How And What Kids Learn
Every once in a while, when I am sitting on the PC, trying to do some work, our younger one knocks at the back of my chair.
“Knock Knock”
“Who’s there?”
“Somebody who wants to watch a song”
“What Song?”
Thus, daddy dear stops working and becomes the DJ for a moment, playing songs on YouTube for the young Bollywood fan. Let’s keep the debate about the impression on young mind from these songs for some time parked.
So, one of these days I was playing a song for her from the movie “Yeh Jawani Hai Diwani”, that we have watched together as a family some time ago. One of the songs from the movie, “Tere Liye Signal Tod Tad Kay”, was playing.
About half way through the song, the kiddo commented,
“But Papa this is not the complete song, a lot of portions are missing”.
I was like “what is missing?”, as I could not understand what is missing in the song.
Then the kiddo enlightened me,
“See Papa, they have cut the boy and girl who are getting married.”
“Who was getting married?”
“Aditi and Karan, unkee marriage function main toh everybody is coming and dancing”.
My head was spinning, who are these Aditi and Karan, only to be told by our 4.5-year-old that it was the marriage of Aditi and Karan in which Deepika and Ranbir are dancing, and some of the scenes on this video on YouTube video were cut and not the same as in the movie.
I started wondering, here is a kid whose mother has to spend more than an hour every day to make her learn simple spellings and counting, etc. yet she remembers a song in a movie seen a few months ago, with the names of characters who are not even the lead pair of the movie.
I was wondering are we teaching kids the right way. I mean, it clearly shows there is nothing wrong with the kiddo as she can remember things that she is interested in and watched many months ago. But she forgets spellings, synonyms and other things from her book for which both her teacher and mother struggle to teach her.
It is obvious, the way we are teaching our kids from books, etc. is not the best way to make them develop interest in studies and even to remember things. Most of our efforts are going in making sure they get good marks in the exams, get through entrance exams, etc. (yes these exams and marks keep on haunting us no matter what).
On the other side, for things like a song of a movie that the kid is interested in, not only does she remember it on her own, but is able to educate her father also.
I think it is high time the schools adopt a better way of educating kids. I do know some of the schools which are using multimedia for imparting lessons about various things to kids. But my personal experience with these things is very limited. We try to include some of these things in our own way at home but continuously get sucked in the marks/exam’s black holes.
I would love to hear the experience of other parents about how your kids are learning a few things that interest them without you ever teaching them and vice-versa, when you struggle to make them learn a few things from the school curriculum.
Sasha and Prasad Np are proud parents of 2 girls whom they fondly call Princess and Pinkette. He wears many hats after taking a break from being corner office critter for a long time. He is now an entrepreneur, blogger, photographer, traveler and a potential investor in start-ups with unique concepts especially if they are in travel related business. He blogs at Desi Traveler, and can be reached at Facebook and Twitter.
