There are some questions, in this real world, which can’t be answer. You can, but you can’t justify it thoroughly. You stare to sky, close your eyes, raise your eye brow, roll your fingers in to the shirt, scratch your chin, wave your hands randomly and just give up the effort. That’s exactly what you do. I was doing the same when Princy asked me the question “What is the meaning of an alphabet A?” I turned my face towards Anup, still seeking some hints from him. He was laughing and that means he didn’t know the answer. We were discussing about how to teach alphabet to children as it was the biggest problem we were facing when she asked that question. She told “I never teach alphabets in my class. It’s useless”. “See, ‘A’ doesn’t have any meaning it self. Why should I teach such thing which it self not having any meaning at all?”. “Children know ‘A’ for Apple because they know what an Apple is”. “Why shouldn’t I teach that apple instead of teaching them an alphabet ‘A’?”, “When you started to speak first time any word like ‘ma’, did your mom taught to you that speak first ‘m’ then put ‘a’ behind it and whole word becomes ‘ma’. Did she teach you?” She poured out. I know it’s an agitating thing but something meaningful. Seriously, If suppose children ask you, “what is an A?” what answer you should give? Will you say “It is the first letter and a vowel in the basic modern Latin alphabet which is similar to the ancient Greek letter alpha from which it derives”? Huh? I guess children will get thousand new questions in their brain instead of an answer.
My aim of writing all this conversation is that, is it really necessary to teach them alphabets? And If Yes then what is the best way to teach them those letters so they can remember it easily? Before giving answer of this question please remind in your mind that this question is for those children who never ever gone to school even though their age is 12 to 15 years. Give your suggestion soon.
More over that, in recent, we have started our new Project at Vastrapur. There are more than 15 children right now who are eager to learn new things. They are very talented; some of them are singers, painters and dancers. The best thing in them is that they never feel ashamed of exploring them self in front of others. They live life in a chawl but full king size. I hope its time to dig some more diamonds now. Will you be with us? Believe in your dreams. Believe in the MAGIC.
