work and work

Have been thinking about the similar lines for few days.

This blog is triggerd by a post by Nivi "A Ted Talk on 'How to live to be 100+http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_buettner_how_to_live_to_be_100.html "

At Bodichipalli village I see many old age people, still carrying water from well to their homes.

One of our mason has grand children and he still travels by cycle and lifts bricks.

At village, our neighbors made their home by themselves with a little help from other villagers - they do carpentry, masonry, painting, gardening .........all works together and still they get time to sit out and do nothing, Kids at campus are impressed with their multitasking.

Last week we were discussing about "when a child of 3 yrs is working on Mobile, laptop or text books we all feel great, but when the same child washes the plates we may be thinking "oh! the child is doing work". According to me whether it is operating mobile or washing plates both are skills and child is exposed to both the skills - but our own belief about both the skills gives different messages to the child".  I see no difference in learning maths from text books and sweeping floors - but the way it is delivered to kids creates boundaries - one becomes superior and other inferior. One becomes more important and other more important and waste of time. Many kids shares "this is not my work, maids will do this work".

In our education we talk about hands on skills, but we donot talk about our own work which we find all around us - we outsource our daily task to others (maids, carpenters, plumbers............) and send our kids to various learning classes to work on hands on skills like pottery class, robotics, theater classes and so on.

One of the visitor at campus asked me "if the child is not working on maths in Kitchen lab, then what value one gets out if it, kids can do a lot of maths in kitchen, how does other things like cleaning the table bring value for them". I was speechless. I see a huge value in cleaning table  - we first think about the left over food, how to recycle them, how to store them, how to make changes in our next meal based on the left over quantity..............this intangible maths is invisible and hence does not bring value for many.