Where are we heading …?

The doorbell rang the third time. It was the courier boy, all set to get my autograph and leave the books. It was my first graders books. She was already off to school. Day after day she had waited eagerly for every door bell to check if it were her books that is getting delivered.

With the parcel at hand, I just found a comfortable place where I could do the check list. Just a matter of few minutes everything was done, now comes the massive job of covering these!

As I got myself to work, I just recalled those good old days.

Our school generally closed on April 12 or 13 a day before the Tamil New year’s day. Though we collected our report cards on that day, we were given dates for each class to collect their wards books. It usually starts by May beginning and closes by mid of May.

I could still feel how excited the mornings of that special day were. We friends generally plan a particular time and coax our parents to come the same time. Though there used to be long queues, we used to sneak out to the corners leaving our parents on the queue. Some of us would be exaggerating on the vacations we went and few chalking out the entire trip schedule we were to. We used to visit the school canteen for a little snack and catch up with rest of the stories.

Back to the queue we would excitedly scroll through our new books discussing how tough the year ahead is going to be!

At home I used to enjoy covering my books along with my mother. Choosing the brown cover and most importantly the cartoon labels and see my names on the new books made my day. And at the same time we learnt the art of covering the books too!

But somehow I had a feeling that today’s children were deprived of these simple pleasures. Is the online mantra the secret thief?or the current new gen education system?

Though the school closes by April, the next years syllabus are up during March, which means they start their next class before the end of vacation. During the vacations today’s children are bombarded with home works and worksheets with their Formative Assessment starting just after the school.

Gone are those days when holidays were meant to be spent at Grandparents house. Indulging in your favorite food , playing through the day, listening to grand ma stories , having dinner at terrace with moonlight at its full brim, sharing our bed  with our cousins where all done with such fun and happiness.This did obviously develop our social skills free of cost and most importantly we it learnt unaware.

No wonder in today's world we run to shops to find grand ma stories,look out for public speaking programs and  take children to play homes so that they learn to mingle with other kids.

 we bombard the children with too many streamlined classes. Isn’t it funny that we send our children to personality development classes? Aren’t we all aware that social skill needs to be practiced like any other skill?

A phone bell put an abrupt end to my musings, it was a parent of my little ones friend, who called me inquire if I know someone whom she could outsource the wrapping job.

 we are so tuned to outsourcing things that we never realize its actual value. Soon there would be day where the technology would definitely over power us and a day would come where we need to send our children to classes to learn moral values, ethics and basic human relations.

Isn't the purpose of life is to live to its brim rather than merely existing? will we ever stop this mad chase?