Rethinking development

Each person has different rhythms and stages of mental development, but the need of society to dictate how fast children should develop may be more harmful than good. While it may help serve as a helpful barometer of intellect development, the absolute requirement for all children to develop according to its standards means that we will have under nurtured some, resulting in school dropouts.

Additional tuition after school doesn’t help much either simply because they too, are conducted with another barometer-ed system of development in mind but not directed to the student on an individual basis (Ever wondered how home-schooling has succeeded where traditional education failed?).

That is why you will come across people, who in their adulthood will turn out to be total opposites to their childhood, both in character and intellectual capacities. Some excelled in schools while others only after. It is not often that you will get to see someone excel in both eras of their lives. The key to that lies in being able to persevere for a prolonged period.

So what does this all mean?

If you’re being told that you’re a failure in school, know that your intellectual development has not peaked as yet. Rest assured, however, that it will come. And if you’re excelling in school now, you will need to persevere and force yourself to absorb knowledge even when you don’t feel like it.

But perhaps the one who really needs intellectual development to peak at this time is society. To rethink and understand that everyone comes with different stages of development at different stages of their lives.

And who is society? That’s us. We are the ones who make “rules” and therefore, we too, are responsible to amend them.