I choose to set the context before I really answer your questions.
In my personal opinion, teaching must happen in both, formal and casual environment. I say this because as a parent I am seeing my child learning in the following two ways:
- Formal Environment: when someone trained, teaches something that the child does not know but needs to learn in order to become academically intelligent and morally right, in a formal setup with other children around. This formal environment helps because the child is more receptive to learn from someone with whom he / she does not assume casualness in a relationship and there is peer pressure with a sense of competition. This is what we know as school and classroom environment.
- Casual Environment: where the child is in his / her own comfortable environment and unintentionally learns from observing things around. This is where the child learns how to behave with others, understands what to do / not do, figures out how to react to various situations, realises what is right from wrong. He believes that what he usually sees happening around is “normal”. The child gets used to seeing what others do at home, or what is going on in the environment the parents let the child be exposed to, and then the child starts considering what he sees, to be the correct thing to do.
To answer the question asked here (why parents are letting schools be the only place for learning?) could be because of one or more of the following reasons:
- Busier lives: Parents don’t have time on them from their work schedules. Working hours under corporate pressure could be, either long or erratic. Also, in the corporate situation in India, people carry work home by letting their superiors invade into their private time or succumbing into aggressive deadlines.
- Lack of confidence: Some parents believe they don’t know enough and they feel that teachers can do all the job, including that of teaching what otherwise must be learnt in the home environment.
- High expectations: I have seen people believe that since they have paid money to the school, they have transferred their responsibility to the school teacher, to do everything that needs to be done to produce a trophy child. They do not realise that the teacher, in a formal environment, can only do so much, in a time available, which also includes academic syllabus.
- Nuclear families: This is true specially in urban India where people are living in nuclear families, often away from grand parents. Having mature elders at home ensures a child gets more attention and love, from someone who has been there done that, in terms of what works in bringing up children. In many cases where both parents are working, the child starts spending more time with domestic help that has been hired to take care of the child. But, usually, unlike parents, for them taking care of your child is a job and not love. This is when parents start expecting more out formal teaching.
Being a parent, I had been struggling until i realised that a child requires the following from parents:
- Attention (not just time)
- Love (unconditional)
- Engagement in activities (playing with them, reading with them, talking with them, watching a movie with them)
- Helping them make new friends
- Help – willingness to help when they feel stuck (with even small things)
- Trust (that they can rely on you)
- Pride – Helping them feel proud of their small achievements
- Happiness – delightfulness and joy in home environment
- Exploration – Letting them be close to natural environment where they can fulfil their inquisitiveness
- Fun in everything they do – Make teaching fun at home
- Listen (Every child wants to be heard. Most adults want to tell a child what they want their kid to do, very seldom do they want to listen. Listening does not mean you need to do what the child says, but it lets the child feel that my parents listen, consider and then choose)
- Appreciation – for small stuff
- Inspiration and motivation (and not being pushed / forced)
I may have missed many small things that parents may have found useful, but, I sincerely hope that I have been able to put my point across as a parent. I have not been doing many things that I have mentioned, but have started making small changes to my life to include the above in my lifestyle.
Disclaimer: I am no professional expert in this area, but I am a parent of a six year old.
