
“Education is the manifestation of the perfection already in man – Swami Vivakananda”
Sometime back I wrote about Abraham Lincoln’s letter to his son’s school teacher and my perspective and how it was appropriate for our lives here too. To bring up a good human being and to help him/her learn and get educated is the role of the parent and also the teacher at school.
Well, there were these competitions going on in my seven year old son’s school again, here, in India. This time it was Western Music. I am so fond of these musicals. My son sang some of my favorites and then Que Sara Sara and Rudolph the red nosed reindeer. He continued to the preliminaries, quarter finals, semi-finals and the finals. But one day while preparing for the finals at home, my son suddenly said, “Not all are going to win.”
I said, “Yes, they are not. But if you want to win, you need to practise.”
He was not the type of person who was interested to sing, but the type who loved to listen to music and songs. And I discovered this during this time.
“But amma, I don’t care.”
“Well, you should do your best. And then if you don’t get to win, that is fine. But you should not just give up.”
“I am not giving up. I just don’t want to sing.”
“Oh?”
Well, I was at a loss of words. I did not want him to do something he did not want to do. But then we were already into the finals, and I thought was it not a sheer waste if he did not even participate? This got me thinking…
The next day I found this quote in his school’s website.
Education is the manifestation of the perfection already in man – Swami Vivakananda.
We send our children to school for education and the teachers and parents are loving and affectionate and try to encourage the children to imbibe knowledge.
But then, what do they actually learn? Only what they chose to!
And also, sometimes they don’t learn and at other times they are very smart in academics. They also indulge in sports and other extra-curricular activities. We are happy, sometimes sad, and at times indifferent to various achievements, successes and failures and mediocre performances of our children. So many choices, actions, results, and yet Swami Vivekananda says we are all perfect.
If everyone is perfect, then where are the gaps? Why do only some people win? Why are there so many differences and scales of grades? ‘Manifestation’ is the significant word. What manifests out of a child is important. And whatever manifests, the society, the parents and the teachers are responsible to some extent. And then the children themselves are finally responsible. We bring up a child, giving him a lot of room to explore, think, discover and find joy, and, thereby, allow him to manifest his perfection.
I did not ask him to practise a lot for the singing competition. If he is not interested, let him not be. Maybe he is interested in building robots. Maybe he is interested in literary pursuits. Maybe he is interested in astronomy when he points out the pole star and Venus.
Because he is talented to sing, does not mean he should want to do it or become the next pop star. Whatever he allows to be manifested from himself, only will be, and I cannot force it.
And the reason for what he focuses on, no one can understand. It is his own mind acting under his own will and there are no explanations for that. So, let me not put a restraint to the manifestation of his perfection. Let him lay down his own options and channel his own interests.
In the end, he did end up participating in the finals, but without practising and the results are not out! But I shouldn’t care about the results because he doesn’t, right?
Is your child exercising independence in what he wants to do in life and what he wants to achieve? If so, are they different from what you think? And how do you handle it?
This is an original post to World Moms Blog by Purnima, our Indian mother writing from Chennai, India. Her contributions to the World Moms Blog can be found here. She also rambles at The Alchemist’s Blog.
Photo credit to Wiki Media Commons.
Oh I so love this, Purnima! I think I would do the same. If a child wants to practice, he will and he will do his best. But if he doesn’t want to or only does it for the family then the results would not be as significant as if he was doing it out of his own accord.
Thanks Olga. I realized that too. And I am glad I let it be so. Let him have fun! After all childhood is made of such fun experience. After 10 years, nobody is going to count the number of prizes he won. He will be what he will be.
And ironically the song Que Sara Sara says the same too – “The future is not with us … And what will be, will be”… lol!
With a soon to be 16 year old, we have this now … what is it she really wants to do, what is it she has to do, what it is that she thinks it is I want her to do – and does that matter enough for her to want to do it 😉
And so it continues … most of all we need to foster a love for learning, so letting them pick and choose is perhaps a better way than having them turn away altogether.
Great post …. you are doing a fab job there Amma 🙂
Oh Nicole, my husband already dreads the teenage years! ha ha!!
Maybe I will be looking at you for some mature guidance in a few years 🙂
To me, this is a very tricky one. My 7 yo son is on one hand quite gifted and well ahead of his age, but on the other hand he will always choose to do nothing in which he can fail or for which he has to do much effort, even if is something that interests him. He has it set in his mind that if there’s something he can’t do perfectly from the first time, he is a complete failure as a person, so he wil avoid it. He just won’t learn something voluntarily, so I do force him… I want him to learn about the fun of learning, which is very important to me.
Of course, this is ‘gentle’ forcing, more like encouraging. For his daily reading exercises for example, he knows that for each page he reads, I will read two, as to have the story he is reading progress faster. So now he reads and he persists when he makes a mistake, which is a huge step forward. The same goes for his violin lessons. He absolutely hates his daily lessons, especially when he is learning a new song, but when I tell him I will give away his violin to his little sister, he rebels. So I KNOW he still wants to play the violin. He just doesn’t want to practise difficult pieces.
This doesn’t mean I let him join competitions of concerts if he doesn’t want to. But if I know he is interested in something at the beginning, I don’t let him quit when he wants to…
But I guess my main point is: I find it very difficult to know whether he is making a choice based on his interests, or based on his fear of failure. So I force/guide/encourage him untill he is more confident about his skills.
As the mom of a son who is 20 years old and a daughter of 17, I can confirm what Purnima has discovered already. 🙂
My son was tested by an Educational Psychologist when he was in grade 2 because his teacher was worried that he had ADD. The results were that he did not, but that he tested “gifted” on most scales. My son NEVER studied (yet always passed all his exams). The ONLY thing he ever put any effort in was computer programming. Since he left school he went straight to work as a computer programmer and is doing really well! 🙂
My daughter, on the other hand, is an extremely hard worker and puts too much pressure on herself to be “the best” at everything! She has a talent for Art and Design and is also musically gifted, but will only sing in the shower and she quit piano lessons when she was 10! 🙂
I believe that the greatest gift we can give our children is our unconditional love, because that gives them the courage to try different things until they discover what they truly love to do! 🙂
Great post! We all have to deal with this at some point as parents and with four kids it’s amazing how different each is in their strengths and interests, which has been a good lesson for me as a parent. I know it’s o.k. if this one is better at one thing and that at another, when they do find their passion they put in effort and that they find what that is is important to me. (of course they have to try their best at school work but in terms of outside activities.)
Poirnima, loved your post , I have a son who is going to be 18 soon and in first year of college. I have learned that when their interests and passion conflict with that is parents and when both parties have strong interest/ passion, that is when conflict arise between kids and parents . For us, we had gently pushed him to do what he was interested as a child(mostly those interest is instilled on him purely on what he is exposed to, if I had him exposed to ice skating instead of chess, I am sure he would have developed an interest in that) but we backed off when our interest didn’t match but he found out what he wants to spend his time and energy on , soon we were cheerleaders on the sides. We have been lucky so far in terms of his talents and his academic pursuit, I don’t have a definit answer if we would have just watched him with out interfering if he didn’t conform to our norms!