Jat education for kids abroad.

[vinodks]

Hi,

In second wave of immigrants, there is tremendous stress on educating childern about Indian culture, values and traditions. Number of temples mushrooming in every corner, balgokulams, retreats, summer camps for kids justfy it. And of course there is need to inculcate these values to kids. I was wondering do Jats have ways of teaching their kids about Jat culture and history? I mean, do they grow up by listening to folk-tales, kisse etc that this second generation immigrant grew up by listening from their grandmas and grandpas...

Jat_history group, managed by Raviji is doing excellent job in educating people like us about Jat history... And approach of group is academic and scholarly... I was wondering if there are some volunteers who want to bring activism in this effort. So what can be done is production(at small scale in beginning) of easy and simple material about Jat history and culture... e.g. when you tell a kid or even a grown ABCD(sorry) you don't begin by mentioning arcane term like Indo-Schythian... In temples they have easy-to-digest presentations for kids about Hinduism... we can start similar effort and we can get better ideas as we move on...

Instead of posting 10 message in jatland daily and argue, a small time can be taken out to compile material(cds, pamphlets etc.) which will help our(oh, not mine:-)) kids... Is it surprising that there are almost no abroad-born kids or youngster on this website.. Does that click something??....

We should appreciate the seriousness of raising kids abroad and how susceptible they are to embrace comflicting elements to our culture... and retaining Jat indentity is equally essential feature of the whole issue....

Vinod

[devdahiya]

Bhai Vinod if parents know the language and culture and if at all they find a need for their children to know about it, i think they themselves will take enough interest in letting them know these things and for those who themselves don't know but want their children to know[rare i suppose] they in any case will go out of their way to get in touch with right people and institutes. And for the third catagory...ie who Know it but don't want their children to know& also those who niether know these things themselves and nor want their young ones to learn...this request is Bemaani. I think there is enough literature on this very site for those who want to learn about our language and culture. Ghodda Kuwein ke pass jaye ya kuwaan ghodde ke pass...Though both things are possible as far as education is concerned.

[dahiyarules]

I will recite an incident that happened during my visit to India last week. Before I talk about it, I want to tell you that I consider myself among those who are very familiar with Jat values and culture. I was proven wrong.

One evening I was telling my Nani a stupid joke. And she pointed out an inconsistency. I did feel embarassed initially, but I felt even worse later on. If this is the level of understanding of my culture, that I posses, what can be expected of the future generation. Not to forget a growin NRI population in western countries.

I strongly feel that parents must not force Jat values and culture, down their childrens throats. Before anything else, children must be given a strong reason to learn more about their heritage.

This is a good point raised by Vinod. This definitely could become a major concern in the years to come. I hope parents address it as soon as possible.

[vinodks]

Dahiya sahab,
These 3 category of people is good observation... Even though parents may want to educate their childern about Jat history, this procedure could be more effective by use of multi-media, becuz kids like that... I just want to say that there should be cumulative effort of community to encourage such things... So communities like AJA, BAJA etc should discuss personally about this kinds of things...

Have you seen animation of Ramayana by Japanese people?.. Its so cool... Its was such an effective medium to teach childern about Ramayana... Temples such vast amount of material that looks appealing and entertaining to childern and in that process they also LEARN.... I guess people who have money should think about it and invest into systematic production and distribution of lets say simple presentation, something like panchtantra, cartoons, even having exposing US kids to Indian school text-book stories etc. is also a major step...

Lot more can be discussed if people are willing otherwise no use....

-vinod


Bhai Vinod if parents know the language and culture and if at all they find a need for their children to know about it, i think they themselves will take enough interest in letting them know these things and for those who themselves don't know but want their children to know[rare i suppose] they in any case will go out of their way to get in touch with right people and institutes. And for the third catagory...ie who Know it but don't want their children to know& also those who niether know these things themselves and nor want their young ones to learn...this request is Bemaani. I think there is enough literature on this very site for those who want to learn about our language and culture. Ghodda Kuwein ke pass jaye ya kuwaan ghodde ke pass...Though both things are possible as far as education is concerned.

[singh1981]

Good thread.......
don't have any idea what to say...but waiting to hear from other members..

[raj2rif]

Dear Vinod,
You have raised a very good point. There are few issues though. Firstly as brought out by Mr. Dev Dahiya Ji, the issue of whether or not parents know about it or whether or not they want their children to know about it. These are the social issues and probably need a very detailed discussion in itself.

What I am trying to put forward is the issue you actually raised in your first post and that is how to make the education "Aam Aadmi Ke Liye". It is most important for the litrature or the medium to be user friendly to become popular. Probably it is because of this reason Sant Kabir was a house hold name as he used "Aam Aadmi Ki Bhasha".

To make the education interesting, we do need to use the modern tools available. It requires little imagination and we can do it. While enough litrature is available for likes of "Ramayana" and "Mahabharat", there is very little available for the Jat Culture. But that should not stop us from pursuing it. Mr. Ravi Choudhary is doing a great job in preserving the history and letting people know about what exists. A systematic approach to translate that history in a audio visual instrument is probably the need of the hour. Not to mention it needs to be user friendly and should arouse interest of the younger generation.

To be honest it is all about salesmanship. If we can sell the idea of knowing our culture to the society, it would be that much easy to achieve this objective.

Let us think about it and come up with some practical ideas. Off course nothing moves without funds and we also need to think about the finance aspect of it.