Poets and children have one thing in common; a sense of wonder. Albert Einstein would protest; don’t exclude the scientists. Their intuitive capability is an undying source of wonder that keeps them going in their pursuit of knowing what seems to be unknowable. With age this sense loosens its grip because of the monotony produced by uniformity which is sine qua non of success in the prevalent socio-economic structures. Sadly, we try our best to kill our children’s sense of wonder by forcing them to a straight path defined by tradition which means, to borrow from Paulo Frere, we treat them as bank accounts where we deposit what is deemed fit by the system.
Poet Brecht paints a poignant image of what such children when they grow up are reduced to; “Why do the people stand in the yard like rubbish bins–waiting for something to be put into them?”
Children’s critical faculty is nipped in the bud because it is treated as something challenging. Their thinking mind is made terribly passive as it is trained to store what is put into it and consequently it relies on the deposits provided by the system while making decisions, small and big. No questioning, no use of critical tools. In our homes and schools, and madressahs, a child who asks questions is a nuisance and is silenced as a nagging voice. To be critical is a sign of insolence and ill-culture. Traditional values teach children to accept authority. Till the recent past – at some places even now – a father taking his child to a school would say to the teacher; “maas tuhada, hadian saadian” meaning that teacher can do whatever he likes with the child by way of punishment in the course of study. The mark of a good child is to respect what is given irrespective of its quality. Authority, parental and social, decides what to impart to the children and what to withhold. This is closely related with our practice of rote learning. And this is not merely confined to formal schools. Children of the working class who are consigned to workshops suffer the same fate; they are taught skills bit by bit but are not allowed to either question the content nor the method of what they are taught.
A boy, for example, is taught to repair auto vehicles but never told about the scientific laws that make the machine function. With the pervasive penetration of private education in recent decades which is forbiddingly expensive there has been a change; parents try to make sure that the child is not subjected to corporal punishment but at the same time are least pushed about child’s mental health which is going to be negatively impacted by the content of what would be stuffed into his/her head. Curiosity is an anathema. A good child is an obedient child.
We also make our children suffer from another malaise; a disconnect with real life. They live in a bubble created by an ideological fallacy that has little to do with our collective life. They are not taught in their natural language, the language natural to the area they inhabit, which alienates them from the people, their way of life, geography, culture, history and flora and fauna. Children in cities especially of middle and upper classes know nothing about our agriculture; how crops are sown and harvested, how livestock is raised, how vegetables are cared for, what insects and birds inhabit their countryside, what kind of rivers and streams water their land, how the people live who literally produce bread and butter for them in the cities. That’s why when grown up, they don’t have a rounded personality. They end up as petty minded with a nasty habit of looking down upon ordinary working people who are a backbone of our concrete life.
In some educational European countries and Israel it has been customary to take children to the countryside during vacations to acquaint them with the people and environment that produce for them vegetables, fruit, meat, wool and milk and so many other things. I have observed that in England parents and teachers, together and separately, take children to vegetable farms, fruit gardens and animal farms to expose them to life different than that of their own. Such a practice is absolutely enriching for the young as they learn from their firsthand experiences.
Can’t we do this for the sake of our children? Can’t we make it mandatory for our schools to take their young students to the countryside once a year? Can’t we encourage and incentivise growers, farmers, landowners and those who raise livestock to create facilities that help fulfil educational needs and are mutually beneficial? Can’t we take the children from the rural areas to the urban centres once a year to make them experience the fast paced modern life? Can’t we do it when our rural areas are within a stone’s throw of our cities? Can’t we teach our children our own language that can effortlessly connect them with our culture, history, geography and boost their cognitive development. It can also help our children get the burden of translating their observations and experiences into alien languages off their chest? Above all, can’t we change our outdated regressive pedagogy? One feels it is possible but perhaps not probable in the present scheme of things created by our fallacious worldview based on ideology rather than realistic and rational view of life. Changing it would threaten the privileges of the privileged. Currently, tradition rules supreme in our society which means that our past rules our present ignoring the fact that the present is shaped by the imperatives of changed contemporary needs. An even worse aspect of this collective habit is that the past glorified as an example to follow is a selective past bereft of objectivity. One can see this in the values we preach and the history we teach.
(Opinion) Published in Dawn, February 17th, 2025
