Reading makes a huge different in people's lives. Reading to babies and toddlers makes a huge impact on their academic achievements later on as well as in the their adult life. Children who read, on average, lead children who don't academically. Adults who read, for example, on average have been found to live longer than those who don't etc.
At a session last month with a little over four dozen parents from twenty-five schools, I shared three things they can do to fill the gap with their children's education in Nepal. Reproduced in the blog post are details of those three things and other important bits from that session.
A comparison of child discipline methods employed by adults in Nepal. According to the results of surveys, children in Nepal suffer considerably from violence in homes.
Violence against children in Nepal, in homes and schools, was routine in the seventies and eighties when I was growing up. Results of surveys show it to be so even now, more than two decades later.
Instead of raising children, who have to recover from their childhoods, we should and we can raise them to be kind and compassionate human beings!
Corporal punishments rarely impart any meaningful lesson, and yet, in Nepal, it's defended as part of our "culture." My classmates and I suffered from it too and as far as I can tell, they didn't do much good for us!
What's more, it is possible to educate and raise children without punishing them physically.