Why are Pre-Schools not under the ambit of Education? Friday, Jul 15 2011

When we had our first child, we imagined ourselves to be very evolved parents – who would work hard at their kids’ upbringing. We zealously made sure that we would nourish her body as well as nourish her mind. Much thought was given to the age when she should start school and which kind of school she should go to. Finally, she started school about a year and half ago. But in this time, we have discovered quite conclusively that the whole pre-school education system is a huge can of worms.

The school we had chosen was 12 kms away from our house. In the introductory speech given by the principal of the school, I asked him how kids cope with the distance, to which he said causally that they get used to it eventually. The first year one needs to pick up and drop the kids and then they come by the school van when they are all settled in school. But since this was bothering me a bit – it was my first child and I had no idea how kids adjust to circumstances, I asked him again when we went to meet him personally. There was not a flicker of doubt on his face when he said, all that will get settled and i should not worry. The parents are the ones who find it difficult to adapt, the kids will have no issues etc.

Apart from this, the school which had classes till XII, followed the Montessori method of teaching which is what I had wanted for our child. They said that unlike conventional schools where 40 kids were taught by one teacher, here the size of the class (or environment as they called it) was 20 and 2 teachers were responsible for it. This sounded really good to us. I have always been a sufferer of too many kids in class kind of environment and many concepts have flown right above my head because no one explained them properly to me and I was not bright enough to understand them myself. Then there were things like shloka classes, mini tennis, breakfast and lunch provided in school at a price after class 1, the discouraging of distributing chocolates and toffees on birthdays and many such happy things which we were quite pleased with. So the decision was taken. We got her admitted to this school. Which meant that we paid more than half a lakh as one time admission fees and around 35K as fee for the year. A lot of money if you ask me for a two-year old – but then, we were investing for her future. We wouldn’t have to shift her out till she finished her education. Or so we thought.

Soon several issues cropped up. We didn’t think to check the timing of the school. It started at 8.15am – which meant that our 2.3 yr old daughter had to be up at 6.30am , latest – a not so easy task for someone accustomed to waking up at 9. This didn’t seem like such an insurmountable problem. The school did give the kids time to settle down to the early timing by starting later and gradually making the start time earlier and earlier.But for us, our kid just became more and more tired as the days passed by and was not able to go to sleep any earlier either. On the other hand, we were also tired of going to drop her and then going to pick her up again – a round trip of 9-0 minutes each time. Both tasks was done by all of our extended family for a couple of months each over a period of a year. Including our not-so-young-anymore mothers. And one gent driving through peak traffic and then getting to office really late and very tired, one pregnant self, throwing up either on the way back or on the way to school. And so on. Very messy. We hired a driver, then sacked the driver. Then hired another driver. Then sacked him also. All with very valid reasons. But the turmoil in our home kept mounting.

Then came the illnesses – one after the other and our child would never get sorted between one illness and the next. The sleep deprivation and the exhaustion wasn’t helping. The frequent holidays this school gave for the pre-school kids was another deterrent for the kids to adjust to school. All told some 3-4 months of the year would be off – for some reason or the other – much more than any other preschool around. Then we learned that each class (or environment) actually had 60 kids and 3 teachers plus a couple of trainees. Very different from 20 kids and 2 teachers if one considers the noise levels in a room full of such small kids.Our kid was coming back home having learned wrong words sometimes, odd pronunciations at times – none of which again were issues which couldn’t be sorted later. But when one assumes that the child will actually get more attention individually, and it appears that no one is really supervising them, it is truly upsetting.

Finally we compounded our error by paying up for the school bus for one term just for the last three months of the year, that too for just one way – coming back from school. No monthly payment here. We were still dropping her to school. After three – four days of coming back in the bus, our little p1 started crying at odd times saying she didn’t want to come back by school bus, even when the subject under discussion was something completely unrelated. Of course, we know the theory that kids cry to get their work done. But this was a bit different. The school bus took more than hour to reach back to our place. The last 20 minutes of the journey was done alone by our child since everyone else had already got off. And she would feel sleepy and doze off only to hit her head against the metal bar of the seat. No aayah/akka/didi from the school supervised the buses even though such little kids traveled in them. Soon little p1 started saying she didn’t want to go to school itself. That did it. We stopped her coming back in the bus and I started going to pick her up every day, leaving my then 3 month old baby with my Mom.

We had to now take the tough decision of shifting her out of the school to something nearby since nothing seemed to be working out. life had become pretty bleak then.  The principal refused to meet us on this subject. We were referred to the head of Montessori who said that this had never happened. It depends on kids – and most of them get used to the distance and go happily by bus. And hence they couldn’t be blamed for it. Our child was just a unique case. Baloney.

What would this mean? We would have to look for a new school and hope they will admit her after one year of going to another school. We would lose 70K of non-refundable fees. Which was a very big blow. And we would have to research, run around and race other parents for admissions in class 1 two-three years later. But since, it had to be done, we did it. And two months later, I am happy to convey that it was the best decision we ever took. The constant tiredness disappeared since this school has a flexible “in” time – when the child is rested and has eaten something between 9 and 10 – very humane I feel. The illnesses are not so frequent and they get sorted quickly. There is certainly more attention paid to the child – where the classroom is really 20 people strong. We have had to compromise on things like kids distributing chocolates for birthdays and even the school handing out toffees on special occasions but that seems to be a small price to pay when our voices are heard at least. And there were enough chocolates coming from her previous school too from parents who chose to disregard the school’s advice. There are monthly PTMs to discuss a child’s progress and issues. If I have a problem, big or small, the Principal is very approachable and it is easy to pass on a message or even talk personally to her. In our earlier school, the whole thing was a cloak and dagger affair, where “sir” would not be bothered about trivial issues like parents wanting to take a child out of the school in just a year and would not grant a meeting.

So my question at the end of my long sad tale  is why did we have to lose nearly a lakh to learn what a school is, how it is run and is it okay for our child? Why must we take that decision when the child is merely 1.8yrs old and we have no idea what sort of toddlers they will grow up to be? Specially, in the case of first time parents, one just doesn’t know enough about kids. This situation would have been so for a lot of kids – I don’t think p1 is unique in that sense.

Why should children who clearly live too far away be admitted at all to the school? Shouldn’t they be refused admission on the basis of geographical proximity – at least where it concerns very young children? Shouldn’t the Principal have the interest of the child in mind rather than just  collect admission fees from all the people who can give them?

Shockingly, such was the case with several more parents that we spoke with – not just in our city but in others too. Parents losing more than a lakh in the first year of their child’s education seems to be more and more common. So why exactly are parents the ones to be penalized? Having higher disposable income does not really mean that any one has that kind of money to throw away. Why should the schools be the ones to profit from all the vacant seats which they can rush to fill the following year? Why should the cost of learning be only of the parents’? Why is nobody regulating the kind of education, the environment offered by pre-schools and the kind of fees charged by them all of which are non-refundable?

In a contest between an institution and an individual, will the latter be the loser all the time?

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This or That? Wednesday, Jul 13 2011

It all started with the toothpaste.

In anticipation of assured felicity in our mutual choice of life partner, my better half and I were complacent. After all, we were both Tam Brams, both from Delhi – even West Delhi, spoke a lot of Hindi, had several common friends and connections, were born in the same year and hence had undergone largely the same experiences growing up, had similar families (2 siblings each) and one set of parents etc.

However, we hadn’t realized that the world (or at least Delhi – which in our view was a fair representation of the world) was split right in the middle and he occupied one part and I, the other. We began to see it with the toothpaste. When I saw him pick up Colgate from the shelf of a super market, I casually asked him if he had used Colgate while growing up. His equally casual “Yes” had me dismayed. “But we used Forhans!”, I exclaimed.

“So did you get Times of India at home back then?”, I asked, casually. “No, we were always the Hindustan Time types”, he replied. Shocking! What had I got myself into?

See, the thing is most things then were available in only two brands. You would be one or the other – hardly ever a third. This was quite puzzling really. Why only two main brands? Possibly because at first there was just one and as soon as people had some disposable income there came another brand just to give them a cursory choice. And so there were people who used Forhans and the Colgate users were “them”. The people who read HT were also them to the TOI readers, just like the TOI readers were “them” to HT readers.

So milk could be bought from Mother Dairy by buying tokens and inserting them in slots for the milk to be poured into your vessel from a receptacle. But there was also DMS or Delhi Milk Scheme which came in packs. We never bought the packets. Firstly, for some reason they were more expensive. Secondly, they were only available in the morning or something. We were the Mother Dairy types.

Bicycles – at least one of which each family had, to be shared among all sundry children, would be either Hero or Atlas.

Biscuits would be Britannia or Parle. Scooters would be Bajaj or LML Vespa. Motor bikes would be Hero Honda or Yamaha. Some were even Kawasaki Bajaj – I guess the one thing of which there were three. Cola drinks would be either Thums Up or Campa Cola. In school one would write in royal blue ink or blue-black ink. (using leaky fountain pens, I must add.) Bread could be either Britannia or Modern. And all bread was white bread. Cars would be either Ambassadors or Fiats. This was of course, before the Maruti 800 days. After that there was just that car everywhere. Batteries used in electronic appliances would be Nippo or Ever ready.

I am sure there are so many more examples which I cannot recollect. Our life so far has been an interesting discovery of whether we are this or that. Which one are you?

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Little Techies Tuesday, Jul 5 2011

I often hear proud parents tell me how their son/daughter is so naughty that not a single remote control in their house is in working order. Their cordless phones have been bashed up and are hanging on to dear life by the dint of scotch tape. They have regressed to using the early man mobile handsets which are cheap and hardy, have none of the fancy functions of the latest touch phones and are hence, less prone to quick disintegration.

Having been blessed with a daughter who is amenable to receiving and following instructions, the control freak in me has had a very easy time so far. Just by telling her that toys are for playing and other things are for uncle aunties to use, I have managed to save all our remote controls, cordless/corded phones, cell phones, sundry music players etc. from premature destruction. p1 has been a most easy child to bring up in that sense. However, little p2, by virtue of his gender or DNA or something has already shown a remarkable predilection for all things gadgety/”electronicy”/”wirey” etc. He examines dinky cars closely for several minutes at a time and gives them a couple of thumps to see what happens. Remotes, cordless handsets, mobile phones, our laptop, its external mouse – all are fair game to him. He loves to pull wires, press all the buttons on the phones, drop the remote from a height to see what happens. Not for a second can I watch television without fighting him off for the possession of the remote. Every phone call I make or take appears to be for him since he comes running (crawling really fast, I mean) each time the phone rings saying ka, ka, ka and wants to pull off the said object from my hand. All this is very wearying and also very worrying. I can manage to fight him off when he is just 9 months old. But what happens when he is a bit older and stronger or starts to do these things surreptitiously? I guess, I can only hope that better sense prevails by then and he leaves these things alone.

On the other hand, it is only now that p1 is nearly 4 years old that she is beginning to handle gadgets with ease as well as frequency. She still does not know much of remote controls – and requests us to switch on the TV for her. She can however, use the home theater – she can switch it on, take out a CD, put in a fresh CD and reverse the process when she’s done watching. Of course, her small hands cannot efficiently handle the CDs without damaging them sometimes. But she is quite at home with the phones. She can dial numbers when we say them aloud slowly. She can have a half way coherent conversation with her grand parents when they pick up the phone.  She runs to pick up the phone when it rings and annoyingly, doesn’t transmit the message to us sometimes – simply because she forgets. She can scroll using the mouse and routinely views old pictures on our laptop. She is just days away from learning to click and select items using the mouse. She expertly, unlocks our cell phones with a swipe of her tiny finger and goes to the required menu item by swiping again and again until she reaches the right page. She can choose the talking tom app or the talking babsy baby app and play all the moves. Sometimes, she goes into a tangent by opening a webpage but we quickly step in and stop the process. She knows how to come out the app by pressing the back key. Phew.

I have seen 6 – 8 year olds use iPods, iPads, PSPs with great alacrity. Their parents, like a lot of others,  believe that exposure to technology is good for kids. We should progress with the times. Now it is no longer admirable to hear that one’s child does not identify television characters or cannot use the computer or any video games.

Even though I am no technophobe, somehow I find it hard to agree with them. Even my p1’s 4 years is much too early for the kind of corruption that can result from gadgets. I can’t help feeling that this is a tender age indeed for this loss of innocence. I really wish she’d play with balls and dolls and balloons and puzzles and toys and skipping ropes and read and colour books, draw, or write. She does all this, no doubt. But technology is also a big part of what she wants to do. Needless to add, she takes a cue from us. A large part of our lives are devoted to technology. Thankfully we still read. Real books. She just emulates us as much as she can.

Sad but true. Technology is here to take over our lives. And it is drawing us in earlier and earlier.

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