What we should teach our children
I
remember two subjects that nobody cared for much in school. Though your
opinions may differ and may even consider maths or science as suitable options;
I am only referring to Catechism / Moral Science and History & Civics. When
I see the state of the nation around me I guess this lack of interest or
importance has affected us very badly.
Let
us examine each subject starting with Catechism or Moral Science. Having
studied in a missionary school Catechism was always the first subject of the
day and it aids character building. Moral Science for the non Catholics also
attempted the same but somewhere character lost out to scores and people just
ignored the subject. The shocking rape crimes that have stunned the nation
shows moral deficiency and morals are inculcated in the childhood. I think it
is a pressing need to ensure that moral science gets elevated to a major paper
right through school and even in college. Surely it will make a change in
character building?
The
next paper is History which was clubbed with Civics. Sadly the paper becomes
redundant in High School. By the time students come out of high school they
forget national pride, delight in their heritage because they are focussed on
marks and only marks. By the time they finish college civic sense gets replaced
by cynical sense when they blame the ills of the world around on someone else
when the root cause will be at home. Today students seldom know their political
leaders, the laws of the land, duties, roles and responsibilities and it seems
unfair to expect them to be good citizens.
I
have observed the earlier government trying to bring equality with the
Samacheer syllabus and despite the best efforts of this government it has
survived. I only wish that one day this syllabus will incorporate these two
major papers for the next generation desperately needs it.
I would love to take these classes part time, but will there be takers?
Believe it or not, I was also thinking along the same lines some time ago. I regret those days in school when I was almost always dozing off and the History sir would wake me up by asking some random questions about dates (the historical ones, I mean). And Civics, we weren't remotely interested at all! Well, I wish teachers made those subjects interesting for students.
ReplyDeleteI wish the teachers of today make some reforms in their teaching methods.
Quite a spot-on post, Clement. Bravo.
Joy always,
Susan
I was thinking of civics for quite some time and more so after your traffic posts and whats happening around... but even i do not remember much.
ReplyDeleteWithout googling what i remember from memory is that Press is the Fourth Estate. May be bcoz my then interest was to be a journalist. I even did Journalism for beginners in College. I think civics is also there in the syllabus but not much importance is given.
After reading the book India Unbound by Gurucharan Das,I felt really bad for not knowing the history of our country.The rights of an individual which we studied in Civics were only to get marks and today nobody knows the basic rights of an Indian.
ReplyDeleteMay be we can take an effort to write a series of posts by our CBC people about basic rights to spread awareness.Let's give it a thought :)