Looking everywhere for teachers, we find many. Some are experts in geography, some in the sciences and some in mathematics. Wherever we see them, they teach to fulfill their duty.
Sometimes, it so happens that the teachers are confused over a problem or a question in a given subject. Whenever this happens, they tell the students to do it for homework. Being a teacher is their responsibility to awaken the academic interest of a child, but we often see some new kids joining the school for kindergarten classes or even a younger batch and they usually cry for a month or so. One is prompted to ask “why?”. And afterwards if they get the spelling of a word wrong or have difficulty in writing while holding the pen, they are punished. Why? Why do you teachers punish children for incorrect spellings when such children don’t even know how to hold a pencil correctly?
Sometimes it too happens that when a child questions a teacher, he/she finds it easy to say that it is the way nature has made it and that “it is none of your concern”. What does that even mean? Yes, children are small and young but everything they question the teacher about might have a legitimate and genuine reason for them.
Everything around children is of concern, mainly because they care and often deeply. Many a times we see that a teacher keeps punishing a particular student. It is unfair as they criticize others for not being toppers. It isn’t necessarily true that only by being a topper you will get ahead with a happy life. Take a look at Cristiano Ronaldo. When he was still studying, his teacher often used to say to him “Football will get you nothing to eat”. If he had listened to his teacher and taken his teacher’s words to heart, today the world would not know him as one of the best footballers ever to walk the earth.
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Not all children have the same capacity to read and write. They might have talent in other activities. Don’t stop them and don’t discourage them. Let them be themselves and don’t force them to fit into a box. Instead, any good teacher will be able to detect the weaknesses of a young student and find a way to work with them to help the student improve. Any good and dedicated teacher will learn about the strengths and talents of their students and help them cultivate those strengths and talents, instead of discouraging them.
Fadimo Dayib, the first Somali female presidential candidate used to say, “My mom always told me, ‘you hold all the life’s possibilities in the palm of your hands”, and that’s true. Don’t stop them from dreaming. Like Frida Kahlo, let them say to the feet ‘what do I need you for when I have wings to fly?’”.
Now even if the teachers are good at motivating and educating kids, the other challenge a child has to face in our society is their parent. They take everything negatively, punishing their children over little things and tiny mistakes. Weren’t they children themselves? Why do they forget it all so suddenly?
Every year in India, about 2 percent of teens commit suicide. You must know that when adolescents are hurt, they feel lonely. That is the time when their parents should step in to comfort them. After all and before everything, they are your children. No matter how good or bad, struggling or successful, your child is your child. Nothing can make them happier rather than an understanding parent.
If you do not provide a support system, don’t blame them for turning to bad habits such as smoking or doing drugs when they are completely alienated and isolated, because the responsibility doesn’t entirely lie on them, but with you as well. When youngsters indulge in bad behaviour and bad habits, often times it is because of a lack of understanding from those around them and because they feel they have no one to turn to. Many adolescents feel isolated and abandoned in their emotional and psychological turmoil and their bad decisions often stem from a place of unaddressed pain and unspoken anguish.
It is not the case only with boys, in many ways girls suffer a lot more than boys. They have to hear everything their parents say to them. Well, to some extent, it is good and polite of them to comply and obey. But the parents usually control them, saying, “What will the neighbors say, the people of the whole locality? You need to talk and behave according to our society”. Boys seem to have a lot more freedom in those terms, because the questions of honour, decency, respect and proper behaviour rest more heavily on the shoulders of girls and women than on the shoulders of boys and men.
In my opinion, listening is paramount and the key to all forms of communication, whether between a child and their parent or a student and their teacher. However, most of the time it is the child and the student who are expected to keep quiet and listen, while the parent and the teacher talk and talk away. If we turned the table around for once and create a space where children and students are attentively heard by both parents and teachers, we would promote a better world where less and less kids feel alienated and tormented. As a result, we would see them flourish and prosper in their daily lives, while meeting the expectations of their parents and their teachers as well.
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