A while ago, Netflix released a movie named “Dolly Kitty Aur Woh Chamakte Sitare”. This movie starred Konkana Sen Sharma and Bhumi Pednekar in the lead roles, and its storyline touched many prevalent issues. Usually I am one who extensively watches all sorts of movie review videos before taking the final leap of faith. Yet for this one, I didn’t bother. Nope, not any of the feminist reasons. I was simply bored.
And amazingly I didn’t regret it one bit. True I didn’t like many things there, but a few scenes nevertheless remained with me.
One being where Konkana Sen Sharma’s younger son wanted to visit the doll museum (or something alike) on a school excursion trip but was forced to go along with the other boys on a bus headed towards the train museum. At that scene, I wondered wouldn’t it have made more sense if the children were simply asked which they wanted to visit – the Doll Museum OR Train Museum?
It also made me reminisce my school days and realize how we had set gender-defined vocational education in our school syllabuses back then.
Once upon a time…
I was a kid in an Ahmedabad-based school in the 2000s. This school had compulsory Wednesday and Friday SUPW i.e. “Socially Useful Productive Work” classes for all its students. Unlike other schools, it wasn’t a class of hobbies but set curriculum on –
- Cooking, stitching, candle-making and basic household stuff for girls, and
- Electrical-stuff-related things for boys.
Photo by “Yogendra Singh” from Pexels
There we weren’t asked but simply told which class was ours. Maybe if someone would have shown an interest in the other class the school would have let them sit there. Who knows? But we didn’t know if we could ask. Why stir the calm waters?
True it was a different time, but now too when a small child keeps addressing himself/herself with opposite gender pronouns parents forcibly keep on correcting them. So vocational education-wise, are we still forcing down hobbies down the throat of a child on the basis of some outdated gender definitions?
Questions I ask…
Photo by “Agung Pandit Wiguna” from Pexels
- Are things still the same in many schools?
- Wouldn’t it be more beneficial for the Indian children to pursue hobbies and interests of their own choice?
- Wouldn’t it make them feel secure if we make them know that they have the choice?
- Wouldn’t it lead to less assumption in our progressing society that “this is not a guy-thing to do” or “this is not something a girl should pursue”?
I am not a scholar or someone from the education sector, but here are the questions I ask today on the “International Day of Education” and “National Girl Child Day”.
Do let me know your thoughts on my questions and assumptions.