Based in Thiruvananthapuram, Chempaka Kindergarten was founded in 1984 by Vernon and Daphne Gomez with the objective of developing a holistic approach to pre-school education. With 11 branches in Thiruvananthapuram, Chempaka has grown to become a reputed quality education provider. Proven highly successful with numerous little preschoolers over the years, the ‘Chempaka Way’ has now been extended to include all levels of schooling.

In 2019, the group was acquired by UAE-based Athena Education which found it more in line with its own philosophy of educating the young generation. What sets the schools apart is its stress-free learning pedagogy or as they call it The Chempaka Way.

L’école Chempaka “Silver Rocks”, L’ècole Chempaka “Serene Valley,” ICSE curriculum Schools and L’ècole Chempaka International, a Cambridge Pathway School are the schools run by the society. With wide recognition from higher educational institutions in India and across the world, the Cambridge IGCSE and AS & A Level Courses offer pupils from the Chempaka a wide range of opportunities.

A new kindergarten was opened at Venjaramodu near Thiruvananthapuram recently, making it the 11the kindergarten of the group. A new campus of L’école Chempakan International was inaugurated at Jawahar Nagar A-Street in Thiruvananthapuram by Ms. Sheeja, Director of L’école Chempaka Society for Educare, on January 14, 2021.

L’ecole Chempaka is a premier higher secondary educational institution based at Edavacode, Sreekariyam, Thiruvanthapuram and L’école Chempaka Serene Valley, Kallayam, opened on June 1 2015. A branch of L’ecole Chempaka, Serene Valley, Kallayam for Grades I and II only (for the academic year 2020-21) has been opened at Udarasirmony Road, Vellayambalam offering a choice of location to children of Grades I and II. With wide recognition from higher educational institutions in India and across the world, the Cambridge IGCSE and AS & A Level Courses offer our students a wide range of opportunities.

The Cambridge IGCSE programme is offered in Grades VIII – X and AS & A Level Courses in grades XI-XII.

For the past five years Chemapka has also started IGCSE and A Levels. The school has good results and their students are placed in best foreign universities for their education.

Based in Dubai, Athena Education is a dynamic education group dedicated to delivering quality learning for all students. The company is committed to developing students as outstanding, independent learners both online and in the classroom. It aims to ensure that all learners become self-confident, are secure and achieve at the highest level they can.
V.N.P. Raj, a banker-turned-educationalist, is the founder and Managing Director of Athena Education. Mr. Raj believes that, “Learning is to liberate oneself from the fear of the self. Knowledge without confidence is like a filled balloon with a hole. What mankind needs is the confidence to observe, think and execute what he or she has learned and experienced.”

The company’s vision is to enable all students to develop strong literacy, academic, innovation and social skills which enable them to become self-confident and significant contributors to the local and global communities, who have full confidence in their abilities.

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Whoever gazed at her would turn into stone. A famous sculpture ‘Perseus with the head of Medusa’, even celebrated her beheading at the hands of Perseus, son of Zeus.

However, in an attempt to change the narrative around how we perceive victims of sexual assault, a New York artist will install a 7-foot statue of Medusa holding Perseus’ head as a symbol of honouring MeToo movement and the women who took a stand.

It will even be placed at the NY County Criminal Court in Manhattan where the Harvey Weinstein trial took place. The once powerful mogul was convicted on February 24,2020 of raping an aspiring actress and sexually abusing a TV and film production assistant.

The verdict was celebrated by his dozens of accusers and the supporters as a watershed moment for the #MeToo movement.

“The place chosen is not accidental, since there they judge cases for crimes related to violence against women,” Sculptor Luciano Garbati said on Instagram. He is an Argentine- Italian artist based Buenos Aires.

instagram.com/p/CGFtKFMA4mj/?utm_source=ig_embed

The 1000-pound bronze sculpture gives Medusa a different ending, depicting her as empowered. The statue was created in 2008. When the #MeToo movement started it took a different meaning.

Back in 2008, the sculpture grabbed the attention, as the sculpture is the perfect avatar for a moment of female rage.

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However, a child finds examinations tough, when the questions maybe application questions or which were not expected by the child. An examiner can question a child from any aspect and application of a subject. Children must be prepared for them. But when are children ready to answer any question?

The answer is simple: Children are ready for any questions when they have a total and clear understanding of the subject. Or in other words, when children know the elephant better and beyond its eyes, ears, nose, trunk, and tail. It is only when a child learns about an elephant in total and connects each part to its functionality as an elephant, will his/her learning be complete. But, when can that happen?

The first condition of total learning is when children do not learn to answer questions. If children are taught to answer questions, they will learn about the eyes, the ears, the trunk, and the tail. But they will forget about the elephant. There should be no attempt, by a teacher to teach towards answering a question. Instead, the teacher should teach into the deepest conceptual knowledge and to connect it to the whole subject. The teacher should not give homework to retest the child working on the same questions based on what he/she learned in the classroom or in a tuition centre. Whereas, what would have been much better was allowing the child to test by himself/herself what he/she had learned in a classroom. And, where he can test? It can be anywhere- in a lab, in a workshop, in a life situation, or even while playing. So, learning plus doing and then applying to the life is the ideal way of learning. If children learn without doing, then they can never know applicability of what they have learned. So, what is the purpose of homework?

Homework, if given, needs to be restricted to 10 to 20 minutes. And what is that 20 minutes homework? Anything the child has learned needs to be experimented. Then, the child needs to write it down – write what he/she did, and how he/she felt. Writing is very critical. Scribble it first. Children can scribble down the important points with pen or pencil or even on an I-Pad you notice while they are doing or practicing what they have learned.

Later, children need to convert the scribbling into a script or a story. When children write down their own stories of what they have learned, I believe that learning becomes more perfect. After you have written down the story, the child needs to act on it wherever he/she gets the opportunity to present it either by writing, by acting, or by speaking. Thus, learning becomes even more perfect. The child learns how to explore what has been learned. This is the way I presume good learning and question the relevance of homework as long as homework is something that the child can practice by himself/herself by observing, creating scribblings, drafting scripts, and then presenting. If not, then homework is boring and monotonous which kills the brain power of a child.

Now questions like: “What about mathematics? What about theories? What about drawings?” can arise. “Shouldn’t children practice on it?”

Every mathematical equation can be taken to a workshop and can be practiced there. Isn’t that how it happens in the real world? And, after it is practiced, the child needs to prepare a script on the equations. On doing so, he/she will remember what he/she has learned forever. Thus, unless he/she has not practiced mathematics in a workshop, in a real life, even in a kitchen; then, all those theories and equations he/she has learned will be forgotten soon.

Therefore, I come back to the question, do we need examinations? Yes, we need examinations. But a child should not study for questions or to find answers for questions. On the contrary, a child should always study a subject in depth, connect it to its practicable applicability by doing it, create his/her own scripts, and present it.

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If education is for my benefit, if education is for my career building, if education is to help me to find a job, like my parents who lived before me, then why doesn’t education give happiness to me? This is a big question. Being a grown up person today, if I understand the problem associated with this issue at least it will help the next generation of children to be happy to go to school.

We are happy to be at home. We meet and interact with our mom, dad, brothers, sisters, relatives and friends at home and we are happy. May be we have a slight fear of father as he may be unhappy if we do something he doesn’t like and he may scold us. But otherwise home is called a home because it is a place of bonding and bonded by happiness. It is love. We know that everything that happens around us build happiness in the mind. Home also shapes our character and our behaviour.

Whatever happens at home is engraved in our mind as we copy it subconsciously. If the environment at home is not good, you would not be imbibing good values from there. The behaviour of your father and mother, how they talk and how they treat each other, how your relatives behave with each other, how they express their emotions, anger and happiness; how they smile, the language they use, their facial expressions; all these are easily picked up by a child. If a child is not using good language while interacting with others outside the home, if he does not behave well, he or she steals, is selfish, fighting for things, taking away other’s toys and so on, where do you think the child learned all these?
Certainly, such behaviour has less binding on his birth but more on the home environment where the people close to him behaved and showed him the way. This should be well borne by every parent that ‘Use good seeds and those seeds will grow to a big, healthy tree before your eyes’.

What is the difference between a school and a home? The moment we go to school, something happens there. We are very happy until the first bell rings. The moment that happens, we have to go inside the classroom and sit on a bench. And we wait for the teacher to come. In those days, the way teacher comes to the class itself was often a problem. The teacher would come with a cane and some books. What catches the student’s eye first is the stick that’s brought by the teacher.

So what is the connection between our mind and the cane? We know that if we are not going to follow what the teacher says, there is going to be a punishment. Why is that warning necessary? The very sight of the cane pulls the mind down. You may think that the cane is the reason why we behaved well in school. Maybe and may not be. But I still believe there is no need for a cane in a classroom. If a cane is required for punishment it can come later. But I don’t think we really need a cane. And if I need to be caned, what I learned at home does not fit well in a public place or in a group.

When the teacher enters a class, there are going to be lessons to be learnt. But why doesn’t learning give me happiness? Every learning is new knowledge. And every knowledge should be a new feel. If my mind is not feeling what I learnt, then it is definitely going to be boring, it is definitely not going to give me any excitement. If learning is an excitement, a new knowledge, a new feeling, then I would have been so happy to enjoy that feeling.

If at home every day mom makes dosa, and another day she makes idli, and yet another day she makes puttu, I am so happy because I have a new excitement, a new taste of my palate. So is education and learning. Learning gives me a new feel of the mind. Learning happens to me mostly through two of my senses. Through my eyes or through my ears; either I will learn through hearing or I will learn through seeing. So, anything connected to the feel of my mind, happens through my ears or through my eyes. And whatever happens through my eyes in the modern language is spatial ability, the ability to picturise, have a feel through a picture. And ability to listen and create a feel is called numerical skill or cognitive skill.

If a teacher comes to the class, teaches something that don’t give me a feel either through my ears or eyes, then that teaching is simply by hearting. It is knowledge that I don’t know what feel it creates, a knowledge I don’t know why I should know it. Don’t you think this is the first reason of unhappiness? It is boring and then we are just being there in the class. Or in between the classes we do a lot of funny things, with friends, hanging umbrellas on others’ collars, or throwing papers at each other. Why do we do that? It is because whatever happens in the front of the class gives you the feel of excitement. Isn’t it true?

It is the way the teacher imparts knowledge, which has no excitement or feeling, which has no motivation of a new feeling, is the cause of our first misery in the classroom. And the moment we are excited we will go in search of it. In the educational language it is called formative assessment feedback system. What is that? If the teacher knows that I got a feel, the teacher comes and asks me a few questions. That I feel, ‘Okay teacher’, how good that can be? Okay how does that happen? I start searching for it. Then the teacher asks me to go to the nature outside the classroom. Maybe it is a botany class.

You have seen the beauty of a flower; the teacher can show me the flower. The teacher can ask, “How this flower is born? Early morning, who makes it wake up?” And have you ever asked a child, how the fragrance comes? How honey comes? Who makes it? Why the plant has made it? From where it made it? A million surprises to me. Now, I don’t need even a teacher. Because the teacher is born inside my mind, as my inquisitiveness to learn. I don’t need anybody now. I will run, I will search, until I find answers. I will come back to my teacher with a feedback. “Teacher I find this, but still I have a problem.” The teacher gives me another challenge.

So what is teaching and what is happiness? It is an excitement and exploring by a child. It is nothing but exciting the mind with the new feel of knowledge and then taking the child to nature and showing him/her what happens in nature and telling the child why this has happened. And ask me ‘Can you go and find out and then come back with feedbacks?

If classrooms miss formative systems and feedbacks, and teachers fail to ignite young minds and bring feelings to the mind of excitement, then children would start feeling ‘I am bored, I am unhappy. I will continue to be unhappy’, This is the starting point. There are a million things that happen in a classroom that add no new knowledge to me, that don’t ignite my mind, that don’t excite me more, that don’t allow me to dive down into the depths of my mind, and that don’t make me more excited and happy in a classroom. It is only the beginning of my unhappiness. As I continue the story I will discuss how schools and classrooms became my problem and why I hesitated to go to a school.

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