Can you think of a metaphor that signifies childhood? A lot of people (parents, educators etc.) think of childhood as ‘soft clay’ that can be and needs to be moulded. Not surprising! It justifies the role that an adult plays in the life of a child. Much like the Maggi TVC that showed the mother sprinkling condiments on the 2-minute dish that pretty much prepared itself when dunked into some hot water. So anything wrong with moulding soft clay? On the face of it NO. Perhaps that is why this metaphor is so popular.
Metaphors are powerful. Apart from lending colour and imagery to an idea, metaphors reflect and even shape our thought process. They carry meaning beyond (meta) one thing and transfer (phero) it to another. I would think of these ideas as cultural pollinators.
In The words that help us understand the world, Professor Stacy Pies from New York University compares metaphors to “3D chess. You’re thinking three things at once: what it says, what it means and what it doesn’t mean. She goes on to explain what makes a metaphor effective is when the metaphors created are striking and original but it’s also about what the person making the metaphor is seeking to achieve in their audience. When they succeed in evoking their desired outcome and send us on a mental journey to discover these connections, it creates a spark”.
In The words that help us understand the world, Professor Stacy Pies from New York University compares metaphors to “3D chess. You’re thinking three things at once: what it says, what it means and what it doesn’t mean. She goes on to explain what makes a metaphor effective is when the metaphors created are striking and original but it’s also about what the person making the metaphor is seeking to achieve in their audience. When they succeed in evoking their desired outcome and send us on a mental journey to discover these connections, it creates a spark”.
Last week, I attended an unusual birthday celebration of a 3-year-old. There were no return gifts or tattoo artists. Instead, this was a spiritual gathering. People had congregated to bless the child. There were songs of devotion and a rather young-looking guru at the helm who addressed the audience. He opened his speech with this one statement “Children are not to be moulded but unfolded”. Professor Stacy’s words suddenly came to life. It made me think about childhood differently. The contrasts between the two ideas ‘moulded’ and ‘unfolded’ were glaring. (refer to the image at the top)
If one approaches childhood using the ‘moulded’ metaphor, irrespective of the best intent (nurture talent/skill) or the gentlest approach used, what still seems limiting is that the direction in which one is focussing one’s energy and the child’s energy is somewhat defined at an early stage of the individual's life. It discounts the fact that the individual will grow, change, and evolve over the next 20 years. As adults, many of us are still rediscovering our purpose. The more one invests in the idea, the deeper it takes root and anything outside of it creates a huge dissonance.
It is like learning to play a musical instrument using music sheets. The sheets have a predefined sequence of notes, a predefined time and duration for which each note is played and even a predefined finger on a specific hand that would need to press the key. A minor change from any of these predefined rules qualifies as a mistake. A child who has learnt to play music by ear would find this whole process highly frustrating. Yet there are hundreds and thousands of children who learn to play by reading musical sheets. The interesting question in my mind was not which approach is considered better or worse but what happens as a result of following either approach.
My curiosity was quelled when I met a self-taught musician and asked him what he thought of the two approaches. His experience with self-taught music which he learnt to play by ear was a process of discovery. He could teach himself to play a new tune flawlessly in a matter of minutes or hours but that was just one of his strengths. He moved seamlessly from one instrument to another since he applied the same principles of playing notes by ear. Very early in his musical journey, he began creating tunes since his brain had recognized and coded how each note sounded and he could combine them as building blocks in lots of different ways. Most importantly all of this happened without gruelling effort. It was inspired action that was his constant driving force. When he moved to join one of the IITs and encountered other musicians who had learnt to play by reading musical sheets, they could read sheets and play the notes effortlessly. But were not tuned to creating or experimenting. Their energies flowed towards reading, interpreting and replicating and that too after years of practice.
Like it is with music, so it is with children - twenty years from now the outcome from both approaches might turn out praiseworthy. The choice and decision then are about, what is the kind of journey one wishes to undertake on the way to that destination. Gulzar’s famous words ‘is mod se jaate hain, kuch sust kadam raste, kuch tez kadam rahein’. In our journey as parents, educators or influencers of children at some point the road bifurcates - one is a road less travelled creating opportunities to meander and discover and the other is the tried and tested fast-paced lane with no time to reflect. Which one will you take?
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