“She’s spreading a lot of false news!” – said a class teacher during a parent-teacher meet. The very phrase – ‘parent-teacher meet’ or in short PTM brings in a lot of anxiety, nervousness and fear if not for all, at least a good majority. It surely takes us back to our school days when our parents would visit our school, and meet our teachers to learn about our scores in the tests. The class teacher might have had suggestions for us work hard – sometimes even quantifying how many hours to work in a day, what all to cut down on such as TV, playing games, etc. It was one such days for one of my student’s parent when they woke to to the perplexing complaint about their daughter that she is seen spreading a lot of false news and gossips about other children in the class. Now, how old do you think the child is, some one who is supposedly spreading gossips about her classmates? Is she in her early teens, college going student? Or is she a high school student? She is now opening her eyes to her 8th year of her life! She is a grade three student!
What kind of a gossip can a little child like her spread? Is it that she was making up weird stories about her friends? If she is really making some according to her teacher’s claim, what kind of stories can these really be – so serious that the class teacher had to take it to her parents, and advise them to keep a watch on that. The teacher has a very strong answer to support her claim, along with an instance to share. It was a week in her class when one of girls missed the school for a very long time, like almost 2 weeks leaving a note with the teacher that she isn’t feeling well. For the first few days, her friends curiously waited for her return. But, as the days passed by, these curious little kids couldn’t probably stand her absence – sparked off the story that their friend ‘the missing friend is missing for a long time because she has got RAPED!’. And after a couple of days, the girl returned to the class, and was surprised to see how her friends were treating her! They weren’t sharing food with her, weren’t even smiling at her! What was more shocking to this poor child is when her best friend asked her, ‘Did you get raped?’. Deeply hurt, this girl immediately went weeping to her class teacher and told her that her friends think that she was raped! The very moment, the class teacher got into the class and discussed with the girls and found out the source person who started off this dangerous thread! And it all led to that one little, an innocent girl in the class who had no clue about what rape is, but knew that small children of her age usually encounter this in the school! She also thought that rapes would lead girls like her turn unwell for long! And thus she justified how she thought her friend was raped when she wasn’t seen in the school for long.
Certain recent events in the schools, apart from damaging the lives of a few girls directly, can also be a source of other inadvertent effects like these! Gone are those days when mothers would have a talk with their daughters about private matters when the girl child was 14-15 years old. Children now, as young as 6-8 years need to be given a talk on “Good touch, Bad touch”! I just hope the requirement for such an education won’t slip further into younger age groups in the days to come!
tomeanmeans 