Speech of Mr. Azim Premji at one of the parent gathering

If you are a parent, you have many aspirations for your child that may include him or her becoming a doctor, an engineer, scientist or another kind of successful professional. I believe these aspirations are driven by your thinking about your child's future, and her centrality in your life.Since good education is often the passport to a good future, I presume it leads you to getting your child admitted to a good school. Then you encourage your child to study hard and do well in school exams. To bolster this, you send him or her for tuition classes. This would have primed your child for board exams and entrance exams, thereby leading to admission into a good professional course. Doing well at college increases the probability of landing a good job. And a good job means the child's future is ensured. I am neither a psychologist nor an educationist, and what I will now state may seem counter-intuitive. I think that these aspirations and actions might be doing more harm than good to your child. To understand why, we need to re-examine some of our fundamental assumptions. In the first place, I have seen time and again that living for some distant future goal also means you do not live in the present. The distant goal will always translate into an external measure of success, such as exams. And most exam-focused children start forgetting what it means to be a child - to be curious, mischievous, exploring, falling, getting up, relating, discovering, inventing, doing, playing. Childhood is very precious; precious enough not be wasted by the artificial pressures of contrived competition, by too many hours of bookish study, and by school report cards that simplistically wrap up an entire human being in numbers. The second assumption is that education is merely a ticket to socio-economic success. Given the state of our country, this reality cannot be ignored. But restricting education to only this aspect is, I think, a very limiting notion of the aim of good education. The primary purpose of a school is to guide the child in her discovery of herself and her world, and to identify and nurture the child's talents. Just as every seed contains the future tree, each child is born with infinite potential. Imagine a school which sees children as seeds to be nurtured - here the teacher is a gardener who helps to bring out the potential already present in the child. This is very different from the current view which sees the child as clay to be moulded - where the teacher and parents are potters deciding what shape the clay should take. There is an old (and forgotten) Chinese saying: ''Give a seed to a potter, and you will get a bonsai.'' Even in a commercial organization, to make profits we do not have to chase profits. Rather, we need to build an institution that gives every employee an opportunity to do meaningful and fulfilling work. Create an organization driven by values of innovation, integrity, customer centricity and care. And as you practice these values everyday and moment, you will see that the profits take care of themselves. Similarly, dear parent, this is my request to you. Do not give up your child's present to secure his or her future. Give your child the freedom to truly explore life with abandon. In doing this, you will see your child flower into a creative and sensitive human being. And when this happens, everything else - money, social success, security - will fall into place automatically. Let your child be a child.

Must Read For All Parents

Once upon a time the animals had a school. They had to create a curriculum that would satisfy everyone, so they chose four subjects: running, climbing, flying, and swimming. All the animals, of course, studied all the subjects.
The duck was very good at swimming, better than the teacher, in fact. He received passing grades in running and flying, but was hopeless in climbing, so they made him drop swimming so that he could practice climbing. After a while he was only average at swimming, but average is still acceptable, at least in school, and nobody worried much about it except the duck.
The eagle was considered a troublemaker. In his climbing class he beat everybody to the top of the tree, but he had his own way of getting there that was against the rules. He always had to stay after school and write, "Cheating is wrong," five hundred times. This kept him from soaring, which he loved, but schoolwork comes first.
The bear flunked because they said he was lazy, especially in the winter. His best time was summer, but school wasn't open then.
The zebra played hooky a lot because the ponies made fun of his stripes, and this made him very sad.
The kangaroo started out at the top of the racing class, but became discouraged when was told to move swiftly on all four legs the way his classmates did.
The fish quit school because he was bored. To him, all four subjects were the same, but nobody understood that because they had never seen a fish.
The squirrel got an A in climbing, but his flying teacher made him start from the ground up, instead of from the treetop down. His legs got so sore practicing takeoffs that he began getting Cs in climbing and Ds in running.
The bee was the biggest problem of all, so the teacher sent him to Doctor Owl for testing. Doctor Owl said that the bee's wings were too small for flying and they were in the wrong place. The bee never saw Doctor Owl's report, so he just went ahead and flew anyway. I think I know a bee or two, how about you?
The duck is the child who does well in math and poorly in English and is given tutorials by the English teacher while his classmates are doing math. He loses his edge in math, and only does passably well in English.
The eagle is the child who is turned into a troublemaker because he has his "own style" of doing things. While he is not doing anything "wrong," his non-conforming is perceived as troublemakeing, for which he is punished.
Who does not recognize the bear? The kid who is great in camp, thrives on extra-curricular, but really just goes flat in the academics.
The zebra is the heavy, tall, or short, self-conscious kid whose failure in school few realize is due to a sense of social inadequacy.
The kangaroo is the one who instead of persevering gives up and becomes that discouraged child whose future disappears because he was not appreciated.
The fish is a child who really requires full special education and should not be in the regular classroom.
The squirrel, unlike the duck who "manages," becomes a failure.The bee, oh the bee, is the child who the school just feels it cannot deal with, yet, against all odds, with the backing of his parents, has enough self-motivation to do well even though everyone thought he couldn't. I had the pleasure of knowing many bees.
Your child is a unique blend of talents, personality, and ingredients nowhere else to be found.Some children are skilled intellectually, others are blessed emotionally, and many are born with creative ingenuity.
Each child possesses their very own exclusive collection of gifts.
The kids didn't come with direction booklets.
Effective parents are always learning, studying, and customizing the instructions for their individual child.
Each and every child is as unique as their fingerprints; a sparkling diamond of unparalleled beauty.
Don't let your child be a kangaroo!