Thursday 11 August 2011

Is it right to write?


A month ago, I was informed by my 6 yr old son’s teacher that he needed to brush up his writing.....now, I know for a fact that he speaks very good English and is extremely fluent. With a bit of probing she clarified that she meant ‘formation of alphabets’.

His books anyway reveal many red marks and remarks on his writing. This is because he changes his font (calibri / comic sans / courier new / Georgia) from line to line. He has a logic to everything, and the one he gave me for this is – “I hate writing, so I tried to do something different in each line. Now my page looks beautiful, not really boring anymore!”  As a parent, yes, I was filled with glee that my 6 yr old was imaginative, creative, and I needed to help him explore this side of him. But as an Indian school student’s parent, I was left with no choice but to tell him that he could do all this in his rough book, but had to stick to rules (however boring and hateful they may be) when it came to his class work. The teacher herself suggested that I keep erasing every bit of incorrect formation until he gets it right.

One weekend later, he looked around for a pen that I needed, and, much to his amusement, he didn’t find one. He came back with a grin saying “There is no pen in this house, and that means, nobody writes, so why should I learn how to”? True to his observation, any writing happens on the laptop and so it set me thinking. Why don’t we just teach the kids how to type instead? He is already familiar with the qwerty keyboard, and although he uses just his right index finger, he loves typing things in a word file, and was very happy to find the spell check function. Now he is questioning the need for dictation. I am yet to figure out how to answer that.

The educational system isn’t really keeping pace the rapid evolution of human intelligence, so I started looking at games online that taught children how to type... and learnt that some states in the US have introduced typing for kindergarten kids.

Yet, just two days ago, I was chatting with a friend of mine who has a 9 yr old daughter. While we were busy exchanging notes on kids, schools, maids, classes etc, I happened to mention about the feedback that came from my son’s teacher. Up until that moment, the 9 yr old girl was completely lost in a game on her iPad with her head down, back hunched, right index finger-tip moving vigorously on the screen. She looked up now, and plainly said, “Why bother writing or typing? Ask him to use the Dragon dictate app, it just needs voice”!

Confessions



5 items in my freezer

1.       5 mini liqueur chocolates
2.       ¼ kg boneless chicken breast piece
3.       Frozen Chaat chutneys
4.       Whole spices
5.       A packet of frozen peas

5 items in my wardrobe

1.       Several plastic and steel hangers
2.       6 sarees waiting (for 7 years) to be worn
3.       Clothes
4.       Wallet
5.       Footwear

5 items in my car

1.       Music CD’s  - English / Hindi / Tamil
2.       Car tissues
3.       Ganesha idol
4.       Pen
5.       Coins

5 items in my wallet

1.       Photograph of my mom and kids
2.       Currency Notes
3.       Coins
4.       Driving License
5.       Credit Cards

5 items on my dresser

1.       Deodorant
2.       Perfume
3.       Comb
4.       Eyeliner
5.       Lipstick

I tag Rohini, Navina and Sirisha, to continue to play!!!