CHILD IS THE FATHER OF MAN

The child-life is a hiding place of mans` power where man must seek it with all his mature faculties. Our tradition asserts that “Home is the best school and parents are the first and best teachers”. This thought has been a continuous source of inspiration for our society to protect the creative and spirited life of the child.

Today, the situation is absolutely averse. Growing restlessness and stress in small kids is something very strange but a harsh truth, which was not existent in past times. When our parents or their parents tells how easy, joyful and carefree their childhood was, it seems to our coming generations as a fairy tale, not possible in these days. Erich Fromm once said that “the danger of the past was that men became slaves but the danger of the future is that men may become robots”, and that is what we are beginning to face.

We are living in an age where there is no scope in our life-style which can nurture and evolve self-born genius in every child. Parents think it normal to admit child in school very early where within a few months small becomes an obedient bull to carry the load of heavy school bag upon their back. We people appreciate this pattern very well on the name of education without being bothered that it has been killing the innocent spirits and dormant potentials before they get manifest.

‘A child,’ said William Wordsworth, a famous poet, ‘is the Father of Man’. What he means here is that everyone `s mature imagination faintly follows out the traces of the childish-fancies, innocence and wonder visions?

Sources of joy and fun play and merriment in the past are now supplemented mechanically by video-games and computers. Conventional ways of growth i.e.-idea of building character in manifolds is un-deliberately forsaken. Young-ones are temped to emulate their all habits from these unscrupulous resources with disastrous consequences. Together with this they come to know all the tact and ugly information in a very tender age, what they really should not. Such unwanted things fed into the young minds, ultimately stifles the possible manifestation of the right conduct, characters and inherent creativity.

The worst role in un-shaping the tender mind is played by our modern pattern of education through unsystematic institutional body. Displaying the meaning of education in terms of marks, grades or merits has increased immense pressure on the young learner, which not only brushes aside all the creative faculties but also leads young ones often to emotional and mental breakdowns. Every year after results we meet with such news that a boy or girl has committed suicide after unsatisfactory performance.

There is a must situation today that thinking people within educational regulatory bodies and in our society together rise to resolve this serious but long neglected problem. It is true that in our world today, to discriminate what is going on right track and what is not, because everyone claims to be on right direction. But, a simple question always remains to be answered that if we are really heading correctly then why we reach at wrong ends. Does it not signify that there is a need of great introspection, yes we do? This is so because regarding this problem, no policy or educational reform alone would be able to mould and protect the healthy future of child unless it is decided individually ‘for what are we marching forward’, what is the result of such a bone-broken hard work due for a small child. To gain what values in life we indulge him in such un-deliberate state of affairs.

It is true that to resolve it means to swim against the tide, but if we want to save our children from becoming robots and if we want this phrase ‘Child is the father of Man’ to remain true in the test of time, we must have to penetrate, introspect and work positively, for there can be no better way than this.