School Projects – Inner Dawn Counsellor Kalas views featured in The New Indian Express
Children need to be given projects that they can understand and execute both cognitively and developmentally. The projects and models that the schools assign to the children need to be calibrated accordingly.
Assessing the children based on their projects, puts pressure on them to go far beyond their capabilities. The trend of outsourcing such projects doesn’t augur well for the child, both in terms of their learning about the subject at hand and also in terms of what they learn about hard work, dedication, honesty and so on.
When parents outsource the project (or they themselves do the project completely), they get a finished product, that is submitted to the school, with claims that it was done by the child with the help of the parents, which is not true. The child is coached to lie to the teacher and others, and learns that it is ok to get your work done by someone else, and claim it as yours.
The child’s creativity, innovativeness can be encouraged through arts and projects that are age relevant and appropriate. By assigning projects that way beyond the capabilities of the child, it can only make the child learn helplessness, or learn to cheat and lie, to claim work done by others, as their own.
Remember – The child not just learns from what they are taught or told. They learn more by observation. They learn more from how the significant adults in their life behave and act.
Inner Dawn Counsellor Kala Balasubramanian’s views featured on the New Indian Express on 4-Jan-17.