By Volunteer Chandamita Bora, FHI Guwahati
Having been to the few events in my relatively new tenure in the beautiful world of FHI, I can see the difference our efforts are going to make in the long run. As human beings, we are capable of doing many many things if we wish to but the main hurdle with the less privileged or even the privileged is awareness. No one can like or pursue something they are not aware of. Speaking in similar line, I do feel we can make a bigger impact than what we are already making by actually customising our ways of interaction with the children. There are lakhs of graduates or post graduates receiving their degrees year after year with similar mindset but very few who are actually making a difference in the global level. It has been quite a while since the last major discovery or invention that the world was in awe of. It is our responsibility to maximise the use of the potential of our brain. A very apt example of dynamic ways of teaching or even the existence of multiple ways of teaching by planting an idea into a child’s mind and letting him explore the varieties on his own while adding valuable inputs and helping him cross the hurdles is beautifully portrayed in the movie Taare Zameen Par. I believe the only purpose of human life shouldn’t be just to grow, educate, have a family and reach the end because then there will be no factor to differentiate us from other animals. If we nurture the culture of out of the box thinking in a child’s mind from a very tender age, it might just lead him to the path of doing something extraordinary by fully utilising his latent potential.
Being aware of something gives the possibility of developing interest in it a chance. Children are curious as cats to know about as many things as they can. Once someone develops an interest in a certain domain, they need not be additionally told to pursue it. It is only the support and required resources they are in need of. On being able to access them, they get to realise the level of expertise they have. Since they love the thing they are doing, they would most definitely want to be better at it. It is also of utmost importance to let them know that it is not a competition but developing themselves is the top most priority, that it is okay to make mistakes, that it is important to progress but not to achieve perfection; that they are supported to cultivate ideas and dream boundlessly and most importantly that their ideas will not go unrecognised. It is our responsibility to let them know about the magical vast world and its mysterious ways of functioning and help them develop an interest by imparting the knowledge we can gather on it. It is our responsibility to teach them how to think out of the box and help them break out of the boxes of barriers created by the orthodox society.
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