This was the book that First Lady Hilary
Clinton wrote as First lady in the 1990s, which tried to imply that it is not
the parents only that play a significant part in how a child is raised with
values, but that many people have a hand in it. The conservatives took umbrage
to stress that the nuclear family is the most important. However we are
increasingly a fractured society where few live in nuclear families with
parents and siblings and it is getting much less today, with so much commuting
going on, and employment far from home.
In that context let me review the part
that should be and is played by the village today, but it will not be for too
long. We have to determine how best we can produce children with values and goals,
under the circumstances of challenging upbringing.
In my experience, when parents, or more
particularly a mother goes to the Middle East, their infant children and others
are left behind, for the father to look after. However in villages he has no
clue on how to do this task, and enlists surrogate women, who often are either
/ and an aunt, a grandmother on either side or an elder sister in the case of
large families to take this role.
The child gets attached to that person
who brings them up usually calling them with the term KIRI AMMA (literally
translated being milk mother) The values that this person inculcates has a
extremely important role to play, and children brought up with a minimal female
attention and love, turn out to be problem children in later years which could
scar them for life, and make lasting relationships difficult.
Insufficient attention has been given to
this aspect of child rearing, and though each Divisional Secretariat has a
person in charge of Kids, and their welfare, does NOT have a complete list of
all the children in their area, and DO NOT got to each GN division to discuss
problem children in each area, that may require intervention due to all sorts
of issues including abuse.
It is therefore an important aspect that
needs more resources, if we are to have a society that has values, and ethics
and prevent truancy, that child protection and child welfare officers are
empowered and take their jobs seriously instead of being there nominally as is
the case at present.
Schools can only do so much and even
they don’t have counselors who can identify children at risk and try and assist
kids who fall through the cracks. These issues will be part of a new village
that takes care of all its youth, ALL!
2 comments:
Over the next 10 years 5,000 village schools will close due to lack of students and teachers. Actually due to the poor standard of education and lack of teachers, parents opt to send their children to the nearest town by bus, thereby forcing the closure of schools. These are mainly primary schools.
There must be a plan to use this facility as the basis, with little extra expenditure to turn them into Community Centers, where the pre school kids have a two year montesssori program, babies can be taken care of in a creche system, so mothers can be gainfully employed and the seniors can use it as a community center for activity and perhaps subsidized meals where it makes NO sense to cook for one or two people in one's home.
In this way, the "rasthiyadu" children can be brought to the fold and be in a program that is interesting to them bringing out their talents, keeping them out of mischief and directing them back to schools, so a kind of social service center too will help.
Today, because of the cussedness of the education department they don't want anyone to take over their schools, and instead let it rot, and are dens for illegal drug taking and prostitution, with many of these places overgrown and causing a menace.
It is high time the people who make decisions, are made aware of this great resource and put it to use
That is a fantastic idea, I have also mooted years ago in this same blog. SO we can start with turning every school that closes, (there are 3,000 schools today, with less than 50 students), I dread to think how many teachers there are in those far flung schools, not catering to their charges letting the kids down, and parents without the resources to send them to town. These children are the vulnerable ones who will fall through the cracks.
We can then have a plan to have such a facility in each GN division that acts as a center of the village and various organizations of the village can have their meetings there too, to make use of the facility and have a responsible person in the village to manage it, an additional source of employment for older retired but highly capable person.
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