Dr Sugata Mitra, Chief scientist, NIIT, famous for the hole in the wall experiment argues that in a rapidly changing world the skills taught to
children have to evolve as well. For instance it would be hard for our
ancestors to believe that fencing and archery are not important subjects in our
current curriculum! Perhaps fifty years hence future generations will look back
and click their tongues at the hours they wasted in writing notes and
memorizing history dates. Dr. Sugata Mitra, instead recommends giving children
the skill to glean relevant information for themselves from the huge repository
for information – the internet, fondly nicknamed Google Chacha!
As anybody who has spent enough time surfing would testify
that access to the internet does not guarantee access to quality information. Children
need to judge the content for its apparent validity, articles for their
credibility, websites for their sources, Wikipedia articles by their
attributions and so on.
Among other skills, ability to discern and logically analyze
are abilities that could be extremely useful in the future. Kids have
to develop the ability to wade through a plethora of information before being
able to glean out relevant pieces. Needless to say our current education system
still follows the old rote method of learning that dulls the brain and inhibits
creative thinking.
Apart from writing disparaging letters, that convey our
frustration to an ex-TV serial actress and hope and pray that they get
answered, the best we can do as parents is to encourage our children to read and
fine-tune their judgement. That process begins early in infancy.
I highly recommend the tag reader from LeapFrog that used to come with an entertaining book, replete with lovable characters and witty
dialogues. It is now accompanied with several audio books and a Leap Frog writing system as well. Consider the tag reader to be
your baby sitter but not the couch potato creating one! When my son was 4 year
old he spent countless hours reading along with this smart gadget that not only
read aloud the pages but would also read out the individual words with just a
click. Intuitive and easy to ease, it combines phonetic drills at the end of
the story, with ingenious games that have the kid glued to the book…you heard
it right …not to your smart phone! An online path learning cycle enables
parents to track their child’s progress online. Equally entertaining, add on
books are also available for growing levels of reading proficiency.
The only drawback of this product that affected me is the
lack of after sales service, especially in non metro cities (Surat, in my case).
Otherwise sturdy, a chance drop can cause the product to permanently
malfunction.
My son is almost 11 years old now, but his fondness for
reading still remains, so much so, that he risks missing his bus at times if he
is taken in with a particularly enticing Geronimo Stilton. Which brings me to
the next issue – How do we ensure quality reading for our children? With so
many popular fiction books available, kids sometimes miss out on books that
broaden their horizon, take their language skills up a notch and force them to
think for themselves. Popular fiction, like popular movies, makes such few
demands on the intellect, how can they encourage growth. So we are searching
for a two pronged solution here – a )The book has to be entertaining enough and
b) It has to fit the bill for language and so on. I am trying to create a
reading list for my growing children. Please feel free to add to this list and
I’ll publish an article in my next blog post.
Signing off till then!
