Sanjay came home sulking from school. He was sent out
of the class for not doing his Science assignment. He would have enjoyed the
punishment if his Principal had not strolled upon the corridor. The Principal
pulled him to his office, asked some irrelevant questions and treated him with
a cane. It hurt him badly and was humiliating. Falling into such a situation was
quite common for him.
He never understood why he forgot to do his assignments.
May be he was not clear of what he was supposed to do. What ever was going on
in the class was not getting into his brains; there was so much life out side
the classroom. Vehicles in motion, people in their business and every soul
enjoyed the sunshine. That boring act of listening to the lessons was not the
priority of his Life. There were more interesting things going on out side the
class room- the birds that perched on the tree out side class room, the
marching ants, and the buzzing bees. The crawling worm that curled it self when
he touched, the screeching cicada that punctuated silence when approached and
many more such things fascinated him beyond the classroom lessons.
Unlike his
friends he never kept track of his books. Pages of his books were torn and what
remained had rolled in from its corners. It was indeed difficult for him to pick a page
related to the assignment. His pencil box was full but the writable pen was not
to be seen at the time when he really wanted one. It took a lot of time for him
to search the page where he had written what assignment he was supposed to do.
With great difficulty he had found his school bag lying beneath the cot but could
not remember when he placed it there. His uniform shirt was tangled to the bag
he had to entangle it, in the process a portion of his shirt was torn, if Amma
comes to know about it! He had wrapped the shirt in a cover and threw it into
the dust bin. When Amma was searching his shirt for laundry, he told her that
it must be some where how could he know about it? “Oh God, hope Amma will not
find out about it while disposing the dustbin” he prayed to himself.
Sanjay did not know whether he was safe at
home. Every day Amma was so clever to
discover some thing or the other that was not acceptable to her and be ready
with some issue to punish him. He was scared to show his Answer sheets that
were distributed in the class today. It had to be returned to the teacher after
getting signed by the parents. Who will sign it for him? Amma or Appa? He knew
all the answers, and had written them in such good length. Now these papers were so heavy in his bag.
All Teachers had taken keen interest to find out minutest mistakes. Small
inaccuracies in spelling, some bit of
oversight in grammar, uneven spacing- his paper hardly looked blue, the colour in
which he wrote. Hoops of red were consistently inscribed around words as though
to noose the flow of his answers. “Why do these teachers rewrite my answer
sheet in red? They make my paper look so ugly! I should dispose these papers in
a safe place so that nobody gets their hands upon it. “The Teacher will punish
me any way, why add parents’ share also along with it?”
This is the situation of a child who
suffers with Learning Disability. Children with such problems will be
intelligent enough to understand most of the things when presented differently,
they find it difficult to process written, printed matter, class room lectures
due to their perceptional difficulties. They learn better when they are given
exposure to the things that they need to learn in the natural environment. They
require multi sensory stimulatory methods to absorb process, understand and
register the information in the brain. These children can excel in any field of
their interest.
Our Education system used to judge a child’s capacity
only through the formal written tests till very recently. Though most of the
educational boards have woken up and are introducing comprehensive method of
evaluation, most of the teachers never come out of their rote systems even
today! Reading and Writing are not the only means of learning and judging the
child’s knowledge. Teaching-learning process must go beyond these two processes
and involve other skills of perception and communication. Teaching-learning
process must take place outside the class room as well, where children learn
more adequately and such learnt information stays in the brain and expresses
itself whenever required for appropriate application in life.
-Champa Jaiprakash
Nice writeup :)
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