Parenting as an atheist

My first daughter, as any five year old kid, would keep asking many questions.  Some of those questions started with the characters she saw on TV.   She saw monsters and goblins in some of the shows, and she was quite frightened, and asked me if they were for real, to which I responded that they were not real.  When Shrek scared off the villagers carrying pitchforks, she asked me the same question, and once again my answer was the same – that he was not real. 

After few more questions in the same vein, I formalized my answer.  I told her that certain characters exist only in stories, in books and on TV, and that they don’t exist in real world.  I extended this notion to tell her that ghosts, ghouls, zombies, and all other threatening and menacing characters do not exist in reality.  [I came to an understanding with my wife that she will not scare our kids with any reference to monsters to make them eat up their supper.]

Bad Parenting: Vegetarian Bullying

[This follows Bad Parenting- Insensitivity and Indecency]

Where do we get our prejudices?  How do we form our biases against certain kinds of people?  How does discrimination perpetuate through generations? 

The answer lies in bad parenting.

The parents indoctrinate their kids with habits, ideals, values and most importantly prejudices.   I argue in Indian values are actually habits I and Indian values are actually habits II that Indians equate habits with values.  What this means is that Indians give precedence to dietary habits, like not eating meat or not drinking alcohol over other values such as honesty or integrity, or not taking bribes. 

 

Give me ignorance, it’s my birth right

In India, we have three major types of discrimination- that of caste, that of sex and that of religion, in the order specified.  Humans are discriminatory by nature- it’s in their predisposition to align themselves with a group to treat people of other groups with contempt, derision and fear.  Waging war, committing genocide, being xenophobic can be found in nature, even with some higher order mammals.  And human society is quite capable of justifying such behavior, sometimes glamorizing war against people of other kind, teaching them to be contemptible of other religions and caste, all in the name of fighting for your own kind.  

Either it is Nazism, or slavery in United States or caste system in India, they are all based in promotion of one’s own kind at the cost of other kind.  While it is easy to find fault with human gene for group discrimination, I am not sure if our disposition towards ill treatment of women is also genetic in nature or whether it comes wholly from religion and traditions.  Whether the roots lie in our animal ancestry or in our religion and traditions, it is generally agreed that most of these discriminations get their legitimacy from the way society influences its individuals.

Taare Zameen Par

[I wrote many articles on this blog- most of them criticize India and Indians. Beauty is hard to find in India. There is ugliness everywhere. But, once in a while I get a glimpse of something beautiful. And when I see something beautiful and excellent, I do not fail to celebrate it.]

Few days ago, I saw the movie Taare Zameen Par. It is one of those rare moments when you can really celebrate excellence right here in India. It is a very well made movie. Kudos to Amir Khan, Darsheel Safary and other very good artists who have made this movie worth watching! Photography was excellent, cinematography superb, and screenplay outstanding. Great direction! It moved me, it swayed me. And most important of all, it had a great message!

There were so many great moments in this movie and each moment was captured so well.

The movie is about a kid who just wants to have fun and grow up at his own pace. The movie captures so well each of those glimpses where a kid enjoys the world around him, innocently, and so childishly. The joy of that paint drop landing on Ishaan’s cheek, the urge to jump into the water puddles, dreaming dragons and monsters, are what the kid’s life is made up of. The present day parents, who are keen on pushing their kids to join their rat race, are robbing their kids from enjoying those beautiful moments. Nowadays, I don’t see kids (in cities and towns) playing in the evening. I see them coming home, and then going off to tuition or straight to homework.

The movie shows travails of a young lad who is just being himself, a kid, trying to cope with this ever competitive world. He wants to learn at his own pace. He wants to enjoy the finer things of life, waking up late, dreaming, and just having fun. Ishaan (the protagonist) is a fine artist but suffers from dyslexia. I still believe that this movie could have been made without using dyslexia as an excuse. It could have been any kid who just wanted to enjoy the life around him. The parents are frustrated with Ishaan, who never seems to learn to write or read. He is thrown into a boarding school because he does not conform to the expectations of his parents, his teachers, and his society.

Though it highlights the problem of one kid who stubbornly refuses to conform, there are millions of kids in India who are being told to give up their childhood. The kid’s life is now reduced to a drudgery of learning by rote. In one instance, when the Ishaan explains a Hindi poem in his own way, the teacher urges the students to ‘interpret’ it in exact same words he prescribed. There goes another kid’s creativity and originality down the drain.

Ishaan’s father wants his kid to conform, learn, and succeed. In this world and society, there is no room for deviating from the norms. The parents see their success through the accomplishments of their kids. Parents want their kid to be top engineer, a top doctor, a CEO, or a top sports player. Everybody wants child geniuses; nobody wants a nice human being.

Children tend to grow at different rates, taking their own times, not necessarily confined to the orderliness and timeliness of a curriculum of a school. A kid can grow the necessary skills to enter the mainstream at any age. What he does at a certain age does not determine his performance for the rest of his life. That’s why I keep saying that just because a kid got into a top school does not mean much. It only means that he was good at that age. To assume he would be good for the rest of his life, and to assume that a kid who has gone to an ordinary college would remain ordinary for the rest of his life is quite foolish- but that’s how most Indians measure themselves.

One of the important messages of the movie is that you need to care for your kid. It does not mean you provide food, good school, books, toys, and video games. What it means is that you need to be there and assure the kid that he is quite OK in whatever he does. Every kid needs to be treated special. And kids should end up feeling they are special.

What is important is how the kid perceives this world. Caring parents who encourage, motivate, and applaud everything the kid does while ignoring his many ‘foibles’, ‘mistakes’, ‘flaws’, ‘guffaws’ and ‘inadequacies’, make kids life better. Hopefully, they make better human beings.

This movie conveys some important messages.

# Every kid is unique.

# Care for your kid and encourage him in whatever he does.

# Parents should not measure their kids only by their marks and scores in the exams.

And remember this:

Each kid grows differently at different rates at different ages. A kid who is completely uninterested in studying the alphabet, math or language at certain age may grow to like them at a later age and that’s when he will move at a rapid pace.

Then, there was a strong message from Amir Khan, about some islands where the tree just dies out because people around it curse it. Of course, it must be an allegory, but it has a good message. It’s so easy to kill a soul by constantly discouraging it.

We set our standards based on false assumptions, misconceived values, lofty morals and hypocritical ethics, and try to impose them on our kids, making their lives miserable. Here’s a speech from Lt. Col. Frank Slade from the movie Scent of a Woman. [This is one of my favorite movies – I have seen it more than 20 times].

And I have seen, boys like these, younger than these, their arms torn out, their legs ripped off. But there is nothin' like the sight of an amputated spirit, there is no prosthetic for that. You think you're merely sending this splendid foot-soldier back home to Oregon with his tail between his legs, but I say that you are executing his soul! And why? Because he's not a Baird man. Baird men, you hurt this boy, you're going to be Baird Bums, the lot of ya.

I really liked many aspects of Tare Zameen Par. Thank you Amir Khan, for giving me a piece of excellence to celebrate!

[I actually wrote a longer post interlaced with accounts from my childhood, but then I went on hold myself against posting it for obvious reasons].

Related Posts: Guide to Indian Idiocy I, Bad Parenting- Insensitivity and Indecency, Trying to find beauty in India, Apotheosis of IITs and myth of merit, My Stand on Reservations IV;

Bad Parenting: Creating Terrorists I

International terrorist from India

Suddenly we have seen a terrorist on international arena from India. We always had home-grown terrorists operating at home, but an international terrorist? Yes, it was a surprise. But is it a surprise that he happens to be Muslim? If there was a poll conducted in India a year ago, asking the respondents- ‘If there is an international terrorist involved in suicide bomb attack in London, and if that terrorist is an Indian, which religion would he be from?’ I think, more than 70% would vote for ‘Muslim’. While Hindus would overwhelmingly vote for ‘Muslim’, I think even some Muslims would have voted for ‘Muslim’. It almost goes without saying that if there is an Indian who wants to do something like that in place like Glasgow or London, it has to be a Muslim. (Its like believing that a mugger in a US city is always Black.)

Why is it like that? Is it the religion or is it something else?

Should we blame Islam?

You might have known by now that I don’t like to blame the religious books and its prophets to solve the immediate problems. All religions have its idiosyncrasies, some more than others. To blame one religion for all evils is like acquitting others. The other reason I don’t like to blame the religion itself for such terrorism is because such blaming doesn’t solve the issue of terrorism. Solving religion and its ills is a long-term problem and solving terrorism is a short-term problem.

When you blame the religion such as Islam and say that its sacred texts actually produce suicide killers, then I should see such suicide killers all through the history of Islam, which is not the case. If it is so unique to Islam, how come we had Japanese kamikazes in WWII?

Also, if indeed we were to actually prove using some long-drawn logic that it is Koran that incites people to blow themselves up for a cause, then what is the solution? It is like saying Science creates destruction through creation of atom bombs. Should we eradicate Science then? Should the people of other religion come together to eradicate Islam and its holy text? Or should we force Islam to shun its holy text because we discovered something dangerous in their texts? Would we do the same to our texts if some ‘other’ religion pointed out sinister interpretations in our texts?

All the solutions which include blaming a single religion for terrorism are untenable and unpractical and hence I do not take much fun in blaming the texts. Instead, I try to look for the practical solutions if there are any.

Now how do you explain this International terrorist coming from a well-educated middle class Indian Muslim family?

I was thinking about it since this incident happened in Glasgow where one Indian Muslim blew himself up in an attempt to blow certain section of the airport there. Everyday newspapers devote copious pages of verbiage on this single incident. But the thought in me remains - what’s happening to Indian Muslims, especially those from well-to-do families who send their kids to mainstream schools just like the rest of us? Here, I try to answer some of my own questions.

Religious Training

Many Indian Muslim parents, including those who are holding normal jobs, and have good education, tend to send their kids to some kind of religious training once the kids reach a certain age. This could be out of peer pressure since everyone around them is doing it or because they want to ascertain their identity in a country where they are a minority (usually many minorities go overboard in expressing their cultural and religious identities – like Indian Hindus in US or UK). Whatever may be the reason these parents do send their kids to a nearby school or mosque that imparts Islam into these young minds. Some well-to-do parents bring home a teacher to impart this training. Note that this is very different with Hindu kids who seem to get their learning indirectly from parents and family around them.

The teacher who is entitled with the task of teaching these young Indian Muslim kids is a maulvi or a mullah working in a nearby mosque or madrassa. Most of these mullahs or maulvis are illiterate. Most of them happen to be rejects of the society whose only claim to something glorious is their ability to rote the Koran. This is not very different from sadhus and other godmen of Hinduism who seem to prey on the naïve devotees to get their livelihood. The difference however is that not many Indian Hindu parents would give such men the responsibility to impart religious teachings to their kids. So, what we have here is a maulvi or mullah who has no formal education, that of science or mathematics, and has little experience of traveling or exposure to other cultures, spending hours teaching your precious little kid with his own version of Islam.

While these Indian Muslim parents take extreme care to choose the best schools for their kids for their mainstream education they seem to settle for almost anything when it comes their religious training. Nobody bothers to check the reputation or credentials of such religious teachers. All questions and doubts are shunned when it comes to the matters of religion and its teachings. In fact, this is not unique to Muslims alone; many Hindus, even the educated engineers and professors seem to abandon rational thinking when it comes to matters of religion – they consult an astrologer to start or begin an important event, and refuse to get their son married at an 'inauspicious' time. While such abandonment of reason is usually harmless, there are times when it is quite harmful. I shall deal with those times when it is indeed harmful.

Organized religious training

There is a big problem with any kind of ‘organized’ religious training. An organized religious training starts with suppression of critical thinking, where questioning is discouraged, and blind belief is encouraged. It is done as an organized tool where indoctrination happens without allowing a debate. A kid who goes through such training is bound to set aside all attributes of critical thinking and logical reasoning that he might have been endowed with through genetic inheritance. He becomes a puppet in the hands of interpreters of religion. These kids learn to be selectively credulous and all-believing in matters of religion, while operating with common skepticism and average reasoning in all other spheres of life. They go to normal schools, attend colleges, do well, become professors, engineers, scientists and doctors, but continue to harbor that selective abandoning of reason when it comes to matters of religion. We see such people everywhere. Scientists doing puja before launching of a rocket; top engineer looking for auspicious time to marry off his daughter; businessman waiting for the star alignment to sign up an agreement, etc.

The first step towards indoctrination

This religious teaching of Islam first starts with complete abandonment of logic and reason. It’s like teaching a kid that Santa Claus visits every home on Christmas night to give presents. How a single person can go to so many homes on a single night traveling on a sled is not something that a kid doubts. Even if he doubts, a reason that Santa is all-powerful, all-knowing, all-present would clear up all those doubts. The same happens to organized religious teachings. All questions that a sane and rational man would ask are trounced down using the ‘logic’ of faith, where every question is answered using magic, miracles, omnipotence, omniscience, etc. The kids are compelled to abandon reason and just accept the word of God, as it is, verbatim, in literal translation, without raising a doubt. Raising a doubt is equivalent to being a kafir (infidel – non-believer)- that abominable creature whom God has condemned to be fried and burned in Hell forever.

In such organized religious indoctrination, the fairies become real, parting of ocean becomes real, the magic which any ordinary magician can conjure up becomes ‘real’, blotting out sun becomes real, and creation of Universe in seven days becomes real. The human brain gets wired in a way to become selectively credulous towards topics of religion.

Normally, the kids eventually grow up to become adults abandoning the belief in Santa Claus and Tooth Fairy, but the religion has this capacity to make sure these kids never become adults. They remain credulous forever. To achieve this, the puppet masters resort to all kinds of tricks – catching them young and indoctrinating them is a very famous trick- used by all fanatic movements- including Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin. The very elements of man - creativity, the ingenuity, the quest for knowledge, the curiosity, which are the hallmarks of human evolution to make him an intelligent being, are all thrown out of the door in few years of such religious training. This process arrests all the mental faculties, stops all critical thinking and now these pupils are ready to believe almost anything without asking questions - when it comes to religion.

Second step

What happens next in these teachings is introduction of a fiery and radical version of Islam. Whether the Indian Muslim parents choose to know about it or not, some of these maulvis or mullahs, armed with a very fiery version of Islam, incite violence and hatred, teach these innocent kids a very radical interpretation of Islam. To the already credulous kid, this goes into his head easy since he is ready to accept any version or any interpretation, as long as it is coming from the same source- the authority who will interpret the word of God for him.

This version of Islam includes selective interpretation of Islam using selected texts of Koran, accompanied by selected stories from human histories, added with contemporary injustices to make a dangerous potion- where jihad is the fight against all kafir (infidel) – and those infidels could be anybody- including those Muslims who do NOT subscribe to your version of Islam, where martyrdom through suicide killing is the biggest achievement giving you a direct ticket to jannat (heaven) wherein you get access to 72 virgins. Hatred is the word to describe this entire teaching- Hatred of others. And those others can be anybody- it could be a Hindu or a Christian, or even other kind of Muslim. That’s why you see the same hatred and ferociousness in the attack between Sunnis and Shias – they hate each other with same zeal and fervor.

Such radical indoctrinations are easy to come if the first step is already accomplished. What is there to stop you from committing a heinous crime if the God has already mandated it? While most rational people tend to bring in personal morality to question the motives of the interpreters (who ask them to become suicide bombers), some of the believers who truly and really believe in the stories as interpreted to them, would go ahead and commit crimes believing that they are doing it in the name of this invisible but revenge-seeking God.

Note

Indian Muslim parents need to know and understand what version of Islam their kids are being taught. Not giving enough attention can sometimes lead to seeing your son in an international event in a less desirable way!

[To be continued...]

Of Child Doctors and Child CEOs

One fifteen year Indian kid operated on a patient and actually performed the surgery aided by his own father in Tamil Nadu. The father is proud of his son’s achievements and when the medical association protested against this surgery, the father said that everyone is ‘jealous’ of his son’s achievements.

In another incident, a thirteen year old Indian CEO launched his own company in Silicon Valley. He has an executive team of other thirteen year olds. He hopes to secure funding for his company, and drop out just like Bill Gates.

Many Indian parents nowadays try to see accomplishments and their successes through their kid’s performance and achievements. These parents having reached midlife see a plateau in their career. They now compare their kids with others and feel proud only through the achievements made by their kids.

In India, parents are obsessed with the scores of their kids. They measure the kids only by the scores they get in various subjects at school. And when the kids don’t do well in the exams, these parents get really upset. Some of the parents punish themselves for their kids lack of performance. They are not ready to go out and face the world. They don’t talk to the kid for months. Some parents resort to punishing the kids, stopping their allowance, stopping their play activities, stop their TV watching, etc.

These days its all about child prodigies and child geniuses. The parents don’t want a good kid, they don’t want an excellent kid, what they want is a genius kid- a Bill Gates or Lakshmi Mittal. Not anything less.

Some readers may quickly conclude that we do this because we are in a rat race here in India. Its not very different in other countries. Most Indians kids in US are in a race to outperform the other. Scores, marks, grades, percentiles matter more than anything else. Not much has changed just because you are in a different country.

You will see hundreds of parents in US who want to outdo the others through their kid’s achievements. For most part, their life revolves completely around these kids. They drop them off at school, pick them up from the school, get them ready for music class, drop them off, pick them up, drop them off at soccer practice, pick them up, finish their homework, etc. Their weekends involve more such practices or meeting up other parents who have their kids in the same rat race. The talk revolves mostly around the kid’s performances. In fact, most Indian kids perform very well in US. Spelling Bee contest, or a Quiz competition, Indian kids are right there to outperform everyone else. Those parents whose kids are doing well are sought after for advice by other parents who want to bring up their kids the same way. And those parents whose kids are not doing well, and have realized this, have shunned themselves from such parties, and they hang their faces in shame.

So who are these parents?

These are the middle class parents, just like you and me- lower middle class, upper middle class, all middle class. Most of these parents are above average, have done well in life, but NOT that well. They always felt that they should have had a head start, should have had much better education (than what they had), should have much better opportunities (than what they had). They feel they would have become much more, a Bill Gates, a Sunil Mittal, a Sharapova, if ONLY, if only they had much better access to opportunities, if ONLY they spent more time studying instead of whiling away time in the playground playing silly games, if ONLY they had come home from school and went to evening classes instead of spending time with friends. For these parents, who feel they have lost out on missed opportunities, their kids shouldn’t be wasting their time. They shouldn’t wait to become adults to prove and perform, they should start right away, right now. They should win the spelling bee contests, win the trophies and awards, speak in debates, win the quizzes, win the talent competitions, and be the smartest, brightest, and always the first. These parents PUSH the kids to perform better and better each time, raising the bar each time, and when these kids win accolades, these parents bask in that glory. These are the parents who want to be behind the stage, on the stands, in the audience, congratulating, encouraging, supporting, video-recording, photo-shooting, while their kids keep winning laurels. They have given up struggle for themselves, and instead focus that struggle on their kids now. They think they have reached the peak of their performance, but believe their kids have the world open for them to conquer.

Its not much different for Indian parents in US. Every Indian family in US is more or less the same- two or three cars, a house, a green card or citizenship, few trips to Europe, a big TV,  investments in real estate in India, etc. Now they want to differentiate from other families, and this they do by pushing their kids to perform.

Wasted childhood

Recently, I was visiting a bookstore in Bangalore. A mom was accompanied by her 3-year old kid. While the kid was looking blank into the space, the mom was buying a book, it was titled something like ‘How to raise your kid to be a genius’. There, I felt pity for that little kid and I thought, ‘here goes another wasted childhood’.

Bad Parenting- Insensitivity and Indecency

The more I think about it the more I believe that the state of India – and all its ills are due to one single reason- bad parenting. It’s not the population; it’s not the economy; it’s not poverty and its not bad politicians either. I think it is everything to do with bad parenting. Unnecessarily concentrating on wrong values- such as non eating of meat, not smoking, not drinking alcohol, not visiting a prostitute, not watching erotic art, the Indian parents are losing out on the big picture on the essential and universal values- being a good citizen- to be paying taxes honestly, to be decent to others, to be civil and polite and courteous, to be taking responsibility about his environs, to keep his street clean, not to be corrupt, not to be dishonest.

Do you ever wonder why Indians are indecent to each other and why they throw garbage everywhere?

Argumentative Indian by Amartya Sen has given us an unnecessary license to hush up all criticism that points at our lack of introspection. His thesis is used by all and sundry to tell us, ‘Look! We have always been an open society; we have always discussed our issues’. Thereby we believe that we have always pointed out our negatives when needed. Yes, it was a first good step, but what we did after we discussed and debated for hours is a complete mystery. Now, I want to point out two things that we almost never discuss- either during parenting or at a cocktail party or in a serious debate on Indian media- a massive desensitization program that is ongoing; and a program to make indecency a virtue.

Insensitivity

You know how some western countries debate their homegrown desensitization towards violence and how it affects its youth! In India, we never discuss or debate our own homegrown desensitization towards our civic amenities- our garbage filled roads, child-beggar laden streets, handicapped on pavements, trash filled gardens and hill stations, plastic filled fields, streams and lakes. Instead, we blame everything on the politicians. We don’t seem to own up our problem (that we are insensitive). We don’t even want to admit that such a problem exists. Those who point out the problem (like me) are asked to shut up, and to take the next plane abroad. Such critics (like me) are called a traitor or termed an ‘arrogant one with lot of attitude’.

On a daily basis, we are allowing our kids to become desensitized towards all our civic responsibilities. When I wrote an article on how I see ugliness everywhere, people commented that I should try to look for beauty in spite of all that superficial ugliness. When I went to Nandi Hills and commented on garbage filled hills, I was told to look beyond and enjoy the view rather than get affected by the garbage lying around. There is this amazing sense of apathy in action here- which is nothing more than being highly insensitive. We DO NOT teach our kids where trash should go, but instead we do set examples on what to do with it – Dad throwing away the used packet on the street, Mom throwing trash outside the window without even looking, Uncle spitting right there on the street, etc. These examples are good enough for this kid to do the same. With added pride that he gets, compared to his parents because of better schooling, this kid also learns the art of rationalizing these actions. He explains them away:

‘Everybody does it, Live like a Roman in Rome!’
‘Someone will come along to sweep this up! Don’t worry! That’s why we pay our taxes!’
‘Look! This is just a drop in the ocean. First, clean up the ocean, then I will do my part!’
‘Don’t preach! Let’s see what difference your attitude makes’
‘Who are you to teach us? Have you seen the streets of Brooklyn?’

The new age parents spend lot of money to send their kids to top schools. I heard a radio advertisement where this international school actually sends the kids abroad as part of their education, where they spend time abroad learning. Wow! I thought. I mean which schools on the planet actually include a kid’s junket to a foreign nation? While we continue to spend exorbitantly and unnecessarily on one side, we don’t take time to teach our kids what they need to do with the trash.

I still remember one incident that took place few years ago, when I was living in US. I was at a movie hall waiting for the next movie. A kid aged 2, I guess, walked up slowly to a trash can and put his paper cup and walked back to his Dad. But this paper cup actually fell outside after few seconds. The Dad made the kid go back and put the paper cup back into the trash can. The kid did exactly as instructed. Then the Dad hugged the kid and they left the place.

Right there, in front my eyes, I saw a parent teaching his kid what to do with his trash. And to give a counter example, I have witnessed an incident in India, where a kid was reluctant to throw trash out of a moving train, but his mom reprimanded him; after which the kid’s resistance became zero and he just complied. Teachers, parents, uncles and aunts, friends, and everyone around are teaching this Indian kid to get desensitized to the filth and trash surrounding him. In fact, they are teaching him to throw more trash into the same pile of garbage.

I live in Bangalore. I see trash and filth everywhere. I don’t think this is a Garden city, I prefer calling it a Garbage city – some people get offended when I call this Garbage city. For those who fail to notice this garbage, kudos to them. They are utterly desensitized. Many people tell me that since I am living in India now, I should get used to it and be a part of the flow. I tell myself, ‘I am not going to be one of you. I will fight tooth and nail and go down fighting, but I won’t become one of you. And I won’t make my kids one of you’. What use is my education, what use is my intellect, what use is my rationality as a human being, if I can’t put it to right use?

Indecency

You know why Indians are not decent to each other? It’s because decency is synonymous with the meek, the weak, and the helpless. In India, the actions of those who are meek and those who are decent are apparently the same. Let me clarify.

A meek person waits for the traffic to clear up before he enters the main street, only because he is afraid. A decent person waits for the traffic to clear up before he enters the main street, only because he thinks it is a decent and right thing to do.

A meek person stands in line to get his ticket, because he fears someone might scold him or bash him up if he cuts the line. A decent person stands in line to get his ticket, because he thinks it is a decent and right thing to do.

There are many examples, starting from how kids behave at school all the way to college and beyond into adult and corporate life and then into retirement, which suggest that a meek person and a decent person apparently acts almost the same way, though for different underlying reasons.

Therefore, Indians have grown up not differentiating the two, and instead, conveniently clubbed both these into one- 'the meek, the weak, and the helpless'. Nobody wants to be seen as meek, the weak and the helpless. They want to be seen as strong, assertive and aggressive. Therefore, we end up doing those actions which suggest these desired qualities in us.

A person who doesn’t wait at traffic and instead juts in causing lot of inconvenience to others is seen as aggressive and ‘smart’. He is paid handsomely for this aggressive posture because he gets away with it, seen by others as a great example. When you wait at traffic, you are actually told not to wait, and that it is the Indian way to jut through irrespective of how much inconvenient it is to others. You are told that you will end up waiting there forever (which according to them is losing out).

The parents teach the kid (by setting the wrong examples) to become more aggressive, be more dishonest, be more corrupt, to cut the line, to bend the traffic rule, all in the great Indian game of ‘getting ahead’. They rationalize all this as ‘getting ahead in a rat race’. ‘Hey, do you want my kid to stay behind? No way! I am teaching all the skills he needs to win this race’, is their usual response when asked why they prefer their kid to be an aggressive go-getter ‘using all that it takes to get there’ instead of being a decent human who respects others, is more concerned about his environs, and is an honest tax-payer.

We have made this ‘aggressiveness with utter disregard for politeness and courtesy’ a virtue in India. Crossing the traffic light when it is red is a virtue. Bribing your way to get your passport earlier than others is a virtue. Getting the best deal by paying off some corrupt official is a virtue. In this game, the person who knows where the corrupt official is a well-informed person and his advice is sought after. The person who knows an honest official is of no use to anyone. When one homeowner breaks all the norms and rules to build his home such that he occupies more land than he is supposed to, he is seen by others as an accomplished individual. Many come to him to seek his advice and know how they too can flout the rules in the same manner. When IT officials raid a rich man, that rich man becomes highly sought after for business deals or marriage proposals (to his son/daughter).

In India, throwing garbage on the street is a cool thing. It shows that you have a cool attitude. It shows you don’t care. If you are aggressive on a road, and don’t yield, it’s a cool thing. It shows you don’t care a damn. These are all cool things as a growing teen in almost any society on this planet. However, those societies tend to shed that cool attitude and take on a mature and responsible attitude as they grow up, which is quite missing in the Indian context. We never seem to grow up from our adolescence.

Through our bad parenting, which sets wrong examples, we have institutionalized insensitivity and indecency and made them virtues. Please don’t blame the politicians. They are just the symptom, not the cause.

Slow Starters have Higher IQ?

There’s an article at Science Daily which discusses the above news item. What is interesting to me is something else. I have a hypothesis based on some of my understandings on evolution of human being. I am quite fascinated by the evolution of animals (Human being in particular) and I have been pursuing this interesting for some time now. My learning is:

1. Universe has been in existence for over 12 billion years (could be 15 according to some estimates). Earth has been in existence for over 4 billion years. Life formed around 3 billions years ago. Life was primarily simple (and single cellular) for over a billion years and then it started to become complex. Dinosaurs started around 250 million years ago (and lived for 150 million years). Our ancestor species diverged from apes around 7 million years ago, and human began to act more like human around 250,000 years ago, and modern man came about 80,000 years ago. He has started to settle down (agriculture) around 10,000 years ago, and the major civilizations started around 5000 years ago. [Most of these numbers are from top of my head. Some of the definitions, like when did we actually become human, are ambiguous].

2. Humans became more intelligent because of the following reasons

a. Depleting forests and increasing grasslands forced some of our ancestors to come down to ground from the trees

b. Sudden change in our locomotion behavior (standing on two legs instead of four) allowed us to use hands for various purposes (tool making) and increased our brain size. (a big portion of our brain is devoted to using our hands)

c. Our maternal behavior, of keeping the kid close to mother, nurturing, protecting over a prolonged duration has allowed our brains to grow the fastest and the biggest from the time of birth to the age of five.

d. Size of the brain (in ratio with size of body) is extremely important measure for intelligence of a species (don’t take this on an individual level)

3. My readings on this are simple- the humans are intelligent because they have their mom to protect them against nature. They don’t have to develop the necessary (locomotion or tactile) skills to ward of enemy or find food. During this time alone, the kid’s brain grows the fastest because there is no other pressure. Compare this to another mammal (Say, a calf). It can stand the next minute it is born and can run within an hour. It starts finding its own food very soon. In these animals, the brain does not grow when it has to- that is, in the first few months and years. While it develops locomotory and survival skills the fastest, its brain does not grow enough to allow it to become intelligent.

4. Therefore, to create a smarter kid, the human child has to be protected and nurtured longer in the first few years. And that means, the kid should be growing slowly in other aspects- like talking, walking, holding, etc, so as to allow his/her brain to grow to its maximum potential (cortex thickens, etc).

5. My conclusion- Don’t push your kids to grab and hold things, walk, use his body to crawl, eat, talk, etc. Instead, just pamper it to the most and nurture it. Anyway, the kid will start doing all the above things once his brain size has grown enough.

I see many parents (here in India) who want to see their kid walking, talking, crawling, etc, before the kids of same age to prove their kid is smarter. Most of the parents get quite concerned when their kids don’t talk by a certain age, or walk by certain age, or crawl by certain age. They almost get into panic mode and push the kids to perform or they take the kid to a doctor to consult.

My hypothesis: If you want smarter kids, don’t let them do anything other than observe, feed and sleep, and meanwhil, keep telling yourself that you are allowing your kid to grow smarter.