Day 9 - Cherishing the Penultimate

As we come to the end of a tightly packed week, insanity takes over. The growing urge to be part of the polluted, suffocating and traffic filled civilization makes us restless. Even though we claim to despise the congested atmosphere, it is our comfort zone. It is one thing to love nature, go on treks, immerse oneself in the beauty of it all but a completely different thing to actually live there. For someone who is used to a bustling life of urban India, it becomes difficult to breathe fresh air after a week!

What about the commitment to our vision? What about being the change for the million kids who are depending on us to deliver? One of the most important take away for the day was investing parents in the education of their child. We often hear statements that put the responsibility of educating the child on the teacher alone. What we don’t realize is that there is not much you can do when you hardly get five to six hours a day with the child. Also, nobody picks up skills, knowledge, mind-sets and values only from schools. The world outside plays a far bigger role in moulding the lives of our children, parents especially so.

A change in education cannot begin and end at improving the teachers. Education is not the acquisition of academic knowledge or excelling in sports or arts. It is the ability to learn, improvise dynamically, think rationally and put pieces of information together to form a meaningful belief system. If Newton had stopped at saying ‘F=ma’ and not have put it into the puzzle of the universe working the way it does, we would have probably gone back to the Stone Age. One does not acquire this skill by merely attending school. It has to be inculcated in everyday life. This is where the world outside comes in. If you wish to change something, then you must also change the things surrounding it. Ring fencing! Investing the parents, making them believe in a common goal can go a long way.

At the end of all the chaos of the first week, the penultimate day arrives. The day we have to start preparing ourselves for stepping out into the real world and applying everything that we have learnt. It is not very easy to piece together everything when you don’t know what the end result must look like. Nevertheless, I see the light at the end of the tunnel. I know I have worked to make relationships stronger and fears weaker. All this, within a week! Hence, in all likelihood, everything else that follows will be alright too. But for now, it is time to cherish the fun outing, the pollution of the city, the bustling lives on the streets, the fights for food, the weird dance moves and above all, new friends!