Develop critical thinking

The newspaper report published a few days back mentioned about the impact of television on the impressionable minds of the young kids. The writer was of the opinion that the exposure to video is likely to have adverse impact on the creativity of the young minds. The educationists and the psychologists are trying to understand how much effect this exposure to the TV channels and other forms of video contents have on the learning of the children and in the process what impacts it has on the creative parts of the children. This becomes more important because the market is full of the digital contents being made available to the kids and the schools. Every day you come across a new product making you believe that their product will make the kids learn so easily and much more than any other product in that field. Sometime it appears like the competition between one kind of fairness creme with the other. Such products are brought in the market making the people believe as if without the use of the same they would not look good as others, using that product. Almost the same kind of situation is emerging in case of the digital contents in the field of school education also. Here, I do not undermine the importance of the contents prepared by these companies but my worry is when and how much should our children be exposed to all that. Another report in the newspaper makes us more worried because that talks about the creative thinking level declining in the children of our country. The children are able to do rote learning but many of them are not able to think critically. The creative skill and critical thinking are very important for the children to develop during their schooling because that will help them to do better at later stage in their life. All the help in the name of the smart classes and the digital content  does not prove to be good always, not only for the children but at times it hampers the learning growth of the teachers also.

The other important aspect not to be ignored is that too much exposure of the children to the machines may not be good for the emotional development of the children because emotional intelligence is as important as IQ. The children already have too much access to the computers, laptops, iPods and mobiles etc. that they get very little time to interact with the family members. In schools also if the same situation is created then most of the time of the children will spent with the machines. All know it well that the company the child keeps,plays a very effective role in the development of  thinking of the individual and this is absolutely true in case of the children. If they remain in company of the machines for a longer period what would they become? For better development of the children more interaction with the human beings is required because they learn more things from them. The children should be allowed to think as much they can. In the past, the kids were left to play outside and allowed to make the houses of their own choice. They could create some wonderful shapes on their own which not even the adults had thought before. I have shared the following example with many people and would like to do the same again. When the TV was not available with so many channels and due to this radio was the most popular media of the entertainment and the information. On vividh bharti channel of the radio, the anchor will talk about a village where the old lady would be telling stories to the children. As the visuals were not available to the people hence they were free to visualize whatever the thought or felt. Somebody would think that it was a kuccha house or a hut and somebody else might think it to be a pucca house. Somebody will think that a lantern is available for the light while others might visualize that the people are sitting at a place where there is not much of light. Similarly, they could visualize about the clothes worn by the adults and the children. Now as everything is readily available and watched on TV so the scope of thinking is reduced to the minimum because the children will think the same what has been shown on the TV screen.  The children in the earlier days were provided with the story books which would give them an opportunity to think about the situation they were reading in the book. Sometimes, those stories would be true and many a times the creativity of the writer. The children should be allowed to interpret the things the way they want to analyse. In this process there is a possibility that something new and different can be created. The innovations are the products of the creative and critical thinking. The development of these is very important in addition to the learning taking place on usual basis. For this the emotional intelligence must be given its due importance.  I do not say that the use of the digital or the visual contents is always bad but as asked earlier we have to think when to expose our kids to this. The use of such contents at later stage or in the college or the university would benefit them because the critical thinking is already developed by that time. The teachers and the schools should be careful enough to use these gadgets available in plenty nowadays. These should not be used for the purpose of impressing others that such things were available to your children. These should be used as the supplement to develop the skills of the children and should not be allowed to be the hindrance in the development of the critical and creative thinking of the children. Let us allow our children to think and do things independently. This will make them better human beings and that is the real objective of education.