School Concert photographers and outdated thinking patterns

School Concert

I do not understand the school photographer's business case for digital images at all.

See when one is attending a concert in the school - we cannot take snaps / videos since it will disturb the children. So obviously we as parents refrain from doing so. Hence the photographer gets to choose the amount he charges for a snap and normally IMO it tends to be exorbitant for no reason.

Still most parents wanting the memories do shell out the required amount. And these are for the hard copies mostly 6 x 8 prints.

Last year it happened the same way - we paid for the prints and yet the photographer did not want to part with the digital snaps. Why ?? This is the reasoning I do not understand. He said he would charge something like 100 Rs per digital copy. Seriously ????  I mean what do the parents want the snaps for ? To share - most likely on fb / flickr and for memories. It is not like these are National Geographic snaps that one has to worry about digital rights to them .. correct ?

So the parents obviously - just scan the damn snaps and share it. And whose loss is that ? The photographer's of course. I would think for a nominal amount he could get a good extra chunk of money for the same thing. But seems the reasoning is archaic - if we do get the digital copies , we can make umpteen copies and put him out of business. Really ???? Doesn't that sound silly ?? For one thing if I get a good scan - I can make any number of copies. Yes they may not be the same as the original but they will be good enough. Most concert snaps one can rarely enlarge after all so the RAW image quality is not required.

And who these days makes that many prints anywayz ? Not many I would think. Finally whoever gets back to that photographer for concert snaps ? Nobody ... !!!! So after a period of time [ if at that ] he would delete the whole lot and it is such a waste.

In the the previous nursery school - the photographer only put those snaps that we had paid money for (prints) and charged for the CD.  I wish this year this person did that - instead he is stuck in the same medieval thoughts.

I did speak to the school office about it and they are also steeped in age old ideas of rights and ability to make multiple copies off the scanned images. These cannot be viewed in the same light as -ves. We have moved way beyond that in the internet age. Although going by their behavior we are still stuck about 30 years back.

In these days of mobile snaps and their prevalence who would upload a 5.8 MB file on fb ?? Looks outdated thinking is not restricted to politics alone !

Empathy

Empathy - Magic bullet to cure all problems !

Is that an eye-catching title ? Or more like a silly way to catch attention to something like a sale ? Never mind ! :) As a Mom  of a school going child .. one thinks perennially about schooling / classes / tuition / education system / school boards / subjects and the like.

And while there are so many things one learns in school and so many things that get 'unlearnt' - like the joy of learning while pursuing marks - I feel that if there is one thing that I could add to the syllabus - I would add the teaching and learning of empathy.

Now this does not sound very earth shaking does it ? But it would bring about a paradigm shift in the thinking process and the way life itself is handled.

Why empathy ?

• For one thing is is not wishy-washy like sympathy.
• Secondly it involves some amount of imagination and courage. It makes us go beyond ourselves and into the shoes of the person across whom we are sitting.
• It is more than conscience too.
• It is not connected with religion at all. So no dogmas need follow.

Yes all other moral values like - honesty, compassion, discipline, contentment ( vs avarice ), industriousness , respect for others etc are good but I would think empathy is at the root of all these values.

Think about it -

• If the creator of the Ponzi scheme was empathetic - he may not have ended up looting the life savings of so many old retired people. He/She would have understood the devastation that loss would bring about.
• Domestic violence would not be an issue b'cos the person involved would understand the physical and mental pain the victim would feel.
• Women complaining about the glass ceiling and discrepancy in wages for the same work would be heard with an open mind.
• Dowry deaths especially the heinous burning would be a thing of the past.
• We would perhaps switch to "Ahimsa Silk" so as to not kill the millions of silk worms for our usage. Ditto with animal furs...
• Child Abuse would make the person feel so abhorrent that it would not come to play at all ....
• Human trafficking - what is that ? :)
• We would have fire escapes that work, more water works in villages where women have to go miles for water, roads that don't vanish in monsoons, teenagers who think it is great to weave around aging trucks with no power steering more circumspect.
• Who would there be to teach a guy to walk into a railway station and fire bullets into unsuspecting people ?
• Nobody would wake up after an operation with a wrong missing body part.

... And so on ......

Empathy -  would lead to being more responsible. More open to negotiations. Not just expecting without taking responsibility. Ameliorating problematic situations. It would make us better humans. And therein lies the crux.

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 !