Yesterday, we visited an initiative for the kids created by two young enthusiasts Ashish and Taukeer. It was wonderful to see their commitment. They have been trying to provide integrated learning to the kids, while at the same time preserving the traditions and local knowledge that have been gathered by that community while roaming around in the forests.
Some of the activities of the kids were also captured over the camera:
In a society that is so doomed with divisions around religion, caste, and nations, it's so good to see such initiatives. While interacting with the kids, we realized at least two things. First, kids have an immense capacity to learn new things. We told them the right badminton technique, and they picked it up very quickly. We asked them so many questions and they could answer very well. I feel that all human beings have an immense capacity to grow and that does not depend upon our age, experience, culture, or exposure. That capacity to grow is innate to us and unless we damage that capacity ourselves, we always keep growing.
The second, which is equally important is that we constantly damage the capacity to grow. We, as a society, indoctrinate our kids with certain unverified ideas and beliefs without telling the truth. We just want to be treated like heroes. We wish to pretend that we know everything hiding our failure to understand this world in the guise of certain ideas and beliefs that we subscribe to. Our kids who do not have much exposure to the outside world get caught in this indoctrination and get caught in the net. The worst part is that they are seemingly happy inside the net, with a limited worldview. They fail to realize that the security they seek in that narrowness is actually the biggest danger. A luxury train taking us to a concentration camp is not a place to be happy.
Ramakrishna Paramhansa explained this through a very beautiful metaphor. He said that when a fisherman throws the new into the sea to catch fish with bait, some of the fish are smart and run away from the net. Some get caught in the net but realize very soon that they have been caught and run away before the fisherman takes the net out. Some keep enjoying the bait and by the time they realize that they are caught in the net, it is too late and they die as the fisherman pulls the net out of the sea. Similarly, we live in a society that is full of all types of bait of ideas, beliefs, rights, and wrongs. The realized souls do not go near the net. Some enter into these nets to realize their fault soon and come out of the net within time. However, unaware people get trapped in these nets.
The problem is that people are caught in these nets of beliefs and ideas much before they become capable of examining the truth independently. These baits appear to be more attractive to hungry stomachs. The fishermen are also searching for the hungry fish. I think that it is the primary responsibility of each teacher and parent to help kids ask questions. Allow them to question every right and wrong so that their own rights and wrongs are not based on indoctrination rather they are based on awareness of the world. The moment they understand the contextuality of the rights and wrongs, their sense of absoluteness about the rights and wrongs will disappear. Once is child learns to live with awareness, he will find his own answers. We need not tell the answers because answers will vary from situation to situation. We just need to teach them to be aware. They need not learn the solutions of mathematics by heart. They just need to learn the logic of mathematics. Once they understand the logic, they will derive the solutions in their own unique way.
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