Vanishing 3 R's

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The three R's are of course the original 3...(nowadays there are many synthetic fakes):

1. Reading

2. 'Riting

3. 'Rithmetic

The 'Vanishing' is from kid's schools of England, America and their million dollar Clones in Hyderabad.

On par with SDM, I love my HM Father...both were stern teachers but both were lovable 'characters' because of their innumerable but forgivable follies.

I so wish that li'l Ishani would be trained in English by the two in their unique ways.

I am afraid it won't be so.

Hear Rod Little's lament from London (Spectator in DC, today):

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"...I would like my (5-year-old) daughter to do a bit more reading and arithmetic: if the teachers have the time. At the moment, 90 per cent of her school day is spent manufacturing artefacts out of toilet roll tubes and sugar paper or "learning through play", as it is called, a process which we were assured would continue next year during "the next stage of her educational journey". There will be no spelling tests because these can serve to lower a pupil's self-esteem, ditto learning the times tables and so on. Perhaps it is just as well that there will be no spelling tests because a) our schools use the phonic method and therefore no child can spell anything and b) the teachers aren't that good at it either----at a recent fundraising quiz night, the outgoing headmaster's team came bottom of the spelling round.

And of course my child, like all others, will soon be subjected to a new national test assessing their ability to read, which takes no account whatsoever as to whether they can spell correctly or not. They will be given 40 words on paper and asked to "sound them out"; some of these words will not be the words as you understand them at all, merely aggregations of certain sounds, which perhaps form the basis of a language on that lizard planet I was talking about..."

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I have many nephews and nieces and friends of their generation 'settled' in England and America.

I know for sure that the mothers of their kids take immense pains to coach their kids at home the way my Father taught me and I taught their generation. And they all come first in spelling bees, some at the national level; and some are becoming damn good professional writers.

There is a stage in the life of a kid when rote learning is not rejected by them and they revel in it, rather; before it is too late.

Take li'l Ishani for instance. She is all of 1.5 years. There is no way her mom can feed her unless she puts one or the other of Ishani's Rhymes Books in her lap.

And what great fun it is to watch Ishani stand, spin, gambol, and drop down to the floor muttering all the time:

"hinga hinga hoaases, pokitful of poaaases..."

again and again; and insist I join her...


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