Which Alma Mater .....

Tis the admission season for 1st std and Junior KG here and the frequent topic of discussion among parents obviously revolves around schools - merits / demerits , admission process , entrance tests [ call it is what you will - assessment, admission test , writing picnic ... :) ] ..

There is the usual name dropping and mentioning of the influence one has in varied schools and the other end of the spectrum with parents forging birth certificates and hauling moolah to get their wards into the school of their choice. And then gloating over the poor souls who have had to go the regular route to get admissions ! Not nice at all !!

All parents have their reasons for seeking schools they like .. but some reasons puzzle me ... Among them the top two I am going to elaborate on.

1. Choosing a school because it is a good school.

Ok ... I have not gone crazy here .... no one wants to choose a bad school for their child and there is nothing overtly wrong in choosing a school because it is good. I would however go one step further and evaluate if the school would be good for the child.

There are many good schools each having their own educational philosophy - some that follow old methodologies of teaching , some that look at newer ways of teaching. Some well established and not in danger of being shut down in a couple of years and some that have an attrition rate of teachers that would give a BPO company a run for their money !!

A school has such an impact on the child's development that one would think that knowing the child's personality and trying to reasonably match it with the school's ideologies would figure somewhere on the list !!!

I am not getting into the other reasons for wanting to get into a particular school - the peer/alumni network, the social pressure , the academic/sports expectations of the parents , the family traditionally going to the same school , age related issues ( too young / too old ), coming in the middle of the year and not having many choices, religious inclinations ... etc ...

2. Choosing a school / board because the parent can handle the syllabus/language.

This almost always stumps me !! Isn't this a disservice to the child ? Shouldn't the child's needs/requirements come first ? And when I look at the curve of learning the past 2 decades ... it seems so apparent that a parent will never be able to handle the syllabus !!! :)

I mean how many of us learnt how to use the internet because our parents taught us ? :))

How many kids tell their parents what latest technology toys/games/mobiles/cameras to buy ? More than one would like to acknowledge !

Children are almost always ahead when it comes to learning something new. Parents - unless they are the uber learning/coping type cannot always hope to keep on top of the curve ... And nobody even knows what tomorrow's wave is going to be !!!

And then languages ... the CBSE board is considering making Mandarin a part of the syllabus. French , German , Spanish already figure in the foreign languages section .. how many parents learn these ? [ Mind you there are parents who do learn and teach their children !! Kudos to them ! :) ].

For that matter how many parents have children who have learnt Sanskrit whereas the parent has not learnt it ? :)

To me it seems self-evident that parents over-estimate their ability to teach ! Or may be I am under-estimating the desire and drive to teach ... But then this is just me .... perhaps marching to the beat of a slightly different ( weird? ) drum on this issue ... :)
 
But to equip a child for the future I would think the most important thing a school can teach a child would be the ability to learn, unlearn and relearn. [ To quote from Alvin Toffler - "The illiterate of the 21st Century will not be those who cannot read or write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn." ]
 
And ofcourse use the knowledge. To use another quote which I recently heard and loved [ Its raining quotes here ! :) ]
 
It is not the deficiency of knowledge that matters; it is the efficiency of its usage !