Children's lack of interest in Reading or Education in general..

Well, you just said you were not an Indian, so the parents being a little harsh is normal in Indian Culture. Strictly speaking, if following our culture kids should be used to this treatment. I can understand among the Indian Diaspora there are other cultural mores that they need to imbibe and kids are cut-off from the kind of treatment that kids were receiving in India. Not only that but with the explosion in the media, our kids are bombarded by cross cultural inputs esp., from US. They see the treatment ofchildren there; parents do not cross certain limits of reprimand. The kids here too are getting influenced. We have as a result over-sensitive kids. It is let us say somewhat OK with school-going kids. What would you say of someone in the college-going age and one doing an Engineering course at that? Recently I had my cousin's daghter stay with us. Since my cousin had told my area of specialization is the same as what she is doing currently, he aksed me to just check her grasp of her lessons. I just gave her one example to work out. There was no answer. I called her and taught her some three to four examples from fundamentals and then gave her a test problem. No answer. And she claims that she is 7.5-pointer! Later when her dad checked with her over phone she had the temerity to tell him that all was well, and that she had answered all my questions. Mu honest feedback to my cousin also sort of fell on deaf ears! Whither honesty? Whither dedication?

True. I agree about the ruthlessness and insensitivity of Indian teachers. It is legendary. And parental attitudes too. I will relate to you an incident from one of our old Sanskrit poet's lives. This great poet by name [B]bhAravi[/B]was a bright young lad of 16 who had learnt enough Sanskrit from his father that he composed very impressive poetry. While everyone who heard him, friends, elders and other senior family menbers were impressed, his father maintained that he was good-for-nothing. This irked him and he goes with a big boulder to kill his father, by smashing his head with it! But then he had the chance to overhear his father telling his mother who was objected to bhAravi's father's harsh criticism of their son, that he criticised him thus so that he kept his pride and over-confidence in check, so that he would go to greater heights of success. Now, this is the typical Indian parent's attitude to their children. No doubt bhAravi became one of the must read poets for perfecting Sanskrit! In India the teacher was highly respected and was considered equal to a foster parent. All that has chnged now. But you are still right. People must move with times and be in line with current psychology and educational practices. Examples like you have given are not rare. Why I brought up this subject of Indian styles of upbringing was to tell you where this all originates and how teacher student relationship has evolved in India. There are some very good concepts embedded in the Gurukula style of education, which is all but lost now. There may be a few of them in Music education of Classical Indian Music teaching. The behavior you have expressed is typical of the present frustrated generation of teachers who find that their profession if not a well-paid one, and the frustrations of their family life brimming over into the professional life. Sad, but true.

You are totally right. The problem is that there is no law that prohibits teachers from abusing kids. Perhaps, physical abuse is taken seriously by some schools, but the mental is not! And mental abuse is not only carried out by Indian teachers, but also in other countries including United States! The notion "I hate that kid and thus I won't let him succeed" is universal!

Yeah you have a point there that even when a teacher is rightfully angry with a student and reprimands a student and then an influential student tries to snub the teacher by other means, then what interest will the teacher have to take the student along to greater heights. I have one belief. While it is possible for an accomplished teacher, and by implication the school environment, to push every student beyond his normal levels of understanding, some of greats are really God made. They can thrive in any environment. To me greats mean the likes of Dr.Einstein, T.A Edison, or Venkiramakrishnan to cite a dew examples. These were mainly products of their own inner drives. IMO students of today plan survival and career success even before they master learning.

One example I would like to tell here. 3 days before my immediate neighbour whose son is irregular in going to school and doing the home work was asked by his teacher to bring his parents. Sensing the wrath of his parents, if the teacher complains about him to his parents, he simply walked upstairs and jumped down from the terrace of the third floor of his school and now landed in a hospital bed. By god's grace his life was saved but he underwent a surgery for a fracture in his thingh. Next time again if he does the same mistake the teacher never bothers to try to inform the parents. This is the present situation of the standard of education and how the students escape from their misdeeds

I am not doubting nor questioning their interest in anything other than academic pursuits. Nor I am in doubt about their capacity to survive in the new world. The question is of attention deficit when called upon to concentrate on learning - what is mainstrem. May be like me you are also looking among relatives and firends. I have got one too many examples of children wnating to learn something serious. There are times when I had felt if only a teacher had given me the concepts the way I had learnt later in life fairly early in life, I would have been able to accomplish more. That kind of restlessness to learn is simply absent. My brother had different difficulties when he was a student. But the desire to put in efforts to learn wasn't absent. The problem is the same with almost all my cousins, about 5 to 6 of them, who are all having children in various school going ages. Today, I am almost researching what environmental conditions will make children want to learn. It is true that our education system has much to be desired. But this was the same one in which we could thrive. Since the system did not give it the way we wanted I for one found not only my own ways of understanding, but explaining the same to others even as a student. There is only one thing that is there today, that is TV and media.

That is right. In these days of nuclear families, the idea of grandparents living with our children is passe. Nor are the DILs/SILs able to see the benefit of the presence of such souls as an emotional safety net in addition to being able to motivate children to study. This increases the burden on the direct parents. If they happen to be busy people not having enough time for attending to the tutorial needs of their children then God help them. But my problem is I am trying to make sometime to teach my children. With great difficulty my son had only recently benefitted by my teaching. The sad thing many others are coming over and learning. Even looking at them my own children do not see. I only have a fervent hope that I will be able to change the attitudes of my daughter, over the next two years. I do not want history to repeat itself, and like my son she learns to to pick up the threads rather late!

Good luck in that. Time goes marching on.

To maintain a cycle by NOT accepting change, is not logical nor healthily beneficial. Yet to see change as an opportunity to learn and grow, can be the only way to motivate. The "need" to do so, must be presented in a form that only they can understand. Teach them on their own level, as to their understanding of the world...the way THEY perceive it, and to that, themselves within it. Unfortunately, I believe that most of the teachers today are not educated to this degree, nor do they possess the psychological tools. Learning is a process not just for the students, but for the teachers also. cdrxo

Reading as habit is also on the wane. The attraction is mainly towards computer games, TV viewing and the like. It takes great efforts to make today's children at one place and make them read. Sometime I even wonder in our own days, may be we were also exceptions in that we were interested in reading as a part of our inherent nature whereas we aslo had students who just somehow scraped through examinations to the next grade. Perhaps their parents would have been as much worried as we are now, maybe, if only they had been reasonably dedicated students in their own childhood. But then day by day our textbooks I must say are only getting better. While coacing children I have enjoyed the design of reading material. We have bought several collateral reading for our children, novels, chidren's literature, but they seem not to have read even one fully.

Ah! Here is a response from a teacher. One who can contribute to make or mar a child's attitude to study.sbeauty, blessed you are that you have taken up the noble task of inspiring young minds to learn by making learning fun. Not every school is blessed with teachers who inspire the children to learn. What surprises me is the books my children use are far far better in quality than what we had! Yet the desire to learn from the book is on the wane!

I think I would want to agree with you. Perhaps the need to fix our own lives in the face of our own parents humbler backgraounds have only served to mask the difficulties even well-to-do parents have been going through from their children, have made our present generation's attitude to study. But isn't this a pernicious trend?

That is what surprises me. US is celebrated as the land of opportunity. That is a person with fire in his belly can strive to become what he wanted to be with less interventions from powers that be, and people not overworking their brains to bring down the others by foul means than fair this lack of drive is just ununderstandable. There are socialistic pretenses either to limit one's growth to make a 'balanced' growth of society. Too much insurmountable difficulty can put off a person. Too much political intervention under the sham of a democratic government can go counter to an individuals development plans. Yeah, though not very much impressed by education you had your grades in par. IMO that would suffice. For not all great breakthrough need be through academic channels. Thanks for the response.

My wife[a Clinical Psychologist, herself, practicing and successful] tired out reading to my son in the younger years. I heard the same thing from other parents among my colleagues. Parents were reading the lessons so much that if sent for a test they would do better. My son used to listen to the extent possible and miserably fail at writing the same thing. He used to ignore home work, do that in a great hurry, half of that even written by his mother... I never used to join in this kind of "teaching". Today my wife is so frustrated that she does not want to do anything with my daughter's dtudies! I teach my daughter to "think" but she wants everything to be converted to rote! Well, unwillingly I am trying to do that. Just to see if that puts her on track to somewhat liking learning. I have to only think that statistically the percentage of exceptional learners is just about the same today as it was that day, despite all the advancements in pedagogy. It is just that we are unfortunate to be saddled with the samples who need to be pushed to learn-pushed to the extent of making you(the parent) more tired than the student. But even today I find students who to teach are a pleasure. I feel rejuvenated. The sadness of a father not finding the genetic encoding of the love for study, in either of his children, has only blank hope, that they may somehow succeed!

Yeah, parents watching TV but asking their children to study is really painful. In India parents who do not find time to teach their children sent them to coaching classes or arrange private tutors. I was running such coaching classes for 10th grade and sophomores, etc., Another idea that they resort to this sort of thing is children tend to learn from other than their parents very well. This sometimes true too.