Role of Schooling in Shaping Children's Future

Education is more than an investment. Gone are the days when parents and families decided upon the school based on proximity to home, stringent budget and from friends' opinions. Today it is all about researching about a school and finding out information themselves and through its reputation both online and offline. Traditional schooling emphasized on studies and had negligible support for co-curricular activities whereas contemporary schooling and education gives equal importance to academics and extracurricular activities. What percentage of parents will be ready to choose a school where overall development of children is focused upon rather than treating kids as rank-procuring machines? Although many may claim that when choosing a Best CBSE school or a matriculation school, children's overall development is the parents' concern, they certainly do not want to let go of the top priority for academics. Yet some parents are creating a transition in this mindset, a shift from pure academic to a more holistic one towards the purpose of education. It is rare to find a school which makes education interesting for children. The monotony and stress of education can be largely reduced with a good supplement of extracurricular activities which the child may be interested in or for which the child may have a natural flair. If you take any primary school for instance you will find a similar pattern of education for tiny tots, when comparing it with other primary schools. In fact it is more or less the same! But introducing a diversity in the teaching methodologies will make a huge difference to the approach the child develops toward education. A Montessori classroom is the environment in which a child picks up the first lessons for learning which begins with observation and reemployment of the learning in various other fronts. Application of learning skills in the future depends on the ability of the child to observe and comprehend the tutor's information and instructions when he or she is in play school. These abilities mark the child's intelligence quotient and form the basis to check his or her competence levels at later stages. An academic examination is not to be treated as the final verdict or do-or-die stance to a child's future, instead it has to be restricted to its importance in serving as the yardstick of “only” his or her understanding of the concepts “and successful expression of the same”. Beside the staple dose of sports and fitness sessions, if schools can add more variety into its nonacademic curriculum by including fine arts, language and phonetics, games, skill building and social welfare programs, it will be beneficial to students and will enable them in becoming better human beings and much beyond a mere thinking robot. Academic scheduling have to be built upon a holistic approach and only then will it give desired results. We find a lot of individuals who have had an excellent academic track record but failed to face the real and bigger challenges in life. Moreover, social and moral values are being lost and neglect of moral science in school curriculum could well be one of the reasons why children who are the citizens of tomorrow show lesser sensitivity toward society and values. A strong base of schooling can be the best foundation for not only the children's education but also for their future. Parents also have to support this endeavor.