Eventhough, my wife, Zarina and I have been parents to our four kids and at present being grandparents to five grandchildren feeling euphoric after witnessing them perform in annual play or on the sports field often cannot get over thanking the school enough for our child's development. We, who, for the most part, have very little understanding of our own children's strengths and weaknesses and consequently harbour unreal expectations, find ourselves bitterly disappointed when our kids do not do well in school as we expected.
Little do we realise that by and large, once we put our child into a school, s/he becomes just another face in a school uniform. The fact that there is really very little scope for a deep dialogue between parents & the school about the expectations we have of each other.
As parents, we're so relieved to have secured admission for our children, but we've neither the inclination nor the time for a deeper & meaningful conversation with the school about its vision, our own expectations, the opportunities that the school can offer and so on.
As a former Chairman Parent-Teacher Association of several schools for 20 years, I found schools are so busy dealing with numbers. The teachers see their job as merely to get the student through the maze of examinations, culminating in the board examination rules.
Given the fact that the basic expectation of school education in the foreseeable future will remain the same. Schools will continue to see their job as one of delivering prescribed curriculum & encouraging children to crack the examination system with the magic wand.
So, I encouraged my children to invest time & efforts for a genuine understanding of their children's strengths, weaknesses, aims and aspirations as such interactions could provide a solid platform for discussions on a variety of subjects, including academic performance.
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