Does fear, punishment and strictness induce learning?

I still remember my dreams when I used to have the trauma that my teacher will ask me ABC and take my test. And on some other days someone used to teach me numbers in my dreams.

Mrs. VIBHA KHOSLA

Principal, Shri Ram Global School, West Delhi

        Those were the days which were full of fun and frolic....... that's what childhood is all about.

When you feel chilled enough to do whatever you wish to. Play with your friends, go for cycling, climb trees and wait for mom to rest in the afternoon so that we could sneak out to play.

Naughtiness was unlimited and had no boundaries as there was so much to do, so many friends to play with and so many games- playing hide and seek, tippy tippy tap, cricket, badminton, stapoo, jumping jack and aankh micholi.  But then why such dreams during the night after have such a fun filled day.

Why the fear of going to the school?

Was school not so much fun as the home and friends were? I still remember how I used to feel early in the morning when I had to go to school. The feeling was nauseating as the fear of going to school where learning came with fear was terrible. The fear of being slapped by the teacher if I did not know the correct answer. The fear of a stick hitting the knee if the uniform was not up to the expected standard of the school. And please understand I am not talking about any ordinary school but this was happening in the best schools around. But is it really the way to learn or is this the right way to teach?

Does fear, punishment and strictness induce learning???

Please close your eyes for a few seconds and think if this should be.

So, when I grew up with this fear I desperately wanted to change this-learning has to be fun and only fun. It is for our pleasure and it cannot be forced or fed by means of punishment. Every child needs a conducive and healthy environment to learn. So how can we do this?

        Melanie Klien, a famous psychologist who studied children extensively said that children look up to their parents to establish a sense of safety in their environment. We have all seen little children poke their fingers in electrical sockets, and the struggle we as parents have to face to stop them. But do you know why they do it? Because they want to test how safe their environment is, and how safe they are in this world which they are only beginning to understand. The parents and caregivers help the children to make sense of the world. And as the children grow up and are enrolled in schools, they look up to their teachers to make sense of the world they are in.

        Now when the medium through which they have to establish whether the world is safe or not, becomes burdensome and threatening, how will the child grow?

        To put it more simply, when the child goes to school in hope to learn and instead of learning happily is put under the pressure to learn, succeed and enter a rat race, the child starts feeling that the environment they are in is not a safe haven, but rather a stressful obstacle which they have to cross. The same learning that can be equated to a pleasant walk in a beautiful garden turns into walking through thorns in scorching heat.

          As parents and educationists, it is our duty to make sure that these precious years for our little ones remain a happy memory, rather than a gruesome one. Not only should the educational institutions realize the importance of preserving childhood and catering to the child's curiosity, but the parents too, should be involved in their child's life and try to empathize with the child's need.