Once upon a time, there lived a little boy in a Mumbai suburb. Contrary to the misconception, this boy was special. He could remember minute details from school and the most trivial promises that his parents broke at bed time. So one night, it was around 10.30pm, way past his bed time.
“Our craft teacher has told us to make a Greeting card tomorrow” he said.
His mother thought he was talking in his sleep, that’s what she wanted to believe. But she knew her son too well; this had happened so many times that now she’d stopped freaking-out. She looked towards her husband who was hiding his head under the blanket by now.
The mother son duo headed to the hall, she fetched everything she needed for this undertaking from a shelf that resembled a mini stationery shop.
“So what kind of greeting card is it?” she asked the boy who was sleepier than before.
“Our teacher said something about Indian integration” he murmured.
“Fine, I’ll come up with something, go to sleep. I’ll be there in a while” she said as her brain went in overdrive.
I’m not totally against craft, infact I love origami they taught us during that class. I love drawing a pond with little fish that my paper crane will eat for food, but telling a 10 year old to make a collage with newspapers is being a little kooky. Most of the craft periods in my school would have competitions like ‘Rakhi making’, ‘greeting card making’ and we’d also make different type of boxes. On one such ‘rakhi making competition’ one of my friends thought that it would be very cool if he used an Éclair /*chocolate*/ as his rakhi centerpiece. The competition results were declared and the rakhis were returned, that friend of mine was surprised to find centerpiece on his rakhi missing. “competition ka jaane de re, par chocolate kyo liya?” were his exact words.
Craft teachers go over the top and come up with innovative reasons for parents to curse them, from collage to pop sickle stick houses; no one can guess what they’ll ask for, and all such projects come bundled with the misleading line ‘Use ordinary household waste’ /*hey I didn’t know we had 100 something plastic spoons or a bag full of pencil shavings just lying around*/. I remember a Work Experience project when we had to use grains and pulses as colors. As I didn’t want to bother my parents, I generously sprinkled tur daal and chaaval I found by myself but to my mother’s horror I had knocked Dal tadka and Kashmiri Pulav off the menu /* in my defense, like a true artist I used the best I materials could find*/.
Mother hasn’t been supportive of my projects ever since.
According to Educationalists, Craft and Work Experience are meant for the overall development of the pupil as he/she has the opportunity to think creatively beyond the curriculum and observe the world we live in, but I’m sure parents have a slightly different opinion. How does the administration come up with such stuff?? For instance, my niece had to make a rainy season wear thing on chart paper. I was making rubber cutting that somewhat resembled gum-boots and my Sis-in-law was drawing clouds on crepe paper, all the while my niece jumped around singing “Ringa rainga roses, pocket full of…..” . Indeed that was a big learning experience for her/*insert sarcasm here*/.
Many people make a fortune by displaying their craft project rejects as ‘art’ and the subject is meant to improve hand eye coordination and I feel that it should be primarily be focused on class work rather than making the parents go through the ordeal. But by the time that happens, go nuts!
