No right way

Aditi Mathur and Ratnesh Mathur

What is the opposite of horse?

Think about this question and try to answer it. Does this question surprise, perplex, frustrate, even enrage you?

The reason you may go through these emotions is because this question doesn’t have a single correct answer. Also, it defies our conventional thinking. When somebody asks for an opposite, we expect it to exist in fact. Unfortunately, our mind has been trained to think in limited ways. Conformity is so comfortable that our mind, primarily designed to be like a bird, has willingly caged itself.

And we want our children to do the same – conform – generation after generation. It is ironical that at one level parents think that innovation and creativity can wait, but at another, a lot of parents want to send their children to creativity camps, to classes that boost thinking power, and want centres like ours to design programs that make children confident and successful.

But wait.

Isn’t the child who thinks that the way to enjoy an orange is to poke a hole in it using the end of a spoon and then squeeze out the juice being creative?

Isn’t the child who thinks that the way to read a book is to lie down on the bed with legs stretched out and listening to songs blaring in the background bring creative?

The authors run Geniekids, a learning centre in Bengaluru that works with children. To know more about their work visit www.geniekids.com.

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