Why This Kolaveri Di

The guru shishya parampara in India is an ancient and revered practice. The ancient texts speak about how students used to live with their teachers, and learn what has to be learnt. They learnt the skills of their trade and left the ashram only when the teacher felt that they were equipped to handle their designated roles in society. During this tenure, students were monitored emotionally and psychologically by the guru. The guru knew the strengths and weaknesses of each and every student and hand held him individually; modifying course content till the desired level of proficiency was reached by the student. Education was personalised, the guru was committed and the student was devoted lifelong.

Is the situation today the same? We read and hear of students turning against their teachers. Recently there was a case in Chennai where the teacher was killed by a student. This only brings me to the question ‘Why this kolaveri, di?’ (Which I have been told means why this murderous rage?)

A friend, also a parent of two growing teenagers recently commented, “Its difficult being a kid nowadays. Clothes, mobiles, game machines, academics, the lack of role models and the competition: all are there out for a child to face.” And all this bottles up in the child sometimes converting itself into rage: a rage that is also the culmination of unheard and stifled voices. In classrooms with around seventy kids teachers lack the time, resources and patience to listen to each and every student.

How do we help our teachers work around such situations?

Someone once said, “Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.” I beg to differ. Teaching is a highly specialised field dealing with the future of several generations to come. Each teacher in her career deals with a minimum of 15 generations. So one can only imagine the impact a teacher has in the life of a nation at large. Teacher education and in service teacher training is highly essential for our teachers to be able to handle the emotionally charged students of today. Teachers need to be people who are trained and equipped to handle these high pressure jobs. They need to be content masters and at the same time pedagogically sound to handle the emotional outbursts of their students.

The responsibility of the well being of a student is surely a combined one and it is up to the both the stakeholders i.e. the parents and the school to meet and discuss the issues that plague the child. Rarely is the initiative taken by the school or the teacher. And this is largely, not just because of the heavy workload of teachers but due to the lack of appropriate training for the teacher. The teacher needs to be trained to have a discerning eye to notice any voice of dissent in any student and initiate to resolve this with the student and the parents.

In-service training is highly essential to maintain the quality of teachers. During pre-service training most student-teachers are just out of their youth and do not usually have the maturity and life experience to take on the mantle of other lives. But as they go ahead in their career, they get trained by the job and by their interaction with their students. And this is where in-service training is very important. As teachers move ahead in their careers, they tend to get rigid and fixed about their ideas, their teaching practices are rarely renewed and their mind sets get reinforced. Refresher courses are essential to into their lives new theories of education, the latest trends in the educational field and ideas that will help break existing mind sets. A constant regeneration of ideas helps bridge the gap between the teacher and the student. What we need to remember is that the age gap between the teacher and the student is increasing with every passing year and the teacher deals with increasingly younger age groups. If the connect between the teacher and the student is not renewed time and again then the generation gap will stare into the face of the teacher.

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Reading Is Right

Srishti works as a senior manager in a multinational and is highly upset with the new batch of trainees that have entered her organisation. “Every year the problem seems to be getting worse”, she complains, “These guys can’t even draft a letter properly. If I ask them to quote someone, they wouldn’t have even heard of the names! I wonder if they read anything while they were growing up. I give them a list of books to read and they hardly manage to finish even one over a three week period. They are good with their content but when it comes to reading, they just don’t want to go beyond the newspaper!”

This is not an isolated case. One of the major problems faced by many senior level managers today is the resistance of employees to reading new stuff. A sense of complacency settles in lives of many people once they have finished their college education and are well placed in their jobs. The only reading that many adults do is that of the daily newspaper. Mark Twain once remarked, “If you don’t read the newspaper, you are uninformed, but if you read the newspaper, you are misinformed.”

The key to survive the competitive market today is communication. The most important tool that aids communication is good language. And good language stems from good reading.

Michael Gove, the Education Secretary of the United Kingdom has said that kids should read at least 50 books a year. This follows a study undertaken by him on the falling standards of reading among teenagers in the UK.  Research shows that the chances of a seven year old owning a mobile phone is 90% higher than him owning a book.

That brings us to the question of the day. How do we address Shriti’s problem? Are we rearing a generation that is slowly losing out on the reading skills? If the answer to this is yes, then it’s time we got up and took stock.

I can hear voices that ask me, why do we need to read? If it’s for information: then it’s all there on the internet. If it’s for entertainment, then I have a movie to watch or a game to play? Why something as passive as reading?

And this is exactly where the misconception lies: Reading deceptively looks passive but is highly active in nature.

Reading activates synaptic connections in the brain that impact other sensory interpretations also. Recent research by the neuroscientist Stanislaus Dehaene indicates that reading actually improves the way the brain functions in a number of important ways. While the mind tries to discover how the characters feel and respond it also tries to see, hear and think like them. Meanwhile it tries to decipher counter arguments for the ones placed in the book.

“Most of my trainees”, says Srishti, “inform me that they never read anything but school text books through school. They were never encouraged either. A few of them read despite their schools but stopped somewhere down the lane”. This is why reading needs to be cultivated as a habit for life. It’s not difficult to get kids hooked on to reading. We just need to figure out what is it that encourages them to read. Without trying to impose what we think is right reading, we need to encourage the reading habit .If your kid loves fiction hand him ‘The diary of a Wimpy Kid’. If she adores nonfiction, the latest National Geographic could just do the trick. The process into initiating kids into reading has to be pleasant. Many kids read all their school books but do not step out of that domain. Forcing kids to read will only drive them further away.

Set up a reading time at home when all members of the family only read. Switch off the television; keeps your mobiles on silent; answer them only if there is an emergency and enjoy the reading session. Let your kids read light material if they do not want to read a novel. Display good books around the house. Some day she will be curious enough to pick it up. Take them book shopping, when you shop only for books and nothing else. Get them a library membership. Read the book she is reading and discuss it with her. That sends out the signal that you care about what she reads and you share his tastes. It might motivate her to want to pick up what you read so that she can discuss it with you!

Reading helps create pictures in the mind. These connections are highly important to the development of the brain. Programs on television offer the brain pictures and the brain finds accepting this less challenging .Hence it doesn’t take in as much. Ask anyone who has watched a movie made on a book they have read, they will always tell you that the movie disappointed them. The images of the movie clash with their mental pictures of the book and someone else’s idea in the movie never comes up to the movie in their own mind. I never found Dev Anand’s Raju Guide as delectable as R. K. Narayan’s.

This is where the genre of comics plays an important role. Super heroes fascinate. So let them revel in the world of Phantom, Superman, Batman or any other legendary hero. The Amar Chitra Katha Series is a major source of edutainment and has held generations captivated. Comic reading abounds in fantasy and fiction. The light reading that it provides along with images has the motivational power to get kids to read heavier stuff at their own discretion. 

Shristi noticed that her trainees used the most basic vocabulary. Even if she sent them back their project reports, they never came up with outstanding work. Most adults often find themselves stuck up for words. This is because they lack a vocabulary at their beck and call. The brain divides vocabulary into active and passive. Active vocabulary is relatively easy to recall and used regularly. The passive vocabulary however is in the subconscious mind, which comes to the fore when needed. The passive vocabulary bank is built when one reads and deposits words in them. The brain then attempts to use the words appropriately.

Shrishti also realised that most of her trainees were as comfortable with technology as they were at ill ease with books. Every succeeding generation is exposed more to technology than ever before. Every home today is a technology treasure trove with innumerable gadgets that garner attention of kids. These offer games, songs and other predetermined programs that have limited value in igniting the greatness of each individual mind.  They keep the kids entrapped with their glamour and glitz .A growing dependence on the internet, search operations, algorithms to monitor what sites we visit ensure that we are flooded with similar material at all times. Reading becomes the poor second cousin.

Can we then tap the power of technology to get kids to read?

E readers like Kindle and Nook offer books on the computer. Though most of them are on sale, there is a vast store house that allows free download of books. With technology in their hands, they feel they have something that belongs to them and something that they identify with. The iPad is also equipped with a good e reader.  

The internet readers today have so many options to choose from. The moment they figure out that content doesn’t engage them they move on the next link. This is increasing their level of intolerance towards reading. But this can also be used to their advantage. Accessing different stories simultaneously, the reader draws by his own path of natural curiosity to reach some option that he may never even have considered reading .The internet has the capacity to take people on a tour of self discovery.

You might not have kids reading 50 books in a year but half an hour a day of sound reading will lead to lifetime of experiences. Real or virtual, reading books is a life skill.

Confucius opined “No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self chosen ignorance.” These ring true even today.

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