Children should rebel against the trend of ‘classes’: Gupta
GOANEWS DESK, PANAJI | 02 February 2016 22:24 IST
Children should rebel against the parents who are forcibly sending them to different classes throughout the day after the school hours.
This was an open appeal made by Prof Arvind Kumar Gupta, an IITian promoting scientific theories through toys.
Delivering a lecture with fascinating demonstrations of making toys based on scientific theories, Gupta also said that classroom is a worst place to learn science when real science is outside in the nature.
While showing different experiments of making things from toys to generators with simple waste material, the author of 24 books and 125 films on science activities came down heavily on the parents who force their children into different activities.
“Play is a serious business, say the psychologists. If there is no play, there is no learning”, he said while literally playing with simple things like paper, matchsticks, cycle valves, tubes, matchsticks etc to make tempting toys and scientific tools.
He condemned those parents who are imposing their aspirations, which they could not fulfil, on their children.
“The best parent is the one who does not superimpose her or his own will on the child but who looks at the child’s own interest and backs the child to the hilt”, he said amidst huge applause from the children gathered at Kala Academy today evening.
While recalling 30 students going for coaching classes committing suicides, he asked what kind of coaching it is.
“You may not do IIT, but you can live a good compassionate life. Damn with the IIT”, said the electrical engineer of IIT Kanpur, who left his well-paid job at Telco to work among the children four decades ago.
He also said the coaching class industry is Rs 2.50 lakh crores in India today, with vested interests involved in it.
Similarly, he said the private medical colleges are earning Rs 12,000 crore every year and a seat for MD is sold out for Rs two crore.
“What kind of doctors we are producing and what concern they will have for the patients? We don’t want such greedy professionals, the country today needs good human beings”, said Gupta.
While stating that building scientific temperament is part of our constitutional duty, he also told the science teachers to take the children out on field trips and to the nature, where lay the secrets of scientific inventions.
“Inside of the classrooms is so boring and disinteresting. We are unable to engage our children there”, he said.
He also strongly objected to the 36 science centres, including one in Goa, built by the National Centre for Science Museum while posing Vikran Sarabhai Community Science Centre as the real model, set up in 1967.
“Nature is the greatest teacher and it is deeply inspirational”, he said, while stating that a coconut tree should be called a Toy Tree as you can make 60 different toys from the coconut.
He also said India at one time was recycling and recycling everything to put to its best possible use while we are today learning the worst from the west and not the best what is happening there.
“Children should get into the cleaning up mode by making excellent toys from the throw-away material and reach it out to the poorest of the poor child”, he appealed to the students.
He also appealed to the children once again to become the best human beings and to pursue passionately what they want to do, even by disobeying their parents.
Gupta runs a website www.arvindguptatoys.com, which has a viewership of 43 million and not less than 20,000 books are downloaded from it every day.
I fully agree with the above mentioned article