Learning is joyful in itself. There was a survey done to find out the activity that humans enjoy the most. According to the results, the most-enjoyed activity of humans is learning new things. Surprising, isn’t it ? But that’s the fact. Children, especially, love to learn more and more new things. In fact, their whole existence is about learning. They keep learning 24×7 – learning through observation, learning through experience (activities on their own).
Now, naturally, the question arises: if children enjoy learning, and in school they get to learn new things, why the joy is not seen?
The answer is simple: children are interested in learning new things and our system is interested in making them learn the same thing repeatedly for the sake of exams.
The fact is, formal education can be simple and joyful. Formal education is a part of life but not life itself. Free time, playtime and family time are as important as study time. Masti, harmless mischief, carefree playing, aimless wandering etc. are equally important-learning takes place during these times, as well.
Today, the purpose of school education has remained, most often, comparison and competition, for no concrete good reason. Competition for no reason neither makes a child intelligent nor enhances a child’s thinking. A human success (happiness and progress) is dependent mainly on the flowering of the mind and enhancement of intellectual abilities. The race is exactly opposite of this.
At the end of the year, the school is able to give results and marks.
But just think evaluation of what ?
- Only memory (acquiring knowledge in short term memory )
- Only writing right answer (being more and more perfect ) or
- Understanding (retaining knowledge in long term memory )
How about…..
- Thinking ( enhancement of the intellect)
- Intelligence (ability to think on one’s own, critical thinking )
- Courage (risk taking, gut feeling)
- Creativity (ideas, experiments)
- Knowing oneself (clarity about own priorities)
As there are a number of students to be examined at a time, it is not possible to check them each individually for parameters such as ability to think, intelligence, courage, creativity etc. All we can evaluate is whether the concept has been understood to some extent; more about an evaluation of memory skills. So, as we can check only this parameter, we (parents, teachers and schools ) compare this and our focus goes just on memorizing syllabus.
Be sure that due to more free time, play time your child is becoming more intelligent, creative, clear about own liking’s, a good observer, more courageous and a curious learner.
The only difficulty is that we are unable to measure it. Just because marks are measurable we are comparing only that and entering in meaningless, mark-oriented memory-based race and getting trapped in it.
Learning in itself is joyful. One should learn for joy, not for the race .This is real education- creating love toward learning. This gives birth to a lifetime learner.