Late bloomers turn winners
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When students find that they are nowhere close to the status of an achiever, their self-esteem takes a beating. However, it is in college that these slow learners show their mettle.
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LEO IS not reading, or writing, or drawing, or even speaking, and his father is concerned. But Leo's mother isn't. She knows her son will do all those things and more, when he is ready. That is the 1971 story of a tiger who is a late bloomer. Unfortunately, the place where it is often repeated is kindergarten.
Perhaps such stories should be told in schoolrooms and colleges.
It would have made a difference to G. R. Arun.
Arun was a first rate "makku" in school, according to a friend. If Arun wasn't sleeping in class, he was standing outside the chemistry lab for breaking a pipette. "I got only 40 or 50 marks. I was very dull," says Arun.
Now in his final year of his Master's in Human Resources Management, Arun has been placed before any of his classmates in a coveted multinational firm.
Friendly, cheerful with a keen sense of fun, Arun says he didn't realise he had a natural skill of getting along with people. And when he did, he didn't know it was an advantage. After he wrote the dialogues for a skit in a college camp, it changed the way he looked at himself. "People laughed at my jokes. I was asked to compere more functions. I got used to speaking on stage. I became confident," he says.
When students are not able to keep up with their achiever classmates, they often think they are "no good." And finishing at the tail end in a class batters their self-esteem.
Psychologist Dr. Aruna Balachandra finds some students in schools averse to the concept of studying. "These children may not have taken to science and be forced to study it. They may hate the way a subject is being taught," she says. And naturally, a student is frustrated, bored and maladjusted.
Not reason enough for a student to wear a permanent gloomy expression and think he's a "loser." It's not reason enough for parents to fret that a student will do poorly in his career.
"Plenty are the sunbeams of inspiration that may filter into a student who is "just average and transform him or her," says a psychologist.
Nobel prize-winner Christian de Duve was not interested in science when he was at school. "Chemistry, physics, biology, I found extremely boring, mostly because they were taught very badly," said this 1974 Nobel winner for medicine.
But he was fascinated by the idea of solving problems. "I was probably the only child at school who loved examinations because I was given problems and it was a challenge," he said in an interview.
After the student finds this spark or the spark finds the student, it's springtime. And the child begins to blossom.
Ruchi Shroff, diagnosed as dyslexic, now heads an entertainment portal at age 24. She gives the credit for her growth to her special school "Alpha to Omega".
"Teaching is under par in some schools. I suggest parents find alternative teaching aids to help their children who dislike school. I used visualisation techniques to learn better," she says.
She lists the advantages of being a slow learner. "Since I can't remember many tasks in my head, I learned that I have to jot things down. I learned to keep at things and be persistent," says Ms. Shroff.
Shantha Joseph, counsellor at JBAS college, says college is often the time when students who did poorly in school open up. "College lets you grow at your own pace. When students find there's no one pointing fingers or harping on their mistakes, they do fantastically well."
Dr. Balachandra recommends that "average students" try and pick up skills like analytical thinking, being organised, and getting along in a group instead of focussing on competing for marks. "In the long run, these skills will come in handy," she says.
Dhanya Parthasarathy
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