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