We often find lot of literature that tells us that we need to teach kids to ask questions, think for themselves, carry out activities that encourage their creativity, practice learning by doing, promote inquiry based teaching, teach kids to think out of the box etc. While these will help the child to learn how to learn, I also want to highlight the need for today’s kids to be briefed on some fundamental life lessons early in life which would make them good human beings.
Many of our [Indian] textbooks pride on India’s diversity. No doubt India’s diversity is unfathomable. But today’s kids need to be taught that diversity no longer means the textbook definition of people coming from different regions, religions, belonging to different ethnic groups, races, speaking different languages, cultural differences, caste or economic differences etc. Diversity should adopt a whole new meaning and should include but not be limited to – physically disabled people, mentally disabled people, dwarves, giants, homosexuals, trans-genders, cross-dressers, feminine males, masculine females, divorcees, widows and widowers, unmarried single woman in her late 30s, a live-in couple, atheists, bisexual or bi-curious people, introverts, dark-skinned people, freckled faces (basically all groups of people who are in minority, or face ostracisation from society in general. We all are part of the same society. While some of these may have genetic roots, others may result from personal choices, and one has to understand that every bit of this “medley” is what makes this society the way it is.
Diversities as those mentioned above need not be explicitly put into the textbook. Rather these should be made part of everyday lessons. They should be included in school textbooks as “part” of society and not be highlighted as “abnormal”, since this may bias the way we look at these so-called [currently labelled as] different people.
Diversity is awesome:)
Image Courtesy: Eddypua/ Devian Art/ Creative Commons
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