Comments on: Goodness Of Fit

By: Goodness of fit « ????? ????

Goodness of fit « ????? ???? — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 07:41:32 +0000

[...] Posted by ???????? on July 12th, 2007 Related topic: Making geniuses consider a country like India. What options do we have? ……. We believe in route learning with a fierce emphasis on academics. Even if we have options we tend to pick a school that values academics more than anything. We derive our pride from the fact that our children can read much before the other kids. This mother I met at a Parent and Me class told me that she does not prefer a Montessori kind of teaching because, ‘They encourage the kid to do what the kid likes to do. What if my kid wants to paint and draw, when will she learn math and science? What good is it?’. …….. ………..The lack of options is based on culture. Indian culture, for that matter most of the eastern culture… [...]

By: utbtkids

utbtkids — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 05:43:22 +0000

RBDANS, its always easy to follow the corwd!

Boo, you make a good point. When I see on U-tube a child reciting the states and capitals, I get a pang of fear. I don’t know if I must run off and start teaching toddler, and what the heck infant too, the capitals. If I do that will I be succumbing to peer pressure or by not doing that is she loosing out on something?? Irrespective of you are a parent or a child, it is never easy huh?!

Sundar, by “letting the kids do…” I meant a harmonious(?!) environment where parents and kids are doing whatever they are doing together, in mutual agreement. I didn’t mean the super control freak who manipulates the people around him! I don’t have problem with ‘letting your child do something else’ wording.

By: sundar narayanan

sundar narayanan — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 05:07:03 +0000

I have a problem with the way you word

“No I take that back, parents do it because thee want to fit in. It takes a lot of guts to explain to friends, relatives and the whole world why you are doing something different with your child”

shouldnt it be “let your child do something different!” ?

If you are still doing something different with your child, you are still doing it! which means you are still trying to be the deciding factor and I have seen parents who say “I am letting my kid take a year off after high school and go spend it in a Kibbutz, or travel the world, or backpack to the mountains in New Zealand or whatever..”. they do this because they want credit as radical thinkers who are out of the box in their approach to dealing with kids!

you are right on the money when you point out how parents assume they know what is best for the children, and it has to stop once the kid shows the mental makeup to make mature decisions..

your kids are not 4 yet! so you will see pretty soon.. trust me, you get there fast these days!

By: B o o.

B o o. — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 09:56:26 +0000

I think we give undue credits to the parents. Personally, Im a fumbling mother trying to figure out how best to bring up my daughter. If I am insprired by you or some other mother and put my daughter in day care or enroll her in a class or teach her Tamil rhymes or anything else on those lines, its not because I want to fit in but to do the best for my child. The reason my parents made me study Computer Science is because everyone was doing it and that was supposed to be the best option at that time. They did nt want me to be left behind on what they thought was a good choice. I was 17 years old and peer pressure got me even then and I did nt protest. So how can we expect a child to tell us what they want to do? Ashu clearly says she does nt want to go to school now. But is it the best thing to do? I dont know. I ll found out in a decade or two from her blog!
What Im trying to say here with my rambling is – parents are not “know-it-alls”.

By: rbdans

rbdans — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 05:29:49 +0000

Left a comment yesterday, dunno what happened to it..

Comment was that most of us in eastern society tend to do what “others who are around us” do. I am not sure if it is always due to the parent wanting to fit in OR the child to fit in, it could be just be ignorance, lack of understanding and lack of confidence.

By: utbtkids

utbtkids — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 03:44:28 +0000

Poppin’s mom I had to google IMHO . Its me, not you.
You make a great point. If every one is an individual, how can we form a society? It always is a tough thing to strike a balance ain’t it? The age old wisdom thats been passed to us telling one thing and the books we hip mom’s refer to raise our children telling otherwise. Even if we have everything in a balance, we always realize that only in retrospect! Atleast that is the case with me! Blaming my parents….I guess if I am the blaming type, I would do it any way! Bunking math class at school was not what I had in mind, but it was the other stuff. More than anything they wanted me to be the best. I would have, if I had studied something else is my point.

Kiran,Gauri, that must be tough. Children spend great amount of time at school and a good teacher makes all the difference. Its is sad that some teachers do not understand the gravity of the situation,

By: Gauri

Gauri — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 13:54:09 +0000

This past year has been a very rough one on Abhay and in turn, on us too, as regards schooling. He’s never been able to handle aggression and as his luck might have it, he ended up with teachers who were aggressive with little children.
Resulted in him clamming up at school and his teachers wanted him “assessed”.
This little boy who is full of life at home and in other places completely morphs into someone else once he gets to school.
And the easy solution that the school looked towards was to label him.

I totally agree with you in that every child is different and while the fact remains that schools cannot be tailormade to fit each and every child down to a T, teachers have to be patient and accomodating to a certain extent and more importantly be able to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of children in their care for three hours everyday.
Like I mentioned to his teacher too – It is very easy to label a child, irrespective of the question of whether a child deserves that label or not. And once labelled, the perception towards that child, the interaction towards that child, irrefutably changes.
Do they deserve that ?

By: thirtysixandcounting

thirtysixandcounting — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 05:11:48 +0000

To add my two bits: The brat was diagnosed at 2 of being mildly autistic with SID and PDD. There is hyperactivity involved, especially since he is vestibular SID. I am lucky to have him in a school which accepts him as he is and takes the pains to have a counsellor sit with him for half an hour everyday in class and help him integrate. He also goes to therapy, speech and occupational and physio thrice a week. Which is a total of 12 sessions a week. At some point the therapist suggested he be put on medication to control his hyperactivity to improve his attention span. I have resisted valiantly. He is just three and a half. I find that if I keep switching activities he stays interested. Or if I go with his interests, he picks up…I dont know how long I can keep him off medication, but I intend to fight it every step of the way, until every one involved with him, from his special educator in school, his class teacher, his pediatrician and I feel he is truly unmanageable.

By: Poppins

Poppins — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 04:55:01 +0000

As usual, a very thoughtful informative post. I have a few counter arguments, maybe I will do a post on it, maybe I won’t. I don’t think I could analyze it as well as you have…

My basic thing is that some amount of fitting in is required in order for society to function. This emphasis on individuality is great for the individual but not so great for society on the whole. When we are too individualistic, it leads to a breakdown in the familial structure as well, something we see in the world today (divorces etc).

IMHO, neither of our societies have nailed the balance. Either we have the me-generation, putting all else after individual interests or the martyr-generation, putting everyone before themselves.

And it’s a tricky thing, helping a child find its real potential. What if your parents had let you do what you want and you had blamed them for it later? Discontinuing your MS is a wonderful thing you did, you are an adult now and you know your mind. Perhaps discontinuing Math at class Eight would not have been such a great idea !