Discouraged and Disheartened

It is times like these that make me so very discouraged and disheartened.

With Class III, Jordan and I are starting the theme “Story Time” where we go through fairy tales together and eventually, the kids will write their own story. Currently we are going though “Little Red Riding Hood” and after attempting worksheets and comprehension sheets that completely failed, as they simply did not understand the story, we broke the story down. We would write down a sentence from the story on the board and they would have to draw what the sentence is talking about. Even this was difficult as they refused to draw something that we didn't draw on the board. They would cry out, “Miss, I don't know how to draw!” so we had to draw it on the board for them to copy. This is something that I found very strange as children have amazing imaginations and love drawing. So we went through the story, which we broke down into eight sentences, drawings and all. Then we wrote down a simple comprehension question on the board: What happens at the start of Little Red Riding Hood?

This question created an uproar. They had absolutely no idea and Jordan and I refused to tell them the answer. Three kids refused to write and gave up their exercise books, which Jordan and I bought ourselves (we bought each child in Class II, Class III and Class IV an exercise book as our classes are not considered a separate subject and they never had spare paper on them), with full knowledge that once they hand in their books they will never get it back. After witnessing this, many of the other kids tried to hand in their books. They chucked the new books on the floor or around the room but I didn't collect them. At this point, I was so discouraged, disappointed, angry, sad and any other negative emotion. How did such chaos arise from a simple comprehension question? I don't know how I can make Little Red Riding Hood easier. The children here are not encouraged to think for themselves. But I am not going to give them to answers for them to memorise. I want them to understand and think for themselves!

Two girls from Class IV (Yankey and Sneha) and one girl from Class V (Pranisha) are participating in the Interschool Competition that is being held tomorrow. Two weeks ago, the organisation that holds this competition e-mailed all the participating schools the questions and answers that is going to be in the test. This whole week, those three girls did not attend class but sat in the staffroom with no breaks (excluding toilet and lunch breaks), memorising the questions and answers. They get slapped on the hand or pinched on the arm or hit on the head and shouted at for getting a question wrong or answering too slowly. On Wednesday, the supervising teacher said, “You need to be sacrificing your sleep to study.” And today Pranisha was scolded for sleeping at 8pm. “You should be sleeping at 10 and waking up at 4!” These are ten year old children for goodness sake! They should be running around in the quad, playing handclaps with their friends and running away from boys with cooties. I understand and agree that memorising is a required part of learning but this competition does not expand the child's education. It has at least three parts to it and one section, which goes for seven pages, is a quiz of useless facts (a question is: What country is known as "The Land of Earthquakes"? Apparently it's Japan). The teachers are putting the school's reputation over the physical and mental health of these children.

This mentality of memorising rather than understanding and going with your own opinion is something heavily engrained into the way things are here that children at the age of seven can't even draw without copying the teacher. This must be detrimental for the children's future! I blame the Indian education system. Not cool. Not cool at all.