question your learning and respect your learning....

“Take responsibility for the choices you make, and also accept the consequences of your actions”

This is probably what came out of today.

At the dance workshop Ms.Priya Murli continued to teach them the dance on the poem, Bharata Samodayam Valgavay, but a bigger learning today was understanding the importance of “discipline”. Somehow because everything comes easy and no one questions a growing individual regardless of caste, class or background, time, punctuality, respect and responsibility are human factors missing in most of our systems of learning.

In our age old guru-shishya (teacher-disciple) education system, there was immense respect, trust and faith in a teacher and hence a pupil always maintained discipline and respect for the teacher but we see in most young groups today these traits are dwindling, and this was brought to the notice of the group of girls softly but in a straightforward manner by Ms.Priya Murli by making the girls understand that true success only comes to disciplines people.

It was a tough morning to get through and some of them struggled with the new steps but once again it was brought to their notice that by concentration and understanding no problem is too difficult.

Post lunch, once again, we had the girls stroll into the afternoon session nearly 20 minutes late and demanded that they go to the beach as a break but since the beginning of the camp somehow we have been giving into every demand we decided that they need to earn their beach day. So we once again emphasised the need to be punctual and if we can get that from them in the next two days we would consider their request.

We started adding colour to our paper prints as this would at the next dimension to the work, also since it is a print exercise the girls had to use patience and concentration to try and make it an even pattern.  For some the pattern started emerging only when they began filling colour. But we clearly observed that many like to play it safe and are smart to find ways of cutting corners to hasten their work.

The evening photography session was working with each group and taking a look at all the photographs shot by them in the past 4 days and guiding them to finding their stories to compile forward. While Kaushik Jay was working with one group, we played trivia with the rest of the group, asking questions that we know they all should know as they were questions framed from their geography, history, biology, basic science subjects, and we were quite shocked at them not knowing some simple answers to questions like “which are the 5 metro cities of India?” “what are metals?” or “name the current president of India?”….for most basic questions their answer was we know it because we learnt it but don’t remember it for which we asked them that if they had understood why they had studied it in the first case? Some of the girls in the group are from class 9, and did not know why they study a subject like geography or history? … but somehow it not their fault, it just goes to show how rote learning has become the order of the day.

We called it a day by having a small chat to make them understand the importance of questioning what they are learning, understand why they are learning what they are learning, not to be afraid to give their opinions and always know that there are always multiple answers to life’s questions and it is not good to just follow a system blindly but learn to question and then make individual and independent choices.

Lastly, we made a time table for tomorrow to get confirmation on their seriousness about time and punctuality, and also informed them that they have to be responsible not only for themselves but for the entire group to be on time. Now we have to see if they will “respect” our request.