How to make learning interesting
My nephew is two years old. He is talkative, mischievous, mischievous and all that. Above all he is the apple of our eye. My sister plans to admit him to a school this session. She’s worried, of course; Will she get admission to the most reputable school in the city? How would she perform in the interview? How should she and her husband prepare for this particular meeting? All this apprehension and chaos over admission to a kindergarten class!
Well, this is the reality of the day. It is a crime for me to send a three-year-old into a totally unknown environment, in the name of her education. When he should be running after birds and butterflies, he is being taught to count her number in a lifeless book.
When he should be making stories with his own imagination (whenever it’s Manu’s turn to tell a story, he improvises the ones that I or other elders have told him) and forced to gorge himself and repeat rhymes whose meaning he doesn’t know. I dont know!
It is for the benefit of parents who are eager to show off their children’s talents in front of classroom meetings. Neither parents nor teachers are willing to admit that classroom instruction is not enough to equip a three-year-old to begin learning about life.
Conventional education stifles curiosity and the bland diet of textbooks kills motivation. These two essentials for learning are often extinguished when, in fact, they should have been fanned to brilliance. A child is shown a picture of a kingfisher and is expected to remember it, but how and why should he remember it? Shouldn’t the teacher take the children on a nature walk and show them the birds, animals and insects that are abundant in their environment? Why is it necessary for them to enter the name of a seagull they have never seen? Why can’t they be told about the weaver bird that has made nests in the babul tree outside their school or the little sun bird that hovers over the flowers in their school garden?
Why aren’t they told about the trees in the environment around them instead of the pine trees, again in an entity unknown to them? Not that everything should be taught by providing a living example in front of children, but it should be relevant to them with the help of examples, pictures, and stories.
One day I was showing a picture book to the children in my kindergarten class, there were large pictures of different species of apes and monkeys. For a while we transformed into these monkeys and played a war game. There was total chaos in the class; everyone was screeching, yelling and crying (including me) trying to sound like real monkeys. When the chaos had settled, I gathered them around me and told them that long ago people had tails like monkeys. I remember that my claim was instantly rejected by the imps. To prove my point, I had to find and show them another book that had man-like creatures with tails. He was bound with nods of agreement. And we resume normal activities. When we got promoted to grade I, we had a conversation about how to write an essay in English. I told them that we should write everything we know about that animal (the topic). Like what it eats, where it lives, what its characteristics are and at the end you can insert other information like how many legs, eyes… etc. So we started discussing this pattern.
And out of nowhere came this topic about how to write about man. (In a previous discussion, I raised the idea that man is also an animal and was criticized again for not knowing anything.)
And behold! Someone remembered it. That man had a tail a long time ago and it disappeared over time. There was an excited shout and everyone started talking at once.
Why aren’t children today taught to explore, to inquire, to marvel at the beauty of nature that surrounds them? The reason that comes to mind is that the teachers themselves are not conversing with such things. In India, many kindergarten teachers have no professional training, have minimal education and usually work as KG teachers because they need money and not because they love the job.
Some of them may be BA, B.Ed. They are always waiting for better opportunities. In defense of these teachers, it can be said that they are paid low wages. Let’s not blame them if they take their job mechanically. It is the duty of the school management to provide and hire staff who are capable of handling such impressionable and delicate minds.
So what should be done? First of all, a kindergarten teacher needs to be a jack of all trades, be it arts and crafts, music, or storytelling. He must be willing to learn, he must plan the day’s work in advance, create an atmosphere in which children feel free to express themselves. He will help them in self-learning.
Try to explain unknown topics with the help of various teaching materials such as pictures, stories, books, music, masks, and puppets. Music can be of great help to channel the energy of children.
Take nature walks. Children enjoy being outdoors. No need to bother them (to hog the name) every time you see a black Drongo sitting on a wire. Let them enjoy the association with their environment. You can tell them all about the black swallow-tailed bird when you get back to school. Learn to control your enthusiasm. Children enjoy information that they can relate to.
He begins to attend theater classes. Mime and slapstick sometimes play an important role in reaching shy and introverted children.