get into this too much, because I’m more interested in real process of learning called education which frees our minds from all these things.
I very much believe in the intelligence of the modern generation, and they will come to know the truth eventually. I wish that the new generation becomes true seekers of life, not by any influence but in their own ways. We need to encourage them to be introvert and learn to think on their own. Turning inward would be the key for a peaceful happy life.
Challenges in the Field of Education
Looking at the scenario it’s high time that we need to take some decisive actions towards this. School years play very important role in everybody’s life. Children are full of energy and it is each society’s responsibility to channelize this tremendous energy properly. Instead of wasting time in so called ‘tolerance and/or intolerance’ children need to be encouraged to focus on developing positive viewpoints towards life.
Previous generations have already created lots of problems in the name of development, and generation-next is going to get affected by it. I think there are many real problems that need to be understood and addressed on priority basis like awareness of cleanliness, reducing poverty and connectivity to Nature as few to mention. If these issues are not solved then the next generation is going to suffer like never before on this beautiful planet.
Awareness of these issues can happen effectively through proper education. Among these personally I’m trying to understand and working on ‘Connectivity to Nature’. I personally believe that if we are able to connect children to Nature, they will not even think of spoiling and destroying it. They try to save Nature. Otherwise, so called intellectuals will be engaged in the discussions on so called intolerance and, there the life on earth will be swept away by natural disasters and uncontrolled pollution.
Humans have already spoiled the natural order in Nature by their irresponsible greedy actions in the name of development. It’s time for us to open our eyes and have a bird’s eye view of what is happening on the earth. It will give us a glimpse of the real situation.
People who sit in their offices and try to know the situations with the help of readymade or second hand sources like internet, people who in the closed doors of universities keeps debating about this etc. needs to come out of their physical and mental cages and realize the true situation as it is, once they start doing this they will get to know the seriousness of real problems, and it may give them the courage to come out of their intoxication of so called intellectual verbal discussions of creative situations like ‘intolerance’. We really need to save our children from these types of people and creative situations. It can be a real challenge. But there will be simple solutions for this, like I said previously there are other faculties we need to introduce to our children so that they will be engaged in more positive activities and learning. It will also challenge teachers to create exercises in this regard and prepare them for executing them while working with children. So that at least the next generation is free of these creative problems and will not waste time resolving them. The people who can really think and are capable of understanding the real human potential need to develop exercises which will help them to connect deeply to Nature, or the exercises which may help them to realize the real challenges of our times and help them in coming up with solutions. At this time, the condition of the Earth is alarming. We need to hurry up and unite together to fight our real problems.
