Dress Code in Colleges

What is it with people who have suddenly taken to moral policing? Suddenly we want to control…….others, of course! So much so that even our educational institutions are giving more importance to discipline and dress code rather than imparting an education. Today, the so called educationists have taken over the role of the parents too. And what is more surprising is that parents do not seem to mind it. Don’t they realize that by doing so their own children are going to be brought up with someone else’s moral values and ethics? Are they really alright with that? I am not. In any case I think the schools and colleges should concentrate on what they are being paid for, which is educating our young and not dilute this with things that are the domain of parents.

A cousin of mine went to an Ivy League University to do his Masters in Business Administration. Since he had some work experience prior to joining this course, he was offered to give a guest lecture to the junior students. I remember him recounting to me his first experience as a lecturer. When he entered the class he was shocked to see students sitting with their feet up on the desks, sipping coffee and biting into sandwiches. There were hardly half a dozen students and he was expected to lecture them. This is back in the 70s when I was a high school student myself. Of course, my first reaction was envy. Why could we not have colleges like this in India? But I also wondered how much would a student learn this way because I was conditioned to believe that one has to pay attention to every word uttered by the teacher, there has to be a certain decorum maintained in class, not only out of respect for your teacher, but also because it helps one concentrate. But the cousin told me that not everyone can get into a college of such repute and the students who get in are there because they have worked to get there and want to be there. And if they want to do well and pass out with good grades, it is up to them to work for it. It is not the job of the tutor to motivate them. They have to motivate themselves. Also, grasping and learning has nothing to do with dress, posture or decorum.

So, coming back to all this hullabaloo about dress etc. in colleges over here, I think the educators need to do a rethink and find out if they are implementing all these codes because it makes a difference to the score cards of the students or are they taking their authority too far. On one hand our children should know what they want to become in life before they hit high school. On the other hand they are not free to choose what to wear well into adulthood! A irony of sorts, I would say.

A student's perspective

My oldest daughter had an assignment to write a composition on a topic of her choice. The topic she chose was ‘My journey as a homeschooler’ which I have posted so that others can get a feel of homeschooling from a homeschooler’s perspective:

When my parents decided to homeschool us five years ago, my siblings and I were somewhere close to devastated. The thought of not going to school was incomprehensible. It took two years for us to start studying at home diligently. Since then it’s been only an uphill climb to becoming more independent, confident and successful. Today we believe that homeschooling is the best thing that happened to us.

The beginning of this journey was not easy. We had to learn how to study by ourselves because we had no one to push us. We had to get used to not wearing a uniform and getting into “school mode.” Studying in our pajamas was definitely odd! It took time to pay attention to what we were reading without sitting in a classroom full of students. As a result, we lost out on 6 months.

As time went on, we learnt to do all those things with ease. Most of all, we learnt to self-motivate ourselves. We became self-learners, although we had the occasional slip where we would not be able to concentrate at all and would spend the whole day “pretending to study.” We learnt to study only from books and the internet and taught ourselves how to take quizzes and tests. Our mother would spend almost the entire night downloading material from the internet and printing it out so we could study in the morning. It wasn’t very easy to concentrate on all that work when we were still in our pajamas.

Getting used to homeschooling was not the only problem our family faced. The decision we took to educate ourselves at home brought about a lot of mixed reactions from the outside world, including family and friends. When asked which school we go to, we would tell them that we homeschool to which they would respond by either laughing or seeming extremely baffled. My family has faced a lot of criticism for the decision we made. People have accused us of being “uneducated” and “uncivilized.” They have claimed that we are and will grow up to be anti-social because of this decision. It was hard in the beginning but then we got used to it. As we made progress, we realized that we could prove the outside world wrong.

Today, we are self-motivated, educated children who are still climbing up the ladder to success. We realized that we have proved the world wrong. We still face negative reactions when we are in the outside world but it doesn’t faze us any more. Compared to school going children, we are able to adjust more easily to the outside world and in a social circle. We are respected for our intelligence. Homeshooling has been the best thing that ever happened to us and we will never regret the decision taken five years ago!

Meaning of education

This is what I came up with when I did a search on the internet to find out the dictionary meaning of the word education:

“…the act or processes of imparting or acquiring general knowledge, developing the powers of reasoning and judgment, and generally preparing oneself or others intellectually for mature life.”

When asked why I chose to homeschool my children, I cite this meaning and ask them if this is really what a majority of the schools are doing today. Everyone is entitled to their personal interpretation, and their own adaptability of what a school does for them. But I found most of the schools amply lacking in the ability to teach children life-skills and powers of reasoning and judgment, which is to become an integral part of their lives in adulthood. Added to this was the burden of too much book knowledge, which was not going to help much as they embark on their different life-paths, whatever that may be. Of course, it didn’t help any to know that what you do in life has a whole lot to do with percentages. This is despite the fact that based on research conducted, it was found that a student who passed out with a whopping 98% did not fare better in life than a student who, let’s say, procured a decent 60%. The only use of the 98% was to secure a seat in college.

So, if the education system is no longer a stepping stone to a worthwhile career or life-path, what role is the current education system playing? As parents, how many of us have actually sat down and asked this question. In fact, when was the last time anybody questioned the role of education in a child’s life.

My daughter's first date

Well, my 16 year old daughter went on her first date today. In fact, it is the first time she has ever liked a boy. Mighty excited and thrilled that she has left her thumb sucking days behind her and truly become a teenager. Or that’s what she thought. Of course, her role model is her 17 ½ year old sister who had a first boyfriend (if one may call it that) at 15. But after she came back, there was a big turn around in her attitude. Somewhere she was feeling the pangs of having left her childhood behind her and having ‘become like any other teenager’. ‘Mom, I am tainted. Help me, there is nothing different about me any more’…… and so on! Of course, it was all in good humour because I caught her ever so often blushing at the thought of the afternoon she had spent with her beau.