"Keep out of the reach of children".
From being mere means of entertainment to harbingers of uncomfortable messages, films have come a long way. One such message is conveyed by a latest release. I bet many of the parents present in the theatres, young as well as old, must have squirmed many a time in their seats during the course of the movie. Bravo, for making the parents know that they are not the know-it-alls they assume that they are.Ambition : an ardent desire for rank, fame, or power b: desire to achieve a particular end.
That is the dictionary meaning of ambition. However, with passing times, I think we need to kind of expand the meaning now.
Ambition : An ardent desire for your child to achieve rank, fame or power / or a desire for your child to achieve a particular end.
Not a bad thing in itself, except that there is a corollary:
Not essentially with the consent or understanding of the child in question.
Now that makes it interesting.
I had a recent conversation with a young, yuppie mother in an upcoming metropolis in India. It was nine in the night, and she was already gearing up to go to bed. She added as an afterthought, " I need to wake up at 4 in the morning". Assuming it must be for morning yoga, I did not ask further. Bang came another after thought, " I need to take my son to the skating class at 5 in the morning".
It is none of my business, technically. But my thoughts did wander to the child. Does a child really enjoy or even want, to skate at 5 in the morning where the sleep could be peppered with so many Peter Pan dreams of lagoons flying over pink flamingoes? Maybe skating is a skill essential to survival suddenly. I am, after all, hopelessly out of touch with the ambitious world.
Every suburban street I walk down is littered with coaching classes of all sizes, shapes and varieties. There are classes for studying, for learning to speak in english, for learning etiquette, dancing, singing....you name it, and it will be taught. Natural inclinations be damned! What can be taught, will be.
I remember a childhood of carefree knee scraping due to falls from neighbourhood trees, fighting over doll weddings and hose pipe clothes-wetting with other little vagabonds. Life is disciplined now. Kids have no time to be vagabonds, and as for the tree-fall knee-scraping, I forgot to mention that there are no neighbourhood trees anymore. Roads don't make a convincing substitute. Or do they?
Trees have been replaced by ever rising towers of achievements expected to be scaled by the erstwhile vagabonds. Running around buildings and playing in the mud have been replaced by a regulated, mechanical drill to school and the umpteen other classes. Child labour anyone? Oh, it is for a secure future? Well, sorry. Guess I have my priorities entirely wrong.
Every kid needs to grow up to become some thing.....I guess music, skating, karate, drawing, is all perfectly essential in all of this. The kid needs to have multiple options, right, even when the only thing he is going to be allowed to do is management, engineering (worse, a combination of both) or medicine. After all, these are the only respectable professions in the world. (Writers are tramps who do not have a stable income, and hello, who said music is a career?)
The price of a respectable profession (which you feel sick about after a precise period of 2 months in it) is something which is invaluable to the inculcation of humanity....no wonder kids these days grow up to be violent, selfish and aggressive individuals. They have been taught at home to emerge superior, to win, to stand first. How does a child's brain distinguish between the right and the wrong when the lines are blurred in the first learning ground, the home? No, it is more important that the child tops in school. Being a good human being cannot guarantee a management degree right...?
If there are any kids reading this, kids, please stop reading this and get back to your books. You need to top in that unit test tomorrow.
P.S. Merriam-webster, You really need to change that definition.
posted by Anupama. @ 2:42 pm
2 Comments:
naaaice.. funny i've missed this one till now :D thankfully, i dunno any freaky parents who'd take their kids to any class at 5am... or maybe its just that a)I'm not acquainted with that many young parents, b)the ones i do know are big fans of Morpheus and Somnus and would consider it impolite to get out in the middle of the night, or c) the kids are too young for coaching classes to take on responsibilty for them...
What's your take on pre-nursery schools that admit kids as young as 19 months? I do know a cpl of those!
naaaice.. funny i've missed this one till now :D thankfully, i dunno any freaky parents who'd take their kids to any class at 5am... or maybe its just that a)I'm not acquainted with that many young parents, b)the ones i do know are big fans of Morpheus and Somnus and would consider it impolite to get out in the middle of the night, or c) the kids are too young for coaching classes to take on responsibilty for them...
What's your take on pre-nursery schools that admit kids as young as 19 months? I do know a cpl of those!
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