September 5th is back once again and India celebrates yet another Teacher's Day, coinciding with the birth anniversary of the second President of India and academic philosopher, Dr. Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan.
My daughter, Chelsea, who is in the nursery class this year - the first year in her schooling life, loves school. I will post her own short film sometime later on this blog. But today, I got down and dirty with her as we made Teacher's Day cards for her 4 teachers. That's right, she wanted to create her own cards for each of her four teachers in school.
As the paints flowed and she got her fingers all messed up with some finger painting, the excitement in her face made me realise how much we adults stifle creativity in our kids. Free painting is all but shunned in schools. Children are taught to be "correct" - "Those legs are not proportionate to the rest of the body," they told us, or "How can that boy possibly be smaller than that tree," they chided.But looking at my 3 and half year old, dabbling with colours, dragging her little fingers along the paper to create flowers and stems and leaves and excitedly using the old toothbrush to spray the sheet in front of her, I made a sincere plea to all the adults she will come across in her life - "Please leave my daughter alone! Give her space to develop her own innate creativity. Don't, for God's sake, stifle it with what you think is "correct", putting her in a little box for the rest of her life. Please!"
And yes, a happy Teacher's Day to all who care for our kids!
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