What Should be the Real Concern...By Neha Khanna, Teacher, Sunbeam School Lahartara, Varanasi

                                         What Should be the Real Concern...

Einstein said "It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge". Years ago, Einstein, an intellectual genius, had beautifully expressed his thoughts with such simplicity that somehow seems to be obsolete in the ever so fast moving world of today.

                  The tech savvy generation of the present world spends each day in the struggle of keeping pace with the swift changes that affect their world every now and then. The ones who are most affected by the changes in the face of education are the parents, and even teachers, who still live with their individual experiences and struggles of their student lives. They often develop certain inhibitions towards the increasing complexities of the education system and start bombarding their children with advice, suggestions, warnings etc. which eventually do more harm than good to them as it keeps adding on to the pressure on the children. Each step taken by the anxious parents act as bricks that build the humongous structure of pressure on the young impressionable minds.

                   The focus these days seem to be only on the marks and results of the students. In this process the students fail to enjoy the most endearing part of their education - the student life. We must have heard it before that the journey is more important than the destination. But we completely seem to ignore it when it comes to a child's educational journey. The fixation with the end results and the numbers reflected on the report card is so strong that it completely overpowers our moral reasoning.

                   Sadly enough, in the present educational system numbers seem to define and certify a child's capabilities. This clearly explains the obsession of the parents as well as the students with the results. It's high time we sit and ponder over what  will actually matter in the long run. Is it the numbers on the report card or the true qualities of a child that will make him/her a successful and more importantly a HAPPY person.

                  Our respected Prime Minister had rightly said "Never let the child in you die". But the question that we need to ask ourselves is "Are we taking away the childhood from our children?" Hope we all are in a position to give a confident NO as a reply to this question.