Being the parent of a child can change your life completely. One moment, you are a carefree twenty or thirty year old and the next moment you are sitting and filling admission plans, saving for college or driving your child to numerous tuition and coaching classes.
Just the other day, on my way to the movie theater I happened to sit behind middle aged couple- knee deep in child rearing- and their two little brats in the bus
“But we spent so much money in admitting you to the Math Camp!” the distraught mother exclaimed
“I don’t like Math, mummy”, said the little devil, even as he spat out from the window at random strangers.
“You don’t have a choice Monty, everyone must do well in math”, spluttered the mother, while the oblivious child blew bubbles with his chewing gum and made faces at his little sister
What this child needs more than a Math Camp, I thought, was a disciplining camp, where someone taught him that spitting at strangers or banging at the seat in front of you is not funny!
Before I knew it, I was daydreaming about my (future) children and the heartache that they will be responsible for in just a few years from now, when I was struck with an idea!
Banks maintain a tidy little online summary of their transactions with us -accessible at the click of a button. Why can’t schools do that? Why did the harried mother in front of me have to wait till the end of the Math camp to notice that her son (now busy scraping something disgusting from under his seat) was no good at math? All she needed to do was log in once a day- maybe during a coffee break and see how many math classes he had taken in the last few days, how he had scored in the interim assignment, where does that score fit into the rest of the student’s bell curve, and even whether he was better at algebra than geometry or vice versa!
Now my mind was really racing! Wouldn’t it be even better if a parent could then compare her child’s Math scores with –say—his music scores, and discover that this is what the child was really talented at? (Is it possible that the little boy howling in front of me was the next Kishore Kumar?) And wouldn’t it be wonderful if she could see how these scores improved or worsened with time so that she could take corrective action immediately? And if your child changed many schools, his little dashboard could just be transferred from one school to the other, helping new teachers understand the child’s drivers and strengths
Maybe there could even be a little screen where we could type in the hours our children spent practicing for each subject and whether that gave commensurate returns- our own little test and learn framework What works better for this child – studying in the mornings or evening? Maybe he understand numbers best in the morning but writes his most creative essays late night! Does allowing him to watch half an hour of television daily immediately impact his grades- or conversely- make him more aware of the world and do better in social studies?
Just thinking of these frameworks was making me look at the child in front of me with a little more affection. Maybe I had dismissed him too easily. What does a zero in Math Camp really mean? Maybe this zero came at the same time as this child was voted the kindest child in class. (Not very likely given how cruelly he was now pulling his sister’s hair). But if his mother had a dashboard, she would know that- and not just harp on his Math score.
It was time for me to step out of the bus and head out to the theater. But before I did, I had one last task to do. “If you don’t mind my asking you, what do you two do for a living?” I asked the hassled mother as she pulled her children closer to her from either direction. She stared at me as if I was crazy and then answered – “ I am a freelance writer and my husband- a radio announcer”. There, that put the final piece of the puzzle in place. Maybe the dashboard could also have accompanying aptitude tests for the parents- determining what they were collectively good at and therefore suggesting potential career paths for the children. Maybe over time, we could have a family tree of such aptitude tests accompanied by school scores ! I was ecstatic now, and suddenly not so worried about having children of my own some day!!
Unfortunately though was no time to go to a movie anymore- when I could walk to the school next to the theater instead and pitch my million dollar idea to them!
) . We have hazaar autorickshaws (ricks for the yuppie) plying on our roads, have we thought of helping these auto drivers? They keep roaming around the city “hunting” for the right customer. And finally when they do get a customer, neither the customer nor the driver are sure if the driver wants to go to that particular place. Can’t we have a centralized system wherein we track all the ricks in the city, guide the right customer to the right rick and save everybody’s time and the heartburn? We do see a lot of potholes on the roads, we do not get clean water everyday in our taps, we are not sure if the bus that we are waiting for at the bus stop would really come in, we are not sure if we would have electricity at our homes while we are watching our favourite sitcoms and the list is endless. Now, I am sure the local MLA and the corporators have the blueprint of their entire area which they manage. If a group of analysts can come together and advise the MLA or the corporator in telling him exactly as to the number of buses that would be required in his area, the peak time, where exactly the water lines are leaking, where exactly there is pilferage of electricity, where exactly there are potholes on the roads (any MLA thinking about google maps?), don’t you think life would be much easier? And all of these sitting from an office with 10 computers (that is it!!!!)