BENGALURU: Dr Malavika Kapur, a child psychologist and an ex-HOD of the clinical department in NIMHANS, wrote a book on use of Ayurveda in childcare a few years ago. “But no one bought it,” says the author. “Not one person I know.”
Therefore, she wrote Jeevika, in 2013, which was a fiction that followed the same idea as her first book. “The book tells the story of a child who becomes a healer,” she says. “That sold well.” This December, she is bringing out another non-fiction title again -- Childcare in Indian Ingenous Health System -- advocating the traditional system of medicine for children.
Malavika had an unconventional upbringing and has strong views on traditional schooling. Born in a small town, Puttur, she didn’t get a formal schooling till sixth grade. In fact, she believes that children shouldn’t go to school in India, “Schools believe that only adults know everything. I’m a developmental psychologist and through a lot of studies we know that children know much more than adults. They’re like scientists! In school, teachers force young children to copy scripts and numbers even though children are capable of absorbing information at a much higher rate than us. We’re basically crippling them.”
She compares Indian education system with that of Finland: “In Finland, children aren’t forced into school at an early age, they don’t have homework and exams until they are teenagers. They are allowed to learn however they want to. But in India, students basically copy down everything for exams. Their creativity is killed.”
But how will a child cope with competition, later in life, if not given formal schooling? Malavika says she battled with this question for a few years. Her son went to the Valley School and there, she says, they did not encourage competition. “They let children do whatever they’re good at,” she says. “My son grew up to be a perfectly happy person... What is important is that the sense of self, of who I am, should come from within.”
Her Father
Inspires Her
The doctor says that her father never looked at her progress report. Dr. Malavika Kapur, says, “He would just take it and sign it... I grew up in a pro-children home. We had total freedom and my parents told us stories. My father believed our education system is faulty and so he started a school where poor kids were taught for three years through only play and activities. What I talk about today, I picked it up from him.”