Motivation is a feeling of an individual to achieve an objective.  A need must be recognised and to achieve such a need the individual should be active.

But what is the motivation we are talking about?

Motivation is the result of encouragement received from elders, parents, teachers and well wishers of the effort of an individual.

Let us take a small incidence.  A child studying in iv standard approaches its parent with some topic and seeks attention.  At that time the parent may have been preoccupied and scolds the child for disturbing.

The parent has committed a grave mistake by dousing the initiative taken by the child.  The child might have had a doubt and sought its parents help to clarify or the child might have obtained new knowledge and wanted the parent to appreicate his effort.

The parent without looking into the consequence of his action just damaged the child’s future initiatives.

Here in this case the parent should have recognized the potential in his child and encouraged it to go ahead and helped the child so that the child takes to new topics and help itself to realise the value of true knowledge.

Motivation is the ‘FIRE’ within the individual.  The meaning of ‘FIRE’ is burning of energy continuously and being enthusiastic.  The effort should be animated at achieving at some objective.  In real life, an individual needs to focus on his/her career objective.  In order achieve the dreams of an individual towards his/her career, the individual need to be focussed on the topic throughout and needs all help and guidance from parents, teachers, friends, associates and well wishers.  In case the individual is not allowed to conduct himself independently / freely the motivation will die.

What role the parent and others can play in the life of an individual to realise his / her objectives?  The environment provided should be encouraging and also access to library of books should be made avialable either by identifying a library / lending library or even buy books for reference.

The environment should be congenial and efforts of the individual should not be criticised.

Every effort of any individual will have its own result, as we all know that – EVERY ACTION WILL HAVE EQUAL OPPOSITE REACTION – and the parent, particularly, of the individual must have trust and belief about their child and extend a helping hand.

The money spent on a child’s pursuit of career should not be considered an expediture but investment.

Motivation starts with identificaton of a need and the need gives scope for planning to achieve result to satisfy the need.  Once the planning is done, the individual is willing to take necessary stress to implement the plan.  Once the decision is made the individual starts implementing and on successful implementation of the plan the individual obtains satisfaction on reaching the destination of the objective.

This is called the MOTIVATON WHEEL – NEED, PLAN, STRESS, IMPLEMENTAION AND SATISFACTION.

It is therefore that a child needs guidance from the parent intitially to encourage it to think independently and must be told of the moral values of the society and what is expected of it to become a responsible citizen.  Once this is done, the child would become proactive and often seek clarification for various doubts.

The child needs to be provided a lot of reading material – initially colorful magazine and later material content ones.  This process should start from the age of 3 or 4, the age of habit formation so that the child develops book reading habits.  The books provided must be in the language of current medium, which is ENGLISH.

As the child grows the child should be provided English news paper either current date or old, so that the child starts reading the headlines initially and later its conents gradually.  This process helps the child to cultivate vocabulary of english language.

The child also need to be told about the difference between SYLLABUS and SYLLABLE, so that the variation is understood and will continuously observe ‘SYLLABLES’  while reading either a class book or periodicals.

In case the reader requires any further clarification may pose their questions to the writer at – tksiva3@gmail.com -

EMPOWERING A CHILD

BY TK SIVASUBRAMANIAM

FUTURE:

What is future?

The word ‘future’ carries meaning that of the unknown times which is going emerge and one has to be ready to face the same whether favourable or unfavorable situation.  However, one cannot leave things to happen and when the times comes at a future date become ready to face them.  We may not get sufficient time to get ourselves to take advantage of favorable situations that may emerge.

In order that we are ready for such a situation, we have to plan ourselves and be ready to take advantage and avoid disappointments.

We are all human beings borne in this materialistic world and have to live.  For living sustenance is required. 

Every parent wants their child to have a comfortable life when they grow up, have economic strength, position in society and acceptance.

Before we delve on this topic, let us analyze a few words, which will give us enough thought provocation to activate us.

These are only a few examples of words listed above.  However, there are several of them in similar nature.

The point to be noted here is that the prefix of alphabets ‘in’ to these words give a different meaning and in all cases that the opposite or negative meaning.

Therefore, a parent has to decide whether they want to make their child a ‘dependent’ or ‘independent’.  The topic on ‘EMANCIPATION OF A CHILD’ in this book is related to making a child independent to face the realities of life.

Again, there is the word ‘ILLUSION’, which means that we see, hope to see of the things that do not exist.  We spend a life in illusions and when time comes, we realize these are mere illusions and the reality is different.

The parent must develop courage for himself or herself and for the child to face realities.

What is illusion in relation to child’s future?

The parent must have been under the illusion that once the child’s obtains a degree or masters in any discipline; the child is going to accept.  This is not a truth.  The parent must realize that the child’s future is not in merely obtaining academic certification of excellence having completed years of studies.  In order the child is accepted and given recognition of his talents, the child should be able to use such knowledge obtained and execute his responsibilities in a responsive way as per the wishes and desires of his / her prospective employer.

Here the point must be very clear to a parent that the parent in the above case was under the illusion without realizing the reality of future, was living in the hopes that the child would gain good employment once he completes the desired degree.  Having realized the vagaries of present day employment scene, the parent must educate the child to foresee what is in store for him / her to face and become ready to face the challenges.  Such an attitude by the parent will help ensure the child’s future.

ECONOMIC STRENGTH:

Economic strength relates to the capacity of an individual of what he / she receives for their service from prospective employers / clients.

How to ensure that our economic strength is guaranteed at a future date?

Human is borne!  He / she has to survive.

Surviving is the negative form of existence, while living is positive form of existence.

SURVIVAL:

The word survival itself is an indicator that no one has any use of the services of the person, who is endeavouring to survive and the person is eagerly looking for people to accept him / her so that he / she is able to generate income for sustenance to support life of himself / herself and their family.

An individual is born.  He / she grows up in life. He / she has all wants associated with living.  How can he / she fulfill these wants.  He / she must have enough buying power to meet all these wants.  Buying power comes only from his ‘ her own earning capacity.  Earning capacity comes only from his / acceptance by prospective employers / clients in recognition of the services they can render for his benefit.

He will be accepted only if he / she is responsive to the needs of his prospective employer.

The moment he / she is being accepted by others, the individual starts living.

LIVING:

 Living is a misnomer and we misunderstand the word.

In reality living means that the individual is useful to may people and their lives get a direction from this individual and they are benefited.

The difference between ‘SURVIVAL’ and ‘LIVING’ is that, while in both situations the individual exists, in the first case the individual struggles to exist, to meet the demands of his / her self and family, no recognition in society.   In the second case, the individual develops his / her own stature in society, dependency on his, buying power to meet demands of his / her self and family.  His success can make him a role model for others.  

TRANSFER OF HEGEMONY:

The success or failure of an individual will be the measuring rod for his offsprings to face in the society, the treatment that is meted out to them.

The children of an individual, who may be struggling to survive, would be looked upon by the society without respect.  These children may be called upon to do small errands for others, which otherwise the society would not dare demand such service from the children of the individual, who has become successful in life and established a stature for himself / herself and their family.

The society will give to their children the respect due to the successful or unsuccessful individual.

This makes the children gain or lose self-confidence.

It is, therefore, in the interest of each and every parent to do such things, which will bring laurels for them and for their children from the society so that the children need not have to face ignominy of disrespect from others when they grow up

.

BUYING POWER:

Buying power is an indicator of economic strength of an individual and his / her affordability to provide necessities in life for his / her family members.  A person, who lacks buying power would be struggling to meet both ends, leave alone providing luxuries in life for his / her children.

Having realized the truth of life, each parent must endeavour to enrich their buying power by proper planning of their career.  However, if they had ignored such necessity in their lifetime, teach their children of the necessity to plan well ahead of times so that they do not land in similar circumstances of their parents.

CHILD’S BEHAVIOUR:

How to make a child responsive?

Why a child behaves like it behaves?

The behaviour of a child is totally dependent on the environment the parent creates around the child.  On this topic, I remember a small story, which is so revealing:

The story goes like this: —

“A successful individual with lots of wealth has a son aged 8 years old.  The parent does not have time to attend the child.  They have provided all his needs.  There are servants around him and every comfort money can buy.

This successful individual was a poor man two decades back.  With his hard and dedicated work only, he has achieved success and improved his status today.

One day he happened to meet his hold roommate, who stayed and struggled together.  When he met his old friend, the successful man was so excited, he invited him to his house.

They both arrived at his house and his was introduced to his wife after welcoming him to the drawing room.  Both friends were seated in the drawing room reminiscing their past.  The son of the successful individual too was sitting in a corner of the drawing room and watching both the friends.

The successful individual was narrating stories of his riches and ordered a drink for his friend.  The servant brought a cool drink and placed on the tee poi.  He offered his friend to take the drink.  Modesty stopped his friend to take the drink immediately and they were immersed in their conversation.  All the while, the son was watching both friends and the cool drink that is placed on the tee poi.

After two or three reminders by the successful individual, his friend just approached the glass of cool drink, when suddenly the rich man’s son jumped from his seat, snatched the glass of cool drink and drank the same in one gulp.  The friend of the rich man was dazed, while the rich man was embarrassed.  Everything happened so suddenly, there was no time for rich man to retrieve the situation.

Here ends the story.

Let us analyze the behaviour of the child.

Why did the child behave the way it behaved?

The child is having all facilities and drinking a cool drink must be a routine affair for the child.  The behaviour of the child was reflecting that of an animal’s behaviour.

What happened exactly? 

The fault lies with the parents.  The parents were so busy in their pursuits that they did not have time to visit their acquaintances or have they invited friends to their house. The child had become so possessive that he could not bear the sight of an outsider drinking a cool drink from their house.  As such the child sprang a surprise to the embarrassed parent.

The moral of the story is that the child should be exposed to civilized behaviour.  The environment should be such that the child should develop an open mind.

TRANSFORMATION OF CHILD’S CHARACTER:

How to transform a child’s character?

The child should be brought up in an environment of various family members and friends.  The parent should socialize with others by joining various functions and take the children with them. They should also conduct such functions in their own house and invite their friends with family.  The child should be narrated moral stories.

Today, with the advent of nucleus family and TV serials, parents find little time to spend with children.

The routine of a child normally goes like:

Getting up early morning, go to tuition classes if there be a need, or prepare for catching school bus, return from school, play for some time, do homework or go to tuition and do homework after returning from tuition.  The child would go to bed after dinner immediately.  There is absolutely no gap of time for fitting in sometime for the parent to spend.  Even if there is some time, many parents are glued to the TV serials, which commences around 7 PM.

The system has to break.  How to break it?

The parent must teach the children economic values from the childhood.  Monitory system must be explained.  They should be involved in the household maintenance in relation to financing various needs and paucity of funds.

The reader must be wondering whether I have gone mad as to   how a child can understand these things at such a tender age.  I     do agree with the reader.  But the fact remains that an association of jasmine flower leaves behind its fragrance on the thread, which is used for making a garland.  Likewise, discussion on such topics would provocate the mind of children to start thinking.  The right age of a child for such introduction is the sixth year.  This is the time, normally a child would be attending class I in academics and such a provocative mind would be in a position to absorb class lesson in better way than what they may be able to do. Continuous discussion on topics related to economic activities will groom the child into a matured person by the time it attains the age of ten and its behaviour will reflect the same.

The child would become more serious in studies; the parent can witness improvement in concentration power. 

There is a proverb -

“GIVE A FISH, HE WILL HAVE LUNCH.

TEACH HIM TO FISH, HE WILL LEARN TO LIVE.”

A parent should take confidence-building measure.  The parent should create congenial environment for the child.  The child should realize that there is nothing impossible in the world.

We are seeing kids of various ages from 3 to 12 years doing wonders.  If a child does this, what is stopping your child from achieving the same degree of success?

The child should be explained about time management and value of time.

As per the present standard of health a human average life time is 70 years, which works out to 25550 days.  The parent must use this methodology of calculating time for the child to face the importance of each day and value of the same.  The child should be told that if it sleeps for 8 hours a day, it is wasting one third of its life without doing anything.  The child should be told that the required amount of sleep for maintaining good health is around 6 hours only.  The child once realizes would try to reduce the sleeping time, Initially it may not succeed.  But the thought itself is healthy so that the child would become serious about facing problems in an honourable manner.

In order to encourage a child to bring its hidden talent, motivate the child to feel confident, if not successful.

The education system in India is very good.  But application of the same by a child or parent is sub-standard; we lose sight of the needs and convention to be followed.  Each parent today must be feeling a problem that his or her child is weak in one or the other subject.

What is the word ‘weak’ signifies here?

The word weak means the child’s inability to understand and cope with the pressure of lessons.

Let us analyze the real problem for this.

Explain to the child about its own classroom co-students.  The child must be having around 20 to 40 co-students in its class.  Ask the child as to how many students it knows intimately.  The answer must be very clear; the child would be knowing around ten students intimately; another ten students by their name and the balance number of students it may knowing only by mere ‘halo!’ basis.

The reason for this variation in knowledge about the co-students, whom the child meets each and every day throughout the year, whenever the school functions, is that the child is not interacting with every student in similar manner as to the first group of ten students, whom the child is intimately interacting.

From the above explanation, one can conclude that weakness can be converted into strength by taking corrective action.  In order to know all the co-students, the child needs to interact with all of them intimately.

In the case of lessons too, similar attitude exists.  The children do not understand the written language in the textbook and tend to slow down their studies. 

Take for instance a typist, who is able to type any matter speedily and another typist who is unable to type speedily.  If you hand over a similar passage to both of them, the first typist is able to finish typing in ten minutes and the second typist is taking almost fifteen minutes.  The reason for this is because the second typist is not conversant with English word spellings as much as the first typist and as a result the second typist is taking more time in recalling the spellings and consuming more time.

In the case of a child, the parent must advise the child that before a lesson is commenced in a class in a subject, the child must go to the class after acquainting itself with the lesson.  Once this is done, when the teacher takes up the lesson in the class room, the child would be in a position to follow what is being taught by the teacher, because the child is already conversant with the words used in the lesson and would be able to follow the verbatim of the expression made by the teacher while reading the lesson.  Otherwise, the child being not conversant with the words in the lesson cannot follow the verbatim of the lesson, when the teacher is reading the same.  As a result, the child would lose interest in the subject and would find it difficult to concentrate. 

These steps if adopted by a parent would go a long way to help the child in changing its character and behaviour towards studies, resulting in high grades.

To conclude, the parent must explain to the child;

1.      ACTIVE LEARNING PROCESS

2.      POSITIVE JEALOSY

3.      MOTIVATION

4.      SWOT ANALYSIS

5.      FEAR ANALYSIS

6.      VOCABULARY AND COMPREHENSION

7.      TIME MANAGEMENT.

The attitude of a parent would help a child to succeed in life.

Human Evolution:

We all are human beings driven by destiny.   Depending on destiny alone will not help us to achieve desired goals in life.  We have to be focused on our conduct and plan well to achieve economic strength to live respectfully in the society.

We do not know the exact date of human evolution.  The theory of big bang makes scientists estimate formation of solar system itself thousands of billions of years.  After that earth was formed and earth was uninhabitable for millions of years and there was no vegetation on the earth.  Subsequently, human evolution occurred.

Humans initially struggled for survival because they were not aware of handling various resources that were made available to them by the nature.  Slowly, need of the hour made humans to ’THINK’ better ways of using the resources and create better living conditions.

THINK:

Now the word ‘think’ has been used over here in the above paragraph.  The word ‘think’ makes us think that we have a faculty to think.  This faculty is nothing but ‘THE BRAIN’.  The brain is made up of approximately 12 to 13 billion cells.  As per the estimate by learned scientists on an average a human uses about 10 per cent of the brain’s capacity.  It means, when we die we leave behind approximately 10 to 11 billion cells in ‘the brain’ unutilized.

We can surmise from the above that though we have enough scope to achieve better things than what we have so far achieved, we the average people ignore our own potential.

The study of ‘the brain’ is a complex subject and whatever little now we have become aware of ‘the brain’ is the result of research undertaken by scientists in the last 100 years and we will come more to know about it in future.

The structure of the ‘brain’ is so vast that one scientist quoted that if we were to create a computer of the capacity equal to a human brain, to store such a computer the empire building in the ‘U.S.A’ would not be sufficient.

KNOWLEDGE:

Knowledge is ‘power’ ‘weapon’ ‘capacity’ ‘ability’ ‘achievement’.  When you acquire sufficient knowledge, it influences your behaviour.  Your behaviour influences your audiences, who will be judging you always.  Your behaviour’s experience by others makes your mission in life a success.  Your economic strength comes from success through knowledge and behaviour.  The word ‘behaviour’ signifies your individual’s performance in terms of ability to ‘comprehension’ ‘initiative’ ‘responsiveness’ ‘accountability’ ‘truthfulness’ ‘dedication’ ‘honesty’ ‘loyalty’ ‘dependability’ ‘capacity’ ‘creativity’ ‘efficiency’ ‘proficiency’.

EXPERIENCE AND KNOWLEDGE:

How to acquire knowledge?  What is knowledge?

The principles of guidance to your behaviour through experience are ‘knowledge’.

What is ‘experience’? 

We are aware of ‘perceptions’ – or ‘panchendriyams’.

We must have heard about ‘panchendriyams’ at one time or the other from our parents, gurus, and forefathers that we must control our ‘panchendriyams’.  Are we really aware of the effects or meaning of ‘panchendriyams’ in general?  There are five perceptions – taste, sound, feel, touch and vision.

Result of these five perceptions creates ‘wants’ and ‘wants’ make us greedy and some may lose track of them and become very greedy and sacrifice human values.  That is why the need for control of  ‘panchendriyams’ and indirectly ‘wants’.

BEHAVIOUR:

What makes us behave like we behave?

Our success or failure directly affects our behaviour.  Let us consider a case of an individual, who despite being educated is unable to find a good employment.  We have surmised the term ‘educated’ and still the individual is unable to find a good employment.  What could be the reason for this?  How it affects his behaviour?

The reasons can be many and let us consider a few of them.  This individual may be very good at academics and must have achieved a first class or distinction.  But, then, this individual may not be having sufficient courage to take responsibility in the area of his specialization, which makes the prospective employer to reject his candidature.

The failure in achieving good employment disturbs the mind of this individual and it will be visible in every aspect of his behaviour/performance.  This individual would lack self-confidence.  As a result, he would acquire negative body language.

At the same time, if this individual is able to shoulder responsibility in relation to his academic qualifications, the prospective employer would definitely engage his services and as a result of this success, you can see vibration of self-confidence in his body language and behaviour.

Every experience of ours leaves a lasting impression on our brain, which will influence our behaviour.

CASE STUDY OF BEHAVIOUR:

Let us now analyze this in detail.

Let us assume that one of these days a person was driving a two-wheeler in the evening and there was power cut and visibility was very, very poor.  If that person happens suddenly negotiate a large pot hole in the same speed he was driving till then, that person would experience a sudden jolt in the movement of the vehicle, which could be sometime very fatal or he might have escaped unhurt with some shock.  The same person happens to go by the same route in similar circumstances at a later date, as and when he reaches the spot where he experienced the previous incidence, without his own effort, he would apply breaks and reduce the speed of the vehicle to ensure safety of his negotiation of the bad road condition.

Have you noticed a change in the behaviour of the person?

Let us take another example.  A child of six months old capable of crawling sees a candle burning nearby.  It fancies the glow of the candle approaches it and would endeavour to hold the glow in its hand.  The child would experience the heat of the glow and cry.  The next time the same child sees a candle glowing, though it is not capable of expressing its agony other than crying, would not venture to touch or hold the glow of the candle out of its previous experience.

We will agree that experience changes a person’s behaviour.

EXPERIENCE THROUGH PERCEPTION:

There are similar examples related to – taste, sound, vision, feel.

Each of our experience makes us to behave in a manner compatible to our needs or wants.

Now let us go through the process of acquiring ‘knowledge’.

Every one uses the phrases ‘abhimanyu factor’ and ‘hanuman factor’

These two factors relate to ‘knowledge’ and ‘motivation’

First of all each one of us must realize that even before we are born, our ‘brain’ has some knowledge and generally many refer to this capacity as ‘in born quality’.

To prove this point, let us place two eggs on the bank of a river – egg of ‘hen’ and ‘duck’.

When the eggs mature and the chic comes out of the shell, the duck chic would move towards the water and the chic of hen would move towards the land.  How is that the chic of duck is aware that it can survive in water and how the chic of hen realized that it would not be able to survive in water.  Are we now sure that we have some knowledge even before we are borne?

MEMORY POWER:

The basic quality of MEMORY is that whatever we experience the 5 kinds of perceptions leaves a lasting impression and every time we see or think about such a thing the recall would be very good. 

Our elders advice us to speak always truth and do not tell lies.  If one were to tell lies about a matter and if the same person questions another time the point, the person answering will not be give similar explanation and may tell a different version.

One has to carefully observe the point I am raising here.  If the person had told the truth on the first occasion, he would have repeated the same version a hundred times without fail. We all experience this type of feelings, but we do not realize the same.

MOTIVATION:

Memory power of an individual is related to the level of his motivation.  What is motivation?  Motivation exists between the need and the satisfaction.  Let us now analyze what is need.  We are all human beings.  Our existence mainly rests on energy we possess and if we consume our energy, we become weak and our immediate focus would go towards regenerating the consumed energy.  Hope, you have understood now the focus towards regenerating the consumed energy is the NEED.  Once you identify the need, you would focus on ways and means to identify the ways to fulfill the need.

MOTIVATION WHEEL

MOTIVATION

SATISFACTION                                                                               IDENTIFY NEED

                                                                                                                        EFFORT

IMPLEMENTATTION

                                        PLAN                                             STRESS

I would now try to explain the points listed above for your benefit.

• IDENTIFY NEED:  Once you identify your need you will start finding ways to achieve the methods to satisfy the need.  Let us take an example of a boy, who might have just returned from school at 3.30 pm and is totally tired.  He is expected to meet his mother in the house and would be expecting that she would have kept some eatable ready for him.  Once he reaches house, he sees that his mother had gone out leaving a message for him with one of his neighbours.  In the message his mother has written that she had to go out on an urgent mission and hence, she could not make any food for him.  She is leaving a ten-rupee note on the refrigerator and request him to buy something from nearby shop for eating.  Now the condition of the boy is loss of energy and hunger and burning sun outside.  Despite these conditions, the boy will be motivated to venture out with a ten-rupee note to buy some eatable from the nearby restaurant or shop to satisfy his hunger.  In the normal circumstances, if the boy were not tired or hungry, he would not have ventured out and would have postponed his eating.

CHILD’S FUTURE:PARENTS ROLE:

In general, an individual must identify his need in his career, academics and once this is done it would be easy to achieve the balance task.

A parent should discuss in detail with their child even at the age of six, by which time he may be just starting to attend elementary school, about the economic scenario and employment opportunities available in installments so that the child starts understanding the core point of debate.  The child would slowly start reacting and ask questions as to what he should be doing?

The child must be informed that unemployment is a disease that every country in the universe is facing and unemployment is totally related to physical labour and for the educated there can be underemployment rather than unemployment.  Therefore, the need of the hour is for the child to equip itself to be able to take advantage of the opportunities in the employment market.  Then, the child can be told about the necessity to concentrate more on its studies without wasting time.  The child should be focused on time management from the childhood and the value of time. When we say value of time, how to project it to the child?  We must know that in today’s technically advanced world, the average age of survival of humans is 70 years (25550 days) and bring out the importance and value of each day.  The child should be told that if it were to sleep 10 hours a day in his life, he would be sleeping about 152 days in a year and 10640 days in it s life span of 70 average years (approximately 29 years). This information would make the child think the devastating effect it will have in its life.  The child would be focused on its sleeping habits and may be able to overcome such need of excess sleeping.

Once this is achieved the child would then become more oriented towards his education. 

A parent should create an environment for the child to be focused on reading and for this the parent may have to invest in books and magazine.  This is not a fortune to be spent for a child.  When the child starts going to school from the stage of LKG/UKG start giving an English comic magazine.  The child would be attracted on the photographs of comics printed in the book and may not be able to read anything.  The cost of one magazine per month would cost only Rs.10 or Rs.15.  Please ensure that the magazine is in English only.  As the child grows up comes to stage of III or IV standard, in addition to the comic please provide an illustrated short-story book.  And gradually increase the volume and content of the book.  By this method, the child is slowing and steadily without any advice or counseling is getting oriented with reading habit.  This would help the child concentrate on studies.

To improve memory power, one has to have

• SELF CONFIDENCE
• INTEREST
• CONCENTRATION
• COMPREHENSION (UNDERSTANDING)
• PLANNING

You will attain self- confidence if you are able to acquire knowledge and ability to take responsibility and leadership.

If you identify your goals and targets in life/career, you will gain interest in whatever function you are doing.  Otherwise, such function would become burdensome.

If you realize the rewards of your efforts, your concentration increases in any function you are involved.

Comprehension or understanding of whatever you are studying is possible only if you make an effort to understand the same.  In case you do not understand a word or two in what you are reading, do not postpone, immediately refer a dictionary and write down the meaning of the word.  This will leave lasting impression on you mind.

Planning your studies is very important.  If you do not plan the syllabus of your studies properly, then you may not be able to complete the portions properly.  Otherwise, you may not be able to score good marks.

To increase your vocabulary, please go through the details given in the chapter on VOCABULARY.

When acquaintance with vocabulary is good, your communication ability would automatically increase for you would be able to recall apt words continuously to express your viewpoint.   Hence, it is necessary that the process of learning should start at the beginning of commencement of education and it should form a habit.

I.Q. (INTELLIGENCE QUOTIENT)

Let us know go a step further and analyze what is ‘I.Q.’

‘I.Q.’ is ‘intelligence quotient’. 

‘I.Q.’ is measurement of the difference between the physical growth of a person for the number of years he has spent since he was born and the development of his brain.    A highly intelligent individual would have his ‘I.Q.’ level at 100/130.  A successful individual would have it around 100/80 or 90.  The numerator here represents the physical growth and the denominator represents development of the brain of the individual.

To improve intelligence of an individual what is to be done.  The individual should endeavour to develop his intake of information of various happenings around him.

‘EDUCATION’ – what is its meaning and definition?  In MALAYALAM ‘EDUCATION’ is referred to as ‘VIDHYABHYASAM’.  You can see that in ENGLISH the word ‘EDUCATION’ means ‘VIDYA’ whereas the terms has been changed to ‘VIDYABHYASAM’ in MALAYALAM.  ‘ABHYASAM’ means ‘practice’  - means equal to ‘educational practice’.  Our forefathers have definitely emphasized the need for practice.

DEFINITION OF EDUCATION:

Let us at the outset understand what is the definition of ‘EDUCATION’.

There are two definitions for ‘education’ and they are – (1) acquiring knowledge through learning process and (2) acquiring certification of academic excellence through learning process.

LEARNING PROCESS – ACTIVE AND PASSIVE:

Learning process can be further divided into ‘active learning process’ and ‘passive learning process’.

‘Active learning process’ means whatever we are studying is done in such a manner that we understand and read.

‘Passive learning process’ means we just read loudly without understanding the meaning of what we are studying.

In the first case retaining capacity of the brain improves and recall is possible and in the second case no storage or recall is possible.

How to convert our study into ‘active learning process’

In our quest for acquiring academic certificates we tend to ignore the importance of process of learning.  Our focus rests on the end results of the qualifications and the resulting career.  We must at the outset realize what is a career and what is economic strength we gain from our education.

Through education, we get an admit card to the employment arena wherefrom the prospective employers assume that having acquired such and such a degree in a particular branch of education, you have a certain level of efficiency and they will be able enrich their business through your proficiency.

We all are sure that having obtained a good degree; a candidate must have definitely acquired a good knowledge.  Is knowledge enough?   Are we capable to communicate such knowledge with others whereby they understand our viewpoint?  There are several such successful people in their academics and but they are self-centered performers, and cannot become good leaders since, they are not in a position to express their viewpoint.

Here comes, the basic difference in the learning process by a child – active and passive.

Active learning process involves comprehension of the subject under study, which would make the person realize the values of the knowledge and methods to use such knowledge.

Understanding a subject is of utmost importance than just obtaining good marks in the subject. 

Passive learning process means, an individual just reads for the sake of reading and acquainting the subject and memorizes for writing examinations to acquire good marks.

Let us see what we understand from the word ‘efficiency’ and ‘proficiency’.

The meaning of ‘efficiency’ is that an individual is knowledgeable and the meaning of ‘proficiency’ is that an individual is knowledgeable and is again knowledgeable to use such knowledge.  Incapability of utilization of one’s own knowledge retards growth of such an individual.

It is, therefore, essential that parent of a child take enough care to develop the child’s capacity by inculcating good habits in relation to their academics and create interest for the child.

Whilst on the subject, I would like to introduce the readers to two related subjects, which are not addressed to by many parents.

SWOT ANALYSIS:

The word ‘SWOT’ is an abbreviated form of the words – STRENGTH, WEAKNESS, OPPORTUNITY and THREAT.

Every individual and every organization/establishment has to analyze their SWOT in order to improve..

Even a one-hour-old child has the faculty of SWOT.  Let us analyze the same in detail.

In the earlier paragraphs, we had discussed about the inborn knowledge of a hen chic and duck chic and how they behave the moment they come out of their shell.  Similarly, a child just born does have this faculty of taking care of its needs.  Let us see how a child uses its inborn strengths to its full advantage.

SWOT ANALYSIS OF A CHILD – BORN JUST ONE HOUR BEFORE

From this one can see the nature has given us certain inborn qualities to take care of ourselves.

Similarly, every individual has to make his own ‘SWOT’ analysis and address all the weakness he may have to transform to strength.

The subject on ‘SWOT’ is generally taught in post graduation level to analyze the SWOT of an organization as a course material.  It is my firm opinion that we must address this problem in formative years itself.

FEAR:

The word ‘FEAR’ is well known to all of us and we use this word at least one time each day.  However, the ‘FEAR’ is not a word in itself but a combination of few words of qualities, which an individual should possess to avoid any threat to his/her career.  The word ‘FEAR’ is an abbreviated form just like ‘NEWS’.

The full form of the word ‘FEAR’ is

• F                      FAITH
• E                      ENVIRONMENT
• A                      AMBITIOUS               
• R                      RESOURCEFULNESS

Let us now analyze each of these words for better understanding:

• FAITH:            An individual should have faith in himself/herself so that he can face the challenge in life and find ways and means to find solutions.  It is generally a known fact that every individual is not sure of the results of his/her own efforts, when such individual is not sure of his effort.  This develops certain amount of anxiety and the mind of such individual falls in a stress unable to bear the waiting game.  Here, we must realize that since the individual was not confident in the first place and he is not sure of the result in the second place, he develops certain amount of anxiety in his/her mind and would not be in a position to face failures.  How to develop faith in oneself?  Every human has certain capacity and if proper effort and practice is undertaken timely, such individual’s proficiency level would be high and such individual would be very confident of whatever he/she is doing, without bothering the end result, which he/she is sure of.  Here, therefore, the key word for every one should ‘I CAN DO IT’.

• ENVIRONMENT:       An individual’s environment should be encouraging in order to maintain the motivational level.  A child’s environment requires the parent should make a lot of sacrifices and participate in the child’s life.  I mean to say when a child is starting to go school, say even from nursery level, the role of the parent, particularly of the mother, should be that of a teacher and the father should be that of a friend.  The parent must participate in the child’s development and spend at least an hour each day discussing various matters related to the competitive world and to face the realities.  Speak to them about several moral stories.  Such an effort by the parent would encourage the child and the child start believing that everything his/her parent is telling is the GOSPEL TRUTH.  The child should be provided with a few books not connected to his academics and create interest in the child to go through such books for refreshing his/her mind. The type of books should be illustrative comic magazines, short stories etc.  The parent should also provide an opportunity for the child to acquaint himself/herself with English language by providing English newspaper at the appropriate age for him/her to develop reading habit.

The environment so created would make the child develop self confidence and   help achieve better results in its efforts.

• AMBITIOUS:  The word ‘AMBITIOUS can be misunderstood as being greedy.  The word is another form for ‘AMBITION’.  While both the words are same in their meaning, the degree of difference between ‘ambitious’ and ‘ambition’ is that the first word indicates a strong desire and the second word indicated a eager desire.  However, there is a difference in the contention of both the words.  Ambition is a word signifying that the individual has a desire to achieve certain things and may not be aware of the ways and means to achieve the same.  But, the being ambitious, the individual would make an effort and try to find ways and means to achieve the desired goal.   The saying goes that a person should be satisfied with what he/she has now, but be ambitious.  Being ambitious generates motivation for achieving with knowledge of rewards that are available at the end of the achievement.

• RESOURCEFULNESS:  The source means point from where we can get things to fulfill our needs.  Resource means making available such things continuously.  Resourcefulness means that an individual is in possession of solutions for all types of problems that we face in day-to-day life in conduction our affairs.  In an organization people identify certain individuals being very resourceful, because they can address all the problems of the organization.  When an individual is resourceful dependency on such individual by others increases without any special effort paving the way of obtaining higher responsibilities and the higher pay and incentives attached to the position.

Every organization works with justifiable profit motivation.  They would be looking for individuals, who can make their venture a success.  Success is the ultimate goal for every individual and organization in general.  An individual cannot wait for opportunities come in his/her way and then try to improve his/her capabilities.  Such individual will never get recognition from their employers.  As such each and every individual should invest his/her faith in himself/herself and try to do take additional responsibilities with future in mind in their present occupation.  Generally, many individuals behave in such a manner that I am being paid only so much and why I should do extra work and make the organization benefit without being rewarded.  This approach is wrong.  The individual must repose faith in himself/herself and equip to shoulder higher responsibilities in another organization, if not in the present organization.  Such individuals will never miss the bus.

Now, we all understand the word ‘FEAR’ has been derived out of four qualities that we possess lack of which would place in jeopardy.  Over period of time, these qualities have taken the abbreviated shape and formed a word ‘FEAR’, and we all forgot the real background of the word’s full form.