By Tamanna Tripathi

tamanna084@gmail.com

With so many pre-schools and schools around, it becomes a tough task for parents to choose as to what is the best for the child. What’s the conventional method and what’s not? Ever thought? Yeah, that’s always in your mind, if you have a 2–3 year old child! Was the teaching approach of our times that bad? And, is it fine if we follow the same rote learning approach for our kids – considering that they will educate themselves? What should be done so that your child learns and not merely educates him/herself?

Each Child is Unique

The first important part towards choosing the best school for your child is to understand that each child is unique, and so is yours. There are, basically, six types of learners: ‘Visual’ learners, ‘Auditory’ learners, ‘Tactile’ learners, ‘Kinesthetic’ learners, ‘Analytic’ learners and ‘Global’ learners. You have to identify your child’s skills and adapt your lessons to cater to the various learning styles of children. Then, focusing on your child’s capabilities, you have to choose the best school for him/her. For instance, your child loves to sing and you want to push him/her to a school that focuses on sports. Imagine what will be the outcome.

Multiple Intelligence

“The Theory of Multiple Intelligences is a theory of intelligence that differentiates it into specific (primarily sensory) ‘modalities’, rather than seeing intelligence as dominated by a single general ability. This model was proposed by Howard Gardner in his 1983 book Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences.

“The capacity to solve problems or to fashion products that are valued in one or more cultural setting”

The question that, now, arises is as to whether the school we choose for our kid really caters to this kind of approach or is the approach only on papers and not being followed (or maybe followed only a few times during the complete session)? The schools show their books with ‘LSRW-skills’ at appropriate places with real-life questions, HOTS and LOTS being highlighted for you to see and appreciate. However, it is not always that each kid can follow all the skills and reach the set benchmark that shows ‘Grade A’ at the end of the session.

As a parent, your approach should simply be to ‘follow your child’s way of learning’. Apart from school education, what majorly matters is how you create an atmosphere at home which lets him explore and learn. We look at others sending their kids to certain schools that are brand names, but in between we tend to ignore the fact that there are some schools which are actually putting efforts so that children learn and do. Only extracurricular activities in the name of sports day, annual day, etc. do not solve the purpose. If a teacher in any school is putting efforts to make her students learn a certain concept with activities and her students are learning in real, your purpose is solved. You will definitely see a child take the right direction of learning and being successful in life.