We have been looking for schools in the last few weeks. My kid is in a waldorf school now and they are shifting to a campus that is far away from our home. So we thought to change now and started looking for schools both in main stream and alternate.
Alternative or other system of teaching like Montessori/Waldorf is kind of ruled out given the availability of schools, its location which is mostly far away from city or the schools near by are not trustable on how well they follow the core philosophy of the school.
Our expectation is only very nominal like no academic pressure, some what quality teachers ( lowered the expectation), decent infrastructure with play ground, non AC and reachable management. But we couldn’t find even a single school satisfying all these. Quality teachers seems to be a bigger issue for most schools, we thought ok to go for schools with experienced teachers for higher grades but even this cannot be confirmed.
Going back and forth on the schools list, primary question that we need to answer our self is ‘what do you expect the schools to give for your kid during their time with school’.
Today we went to one of name brand schools and their vice principal mentioned that they will ensure to teach moral values to the kids. I was wondering, what !!! She followed saying that they have to respect and obey their parents, socialize with people, what to talk and what not to talk,… where are we going ???. That reminded me why we are not intuitive, why are we not questioning, why are we not dreaming because we are trained to do and talk what our teachers or parents or some one say.
Okay then what do you expect from a school that too mainstream schools. I think if schools just teach them to read and write, that is sufficient. Learning has to come from the kid through listening, comprehending, applying thoughts, questioning back or challenging that will help to fully understand the concept. If a kid can do this for a simple concept, then the complexity doesn’t matter.
But is this responsibility of a school or can this be obtained in the schooling. In an ideal school, teachers would promote the learning and pay attention to individual kids. They would enable them to learn at their own pace. But I seriously doubt if we will get such a school. If not school, how will my kid develop this for herself. Today I was hearing JM’s speech on “why students have to study literature?” . One point that stuck me is, only literature can make you think beyond what is explicitly written. It helps you to dream and attach your own meaning to it. I think this is very insightful and kind of revelation. As a young adult, when i was reading novels there was a dreamy world but over the period fiction becomes unproductive. Chetan bhagat’s book became uninteresting after couple of books but Haruki Murakami created a dreamy world as Ponniyin selvan. Now a days, it is all about productiveness and less about imagination. Its a unknown trap but never too late to resume.
Getting back to Schools, the question remains the same and the search will continue. But one thing clear is what ever learning from the schooling process is also applicable for the parent. If we want our children to apply it.
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