Sunday, January 20, 2013

Building A Nation's Character


We are witnessing increasing violence all around. This disturbing trend is affecting our life to the core and changing our priorities. It is re-enforcing the need to carefully imbibe the relevant social values and ethics in our education system and curriculum. At KITE School we introspect and review the study pattern and activities periodically. It is important to understand that value-education must start right from the preschool days. Child’s behaviour pattern should be monitored and should be corrected, if needed. Here ‘correction’ does not mean aggression. Parents should work towards attaining desired results with affectionate and tender training. More importantly, we should inculcate social and human values in children not by preaching or ‘teaching’ but rather by showing them in our daily life interactions. Children observe and learn and internalize.

When children watch adults’ behaviour, they take it as approved social norm, they take it as a model in their sub-conscious mind. Therefore various models, derived from ‘watching’ different day to day situations, accumulate in the sub-conscious and a certain character starts building up in the child’s personality. Therefore it is utmost important that we behave consciously in front of our children. It is also equally important that we do not expose our children to inappropriate situations, scenes and media. We need to set proper example, we need to provide proper paradigm.

Every incident leaves a mark, every experience leaves an imprint. This is how children develop sense of truth, equality, empathy, justice and commitment. This is how society gets healthy and happy. This is how a nation’s character is built. This is how we get sons and daughters who make us proud!