This chapter establishes the facts that learning of a child should be done in natural condition and the child's learning should be natural as if he or she is learning the sitting and walking habits. Most of the time in our day to day life we saw that children learn out of curiosity. They actively engage with the world around them and tried to identify different objects with the help of their senses.
Most of the time it has been seen that we create barrier for the natural learning of our children as we think that they are just wasting their time and energy. But it is the process of their learning. Though we call ourselves a great scholars but still we don't find: why our students are facing lot of problem while learning in schools?
Schools have their own criteria for checking their learning but their evaluation is useless as it is based on rank and number system not based on life experience. Our evaluation techniques are not as good as we consider because it just check the cognitive development of a child. Though NCF 2005 helps to check their affective and conative domain also but it is far from implementations. The reason is the only touchstone for checking the abilities of students, schools and teachers are "Marks in 90s and above 90s." Such a damn jock it is! I am one of the students who never got more than 60% in my school life but still, my knowledge base is more than these students of 90s because my teachers also focus to strengthen my understanding abilities not cramming abilities.
Here in this chapter, it has been emphasized that children are an active learner, therefore, the textbook culture should be avoided. But tell me truly in how many schools learning is based on the active engagement of learners? Rather students are forced to mug up things so that they can produce a good result which further helps the schools to sell their products. After their studies in school when they enter colleges, they found completely different things. They saw that teachers are just giving the lectures and doing the debates in class and then they find themselves nowhere.
In this chapter, it was told that child-centred pedagogy should be their mean of giving primacy to children's experiences, their voices, and their active participation. But is such kind of pedagogy really being practised in our schools? As per NCF-2005 chapter, 2 students should take initiatives to do things, to ask questions and to pursue investigations but most of the time chalk and talk method is used and the teacher is always busy to complete the syllabus. If these things can't be implemented then why we invent such ideas and theories?
This chapter focus that children should be provided such kind of environment where they feel they are valued but is it happening? One of the biggest barriers to the development of a child's thinking abilities is their parents. They want marks. They want the 90s and above 90s and the school, teachers, Principals also want this. Now the child also starts thinking that marks are more important than knowledge. If marks are important, then see how many marks Mahatma Gandhi got during his schooling. If marks are important then why J. Krishnamurti refused to get teachings in schools. If marks are important then think about Sandeep Maheswari who is a college drop out student!
Now let us talk about development and learning. First lets start from a question what is development? and what is learning? And what is the difference between development and learning? Development is the result of learning and learning is a process of our life experiences. Now let us see how many students have a learning based on their life experience and what kind of development they have now?
This is the bloody shit system which just wants the 90s not learner, teachers. They want numbers not knowledge. Do we think our students are understanding their subject matter deeply or just remembering the facts and forget after examinations? Is there learning without burden or learning with a burden?
Think!
Think?
Please think.
