My Contemplation

Happy Children’s Day to all my friends, all colleagues, all below my age, all above my age and those who feel that they are still a child and have lot to learn, lot to do in their life. November 14th of every year, the day is celebrated as a children's day after the birthday of the first prime minister of independent India, Pandit Jwaharlal Nehru, to honor children of India. 

It is known that Pandit Jwaharlal Nehru, after Independence of India, had worked rigorously and passionately for the better education and welfare of children and for the youth of India. Under his regime, he committed in his five years plan that every child in India would get free and compulsory primary education.  He also brought a scheme to distribute free meals and milk to school children in India. 

Children are the future of tomorrow, the young India. However, today in India what children learns is competition, discrimination, corruption and earning money (oops, earning more and more money – reality shows and media has supported the perception more strongly). A poor child cannot attain school as their parents cannot afford the fees or the donation. Private schools are given more importance, where merit is the second priority and donation is first for admission.  School teacher who plays major role in nurturing youth of India, are interested in earning more money out of this profession and most of them have started with private tuition. They teach more in tuition as compared to that in school. Everyone right from the trusty, management to the teachers have changed their perception of this Nobel profession called “Teaching” and have transformed teaching as a pure business, a revenue & profit generating machine. 

Not only schools, trusty, managements, teachers and Government are responsible for this situation. Parents are equally responsible for the same. Parents compare schools on the basis of their facilities (just as we do for hotels, cinemas and homes, etc.) and all want their child to study in the best school where he can learn everything. This leads the schools and management to improve the quality of facilities rather than education.  Thus more money is invested by Government and investors in providing facilities than the salary of School teachers. This leads to poor quality of teaching but better quality of infrastructure.  No parents want their child to become a teacher, because there is no money in it. Teaching is a Nobel profession and should be considered the same. Government should encourage people to select teaching as their career by creating more opportunities in this profession. 

Children are getting smarter and clever with technology upgradation, but hardly few of them are learning basic characteristics of humanity. Competition is necessary, but is it the right time for them to know what competition is, how to compete with the another child sitting next to him, when they are just a kid and they don’t even know what is the importance of getting marks in exams. Is it necessary to discriminate children on the basis of their status of parent’s income, on basis of their looks and basis of their family status? Appreciating someone who is doing better is necessary, but that appreciation should not lead to discrimination among others. A kid when he is born, he is pure by thoughts and heart. We feed them with thoughts, liking and disliking. Thus, when we feed them we have to be careful.

A child in India is discriminated right from the first step of his learning – The School. Can’t donation be the second priority for getting admissions? Better infrastructure in schools and better quality of education is needed, but not at the cost of other children loosing opportunities of attending schools.

I wish, we all together someday can help Government and create a better environment for our children, to help them feed what actually they need rather than showing them importance of materialistic things.

Happy Children’s Day!!!