Issues in Education: The Role of the Peer Group in Education

The social factors in the development and self awareness of the child are very important. I would ask a question: can you have self-knowledge without the others? I would encircle the circle of self-knowledge in the following way:

Issues in Education: An Adult-world with their own Modes of Thought.

A teacher remarked, “Every person needs space; relaxation and time and an ideal place could be the staff room.” If an adult needs a personal space to grow, what about the personal space of a child?

Is perfect education possible if the teachers are very human? One can never find a perfect system; the growth is possible only when one is a part of an imperfect human society. The principle to check this assumption is possibly this – “everyone gives according to the measure one receives.” I also can say that one sees the world in the way one has been constructing the inner world through the variety of the encountered experiences. When Piaget suggests a co-operative relationship in education, he is suggesting a possible world of education wherein the teachers and students are perpetual learners. There is no coercion and dominance but only reciprocity and sharing.

But every teacher must be aware of the human fragility; for instance one rightly remarked that the children are the best observers. Hence, one student observed that a teacher is moody in the photo. Therefore, being aware one must be able to say in the first person – “I am angry”, “I am moody” rather than pretending to be the perfect teacher.

Issues in Education - Going Out Presupposes an Entry Somewhere

In the order of nature, not many things are capable of being trained. Water, for example, is capable of assuming only three different forms: vapor, ice, and liquid. Crystals have their shapes rigorously determined by the law of nature. In the animal kingdom, it is very dubious whether fleas can be trained, though elephants and dogs can. No one ever says to a little pig, “What kind of a hog are you going to be when you grow up?” but one does ask a child, “What kind of man are you going to be?” children are either trained by us toward a fixed goal and destiny, or they are trained in spite of us. The parents never have the alternative of deciding whether their child’s mind is full or empty. It cannot be kept empty; it will be filled with something. Passions, television, movies, streets, radio, and comic books – all of these contrive against a perpetual vacancy in the mind of the child. 

Another aspect is the conception of freedom as the child grows. Fulton Sheen distinguishes freedom as having two sides: freedom from something and freedom for something. Freedom from something is the negative side of freedom and implies absence of restraint. Freedom for something implies a goal or purpose. The first is freedom of choice; the second is freedom of perfection. 

Issues in Education - The child and his Surroundings

Reading the above Photo, the following remarks can be made at random 

Observer 1: “The child in the photo is struggling for his needs for affirmation and is getting the conclusion for himself.”

Observer 2: “the child must be wanting to go home or want to ask permission from the teacher but the strictness of the teacher is not able to ask permission”

Observer 3: “the child feels that the school is a boring place”.

Observer 4: “The child is new to school and he is anxious and shy.”

Observer 5: “the cause of his action is the bad remark of the teacher”.

Observer 6: “the child is not able to understand the teaching and is not in a mood of studying.”

From the above statements we understand that the child is surrounded by too many persons, varying emotions, surroundings, things and the other invisible forces that affect him in his growth. What comes to my mind is the movie, “Taare Zameen Par” in which the child is in a boomeranging world (of remarks, school, friends, parents, varying moods, the world of comparison and competition, etc.). The question that should arise in our mind is – how far a child can decide for himself to construct a world of meaning?

A child needs to be affirmed for what he/she is to create an interest in learning. The transition from home to school and from parents to teachers and peers are definitely the factors shaping the growth of the child. So we need to make a sharp contrast between school and home; the needs of the child and education, the method of education and the child; the child and others’ incapacity to know the exact inner happenings of the child, the adult world and the world of the child.

Amidst this, one common and very revealing thing is that no human is capable of knowing the internal happenings of the child. Hence, respecting the child as he is and helping the child to construct his own world in his own perspective is a duty rather than imposition of adult forms of set modes of behaviour.

Issues in Education - Parents and Their Role

Fulton Sheen in his book “Thinking Life Through” he writes about the training of children and the role of a mother. He says, “The tragedy today is that parents themselves are so often without any convincing standards to offer for the guidance of their children.” Rudyard Kipling once said, “Give me the first six years of a child’s life; you can have the rest.” Napoleon was once asked, “When does the education of a child begin?” He answered, “Twenty years before its birth – in the education of its mother.”

Certain things that are visible today in the circle of the education of the child are: Parents are often worried about the future of their children. The father of the child is often not seen because he is the bread winner and supplier of finance. And a slow process of breaking the umbilical chord is a necessary condition for a child to insert itself to the society to be a part of a larger support system. Hence, school alone does not educate the child without being part of the first school of education – home.