On 4/10/08, Thaths <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> When I was growing up, my parents lacked the money or connections or
> even knowledge to be able to send me to schools like Rishi Valley.
> They did send me to pretty good mainstream disciplinarian, 100%
> success rate ("Most of our students get into IIT") schools by their
> standards. However, I thoroughly detested most of these schools. There
> were a handful of friends and teachers (mostly Geography and English
> teachers. Hmmm. Wonder why Geo and English teachers are usually the
> most helpful) who made the experience bearable. For a long time after
> I left school I believed my education (not learning) could have fared
> better at a school like Rishi Valley.
>
Same boat, but I was a rat. :-)> However, I have started having second thoughts about this. It is true > that mainstream schools work on a cookie cutter model churning out IIT > and AIIMS students at a steady clip. These schools also force > adolescents to learn the System in which the school operates and game > it to succeed in it. I am beginning to wonder whether this ability to > learn about how a System operates and to hack it is as important as > creative, pressure-less nurturing for the long term success of an > individual. Thaths, I agree with your take. In many of the 'alternative' schools (but not in all schools) 'skills' such as in math or other sciences is looked down upon as opposed to the virtues of painting or pottery or pottering around which are supposed to be elevating and all that The problem is that many folks artificially create this schism either because of their own fears about math or because of the inadequacy of the system to support regular teachers (who could also be phenomenal). On the contrary the 'regular' school folks talk ill of these arty-farty schools which churn out 'misfits' whether or not their contention is supported by facts. Actually IMO fine/performing arts don't have to be seen in opposition to math kinda stuff, They are NOT mutually exclusive streams. In the school that we are associated with, we have a reasonably happy Midway - math is not frowned upon, art is not considered snooty etc etc - though our kids cannot SAT thru exams and fly to Chicago, not yet. o har har... (sorry) Pressureless nurturing: Actually, when a kid's imagination is kindled and captured, the kid bloody slogs, day in and day out, in her/his pursuit of what the kid wants to know/systhesize/digest - whether it is about planets or differential equations of butterflies. To see the kids who create their own deadlines (stretch ones at that) and take help when they want is, truly amazing. I have been fortunate to see these kinds of 'magic' - how else one could describe the wonderful thing? Actually in a few 'alt' schools there IS pressure, but it is not a mindnumbing one at all. :-) System hacking: I hope what you mean by this is not system beating :-) - the latter, the exclusive reserve of so many smart scoundrels that I know, many of them from IITs The point that I am trying to grapple with / articlulate (may be mathiculate also) is that - If a 'normalized' child whose developmental stages are adequately addressed at appropriate times, sets his heart at a task, it bloody well accomplishes that. This would be true of any school. Rules of the game: What we need to do is to help/assist the kid, giving it a nurturing environment. This does NOT mean that the kids from 'alt' schools are NOT primed to face the competitive world. IMO, in a canonical schooling system, the kid is trained to understand the rules of game/social_system, understand one's place in it, be clear about what one wants to do and pursue it with single minded devotion. Since you brought up the rishivalley topic, I would say that many of my batchmates were actually from rishivalley and I studied in one of these offending 'elite' engg schools; mea culpa. These folks had interesting ingmarbergmanish sensibilities coupled with the killer instinct of toshiro mifune.A nice combo, I think. Anyway, the point is that regular or irregular schools, the onus is actually on the parents. What we need to do is to make the child blossom on its own, giving it a good environment, choices, and feedback as parents and as folks not interested in Dgeneration . As the Godfather2 dialogue goes - it is difficult, but not impossible. ;-) What I need to do is to just shut up and start sleeping, __r. -- http://www.qsl.net/vu2sro/ The lyfe so short, the Craft so long to lerne. -- Geoffrey Chaucer (The Assembly of Fowles)
