My Paatshala

My hands are paining! My eyes are burning! Ah! My back is breaking, “How much more”? And can I just stop now?

These are not the pleas of the daily laborers who are toiling in the hot sun, carrying heavy loads, but of the school going children.

Right from the time they are 2 – 3 years old, we decide to send them to school where they are taught

·       Shapes

·       Colors

·       Textures

·       Size

·       Names of objects

These are things that the kids can learn at home by trial and error, we are after all talking about little people who have been here and done it sometime or the other. They will learn sooner or later. But no sir! sorry, we are in a big hurry we do not have time and have to catch up with the rat race.
According to the ancient Indian system, a ritual called “Akshara abhyasam” or “vidhya arambam” is performed at the age of 6.  That is when the mind is ready to understand complex reasoning. In our culture the concept of written work did not exist and the child was taught verses orally thereby improving memory. 

A school in its purest form must induce the thirst for knowledge. The primary intention of education was to strike a balance between the physical, emotional and mental states of the individual. Once the mind and body are in harmony, one can talk of teaching hard core concepts. The student was taught by inciting curiosity and thereby extracting questions for which relevant answers where sought by both the student and the teacher.

Today the schools are more like factories that actually put every other child into the same mold irrespective of whether they fit or not. Surprisingly most children fit, save some rebels to call them that. Throwing a glance at the typical day of say a three year old the day starts with the kid lolling in bed till say 8-o-clock in the morning. The mother hurries the child to be ready in time for a school that normally starts at 9 or 9.30 pm. The little joys of the morning time like the sunrise, the birds chirping in a nearby tree, the squirrels scurrying about is lost. Then in the school the child is made to write the Alphabet like it is their only chance of surviving through the day. Back home the kid brings a load of the same survival kit to ensure further longevity. But that is not all, we will send them for extra (ordinary) classes after which the child gets to watch several scholarly shows like Doreamon, Ninja Hattori, Ben 10, and so many more in the same lines, till it is time to eat and go to bed.
What are these young children learning? There is no possibility for curiosity in this case. In today’s system we do not talk of this knowledge. Our only concern is to feed stale and useless information in the name of education, there is no scope to use a technique based on research and remedy as the current system is based on a set syllabus which the student merely has to memorize. That apart every other child is branded as either "A slow learner", "ADDHD", "Autistic", and the list goes on as they find newer words in the English dictionary thereby breaking the very core of that little human being. 
The great scientist Albert Einstein said, 

“The only source of knowledge is experience”. And also
“It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge”. .

The one person I consider to have been truly enlightened after “The Buddha” is Albert Einstein. Had he be born in India am sure we would have the Einstein Mahapeetam dedicated in his glory thronged by the Einsteinites from all over the country as he could not be a mere mortal in our eyes. The point is that our ancient religious texts are nothing but scientific treatises. There are references to the “big bang theory” and what the scientists call the BOSONIC Particle, in Thirumular’s Thirumandiram, The Rigveda, and the Brihadharanyaka Upanishad. By categorizing them as sacred, divine and godly in the name of religion the wisdom of our country is lost in antiquity.

The present education system is successful in creating memory machines that can reproduce everything that is fed to it. We are each born with different gifts and thereby equipped differently to pursue in those lines. We all are most definitely not empty shells; there is something or the other in each of us that is unique and hence useful to the others. 

What we need at this point is a system that combines the ancient method to teach the new age concepts. Ideally a school

   Must be close to home

   Must be located preferably in a place with a lot of open area

   The teacher student ratio must be 10 : 1

   The school must start early

   The school must begin with Yoga sessions everyday

   There should not be any prescribed text books

 The class should be conducted in a responsive manner, based on research made on the subject by both the students and the teacher.

   A typical day at school should be interjected with training in  music, dance and art training

   Martial arts must be mandatory for boys and girls alike

Most people may find these ideas idealistic and impractical. "Whatever the mind can conceive and believe the mind can achieve".
India today needs radical men and women who can break free from the prototype and go back to our roots when every individual was enlightened. The time has come when we as a nation have to wake up to the need to enforce moral values that are utterly lacking in our system and work toward achieving it.