20th August 2010
A child's education should begin at least one hundred years before he is born.
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr
Ignited Child!
In order to understand what environment Einstein would have had in his childhood, let us imagine we are Einstein and see how people look at us. Not at all intelligent, dull, slow learner, cannot communicate. So why talk to him and give any challenging assignment? This was the situation in which Einstein spent his school days. Since there are was no pressure on him, he had all the time and freedom to do what he wanted to do! So he was day dreaming what it would be like to send at the end of a light beam? Will he be able to see his own face in a mirror if he holds a mirror in his hand sitting at the end of a light beam? This was the freedom Einstein enjoyed! Can you imagine a student studying in a typical syllabus and test driven society to have such a freedom!
The second aspect is what we should understand from the experiments of Marian Diamond with her rats. The rats which had stimulating environment had developed more number of neuron interconnections. We can think ways and means of providing a stimulating environment for our children when they are growing up.
Every child is talented in some way and the role of a parent is to provide a channel to tap the potential to the maximum extent, by providing a tension free and pleasant environment. A pressure or emotional disturbance affects the neuron density. I mentioned earlier that we lose around 10,000 to 35,000 neurons per day due to attrition, decay or disuse. If children are subjected to tension and mental pressure of any form, they lose more number of neurons. The more and more tension and pressure they undergo, the more number of neurons they will lose. This environment will also affect the growth of glial cells reducing the density of neurons in the brain.
The question you will have is: how to enrich and stimulate the environment?
Read further….
N C Sridharan and Radha Sridharan
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