The current educational system that most schools have been following in our country has its perks, but at the same time, there are some drawbacks that one can’t ignore. The system focuses on capabilities such as fact retention and memory more than knowledge, and there is very less focus given to the practical application of the knowledge acquired through books. We all realise at some point that school education is never enough. We must not let our children go through the same. The schools are doing great at providing education, but there’s a lot more when it comes to moulding lives.
Every child is unique in his special way. Some children would keep performing well and even excelling in almost everything until you keep praising them; but some children believe in being rebels and would, on purpose, ignore your expectations rather than do the opposite. But most teachers do not pay attention to this uniqueness of children and fail to appreciate their innovative side. Due to this, our schools produce herds of similar-minded students as they were never taught to think out of the box, and even if someone did, their ideas were suppressed to follow the conventional and the so-called ideal methods.
Lack of explorative freedom
The lack of openness to new solutions in our schools leads to hinder the problem-solving skills of students. Schools spend the initial years of children’s education teaching them ways to behave. This norm needs to be replaced by providing children with real knowledge. Children can develop manners later on after the age of 5. However, the first five years must be dedicated to real, unbound and vast learning. People think that children are predictable but, that would be an overstatement. Children can surprise you every second; it is almost as if they have some sort of superpower. Being adults, it becomes our duty to cater to the needs of the extraordinary mind of the children and not let them degrade.
As children reach the age of five, it will be thoughtful to provide them with educational toy for 5-year-olds. These toys will propel their minds to think innovatively and retain the learnings that they gain. The young ones would not view them as sources of learning, and rather they will think of these as other toys. As the young minds slowly start to explore and broaden their creativity and knowledge through such toys, they will find playing with these extremely fun.
Moreover, rarely does our current education system talks about the importance of being a creator or inventors at a young age. Very little emphasis is given on the practice of recognising problems and hunting solutions. Even the countable problems that are discussed throughout our school life are mostly at a global or national level, and the children simply assume they can’t do anything about it.
Need for a practical approach
The initial ten years of a student’s learning must be based on practical experiences, closely related to real-life issues that fellow living beings are facing because this will be something that would stay. There are thousands of resources available nowadays that could aid your child’s learning, and we are just reluctant to look through them, although we realise that we too are trapped in the web of the tried and tested conventional methods.
There’s nothing particularly wrong with the traditional solutions, but as time moves ahead, almost everything changes, and we as living beings must adapt to changes and evolve with time. Not everything that was considered ideal in the gone years would be applicable in the current times. There are books for young learners, activity kits for children, educational toys for 8-year-olds, experiment collections for pre-teens and every other supply that one would need to make their child innovative to the next level. We just need to come out of our shells and provide our children with experiences to last for a lifetime.
