Superstition Or Superscience?
Amid accusations of having saffronised higher education of the country, the Centre approves the teaching of astrology in universities.
Is the Government promoting a
science or a sham?

Science Or Sham?
Even as stargazers claim their knowledge has an empirical basis, scientists debunk it as mumbo-jumbo.

PM's Point Man
Sidelined two years ago, he has bounced back to become one of the most powerful ministers in the NDA.

Diverging Tracks
The Gormu-Lhasa railway line will significantly improve China's military logistics capability and exert strategic pressure on India.

Plane Pique
The Gujarat Government resents the CAG indictment for the purchase of an aircraft.

LIVING: PLAYSCHOOLS

Business At Play

Playschools are using imaginative games to develop a child's personality. At a price, of course.

By Supriya Bezbaruah

At an indoor mini-beach, toddlers excitedly build castles, spraying sand everywhere. A room echoes with the delighted laughter and screams of four-year-olds splashing under a waterfall in a heated indoor pool. These are the scenes inside Macademia Soft Corner, an unmistakable bright blue, yellow and red building on Delhi's Ring Road. Imaginative, yes, but not unusual. In west Delhi, a red, white and green mock castle houses Mother's Pride, where soft, colourful balls fly through the air as toddlers roll around in a ball pool. A similar scene is played out in the south Delhi shopping mall Ansal Plaza, where children race each other in red plastic spaceships and helicopters at the playstation Funky Orbit.

Children at play? Wrong. All the tiny tots here are involved in serious educational activities. At Macademia, building sandcastles together is seen as a way to develop team spirit and encourage creativity. The coloured balls at Mother's Pride form the core of lessons in the concept of colours and numbers. And "developing the child's motor reflex abilities" is the real purpose of the plastic vehicles at Funky Orbit. "It's edutainment'," claims an exuberant Pushpa Bergot, general manager, Funky Orbit.

TEAM SPIRIT: Children building sand castles at Macademia

Innovative new playschools are vying with each other in the use of imaginative, attention-grabbing ways to influence a child's personality. "A child develops 70 per cent of his brain between the age of three and 12 years," says Anup Kanodia of Planet IQ. "And while 3 per cent of children are gifted, 75 per cent are potentially gifted. We intend to bring out that potential." Strategies differ in that pursuit. Besides an indoor heated splash pool and beach for toddlers, Macademia has a theatre where children feature in shows. For older children of up to Class VIII, there's the burrow. This is a series of tunnel-like rooms where city-bred children can learn rock-climbing, trapeze across the room, cross a mock river with a three-rope bridge, and cross a "spider web" net. "All of these are team-building activities, intended to develop the child's social and leadership skills," explains Deepak Garg, manager at Macademia.

Mother's Pride has a heated pool, a theatre and the ball pool for children up to four years. Funky Orbit, the four-storey, 28-ft plastic-and-rubber contraption, has rockets, tunnel-slides, swinging trees and helicopters as well as balls to develop the child's visual and motor skills. Planet IQ focuses on learning through specialised computer programmes that include taking the child through a journey to Jupiter and designing the interiors of a house.

Their approaches may vary but all the institutions share one inviolate rule: the children should have fun while learning. Their launch was inspired by the same reason: a revulsion to the rigid, insensitive treatment of children in more traditional schools. "No two children are the same," says Planet IQ's Kanodia. "We have a child-first approach."

Canadian-born Garg was struck by the difference between the timid Indian child and the confident street-wise American child with half the knowledge of his Indian counterpart. Macademia Soft Corner was born to reverse that. "There is a dire need for personality development of children in Indian cities. We aim to bring children out of their shells," says Garg.

Choice-starved parents, horrified to see their little ones withering under the burden of traditional memory-learning curricula, are lapping it up. "This is ideal, I wanted my children to learn something in a different way and enjoy themselves in the process," says Manmeet Sethi, whose daughter, four-year-old Tanisha, is enrolled at Planet IQ.

The institutes are not merely filling a gap in the pre-school development facilities for children. In an urban environment where the number of working couples are on the rise and joint families on the decline, they are cashing in on the role that grandparents traditionally played-looking after and entertaining the grandchild. Most playschools have day-boarding facilities and some also organise car pools or run mini-buses to pick up and drop children.

Ironically, these imaginatively set up pre-schools also provide an edge to children in the intense competition for admission to traditional schools. "Our children tend to be more confident and articulate when it comes to school admission interviews, and that sets them apart right away," says Garg. But just to make sure, these schools do have a certain element of formal training, though it is designed in an entertaining way by trained teachers. Macademia, for example, has lesson plans where even young children air their views on a range of topics from Air to Walt Disney to the Mauryan Empire. The difference, say parents, is discernible. "My son was timid. In a year, I have seen him really grow and open up," says Namita Chopra about her son Shivang, who is now in Class VIII. Vandana Dang, who has a four-year-old son, describes a similar impact on her child.

Of course, there's a price to be paid for this change. Macademia charges Rs 14,000 a year for its Learning Centre for older children and Rs 28,000 a year for the Playskool. Planet IQ charges Rs 400 a month in Delhi. "It's reasonably priced, considering the benefits the child gets," says a satisfied Chopra.

That popularity probably accounts for the expansion plans of these schools. Planet IQ, set up in 1995 in Kolkata, has 14 centres across the country, and plans new schools in Dubai and Dhaka. Mother's Pride, conceptualised in 1998 by housewife Sudha Gupta, now has three branches across Delhi, with plans for more. Both Macademia Soft Corner, launched in July 2000, and Funky Orbit, which has a smaller branch in Bangalore, intend to expand soon.

And it seems that will make more parents happy. Dang explains why: "Nowadays, a couple will have only one or two children ... Everyone wants the best education for their child, and with fewer children, they can afford to pay for it." Little children obviously mean big business.

MetroScape

Looking Glass

Chennai Restaurant:
Beijing Blues

Delhi Contemporary Crafts: The Craft Workshop

Delhi Restro-bar: 4S