December 13, 2016 at 12:40 am

Social sciences is one of the subjects which all of us would have had to study when we were children. It was earlier called Social Studies. Nowadays it is observed that many children find the subject difficult to grasp due to many reasons. One of the main reasons if  obviously that the number of chapters is high as it is subdivided into Geography, History, Politics and Economics so is the volume and the content.

This starts from class one where formal education starts on a serious note. The topics are all encompassing covering all the aspects of each chapter in detail. The student finds this particular load of this subject too high which when it is compared to the other subjects and there forms an image in the mind of the child that the subject is long so are the questions and answers and they slowly get aversion towards this subject. When they reach classes like 4 to 6 the volume would had been hiked further and they start reading the subject simply for the purpose(rote learning) of passing or getting good scores. This a common thing which happens with other subjects too and more so with social sciences.

Children if they learn this social sciences well can get into many fields like being a historian, geography, political science, philosophy, paleontologist, hydrologist,  earth sciences, oceanography, environmental science, anthropologist, pedalogy,  cartography, rock and minerals, statistician, archaeologist, gemologist,  social sciences and many more new professions. Please educate your children about this subject which is enjoyable and interesting to read if done the right way.

To add to this is the time alloted to each subject which is approximately 30 minutes. Let us say if there are around 40 children in the class the first five minutes for the children to settle down and get into the topic being taught and the last 3 minutes for the winding up. In between two people turn up one for their respective birthday and one for some other reason. In the end per class each child gets only about 20 minutes from the teacher. Which is very short considering the volume.

Nowadays the teachers whichever school it may be have also their pressures and other duties assigned to them other than teaching, which eats up into their time and affects the performance of the teacher. The pulls and pressures from different ends takes a toll on the teachers energy and saps them of the same. Some schools appoint teachers for lesser salaries as they want to cut costs and obviously the quality of the teaching suffers. One more trend which is observed is that teachers teach as if it is a mundane job. They do not generate interest in the child to listen to the topic being taught. They should treat children as their friends.

And the students are also responsible for this situation as they have  no discipline and  treat going to school as going to a picnic and whiling away their time and disrespecting teachers with their attitude. This demotivates genuine teachers a lot. Parents are adding up to this cause and they aggravate the situation as they seem to think their duty as a parent is finished once they literally dump their kids in the school. Many parents do not have the time to ask their children how their day was and what did they do in school and check their books once in a while. All the parties are responsible and they contribute to this situation but the ultimate sufferers will be the children whose year is wasted as they do not end up performing to their potential.

Parent teacher meetings are a mere ritual. Once parents are informed of their child’s performance they raise a hue and cry that their child has not performed according to expectations and the school is responsible. It is always better to sit and talk it out about their children and see how things can be corrected the next time.

If children will not commit mistakes when will they learn? It is also unfair to expect the child to behave like a adult and score the best marks always. Pressuring children to score is not a good thing to do and it will demoralize them and affect their self esteem and may also affect them psychologically. All the concerned parties should think about this and take course correction.

• This topic was modified 8 years ago by  Krishna Kumar.

December 18, 2016 at 9:16 pm

To say the truth kids nowadays are just not patient enough. They want things to bedone once and forgwt about it. If i can remember during our tomes we did so many subjects in school social studies being one of them, and you were expected to pass in all the subjects. What was a child to do you could not even try to say that you were being over burdened you were taken to school to goand study and that was that. Kids nowadays have been eased off some subjects by being let to choose what subjects they want to do, so whats the big deal about not liking social studies? The thing is they just don’t want to read thats it. They may say that social studies is too long, thats the way yhey view it but in actual sense thats just a term given to shorten the subjects but its just each subject on its own.

December 18, 2016 at 9:41 pm

I agree with you 100 percent but those days were different. Even today you have some small number of students who study like how we were studying but the average and those who find difficulty with studies are in a majority. To tell even the subjects have been trimmed down and even the marking pattern has been simplified but still these children find it difficult. I am able to speak about this with a sense of authority as I teach different subjects and have worked at a school. For these children passing the 10th class exam is like passing the IAS. That is the situation. Many have got addicted to television, computers, online games and other stuff and their mind does not get out of it.

I feel the parents are the culprits. As they feel it is their birth right to give birth to a child and not tend to the childs needs in the formative years which are crucial for a proper foundation. They want the child to get education in a jiffy how one would get money out of an ATM. The do not want to do proper parenting and both will be working and will give less time for the child and pamper him with money, gifts and are easily blackmailed by children. Bad parenting is the result of this with the society also playing a part. That is my assessment when told they never listen and tell what they say is always right. If you pay money you can get services that is the attitude.