Less Education, More Understanding

Spending quality time with your children can go a long way.

Being a child is exhausting. From six in the morning to nine o'clock at night, they have a packed schedule. Even a five-year-old has to attend a chain of private tuitions after school. It has become our tradition to put so much emphasis on children's grades and 'keeping up' at school that parents and teachers alike try to box education into them (pun intended). The private-tuition mandate grew largely out of insecurities, fear and competitiveness, none of which have anything to do with real education or learning. Saying 'no' to private tuition would be a healthy choice, at least until the ninth or tenth grade. Even then, it's best not to overdose on it because it damages students thinking capacity and reduces their ability for independent study.
As we grow older, we often lose sight of what really matters by putting too much importance on social standards. Children need to have time to be children. As strange as it may sound, it's not uncommon for parents to insist that their child becomes good friends with the 'first-girl' or class prefect. But education is not contagious, it simply cannot be caught that way! Education skills are also not genetic or hereditary. So comparing the child's achievements with their intellectual parent(s), brilliant sibling or list of “successes” on the family tree doesn't help either. But these kind of practices affect children in a negative way. They lose their confidence and self-esteem when they are always being compared to the 'smart kids'. Although parents are trying to secure the child's future, the child feels unwanted and unloved, and starts to believe that they are not good enough.
Childhood plays a vital role in shaping a person's life. It is a phase when we start to form our beliefs, expectations and values. This happens through emotion-based understanding because rational-thinking capacity is not developed at childhood. The feedback that they get from their surrounding environment, especially from parents and immediate family members, is the key input for their thoughts (which are the same as their emotions). No matter how many times we tell a child that he/she must study and do well at school, children don't have the ability to understand this. But when parents get irritated or angry at them for their lack of obedience or poor performance, children interpret this “parental concern” as “my parents don't want me”, “I am not good enough” or “I did something bad”. They associate “performing badly in an exam” with “being bad” because they don't have the ability to separate these two disparate concepts. Instead, if parents request children to do something (with kindness and also firmness), children pick up this positive tone in the message as “good” and strive to do what's asked of them because then they identify with “being good”. The key emphasis here is that this is not the same as “telling them to be good” in an authoritative way, because authoritative tones carry negative connotations.
Unfortunately, in our culture slapping and verbally berating children are still common forms of parental discipline. But children don't understand why they are being scolded or beaten. When children are brought up with a heavy hand, they grow insecure and fearful because they think “if I do something wrong, I will get beaten”. Children learn from what they see. So when parents hit a child, the child doesn't learn the lesson that was intended but gets the message “it's ok to hit”. This encourages them to be violent. If the beating happens often, children blanket all their actions as undesirable and think “if I do anything, I will get beaten”. They become afraid to pursue their true talents and gifts and become sad and insecure. They don't have the ability to process these emotions or to explain these in words. This causes aloofness and frustration and they often act out by getting into fights at school or with siblings at home and throwing frequent tantrums.
When parents place undue pressure on their kids regarding grades and school performance, eventually it's common for the child to start keeping distance from parents to avoid unpleasant badgering. Even when they spend a lot of time studying, this ends up being generally unproductive due to monotony and boredom from doing too much of one thing. They become frustrated and end up not learning properly. When their results are not as good as expected, it simply goes back to re-confirm their belief that they are not good enough. Even when they do secure good grades, they quickly forget most of the things that they had studied due to excessive memorisation and superficial understanding of the contents.
This childhood struggle continues onto teenage years and adulthood. As teenagers, their frustration from repeated shortfalls turns into anxiety, depression and anger. These things often lead to short-tempered outbursts. It can cause noticeable aloofness and seclusion. When they feel vulnerable they turn to rebellion: substance abuse, hanging out with the wrong crowd, and choosing unhealthy relationships. All these things simply lead to more frustration, more depression, more anger. And by this time, they have usually given up on the things they were naturally good at because they never learned to value their natural talents. By the time they reach adulthood, they have fully formed negative opinions about themselves and their life. Since they are not happy with themselves, they don't thrive at their career, they struggle to maintain family ties and marriages easily fall apart. Feeling unworthy and depressed also takes toll on their physical health. It makes them prone to heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure and overall vulnerable to a weak immune system.
So how can we break this vicious cycle? Parents should encourage openness. Parents have to realise that they themselves are not perfect, and their kids will not be perfect either, no matter what. Good parents know how to embrace the concept of imperfection and refrain from 'constructive criticism'. It is crucial to understand that criticism is never constructive, no matter how well-intended it is.
Instead, encouragement goes a long way with kids. Parents should spend quality time with their children on a regular basis, even if it's as little as ten minutes per day. They should find out their child's natural talents and interests and help the child to develop these seriously. Every child is gifted in some way. If the skill happens to be math, great. If not, also great. Parents should pay attention to their children's natural skills and proclivities and help them to develop those skills. Engage with kids. Talk to kids. Encourage them to think. Treat kids as 'significant people' because they know important things. They know who they are, and what's important to them. This is their true identity. Parents lovingly amputate their kids when they try to mold them into something that the child is not.
This does not mean that education should be forsaken. Encourage education in different forms: reading various types of story books and novels, writing short-stories, taking part in debates, watching interesting and educational programmes on television. These things really help to develop their mental faculties.
Another important thing is sports. This is very important for children's health, their overall wellbeing and also for their education. Unfortunately, in our culture we don't place emphasis on this at all. Girls in particular are marginalized, although options like badminton, lawn tennis, dance classes, cycling etc. can easily be availed. Parents should recognize the importance of these simple things and encourage their children to make physical activity a part of their daily priorities. When children take part in sports regularly, their learning abilities increase, so they can learn more in less amount of study-time.
Lastly, and most importantly, parents need to take to heart that being an “A-grade” student doesn't mean your child will have an “A-grade” life. The greatest gift any parent can give their child is a happy, healthy and well-rounded childhood.
The writer is a lecturer of Economics at North South University.