Mother A : "My little one is going to get an admission in convent very soon."
Mother B : "Oh Good! I am also planning to go for an inquiry at Shamaldas Vidyalaya."
Mother A : "Oh God! Not a convent?" (Putting both the palms on respective cheeks with eyeballs almost out!)
Mother B : "Y..yes" (She replied as is she had admitted her crime)
Mother A : "How would your kid make it to IIT then?"
Mother B : "What?"
Mother A : "You see. Now a days, English Medium is must. It prepares your kids for IIM and IIT. English Medium students become so smart."
Mother B : (Already lost in thoughts....)
END OF THE STORY..
Mother B has canceled to visit Shamaldas Vidyalaya and will convince her husband and other family members to go for some English Medium school.
What type are you? A or B? Well, none of them are wrong. It is a very normal conversation now-a-days. The other one is, "Which board?"
These must be very familiar sentences for you. You might have said or heard them. If I am not wrong, you must be remembering one. Right?
Well, the idea behind this blog is a photo which my photographer sister posted in one photography group. (I can't post the photo here as there is a rule of us, the photographer sisters, that no one can use each other's work) There were a group of school kids in an auto rikshaw with mixed facial expressions. Some were tired, some were playful, some were looking at the camera with question. But two things were common: the size of their school bags and an unseen burden.
Yes. The burden. I gave a caption to that photo, 'Burdened Innocence'
Kids are doing what they are told to do, Go to school. Go to tuitions. Go to music class. Learn piano. And many more things which we decide on behalf of the kids till their certain age. We try to do good for them. We want their future to be glorious. We are not wrong in that.
But along with this all, one bug has entered in our mind so firmly that we are not ready to remove it. That is MEDIUM. Gujarati Medium, English Medium, Hindi Medium and many more.
This should be decided by the parents and family only. But where is the logic? I mean if you are deciding on the base of such conversation which described above, then it is completely illogical. Go and survey. How many IITians and IIM students have done their schooling in their native language? It will score more than you have imagined. It is a simple thing. Why to complicate it?
How can you say if your 6-year-old kid would ever see IIT or not? You don't even know about his/her likes and dislikes. He/she is just a kid.
I am not saying that English Medium or the medium other than native language is bad. It is not. But to think that mediums other than English is bad should not be acceptable. Kid's smartness is not dependent on his/her medium of schooling. It is dependent on the environment he/she is living in, the people he/she is living with, the exposure he/she is getting.
Many cities don't even have good and descent English Medium schools and convents. But still, "Going-with-the-flow" parents put their kids in such schools. Now, the only one who will suffer is the kid. He/she would neither be able to understand English nor his/her own native language. He/she would not be able to get involved in his/her basic social conversation. He/she would gradually cut-off from the social life. And that is definitely not healthy for any human being. And this is just a kid, a growing one. The more he/she meets different people, the more he/she learns. See, smartness is about these things too. It is not measured by his/her English vocabulary and fluency only.
There are some English Medium schools I know where they give your kids balanced knowledge, where equal importance is given to your native language too, where schooling is not burden for your kids any more. If your city has good convents and English Medium schools and if you can provide suitable environment for his/her healthy growth, and most importantly, if you and your family are confident about it, then go for it. I am repeating myself, It is not BAD.
I am 24 and still writing about such topic. Why? Because I have heard and seen such incidents. And from that day, this concept was very clear in my mind. I am brought up in an environment where good education is considered the base of one's upbringing, progress and personality and where all the languages are given equal importance. That is why I believe that whatever you learn, in whatever language, it should be best and descent enough for your growth, knowledge,success and personality development. Just try to think like that, don't go with the flow blindly and this will be so easy for you to choose a MEDIUM for your kid.
Mother B : "Oh Good! I am also planning to go for an inquiry at Shamaldas Vidyalaya."
Mother A : "Oh God! Not a convent?" (Putting both the palms on respective cheeks with eyeballs almost out!)
Mother B : "Y..yes" (She replied as is she had admitted her crime)
Mother A : "How would your kid make it to IIT then?"
Mother B : "What?"
Mother A : "You see. Now a days, English Medium is must. It prepares your kids for IIM and IIT. English Medium students become so smart."
Mother B : (Already lost in thoughts....)
END OF THE STORY..
Mother B has canceled to visit Shamaldas Vidyalaya and will convince her husband and other family members to go for some English Medium school.
What type are you? A or B? Well, none of them are wrong. It is a very normal conversation now-a-days. The other one is, "Which board?"
These must be very familiar sentences for you. You might have said or heard them. If I am not wrong, you must be remembering one. Right?
Well, the idea behind this blog is a photo which my photographer sister posted in one photography group. (I can't post the photo here as there is a rule of us, the photographer sisters, that no one can use each other's work) There were a group of school kids in an auto rikshaw with mixed facial expressions. Some were tired, some were playful, some were looking at the camera with question. But two things were common: the size of their school bags and an unseen burden.
Yes. The burden. I gave a caption to that photo, 'Burdened Innocence'
Kids are doing what they are told to do, Go to school. Go to tuitions. Go to music class. Learn piano. And many more things which we decide on behalf of the kids till their certain age. We try to do good for them. We want their future to be glorious. We are not wrong in that.
But along with this all, one bug has entered in our mind so firmly that we are not ready to remove it. That is MEDIUM. Gujarati Medium, English Medium, Hindi Medium and many more.
This should be decided by the parents and family only. But where is the logic? I mean if you are deciding on the base of such conversation which described above, then it is completely illogical. Go and survey. How many IITians and IIM students have done their schooling in their native language? It will score more than you have imagined. It is a simple thing. Why to complicate it?
How can you say if your 6-year-old kid would ever see IIT or not? You don't even know about his/her likes and dislikes. He/she is just a kid.
I am not saying that English Medium or the medium other than native language is bad. It is not. But to think that mediums other than English is bad should not be acceptable. Kid's smartness is not dependent on his/her medium of schooling. It is dependent on the environment he/she is living in, the people he/she is living with, the exposure he/she is getting.
Many cities don't even have good and descent English Medium schools and convents. But still, "Going-with-the-flow" parents put their kids in such schools. Now, the only one who will suffer is the kid. He/she would neither be able to understand English nor his/her own native language. He/she would not be able to get involved in his/her basic social conversation. He/she would gradually cut-off from the social life. And that is definitely not healthy for any human being. And this is just a kid, a growing one. The more he/she meets different people, the more he/she learns. See, smartness is about these things too. It is not measured by his/her English vocabulary and fluency only.
There are some English Medium schools I know where they give your kids balanced knowledge, where equal importance is given to your native language too, where schooling is not burden for your kids any more. If your city has good convents and English Medium schools and if you can provide suitable environment for his/her healthy growth, and most importantly, if you and your family are confident about it, then go for it. I am repeating myself, It is not BAD.
I am 24 and still writing about such topic. Why? Because I have heard and seen such incidents. And from that day, this concept was very clear in my mind. I am brought up in an environment where good education is considered the base of one's upbringing, progress and personality and where all the languages are given equal importance. That is why I believe that whatever you learn, in whatever language, it should be best and descent enough for your growth, knowledge,success and personality development. Just try to think like that, don't go with the flow blindly and this will be so easy for you to choose a MEDIUM for your kid.
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