The word Education is derived from the Latin word – Educere which means ‘bring out, lead forth’. It means the child is not an empty box to fill. We have to bring the best out of him. Education focuses on the harmonious, physical, mental, social, emotional, technical, and spiritual development of the child. It transforms the child from a self-controlled, egoistic being into a social and global citizen. If this is the meaning of education, then why does education become the synonym of STRESS? Teachers and parents both have to try to understand the real meaning of education.
Today, education is stressful and challenging due to traditional parameters of academic assessment and evaluation. Every aspect of assessment instills fear in the mind of the child, the fear of competition, fear of forgetting and above all fear of being branded as a failure. So stress is a combination of all these fears. We should teach him that success is a journey, not a destination; and success needs hard work.
Marrying competencies and skills acquired through academic pursuit with responsible quantitative and qualitative assessment techniques will definitely lead to a special flowering of talents, which would fulfill the mission of education. Our missile man, Dr. Kalam believed in this. So assessment should be free from stress. The National Curriculum Framework (NCF 2005) visualizes certain broad aims of education which seem to be in sync with Dr. Kalam’s mission. It explains that real education makes the child THINK and TRY. It guides the educators – during assessment they should give importance to the independence of thoughts and actions of a child, not to rote learning. The teacher who was once the SAGE on the stage is now a guide or facilitator to empower students to learn at their pace and at their leisure, or through personal learning networks.
The great Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw once said – Progress is impossible without change and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything. So all the stake holders in the education process need to make a paradigm shift to a more transparent and inclusive evaluation system. More efforts are required towards changing the mindset of children and parents; those who have very big dreams, make stress an inevitable part of their lives. The need of the hour is to understand that the rat race towards high ranking and unbelievable percentages will make the life of a child full of stress. Stress causes depression, insomnia, and brings about drastic changes in the personality of the child. Another reason of stress may be excessive workload, too many curricular activities and lack of time. It leads to rebelliousness among the students and kills the interest of the child in studies.
When we trace the evolution of mankind, we see how human beings moved from one level to the next – from hunting to farming to developing computers to smart phones. So we have to understand that the demography of our classroom has changed drastically and the focus of education is no longer on rote learning but on concept formation with the application of ICT like flipped classroom, etc. So our classrooms are increasingly becoming learning laboratories and education is to move beyond the traditional methods. Classrooms should become centres to facilitate learning and educators should put into practice scientific and efficient ways of assessment.
Once Dr.A.P.J.Kalam asked –‘Can we make an education system which will retain smiles on the faces of the students throughout the period of education?’ So, both parents and teachers have to meet the challenges and work to maintain smiles on the faces of the students. A child stepping into the sea of learning is like a refreshing morning breeze untouched by stress of the competitive world. Parents and educators must understand child psychology and the real meaning of education.
The aim of education is to develop every child to become a confident and self-directed learner by working on his IQ, EQ and SQ and prepare him to become a physically, mentally, technically, ethically and morally upright global citizen. The goal of education was, is and shall always remain to equip our children with values to become better individuals; thereby creating a better world where there is no space for stress in life.
REFERENCE:http://www.progressiveteacher.in/need-of-the-hour-stress-free-education/
