I have been experimenting with learning capabilities and methodologies for quite some time. My guinea pig in this experiment has been my six year old daughter "Auroshree". Here are a few of my findings with proofs to substantiate my findings. 1. Kids love to take challenges to beat their adult opponents in a game of wits. I started teaching her doing basic arithmetic mentally using playing cards. We had two sets of cards Ace,King,Queen and Jack were marked for Addition, Subtraction, Multiplication and Division. Joker was zero and all other cards were their respective numbers. In the game between two players, the first player has to put three cards. The first and second cards will be the operands and the third card the result. The second player has to put the right operator. If the second player puts the right operator he/she gets all the cards and one point, if she misses she has to give back equal number of cards as the result and she loses one point. When she become comfortable we changed the format of the game now the third player her mummy was included. Now we played the same game orally, the first player would say two numbers, the second player another number which could be the sum, difference, product or quotient, third player has to tell the operator. We keep changing the format of the game and I found the kid is more interested in beating the adults and winning and in the process learns to perfect the skills. Using the same game of cards now I am trying to teach her the concept of equality, the first step towards algebraic equations. Today she can mentally do any single digit operation and addition and subtraction of any two digit number. 2. Kids love to relate and visualize and find it more intellectually digestible. I was teaching her the organization of a computer or rather how a computer works . How inputs like data and programs go into computer's memory, how the cpu reads each instruction and executes it, operates on the data and displays the result. It was getting quite boring for her and she was uncomfortable in comprehending what I was trying to make her understand. So I changed the subject and told her she has a more powerful computer in herself and she was excited to explore it. I went on relating her parts of the body citing analogy to the parts of the computer. So her eyes, ears, mouth rather all senses were mapped to the input units, the brain was the memory and cpu, her actions the output. Now here I faced the challenge is the brain the cpu or the consciousness? I had to explain her that for simple problems a part of our brain works like the CPU for more complex where the brain dosen't know how to solve the problem it asks the consciousness. Although I am not satisfied with my analogy but for the time being I have given her this example. If you have better analogy please let me know. Now my daughter tells her mother that her cpu is tired or memory is full when she dosen't want to answer any more of her questions. 3. Kids love to be treated as grown ups. Ask for their opinion and see their reactions. They would put their every mental faculty to solve your problem. I was trying to teach her the concept of classes and objects. I was giving example of Automobiles,Cars, Bike, Cycles as Super Class, Sub Class and our car, bike, her cycle as an Objects. I probably overloaded her with the concepts like methods, attributes, messages etc. although I tried to give her relevant examples but I was not able to trigger the interest in her which generally becomes apparent from the quality of questions she asks or discussions we have. A few days later I told her I am having a problem I have to identify the objects and classes those objects belong to and I am unable to do so. She jumped into it and started understanding my problem which was of course a fiction and started participating with me in my thinking and problem solving process. Again here I landed with a question the answer of which was debatable for her whether the horn of a car is an attribute and if so then why honking is a message/method? I am now debating with my wife whether my daughter should go to the school to learn or only to socialize? I am of the opinion she should go to socialize. For learning what they teach in the curriculum there are many better ways and the best way is to interact without boundaries.

Dear Sudhakar Ram, I agree with your conclusion that we need to create a better alternative method of education. But I disagree with your indirect suggestion that until we have such an alternative system in place, we should go with the traditional flawed education system. My suggestion is parents should give the best of both to their children by giving early education in the available alternative systems like Montessori/ JK Foundation/ Aurobindo/ Isha and then switch over to the traditional system when it becomes impractical to continue in such systems. My explanations are given below as my response to the three areas of concerns raised by Ms Hemalatha Iyer. I commit my services to bridge the gap between the two systems appropriately. Best wishes, Raja Subramaniyan If Ms Hemalatha Iyer is serious about her objective of preparing her child for the competitive / stressful corporate environment, then she should send her child to Montessori System. 1. Montessori System is not commonly available for children over 6 years. With some difficulty one can find a school that offers pseudo Montessori system till 5th grade. Parents should send the children to Montessori System upto the age of 6. This is very important because the child should not develop an aversion to the education system from day one. Adapting to the requirements of Grade 1 is not a difficult proposition and even if it is, it is worth it because atleast the child has had a good beginning. Montessori System upto the 5th grade is also recommended. Since even in the so called Montessori Schools, all the basic skills like reading, writing, memorizing, reproducing etc are taught to the children and they will be fully capable of transiting to conventional education in the 6th grade. The only ‘minus’ point in Montessori System is that it does not make the education process stressful. In order to join the rat race in the corporate environment, it is enough if a child starts running the rat race at the age of 11-12. He will perform better than a child who started running from 2 ½ years. Current educationists and the government have realized the fallacy of competitive exams and they are doing away with the ranking system and even removing the public exams till 12th grade. Therefore, it is recommended that the child goes through the Montessori System at the KG level and then preferably continues in the same system until 5th grade. 2. Montessori system is PROVEN to be the best education in the world. For example, no other system allows the child to understand the concepts behind numbers. While the conventional system is harping on the memorizing and reproducing skills of the student, Montessori system expects the child to understand. Teaching the child how to think makes the Montessori system as the best of its class. It is not correct to say that the education in Montessori system is unproven. Many who have done their early education in Montessori system are doing exceedingly well in the corporate world. However, the current education is proven to be a failure. The ratio of the number of employable and productive people to the total number of graduates turned out by the universities undoubtedly proves that the current system of education is a complete failure. It is a choiceless gamble that every parent is forced to take: putting their children through the current education system and take a chance that their ward will succeed. 3. It is not as if Montessori Students do not get into the best colleges and get good grades. One needs to score well in 12th grade in order to get into the best colleges. To score well in 12th grade one year hard work at any good tutorial center is more than sufficient! It does not matter what the child does until then. Conventional education does not add any value to the child in preparing him for the 12th grade. Even the 11th grade lessons are totally irrelevant and unnecessary to score well in the 12th grade, not to talk about the lessons in the earlier grades. Therefore, if a child has an option to really learn, learn what it likes till 12th grade AND get a degree from the best college with good grades, he will do lot better than a stressed out unemployable counterpart. The conclusion is we need a viable alternative to the current education system that starts from 2 ½ years and goes upto college degree. In the absence of such an alternative it is better to delay getting into the rut as far as possible and allow the child to enjoy its childhood picking up whatever it can in schools offering alternative system of education like Montessori Method.