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Most of us believe that geniuses are a
very rare breed and only a few children are born with that potential. Not
according to the Raghavans! “Many children have the potential of
developing genius,” according to them. “Every child has far more potential
than comes to the surface under normal circumstances. The secret is to
create conditions that enable the child to discover and express their full
potential.”
“Young children have an incredible capacity for learning,”
says Aruna Raghavan. “They can learn to read multiple languages with ease
at a very young age, even before entering school. They can imbibe a wide
range of general knowledge just as a form of recreation.” Her husband
Raghavan adds, “Children can learn at least twice as fast as they normally
do in traditional schools without homework, cramming or strain of any
type. Learning can be fun for the kids and a way for parents to relate to
them positively.”
The birth of their daughter, Niru, made them search for new
methods. They stumbled on the techniques developed by Dr Glenn Doman in
the USA, combined them with ideas on education taught by The Mother of Sri
Aurobindo Ashram, and found they worked miraculously with their own child,
who began reading voraciously and learning on her own at a very young
age.
Doman concluded that the first six years of life are a time
when children learn naturally, spontaneously, effortlessly and joyously -
as a form of play - and that the more opportunities the child has for
learning during this period, the more rapidly he learns and the greater
his capacities for learning. The younger the child, the greater the
capacity to learn. Every child's natural ability to learn far exceeds what
we are tapping, because of the deficiency in our teaching methods. Our
present educational methods tap and develop only a very small portion (at
best 5%) of human capacity. Each child is a potential genius, with unique
capacities. The system should be capable of recognizing this and drawing
it out. The programmes are propagated to begin
with three week babies and go on till the child is five years. By then,
the child was well into reading books beyond his level. But it is
understood that the figures may vary.
The Raghavans are not just talking through their hats. They are
working practically applying advanced methods of early childhood education
to help normal children develop their fully innate potential. Aruna and
her husband first became interested in early childhood education in the
late 1980s while living in Mumbai. She was a secondary school teacher. He
was a Chartered Accountant with a highly successful computer software
consulting business.
Eight years ago the Raghavans left Mumbai to set up their own
school at Arasavanangkadu village near Tiruvarur, Tamil Nadu. Three years
ago Aruna guided the launch of Primrose School in Pondicherry and several
others since then. All the schools are applying the same basic approach.
“The methods we apply in our schools enable even average children to
perform way above average, to acquire self-confidence and
individuality.”
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Articles by
Aruna Raghavan
Correspondent, Primrose School, Pondicherry
Correspondent, Shikshayatan School,
Arasavanangkadu, Tamil Nadu
1.
Reading
without Being Taught
2.
Reading
-- How Your Child
Progresses
3.
Teaching
Babies to Read
4. Teaching
the Five Senses
5.
Reading
to Your Child
6.
The
Beauty of Words
7.
Integrate
Learning
8. Physical
Education
9. Poetry
and Your Child
10. Emotional
Growth
11. Teaching
Science to your child
12. Evaluation
without Exams
About
Primrose School
About
Shikshayatan School, Tamil Nadu |
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