Nopes, I am not talking about cricket over here (I can hear the huge sigh of relief from all those who know that I am more concerned about the namesake insect than the sport here). What intrigued me to pen (or key) my thoughts today is my son’s online class. They were being taught about seasons and I heard them saying “there are 4 seasons”, and I was like…what? Last time I checked I was in Gurgaon, India. And I do vividly remember even last year we had 6 seasons change over the course of 12 months. I did a quick check with some other friends having kids of similar age, but in different schools, and the answer was same, there are 4 seasons!
Why is it such a big deal!
Heard this song? This is from a top rated series currently on amazon prime, called Bandish Bandits. More than the storyline, its the songs which are plain amazing and a treat to (h)ear. The song am referring to “Rituraaj” – the king of seasons..and my personal favourite, the rainy season (my first post happens to be lamenting on the same). Its a shame if my child is stolen of the realities of the country he’s born into and made to rote something which is clearly off realities. Its true though that the medium of instruction cannot do justice to the fact of the richness of our climates. Grishsho (Summer),
Borsha (Rains), Shorot (early autumn), Hemonto (late autumn), Shishir/Sheet (Winter) and Bosonto (spring) (Greeshm/ Varsha/ Sharad/ Hemant/ Shishir/ Vasant). A huge amount of our cultural heritage, be it literature, fine arts, sculpture or architecture is nothing but the manifestation or glorification of climate and its impact on us. You miss a season, and you are missing a whole link to the cycle here.
But its just a season…why fret!
Born and brought up in bengal and having spent a considerable time in states like Kerala and Karnataka during my initial days of professional (and wanderlust )life, the one thing which struck me most when landed up in Delhi-NCR was rains…or rather..the lack of it! My father once famously mentioned that the thing you call rain here would not even wet a paper towel back home. Having said that, must admit, that in past couple of years, we did witness torrential rains (and its impact on the ill-prepared municipal systems). This year specifically we have seen rains linger on for a longer duration of the year, and with greater volumes when it does. Our coastal regions bore the brunt of some of the fiercest cyclones in recorded history. As per several reports, the largest deltas in the world, the Sunderbans which act as a heat sink and natural barrier to cyclones have depleted by~50%. December 2019 was one of the coldest ones that I can remember. Climate change is no longer a theory in some obscure report, we are now part of the unfolding tragedy.
Peter Drucker has once famously mentioned “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it”. Taking it a bit further, if you are not teaching the kids the exact nature of your local climate, how can you sensitize them about the changes that’s happening around and to take corrective actions in their future? A lot of us these days are focusing on imparting “employability skills” to our kids early on (coding, robotics, olympiads..list just gets bigger), but what about life and survival skills? BTW, a major chunk of new age jobs are heat generators while we keep on depleting the heat sinks of the world. IMHO, this earnest cry for help from Bhutan should be played on all movie theaters along with the national anthem. Am I sounding too dystopian? When news like the collage below stop being sunday columns on page 7 of the weekender and end up on weekday pages of your daily newspaper, you know the water is now flowing above your head (sic.)
So? What do we do?
Its one thing to get inspiration on course curriculum from an International point of view, but blindly following it without taking into consideration the local variations and realities will only create confused individuals (especially in an age when kids consider a school teacher to know it all and parents are just…you know..impossible parents!).
One More Week 