My own seven-year-old daughter recently asked me for a hand sanitiser to take to school, to “quickly clean hands before I open my dabba ”. “Why quickly?” I asked. It took me some time to realise that she was in fact responding to my repeated questions on why she was often not finishing her lunch in school. “If we go down to wash our hands, we do not have enough time to eat. Sometimes I have just a couple of bites and the bell rings.”
“But what about playtime?” “We aren’t allowed to go out of the class — if we eat fast, we can play ‘stone-paper-scissor’.”
That explained the unfinished food, the loss of weight and appetite, and the almost permanent slouch I was noticing in my child since the start of the academic year.
A couple of students who come to me for English classes reported similar treatment being meted out to them in their respective upscale CBSE schools. I write from Central India, but the situation must be similar in other parts of the country, where schools are systematically over-scheduling kids when it comes to academics and co-curricular activities (read CCE worksheets, “project work”, “formative and summative assessments” and sundry competitions), and shrinking recess hours to accommodate vast and ambitious curriculums that “raise the bar of learning”.
Children have their own sense of justice, and the feeling of revolt at being play-deprived is palpable when they open up to me. School managements, often with the active collaboration of ill-informed and overambitious parents, have been insidiously but determinedly robbing our children of a most basic need to play, explore, create and chill, at their own time, in their own space. We are talking of thousands of schools, pre-schools, “day-care” and “activity centres” across India that cite complex theories of learning, show brilliant images of neural connections develop at breakneck speed till the age of six, quote educationists from Maria Montessori to Howard Gardner to justify the need to shove new concepts down the throats of millions of children. Parents are spoilt for choice — i-math, calligraphy, sanskaar or the ubiquitous art and craft — and convinced they are raising a generation of child prodigies by minutely chalking out every moment of their day.
By depriving our children of physical space, good old sand pits and water play with buckets and shovels, we are robbing them of the only window they have to expand their awareness of space, develop their motor reflexes, their sense of touch and their own emotional space. No instructions are needed for sand and water play, and yet these, along with moulding play dough, constitute the most therapeutic of all activities. Through free play — and here I am talking good old catch-catch, kho-kho, kabaddi or hopscotch — they learn to distinguish between fair and unfair play, to take risks and to resolve conflicts, to form teams and show empathy. Such kids are clever, not cunning, non-violent yet not risk-averse!
What is a childhood without cuts, bruises, stained or torn clothes and a few tears? If kids do not fall, how will they learn to pick themselves up? Are school managements and teachers catering to overprotective parents or to their own need to avoid a mess and the hassle of managing turbulent tots? In either case, they shouldn’t be running schools in the first place. If kids are not given the time to share goodies and ideas over relaxed meals, how will they ever develop social skills? Authentic interaction rather than instruction is what hones social skills. What better place than a school where peers and resources are aplenty!
Finally, what of the child’s mental space? To get those great grades, answers or keywords are dictated in notebooks which kids regurgitate on their worksheets. Students are thus being robbed of the freedom to make mistakes and learn from them, of the ability to think on their feet, to organise their thoughts and use their own language and logic. How will this generation “Make in India” when they cannot even string up a decent sentence together on their own.
Unarmed and unmasked, the heartless robbers pursue their heist in broad daylight, relentlessly robbing our children of the time, space and freedom to play and learn at their pace, a freedom that should be every child’s birthright. Children do not have a voice, and schools, ministries of education and sometimes parents do not have a heart. And so the burglary goes on unchecked.
When will we realise that children do not just twiddle their thumbs and waste away if given some downtime? They may daydream, draw or doodle, but they are also learning. They may kick, hop, skip, fall, fight and make up, but they are still learning. Please let them learn. Please let them play.
kersetareh@gmail.com
