Monday, November 3, 2008

Did you say 'Kid'?

The other day, there were two surprises. One was an sms from an old classmate of mine, who was my best friend during my 11th and 12th standard days. Well, that was 22 years ago. The other was a call from another classmate, again from the same class. I was not too close to him, but we had been good friends nevertheless. They had got my number from yet another classmate who I had bumped into last year at the Hyderabad airport. Some of my friends from the class of '87 had kept in touch, and it was at one of these recent gatherings that they remembered me. This had resulted in the sms and the call. I went down memory lane. I had to...

The friend who had called is a very enterprising chap, with very good social skills -- I still remember the ease with which he often interacted with people, young and old. He knew so many people and had friends from different colleges in town. He went on to do several things which required him to bring to the fore his people skills. For a long time, he became an event manager for the corporate sector. He was the organizer behind the famous 'Bangalore Habba' (festival) every year. It therefore came as a pleasant surprise for me to learn that the event manager somehow became interested in the education of children, particularly in the ideas of Maria Montessori. He even did a Montesorri course from one of the colleges in the city. With his wife, he then started a chain of Montessori pre-schools in Bangalore, called the 'Roots Montessori' schools. There are four of them now. I was happy to hear about his experiences, and his passion for Montessori's educational ideals engaged as I am, in the education of children since the last fifteen years . 'I believe in total freedom for the child...the heavy bag should be banned!' he proclaimed. Indeed, he was planning to get his five year old son in the well known Valley School which had been established by Jiddu Krishnamurti in the late seventies in a beautiful location some twenty kilometres from Bangalore.

We kept talking abut our families and about our other friends, their families, their kids. I told him I had two kids, and asked him if he had any. He said he had one child. He had been in touch with many other friends from the class of '87. Does any of them have kids, I asked? He solemnly replied that so and so had one child, while so and so had no child...Finally, at one point, he had to cut me off. 'Did you notice that I have been using the word 'child' everytime you use the word 'kid'? I said I did. 'Do you know what 'kid' means'? Again, I replied in the affirmative. 'So, why do we label them as the young ones of a goat'? I explained that it was the first time that such a thought had even been put into my head. capricorn though I am, I had never imagind a goat when I had used 'kid' all these years. 'Let us call them children...let us give them their due', he said. 'Very well, point taken', I said. I knew what he meant, though I argued with him that a verbal shift is not enough.

His point was about semantics. Well, using the right words is perhaps the first step towards a clearer communication and understanding of meanings, without belittling the real nature of people or things. But does it change anything fundamentally, I wondered. The best example perhaps is the term 'differently abled', instead of 'disabled' when we are talking about some people who are in difficulty. 'Disabled' connotes a loss of ability. Yet, 'differently abled' brings back life, and points out that all is not lost, and that the person is able in many different ways. This is a powerful shift, provided it is accompanied by a paradigm shift in thinking, attitude and behaviour towards those who face disability of one kind or the other. Merely using politically correct words does not bring about this shift. It requires far deeper adjustments and changes on our part.

The same is the case with the term 'child'. Even if we were to use it, 'child' would mean different things to different people. To someone who is educated about children and their development, the term would evoke one set of images and meanings. To a parent who is hell bent on ensuring that his son or daughter gets great marks in the examination and always stays ahead of his class, the word will evoke an altogether different set of meanings and images. To use the word child and to appreciate what it means will require much harder work on the part of adults. Notions of child and childhood vary from culture to culture, and they keep changing with the times. Going by the middle class anxiety for performance in the examinations, and going by narrow definitions of what it means to succeed or fail in life, the problem is not so much about using the word kid or child, as long as we remain impervious to the potential of every child to grow as human beings in uniquely different ways.

November 2008