You are the future ambassadors

Lal FONSEKA

At the outset, I wish you a very happy New Year 2013 with a strong advice from me. "Happiness is the beginning of the journey towards your success." So then, whatever you perform in the year 2013, do them with happy mind. You are sure to end up as a winner.

What is Future? Will you be able to give a proper answer to this much important question? Some scholars define it as the present, added on to some period of time, becomes future which means the present plus time is the future. Do you agree with the above definition? Whether you do agree or not it is the reality. So our present work plus the time in which we do and achieve things together becomes the future world. The future is not a continuity of the present world - it can never be. The present world is being handled, destroyed and created through this given period of time, and what remains will be the future world - good or bad, created or destroyed.

In short we could say that that today's world is to be the future world. In other words, we could say that today's people and their contribution is that which is going to mold the world, its ways, and its life for the future. At the same time we could say that today's people may not remain and survive in the future, but the expectation is, today's children will survive. Naturally, therefore, if the present children are molded in their attitudes, in their values, in their ideas, and in their ideals, we can expect a better and more organized world of tomorrow and achieve the design for the world that we hope for at this moment. That is why we do always say that future world is belonging to children.

Hence without making any arguments, we have to accept the fact that children are the future of the world. This is common even to the children of any country whether it is developed or under-developed. But in the way things are now happening in the world plus the rapid improvement of technology, can we hand-over the world to the present day children? Are our children prepared to accept the future challenges? We do always observe; nowadays many young people who get graduated from our universities come out with negative attitudes. Whatever said and done, every generation, I believe, should live better than its predecessors. One thing is sure, a very few children are able to fulfill the expectations of their parents. Why this happens? What can be done to solve or reduce this problem?

One thing you must remember is that, it is easy for us to say that today's children are our future. When we say it, we mean that we must strive now to mold the children to think correctly but differently and act differently. It will also be our duty to mold them judge rightly.

Adults' responsibility

Today, Sri Lanka is lacking the adults of this kind of caliber and as a result our country is in this sad condition. With or without our knowledge, being the adults, at present we are neglecting the children. Without prejudicing the intellectuals of our country, I would say that country without intellectuals has no future. All the progressive and progressed countries in the world are such because their progress is guided by and planned by the intellectuals of the generation. In our country today, however, wherever we look, we only see a fair amount of animal human-beings (pardon me using this word), extremely selfish, never caring for other people or having a vision for the country, a love for the nation or a love for the people.

This could be proved when you see as to how our people drive or walk on the public roads. Very recent example to prove this statement is the triple murder at Ratmalana area where a so-called professional killing his wife and two children of three years and one month old due to another illicit love affair he had with another woman of 20 years of age. When I use these words "Animal Human-beings,"definitely there will be a few numbers of people who do not agree with me. Sometimes we act like cattle - each one wanting to fill up his stomach and amidst of this uncalled behaviour, perhaps we breed vigorously! So the population increases and all the consequent problems arise. Population should increase for the survival of our nation, but adults should behave like they live in an exemplary society. Dear children, there is a very big role you have in your hand to play in the future. You all are the future ambassadors of our country. Even though, there is hardly anything you could pick up from your elderly society, one thing you must always remember that future of our country lies in your hand. We will now try to define the word "Student."Many scholars use the term "students" to refer to young people in general, and then they mold the future simply because they are the future. When their generation grows up, they will be the leaders, voters, business owners etc. and therefore you will mold the future.

On other hand some other scholars use the term "students" to mean those who attend schools even universities, the idea is more or less the same. But in this case, you can reasonably expect students to become more "important" in shaping the future because they are likely to occupy positions of greater responsibility. As we explained before, children are the future. It is not just a cliché. This is why we say that education is so important. Today's children will be tomorrow's leaders. They will solve the problems we create and unable to solve, and they will likely face even bigger ones. Children of any class will be our future problem solvers. Most of our students are getting free education. Even ninety nine percent of our population at one particular time of their life had obtained education free of charge. All intellectuals and professionals such as medical and other consultants, eminent scientists, prominent engineers, writers, scholars and even big entrepreneurs have received their education free of charge. As a result, every one of us is indebted to the country. One factor that you cannot forget is that presently you enjoy your life due to this system of free education you obtained at least up to the level of university. How lucky we are? Sri Lanka is one of the few countries which give free education to the entire population sometimes even after the levels of university.

However by leaving the country in the hands of children, we being adults, can we wash our hands off? No, In order to overcome this sad and unfortunate situation, we need to work together and rise to the challenge of improving our performance towards child development.

National Education System

Under these circumstances, educational writers and experts have been quick to point out what they think make the difference: it is parents, teachers and the universities. There is some truth in all these points. We know that children walk through the school gate brimming with the influences of their home life, and that parents taking an interest in their education is a key element of future success.

And we know that to get a quality education in school there are some essential ingredients: high expectations for every child, excellent teaching methods, a high-quality subject curriculum, strong and focused school leadership and 21st-century facilities, supported by a funding model that directs resources where they are needed most. As was mentioned before, in the present age, education has becoming more important and vital. In line with this, the number of graduates is increasing as well. Even if the students fail to gain university admissions in Sri Lankan system, still they have some other avenues to gain higher education even to become graduates.

As was told before, recent research suggested that many young people graduated from universities tend to display negative attitudes including selfishness, self-conceit, passive and lack of socializing skill. My main objective of this article is to discuss the potential causes and provide remediation to this issue.

From the year one in your school, you are subject to a stiff competition. One might raise the question as to what competiveness year one children have to face. But in reality, it is not the competition coming from our education system but it is coming from the teachers and schools. Teacher s has a different way of looking at children who are getting education from them. They do always have preferential treatments for the children who come from rich and prestigious families. As a result, for the other children, they are forced to show their true potential and abilities to come up through mere competition.

Under the National Plan of education, I believe there should be higher entry requirements to the teaching profession to ensure students are being taught by the best and brightest teachers, and student teachers will have more practical classroom experience before they graduate as trained teachers.

I have visited a large number of schools through invitation to develop productivity improvement techniques and also to make awareness lectures on changing attitudes of children and teachers. During these visits, almost all new teachers said that they do not receive extra time to plan their lessons, and no method to receive mentoring by more experienced teachers during their first two years in the service.

Like in the developed countries, our teachers do not get proper extra training in managing disruptive behavior and bullying, so bad behavior is dealt with and every child in the classroom has a chance to learn. Instead, I have observed our teachers have formed themselves into various cliques who have different views and opinions. This has become a serious problem in uplifting the school education which is directly impacting on poor children.

360 degree feed-back

Like in the private companies, teachers must have an annual performance review of 360 degree and should be trained to meet the national professional teaching standards including the graduates. If this system is followed effectively, Principals and school leaders will not have say over decisions such as selecting the best staffing mix. Every school through School Development Society will have its own improvement plan, developed in consultation with parents and setting out what steps they will take to lift results.

The nature of competitiveness in school coupled with parents' higher expectation especially on Grade 5 scholarship examination which is in Sri Lanka famously known as the Mothers' examination has mounting the pressure on students from grade 3. Students are tailored to endeavor solely on academic excellence and often being compared to their peers by our parents and teachers.

Despite the healthy competition in term of academic achievement, such mentality has negative repercussion on the personal attitudes. For instance, unwillingness to share reading materials with others in order to obtain top rank in class would certainly develop into selfishness. In addition, academic focused student tend be passive due to lack of outdoor exposure and engagement in social activities. Our schools with the outcome of the scholarship results do display pictures of the students who excelled in the examinations leading the other students to mere disappointment.

Every cloud has a silver lining and this does applies in preventing students from developing negative attitudes at school. Academic oriented school should emphasize extra-curriculum activities for their students through after school activities such as the Literature society, various sports and charity organizations.

During my schools days, we were engaged in Sarvodaya Movement headed by Dr. A.T. Ariyarathna who happened to be one of my early teachers at Nalanda College, Colombo and we learnt quite a number of good qualities by getting involved in this wonderful movement. Similarly, by engaging in these extra-activities, positive value particularly teamwork and communication skill can be instilled among the students. So Children, it is your time to get involved as much as possible in extra curricula activities which will never have negative impact on your academic carrier.

Students' behaviour

In many countries including Sri Lanka, schools have severe problems with student behavior. What do you think are the causes of this? What solutions can you suggest? In a number of countries a significant issue faced by school is student behaviour. In this article I will look at few major causes of it and propose a solution.

Firstly, this is confirmed by statistics that a majority of children display rowdy attitude at school because either their parents are going through a divorce or they are single parent child. Some parents though they are living under one roof are appeared to be involved in quarrelling each other in front of their grown up children. Certain research findings have revealed that 30% of the married couples have been living at the door step of divorce.

Single parents find it very difficult to work and take care of a child at the same time. Sometimes they are unable to divide the time equally; in which case, the child suffers.

These children tend to believe that their world is breaking apart. This result in them becomes more and more attention needy. Again it is left to the grown up children to adjust themselves to the situation and act accordingly keeping in mind that no ordinary people will have a prominent place in this modern world. So the only solution available to them is the education with positive attitudes.

Secondly, the punishment with which a misbehaving child is charged with is not always harsh enough. They take writing "I will not do this again" 1000 times as a joke. Some believe that because of this lenient punishment, there cannot be change whatsoever in their attitude. In fact such a child will recommit his mistakes as long as he believes he can live through such light punishments. But I have a different experience.

Once I came to school late and got caught to the Principal. He wanted me to write "I will never get late in future" 100 times in a double rule book without crossing lines. If you do one single mistake, I have been asked to start afresh. This punishment though it appears to be not harsh went into my inner circulatory blood system and from that day onwards, up to now I am always trying to be punctual.

Keeping these causes in mind one can come up with many solutions. Parents (or single parent) should make sure that they provide enough attention to their child so that he does not feel attention deficient at school.

Regarding the second cause the school ought to come up with new punishments which are harsh enough to make child reconsider his actions before misbehaving.

To summarize, a parent should look after his child's attention needs in order to minimize his rowdy behavior at school. Also a change in schools policy can inhibit a child from misbehaving.

Teenagers

Teenage students and those who have crossed the teenage can render great service to the country. Unfortunately in Sri Lanka, students in this age group are appeared be forgetting this most important principle. Our country badly needs their services but it is they who have to understand this.

They have reached an age where energy increases in them. And then, they start thinking about the maturity. No doubt, during this period, maturity has begun to dawn upon their minds; they have the capability to separate the right from the wrong. Most of our children knowing very well what the wrong things are, keep on doing the wrong things. This applies even to our adults as well.

They are in such a large multitude - they are like a surging wave of River Mahaweli. This river is now properly controlled and channelized. As a result, it renders continuously the vast tracts of land green. But if it was left uncontrolled, this river by now could have done havoc and devastation.

Request from our children/students

Dear Students, you must be in a position to know your ability and you could very well use your talents and skills to give a much required service to nation. Unfortunately once again as of today, it seems that you do not want to know it. This is very sad state of affairs. By acting in this unwanted manner, even without your knowledge, your energies go a waste. I am father of two children, all what I do at my home whenever opportunity arises, is to sit with my children and wife over a round table discuss our observations towards children as well their observations toward us.