“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.
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