Stories/Kahani/Varta - These words are exciting enough for me, even now. This article/post contains my own opinions based on my experience and surroundings around me till this day.
The art is dying if I decide to be honest. The mobile applications, animations on retina displays are killing it. We are killing it. Those parents who glue themselves on social media to show off how beautiful their kids look, make kids glue on gadgets too. I am not a parent yet and so I might be too harsh and impractical but then again , the bitter truth of today's life style can not be ignored.
If I consider my childhood the most interesting one, then it is because of stories narrated by my grand mother which resulted into my interest in reading. Story telling by grand parents or even parents have different effects on kids for sure. The narration leaves a big window of imagination in the little brain than those animated stories. For example, 'There was a biiiiig Neem tree near the well'. Each of the kids will have a different imagination for both things. In fact, each time they will listen to this, they will have different form of the tree and the well. If they have been shown both objects on the screen, they will not use the brain to imagine much. I feel the whole phenomena hinders the mental- logical, creative, imaginative growth of a kid.
In showing off. how modern and technically ahead we are of time, we are loosing on the art of story telling which works as a catalyst in the growth of a kid.
It has become so important to make a kid speak in English from the very first year that we forget that the age of 1-10 is the age you can make your kid - bilingual or even multilingual. Research shows how kids brought up in the environment of multiple languages grow faster. Then there is also an ego of couples who proudly says,'You know my son speaks English only, he does not understand Gujarati (or the mother tongue) at all.'This is so depressing. The young parents don't realize how they are missing on those words, stories, characters in regional stories which builds cultural values in tiny minds. I am not against English, but then story telling sessions in your own language will have a different impact, keeping the family closer to the roots. Not to mention the history of India, culture and values in those stories. Before they step in the school, they would be having vocabulary in multiple languages with a strong power called Imagination.
Then there are comics. They help kids to put actions into those sketched figures. I am sure, from my generation there will be really few pupils who would not have read 'Chacha Chaudhary' or 'Raju's squirrel'. They are dying too!
Again I am positive too.I have seen many young parents introducing story books and narration till they start reading on their own, but they are very few. While I was in Singapore, one of the best feature(?) of the country was kid's library in all major areas. Each of the library had sections for a year old baby ( Pictorial or the book for narration) too. I have personally met a two years old girl who narrated me a story referring to each of the pages/pictures of the book, of course the story never had sentences, the story had a lot of imagination and excitement.
I hope if at all a young parent reads this and think over the subject, gets tons of story books or tells their toddlers stories from all over the world - I will consider myself helpful in building next generation of India.
The art is dying if I decide to be honest. The mobile applications, animations on retina displays are killing it. We are killing it. Those parents who glue themselves on social media to show off how beautiful their kids look, make kids glue on gadgets too. I am not a parent yet and so I might be too harsh and impractical but then again , the bitter truth of today's life style can not be ignored.
If I consider my childhood the most interesting one, then it is because of stories narrated by my grand mother which resulted into my interest in reading. Story telling by grand parents or even parents have different effects on kids for sure. The narration leaves a big window of imagination in the little brain than those animated stories. For example, 'There was a biiiiig Neem tree near the well'. Each of the kids will have a different imagination for both things. In fact, each time they will listen to this, they will have different form of the tree and the well. If they have been shown both objects on the screen, they will not use the brain to imagine much. I feel the whole phenomena hinders the mental- logical, creative, imaginative growth of a kid.
In showing off. how modern and technically ahead we are of time, we are loosing on the art of story telling which works as a catalyst in the growth of a kid.
It has become so important to make a kid speak in English from the very first year that we forget that the age of 1-10 is the age you can make your kid - bilingual or even multilingual. Research shows how kids brought up in the environment of multiple languages grow faster. Then there is also an ego of couples who proudly says,'You know my son speaks English only, he does not understand Gujarati (or the mother tongue) at all.'This is so depressing. The young parents don't realize how they are missing on those words, stories, characters in regional stories which builds cultural values in tiny minds. I am not against English, but then story telling sessions in your own language will have a different impact, keeping the family closer to the roots. Not to mention the history of India, culture and values in those stories. Before they step in the school, they would be having vocabulary in multiple languages with a strong power called Imagination.
Then there are comics. They help kids to put actions into those sketched figures. I am sure, from my generation there will be really few pupils who would not have read 'Chacha Chaudhary' or 'Raju's squirrel'. They are dying too!
Again I am positive too.I have seen many young parents introducing story books and narration till they start reading on their own, but they are very few. While I was in Singapore, one of the best feature(?) of the country was kid's library in all major areas. Each of the library had sections for a year old baby ( Pictorial or the book for narration) too. I have personally met a two years old girl who narrated me a story referring to each of the pages/pictures of the book, of course the story never had sentences, the story had a lot of imagination and excitement.
I hope if at all a young parent reads this and think over the subject, gets tons of story books or tells their toddlers stories from all over the world - I will consider myself helpful in building next generation of India.
In this age of nuclear families, children live away from grand parents, so they are deprived of the opportunity of opening of the 'big window of imagination' that story-telling provides. Parents are too busy to have time for story-telling. However, they can provide story-books with large pictures as some compensation but one-to-one story-telling has no substitute:(
ReplyDelete