Why do parents send their children to school? Is it only for studying a set of subjects and getting marks in examinations? The main purpose of sending our children to school is for their overall development. It is a well-known fact that overall development is beyond academics. Many schools these days are making efforts in the direction of the overall development of children. Even the government schools are trying to make their teaching and learning more holistic. Let us first understand what holistic learning means.
Holistic development entails three main types of capacities – mental or intellectual, psychomotor or physical, affective or socio-emotional. Usually, the schools tend to focus more on developing mental or intellectual capabilities mainly through teaching subjects. Physical aspects are somewhat taken care of by sports activities that most good schools have these days. However, the socio-emotional capacity building is the least thought of in schools. The schools are more inclined towards disciplining the children rather than nurturing their human emotions. While discipline in itself is not bad but somewhere the strict rules and sole focus on maintaining discipline with punishment system negatively affects the children. And children do not get opportunities to express what they feel and manage their emotions.
Mostly, intelligence is thought of as being synonymous to scoring high grades. However, according to the popular Multiple Intelligences Theory propounded by Howard Gardner, every individual is intelligent. Each individual has different set of capacities which are more dominant than the others. So, the individual is intelligent in those areas. We all keep hearing that each individual and each child is different and unique but we hardly follow it in schools. We judge the capability of every child the same way. Not every child may have the interest or ability in mathematics. However, the same child can be linguistically very strong. The main aim of the schools should be to discover these innate qualities of every child and nurture them further. Teaching the same subjects the same way and expecting all children to perform well in only one type of examinations is quite unfair. Also, it does not lead to overall development at all.
There are very few schools that actually focus on finding the innate potential of every child and giving them exposure to build on their capabilities. Millennium Schools are the perfect example. The philosophy adopted in The Millennium Schools and Millennium World Schools is to nurture the innate potential of every child. Their curriculum is designed in a way that each child gets multiple opportunities to enhance their talents and abilities. One of the best CBSE schools in India, Millennium Schools have developed a unique and research based curriculum called Millennium Learning System. They have won many awards for it too. Their approach to teaching and learning is truly holistic that focuses on developing all three capacities – mental, physical and socio-emotional. A lot of importance is given to children for understanding self and their emotions. Their aim is to create responsible citizens who are life-long learners and are ready for the future. Millennium Schools are rated as the top schools in Indiaand they have more than 40 schools across different regions in our country.