The primary objective of school education should be to free the child from the prison of boredom. Learning becomes an unattractive proposition if it is based on pain, excessive exertion, threats and shame.
A school which is able to stay clear of fear of learning, pain and exertion will certainly be more successful at maintaining a deep and long-lasting connection with its students.
Schools must remain continuously and consistently observant of the needs of the mind, the body, and the spirit of their students. This can be achieved by infusing affection, sensitivity and attention into the school environment. Learning experiences must be infused with cultural, emotional, physical and intellectual sensitivity if schools wish to become more responsive to students and their needs.
Educating the educator
Before the educators begin to play any kind of role in the student’s life, inside or outside of the schooling system, they must as a first step be trained to examine their own strengths and weaknesses. Educators can offer to students only what they themselves are, and nothing more! Therefore, understanding the self becomes a first step towards developing necessary strategies to enhance their own potential and performance.
This effort, realisation, understanding and correction can help them regulate their own emotions such as anger, irritation, disappointment, and lack of empathy, inside the classroom and towards the students. Self-correction also improves thoughts and conduct, making them more effective role models.
An educator lacking in subject expertise, inner harmony, confidence, creativity, sensitivity, and imagination will be ill-equipped to build a connection with the students. For instance, if an educator is struggling with a particular concept but her ego does not allow her to go back to her textbooks, approach another co-teacher, read, or research, she is most likely to pass on the conceptual confusion to her students.
Another situation could be pertaining to the teacher’s personal life. In such a scenario, if the teacher does not have the ability to address adversities with patience and calmness then she is most likely to dump her frustrations, anger and fear onto her students. Therefore, the educator must be well equipped to face her inner and outer adversities-head on!
Understanding the student
As a second step, schools should consider shifting focus from excessive external activities concerned with the development of the child to activities concerned with understanding the inner patterns and capacities of the child’s mind, body, heart and spirit. Understanding periods of sensitivity such as a surge in a desire to learn, drop in a desire to learn, loss of a grandparent, loss of a pet, shifting of homes and cities, and crisis at home will help the schools respond appropriately to the child’s learning.
Such circumstances have a direct impact on memory, retention, attention, and enthusiasm. Whatever the school may have planned for the academic year or the semester, it must have a sense of pleasure.
When the students experience a sense of pleasure in learning then they will feel the task at hand is not laborious and therefore would want to do it. This will ensure that learning is stress-free, fatigue and anxiety free.
When the students enjoy the process of learning then they are more willing to achieve mastery over skills and concepts. This keeps them coming back to school and back to the classroom!
Creating good environment
As a third step, the schools must focus on understanding the various components of the child’s environment, which when put together, enable the educator and the schools in assisting the child to attain her developmental milestones. These vital environmental components do certainly include but are not limited to, intellectual and physical infrastructure.
Beyond a vibrant intellectual space and well-equipped physical infrastructure lies a very sensitive and crucial component that pertains to love and belonging. It is the abundance of love, sensitivity and reassurance that makes the student feel secure.
When the students begin to feel that they ‘belong’ to the school and the school ‘belongs’ to them it is then that the school-student relationship translates into one based on trust and understanding rather than one stemming out of a sense of transaction. The school can then utilise the foundations of this trust to generate in students an enthusiasm for learning and knowledge.
(The author is an educationist working on documenting her observations on children’s play and learning experiences.)