Stop Teaching! Let the children learn!

Let Children Learn

I keep thinking about questions I used ask my parents when I was a child. The questions like:

Why should I go to school?
Why should I study?
Why should I go to college?

The typical answers that I get are :

To get a good job.
To settle down in Life.
To earn money.

I took these answers and moved on. I didn't really question and argue much on these answers.
But now I am a father and these questions have come back in my conscious. What will I answer when my son ask me the same questions? Will I bark on the same answers handed down by generations or should I take re look at the questions and find the actual answers?

So, Why should I send my son to school?

I don't think it is to get admission in a better college and in turn get a better job and eventually earn good money. In the ideal situation it should be to learn, experience and gain knowledge.
It should be to expose my son to various situations so that he experience and learn from the. It should be expose him to various new aspects and concepts of life and world (like animals, birds, trees, geometry, physics , so that he can absorb them in him and use them as and when required.
With this the next question rises.

Are children learning at school or are they being stuffed?

In current scenario the schools are under pressure and competition to show results and the results are measured in the percentage of students who pass the exams. So now the focus of the teachers is to make the children pass the exams and they do every thing they can to achieve. In this era of competition and expectations from parents the schools (and even parents) have misunderstood the meaning of education.

We think that more our children remember the words and information in their textbooks the more knowledgeable they are. The race is now to make sure our kids remember all the stuff that is out in the textbooks. If a child can reproduce what ever is mentioned in the text books or other books more accurately he/she is considered to be more knowledgeable. The more accurately he reproduces the nearer he gets to being labelled a genius.

So now every kid tries his/her level best to reproduce the books that they read or are told to read.

So, does textbooks determine what our children become?

We all know what we think is what we become.
If our children keep reading and reproducing the books, what they will eventually become are copying machines. The ones who are good at it are heroes of the school and ones who are not, well they are ignored.

Now these copying machines are our future. They determine the path that humanity will take and the future humans will follow.

I am really scared and then how come we have survived this culture so far. How come the situation has not become miserable so far. I believe it is because a lot of great people have chosen not to go to schools. If we just look closely  most of the people who have changed history (for good or bad) are the ones who have escaped the photo copying culture of our schools and colleges. They have been dropouts or just uneducated.

These brave-hearts have done great amount of work for the betterment of humanity in-spite of our schools.

So shall we drop our children from schools?

That would not be practical thing to do. I think we should let our children learn, experience and gain knowledge in-spite of their schools. I think we should not give too much importance to some aspects of the education system like exams, results, rankings and let our children enjoy education in a stress free environment.
We should expose our children to more real life experiences than simulated ones.Let them face the world as it is and learn from it, rather than theorizing about it in their minds. It's better if we just let them deal with various real life situations the way they want to deal with them. Let them formulate their one methods and ways of handling different situations.

I think the only thing we should do is to stop teaching and let our children learn.


JKS


Please read other children related articles at How To Make Children Listen and Children and Competition

Drop the Mask!

A story to think about, told by Osho.

It happened that after the murder of Abraham Lincoln... one hundred years had passed, and the whole year was celebrated in his sacred memory. A drama was prepared, which moved all over America all through the year, playing the same drama based on the life of Abraham Lincoln. And it was a rare coincidence that they could find a man who looked like Abraham – he was lean and thin and tall and ugly. Abraham Lincoln was not a very beautiful person, as far as his face is concerned.

As far as his being is concerned, he was one of the most beautiful persons.

When he was fighting in the election for the presidentship, a little girl suggested to him, ”If you grew a small beard, that would make your face look more beautiful,” because he had marks on his face from small pox. First he laughed, but he thanked the girl and he thought it over. And he grew the beard, and with the beard his face took a totally new shape.

This man had the beard, had the same kind of eyes, the same nose, the same height; so he was given the part of Abraham Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln used to stutter a little once in a while, so he was taught to stutter. He was also a little lame – one leg was a little longer than the other – so they tried to make one of this man’s legs a little longer by traction, pulling it – just a little longer so he started walking like a lame man.

They trained him to speak the way Abraham Lincoln used to speak – one hundred year-old language, words which were in fashion in those days. And he proved to be a perfect actor. Anybody could have misunderstood, seeing him, that he was Abraham Lincoln.

And for one year he was moving around the whole continent playing the same drama, three times a day – in the morning, in the evening, in the night. The poor man got so much obsessed with it that when he came home he still walked the way Abraham Lincoln used to walk; he still talked in one hundred year-old language, and he still stuttered.

His wife, his children, his father and mother all laughed. They said, ”You have done enough – one year – now, drop it. And let your other leg also be lengthened so that you stop this business of walking like a lame man. And there is no need to stutter.”

But he said, ”I am Abraham Lincoln.”

First they thought he was joking, but soon they realized it was not a joke. He had started believing that he was Abraham Lincoln. They tried in every possible way... but once he had seen the glory of being the President of America and one of the greatest men of history, he was not ready to descend down back to being an ordinary human being.

He was brought to the psychoanalyst, but to no effect; he would behave just like Abraham Lincoln. And he would ask the psychoanalyst, ”What is missing in me that you are so worried? What is the problem? Why am I not accepted as Abraham Lincoln? You show me any fault....” And it was true, there was no fault.

Finally the psychoanalyst said , ”This is beyond... this is not a case of mental derangement. He has become obsessed, and he will understand only when he has been assassinated. But then there will be no point. And if you assassinate him, perhaps he may think that he was right – even dying, he will die exactly like Abraham Lincoln. He has died many times on the stage, although the assassination was false. But he knew how to fall, what to say, what Abraham Lincoln’s last words were. Even if he is assassinated, he will do his act to the very last.”

You will think that this is a rare story, but the fact is, we are all living a personality which has been imposed on us.

So Let's drop our Abraham Linoln Masks immediately or else we will loose ourselves.

Enjoy other interesting Stories told by Osho HERE!