What is the role of a school in society?
Education is an important part of the child's life & school plays a significant role in the education, and intent of this story is to understand how the school is able to prepare the child for the real life situations once they come out of the school / college.
We are in a fast evolving technology phase & it’s likely all the learning (academics) happening currently at school would be available outside the school in a structured manner via online medium and children will have an option to learn at their own pace from home.
Until such a time, I would like to share a few principles that we liked at The Valley School, KFI, Bangalore, the school our son Aditya Bhaskara is studying for the past 10yrs.
Retaining the curious mind
Infants have a curios mind while growing up, as they tend to throw, break, look at it upside down when they come across a new thing in their life to understand the structure, internals & other details about the object. It’s important for the school to help retain this curious mind at the school & home, by encouraging them to ask questions on the status quo or things they are being taught.
It’s not easy, since it could lead to a few unpleasant discussions as we need to be honest / open about the topic, it’s very important for the parents & teachers to be consistent in their opinions every day!
Teaching how to think
Classroom should be a temple for children to learn how to think, rather than being a place only to remember what is being taught. When a kid has learnt how to think, they would be able to apply this knowledge on a new problem they would face tomorrow in their real world situation, rather than building a narrow knowledge base.
Knowledge is something that children need to keep acquiring all through their life & it’s important the school teaches them how to structurally acquire a new skill / concept. It’s like teaching the kid how to fish, rather than giving them fish.
Building the self confidence
Growing up in an encouraging environment, that does not judge the children does a world of good to their self confidence, it would help them grown up believing in themselves & not comparing with their friends. School should be a place to identify the strengths, weakness & potential of the child to him / herself & not for the outside world in the form of reward, trophies or ranks.
Is it possible for the school to limit the academic valuation for the purpose of logistics reason & not use that as yardstick to compare child A vs Child B? The Valley School doesn’t have exams until the children are in Class 9, instead of scores they expose the children to different ways to express their talent — painting, performing arts, music, sports etc., generally the child spends only 3–4hrs inside the classroom & remaining time in the outdoor environments.
Self Learning
In my opinion one of the main goals of the school needs to be to empower the kids to learn by themselves, school should have reading materials outside of the prescribed text books for the kids to research additional material in library or online to follow through reading & create some kind of presentation on the chapter to rest of the class.
Ability to learn on own is an important skill for the children as they grow up to face the college education & professional world once they graduate. As a parent you can observe the self learning ability in your kid, when they go beyond their class curriculum, subjects syllabus to solve new problems, build new things from scratch or using other materials at home.
Parents Responsibility
Role of a parent is to ensure they are in sync with School philosophy & be consistent with the child all the time, over the year. Parents need to encourage their kid to retain the curious / creative minds & allow them to dismantle a toy or things at home to understand how it works & possibly build something new using the parts.. don’t worry new concept they learn is 100X worth than the toy / thing being dismantled by your kid.
Better human being
I would like to conclude saying our main objective for picking The Valley School for Aditya is let him be a ‘better human being’ than being an engineer / doctor, let me list down a few core attitudes / behaviour that every kid should ideally hone at the school
- Empathy — understand the situation, circumstances of the situation / other person & then respond. Customise the response
- Ethical — keeping highest standard for himself & for the people around, avoid the temptation to break a rule / take a short cut
- Keep an Open Mind — we meet a lot of people who have a closed mind & come with a decision to the table / group, keeping an open mind & hearing out helps always
- Think Longterm — only experience teaches longterm thinking is good, and people generally learn this after making several mistakes. If they learn this from school days, it would make a world of difference
- Being an improviser — you may not be the perfect at start or day 1 at something, learning not to give up & to be an improviser on daily, weekly & monthly basis, makes the kid a winner
- Respond & not react — professional & personal life experience will be lot simpler, if we all learn to respond rather than reacting to others, it’s like half of the argument is won if we follow this
- Being Sustainable — our work / life events are only causing destruction to nature, and we not being conducive, would growing up with a thought of being sustainable create a better world?
Thanks for tuning in, education / observing children growing up is my favourite subject & enjoyed penning this down.
