Grooming and nurturing at Tagore International school

August 01, 2010

After spending more than a decade into audio-visual medium of communication it is hard to impress me with the kind of patchy work that is being taught in various media institutes nowadays. It seems mass communication schools that have mushroomed across the country are only mass production factory of low quality jack-of-all-trade stuff. And thanks to the television revolution in this part of the world, where the journey from one Doordarshan to 400 odd TV channels has not taken more than a decade, creativity and out-of-the-box thinking has been relegated to the dustbin.
Over the last few years of my professional life in various capacity, the first thing that I have always told to these young mass media pass outs is to unlearn on the job what all has been taught to them in their respective institutes. And hence when a friend of mine asked me to be one of the judges on the panel to evaluate the work of school children, I had a mixed feeling. Even though I have a natural love for children, I was not sure as to what sort of animation and television production the young kids could have done. Worst even, I had this apprehension that it will be more of schools competing against each other in the name of their students’ work.
However, the obligation to the friend drove me to the Tagore International School in the early morning of a working day on Thursday, July 29th. The cultured grooming and discipline of the children here is something that reflects in the overall ambience of the school. In an age when many of the schools, especially in the NCR region are in the news for all the wrong reasons, this school stands out in terms of class and quality of its students. The general feeling that I have carried home is that the children here are not taught but nurtured.
It was an inter-school competition with students of around 20 schools from India and abroad being invited to showcase their talent in the respective categories. Though the first impression in the school had already made me all the more curious to see whether their works also has the substance to stand out, I kept my expectation level way below with these kids. But the screening of the inaugural film that was supposed to be “of the children, by the children, for the children” was an eye opener. At least I have not seen any amateur group coming out with such creative work with perfect finesse in the last few years.
This is no mean achievement by a bunch of school going children who have no formal education in film making at any professional level. I wish the young professionals who come out of various media institutes and are desperate to make a career in the profession, show the same kind of creativity, passion and zeal. But then the differentiator here will always be the quest to make a career by every possible short cut routes and innocent passion by the kids.
The Ordinatrix Event has been one of the most fascinating experiences in recent times. The feeling is not just because the event was very neatly organized, but in a much larger context it also reflects the fact that the mass media revolution in this part of the world has not completely gone haywire. At least the animation and television production of school going children suggest the same. Some of the concepts, ideas and interwoven social responsibility in it were indeed an eye opening for me.
Even though these children completely stand out with their class act, their feet has been firmly rooted and they don’t seem to mature and overgrow their age and experience. No wonder, the journalist and sociologist in me was equally eager to figure out whether the overt courtesy and politeness was an inherent part of their grooming or it was all plastic emotions meant for the day.
The post event interaction with the core students’ team that organized the event along with the Principal Tagore International, Madhulika Sen, dispelled even this doubt. The innocent children admitted that many of them may have to leave the creative hobby as parents want them to become successful with Engineering and likewise socially accepted degrees. Probably they don’t value even the fact that along with their routine academic curriculum they have taken the best advantage of the computer lab set up by the school and honed their creative skills. Given more opportunity they can work wonders.
I just wish these children are allowed to do whatever they enjoy doing in their lives. I wish somebody would suggest the parents of these children to watch the movie 3 IDIOTS and take a leaf out of the experience. I wish Principal Madhulika Sen replicates the same role with these children as Aamir Khan did with his other two idiot friends. My wish list is a bit too long, may be, but my expectation level has been exceeded by the experience with Tagore International school.