Did I ever tell you about one craze hobby of mine? I call it ‘Watching faces‘. Try it yourself, it is relaxing. All it takes is to observe the way each person’s face is created (by the Almighty, if you are a believer, that is) in a uniquely different way with the same set of tools- one pair of eyes, one pair of ears, one pair of brows, one nose and just enough flesh to fill in the forehead, cheeks and chin. 
What splendid variety, with permutations and combinations! Call them ‘designer faces’‘?
That brings me to the immense possibilities of teaching to young children. Teachers who teach the same subject year after year are said to be experts in that area. But it could ALSO spell doom to the liveliness inside classrooms. If that is the case within the walls of the school, what about the parents handling young ones at home? Instead of passing on ‘what I had been taught’, ‘what I have understood” to the children, parents could rather take a journey of exploration. Instead of ‘teaching’ the child, the parent could make learning (the lesson) an experience that they undergo together. At schools, though most boards of education insist on this way of learning, the pressure of completing tasks pushes the teaching staff to a ‘dry-run’, squeezing out any enthusiasm that would trickle every time a new topic is taken up. The teaching aids (OHP, videos, field trips, etc) certainly usher in the much-awaited air of freshness and life among students.
When a parent or a teacher refuses to look at teaching as a vocation (if not a ‘passion’), knowledge becomes a casualty and learning becomes a forced-feeding. I was in for a shock when someone recently told me that she found me being ‘fussy’ about teaching children, et al. “How to make things look new every time?” she asked me. 
‘Will it be okay for you to wear uniform all through seven days of the week, eat the same meal three times a day or order the same dish every time you go to the restaurant?’ If we yearn for variety and diversity even in trivia, how could school life go colorless?
Term it ‘monotony’ or ’stereotyping’, the student becomes the sacrificial lamb in the hands of teachers and parents who lack the zeal of teaching. I invite the members of this peculiar group to ponder over the following-
- In the culinary domain, we have recipes after recipes dashing out yummy food items with same set of ingredients. Imagination never ceases!
- In the domain of music, have we heard of the last composition ever? Classical music, rock, jazz, folk music… whatever the branch, still, imagination never ceases!
- In the world of chocolates, new products flood the market periodically.
Changes in shape, size , color or taste and a new flavor of chocolate is born! Imagination never ceases….
If variety is the spice of life, creativity is the life of teaching. Parents and Teachers, come, adorn the robes of Lord Brahma (the ‘Creator’ in the Hindu mythology) with pride and responsibility. You are creating a new era of promises, prosperity and peace.
And that is the need of the hour.