Dear Diary,
I was re-reading an earlier entry where I have been able to perceive the goodness of a new workplace so quickly whereas the hard-hitting, complicated, 'grey stuff' that people's personalities (including my own) are made of came out through the following months of close engagement. Quite amazingly, I seemed to know even then that this could be 'the perfect honeymoon phase' and that it could get over soon (and it did!) leaving behind a list of learnings from the overall experience. What's more interesting for me is that as I look back I realise how a human mind or human condition is wired quite predictably for most of the people I know. Most of us tend to choose fear over love by default, and most of us forget to forgive and love ourseleves before we think we can forgive others... Anyway, a lot has happened since we parted ways. A lot of water has flown under the bridge and it's time to now share some good news and move forward, slowly but surely.
I changed my kid's school (yayie :) ) from a mainstream one to an alternative one. This was a very important and sensitive decision that I was able to take thanks to the exposure that good friends and the media have afforded me in today's day and age. This is not to say that one is less grateful to my kid's last school that unwittingly taught us lessons for life and some people there have been exceptioanlly kind to us also, but the new school has a far better teacher:student ratio. That is the need of the hour for my child and any other small child also for that matter.
As this change begins to settle in all its dimensions, I feel that small children generally deserve more considered time of all the elders in their lives especially from the parents and teachers, and especially when they are beginning to comprehend the world that they are born in. Not only my child and I are able to spend more quality time with each other now, we have both graduated into developing a more solid understanding of each other in the last ten days.
In other words, we seem to have freed ourselves from the pressures of rote learning and coming first (in grade one!)... We have done ourselves a favour and freed ourselevs from mugging up words and re-producing them in impeccable handwriting at breakneck speed in the class room. My child doesn't have a great handwriting right now, and it's ok because he is too small for that kind of pressure but his grades and class work speed both have improved dramatically in the recent past (in his earlier school). Despite prioritising rote learning over everything else that a balanced childhod should be made of, I felt his academic progress was not emphasised or lauded as much in class. He was often made to feel 'lacking' something, in one way or another, through the complaints of his teachers in his notebooks - always looking for a 'perfectly completed CW' but not actually knowing how to really help each child with conceptual clarity (perhaps because they are so many children per teacher among other reasons). So at the end of a hard day, neither my child nor I felt fulfilled or happy irrespective of the long man hours going into study-time. My effort at home with say trying to teach him maths through concrete examples was being mis-matched at school through a hurried approach considering there is the huge syllabus to be covered and the pressure on everyone involved in this kind of a mainstream educational system.
But now, by God's kind grace, at least all this pressure has been lifted off. We can finally breathe better through the day, pace it slowly and don't need to prioritise memorizing lessons over play time and nap time, especially during 'examinations' and pre-pre-tests before that. I am a product of that system and I remember now how I sufferred through it for some pieces of medals that just hang in some dark corner of my cupboard today. But our parents had no alternatives that were easily available to them so I thank them with all my heart for bringing us up the way they did. It is only through that lens that today I was able to decide what will be a more suitable exposure for my child, more suitable for his age and need. I feel bad for my other co-parents who feel these observations are 'not valid' or I am being 'extra sensitive' as most people choose the convenient, mainstream path. Some of these parents also believe that they are not doing enough, or they are a 'bad parent' so they would rather hire private tutors in primary school than think that something is wrong with the fundamental way we approach educating our children. I am not surprised why such young children crumble under this kind of a performance pressure these days, and we know from media reports the extreme and unfortunate ways in which they do. Parents also feel the heat of experiences of children at school, from mild to extreme in nature.
For now I believe that as a parent, this is yet another honeymoon period ( :) ) that we are going through here at the new school. That we must continue to engage with this alternative educational model as well in every detail so that we can maximise our holistic learning experiences here irrespective of the imperfections of the human nature, including our own.
