My husband and I have always believed that children learn from the environment. We've seen this being realized many, many times in our career as educators. Create the right environment in School and this in conjunction with the right kind of environment at home is what shapes our children. Environment doesn't just happen, as we have learnt. If the right environment is not created, then whatever the environment is where the child is growing up, that becomes the child's teacher. As we see in 'Slumdog Millionaire'. Children are avid learners. So, Jamal, Salim and all the other kids learn what their environment teaches them, and they learn the lessons life makes them learn, fast and well. They learn to live by their wits and they learn to survive all the vagaries of fate. This doesn't mean that they don't have the spark of childishness in them. They do. Their childishness is very much there, alive, albeit hidden under layers of cynicism and hurt and humiliation. Their childishness comes out in the games they devise, playing cricket on the runway, thrilled at the sights they see when they are unsuspectingly taken away in the bus to Bombay, their calling themselves the 3 Musketeers.....Later, their human-ness also becomes evident. They have not let it die completely. The tenderness and loyalty to each other remail. But, oh, how they learn from their environment, how they adapt, be it as a guide at the Taj Mahal, or a beggar, or a thug, or a chaiwallah. Life is a constant education, the environment is their classroom, and they are willing students.
Creating an environment isn't easy at all. It is very hard work. It takes all your mental, psychological, emotional and physical energies to create an environment suitable for children to grow in. Our energies should be only concentrated on this task. Our children are our future and they are the ones who will create the future world. What we see in many schools today - 'let the children be free, let them be creative, let them learn for themselves' - this just does not work. If we let children be, then they will fall back on their limited intelligence and limited EQ and SQ to do only what they can ( check out the book 'Lord of the flies). Being human they will make mistakes,but then, because there is no adult presence in their lives, no adult who has taken the time and the trouble to motivate them, stimulate them, draw out the best in them, force them to higher and higher heights, correct them, they will fumble and fall. They will not know that it is all right to make mistakes, that one learns from them and then one gets on with the business of living. We as adults have to equip them intellectually, emotionally, physically and psychologically, by creating the kind of environment where they will learn all this. The environment we create is what is going to teach them the eternal values of living; it is going to give them a belief system, something to fall back on at all times, something to judge for themselves whether they are on the right track or not, something to help them cope with reality; it will teach them to discriminate, it will set standards. Then, when they go out into the world, they will go forward in strength of mind, heart and body. From what they learn from the environment that we have created for them, they will deal with whatever life gives them - the good, the bad and the ugly, and will be able to create their own world with confidence.