Should schools stop teaching children rhymes like Machli Ka Bacha?
Most of us are familiar with the popular Urdu nursery rhyme, Machli Ka Bacha (The Baby Fish). In this rhyme a newborn fish is hunted by a human family.
The dad does the catching, the sister does the cutting, the mom does the cooking and together all family members relish eating that poor newborn.
A horror story is not how many of us remember this rhyme. We recall its jovial tone and celebration of a family working in cooperation and enjoying their time.
The vocabulary level is also appropriate for nursery age, and children know the characters and can understand the actions.
Yet it may only take a moment of pause and a reflective look to see problems with what actually is a glorification of baby hunting.
Children at preschool age do not just listen to a story or sing a rhyme or learn their vocabulary.
They keenly engage with them, relate to their characters and situations, develop mental categories and cultural sensibilities, and try to imagine their world through them.
Sadly, the above rhyme is not the only troubling content that our children get exposed to everyday in thousands of preschools (and homes) across the country.
And the problem is not limited to rhymes and stories, or one language.
Our teachers — facilitators, guides, directors — need to become critically attentive to the deeper relation of preschool experience to the whole child and society and environment, all together in a holistic framework.
Rhymes are not just rhymes. A school trip to the zoo is not solely an educational experience. And narrow academics cannot be separated from how children learn to interact with nature.
In what follows I’ll share a few observations and suggestions, hoping to invite critical reflection and ways to transform the preschool experience.
Normalising indifference
Consider A-Hunting We Will Go, an English nursery rhyme that I would hear in one of the preschools in Karachi. In this rhyme children sing, “We’ll catch a fox, and put him in a box, and never let him go.”
And as the rhyme continues, they vow to “catch a fish, put him on a dish, and never let him go.” Alternative versions try to dilute the content by letting the animals go after abuse.
![The popular, commonly known version of the Machli Ka Bacha rhyme.](https://i.dawn.com/primary/2018/05/5b0e9733178e0.jpg)
Children’s books in preschool environments — some of them from well-known publishers — often depict zoo, circus and street-monkey-show with no reflection (or regret) that the wild animals are often captured from their natural habitats, or stolen away from their families at a young age, and then tortured, drugged, and tamed, and kept under unnatural and miserable conditions.
And what’s the underlying message? That it’s fine to interfere with animals’ lives, control them with whips, sticks and bullhooks, and make them do unnatural things just for our entertainment?
The zoo is also one of the first places where preschool kids are taken on educational trips. Missing again is that moment of pause and reflection.
Consider the situation of elephants, for instance. Young elephants can walk up to 30 miles a day in their natural habitats, but separated from their herds and in the confines of cages they tend to develop a neurotic behaviour — walking frantically back and forth from one end to another.
Hard surfaces have also contributed to foot problems and arthritis in some cases.
While taking selfies and videos at the local zoo in Karachi, visitors probably don’t realise what the two frantically moving young elephants, in separate cages behind them, might be going through. You won’t find such information displayed on their cages either.
And like that, the zoo experience fosters indifference and normalises mistreatment of animals.
So, what value does such an educational experience have in which children learn the animals’ names, get pictures taken with them, but become indifferent to their pain?
Language and framing matter
Equally significant are the less tangible elements of preschools, such as, how a teacher describes and cares for nature. The very choice of the words and language means a lot.
One teacher may describe animals and plants as ‘living things’ and treat them as detached objects of instrumental value (“how trees benefit us”) or of scientific investigation and classification (“parts of an insect” or “shapes of leaves”).
Another teacher may approach them as ‘living beings’ having levels of consciousness and ecological unity that we also share, and explore the wonders of their creation with children.
Both approaches offer environmental awareness, but one fills the mind with narrow academic information and distances the heart from nature, and the other opens the heart and mind to ecological awareness and conscious living.
These were just a few observations as informed by a spiritual-ecological perspective. And if we engage more critical perspectives — class, gender, language, political, postcolonial — the picture gets even bleaker.
Some of these troubling elements come from the ‘practice’ of individual preschools and teachers. And some have roots in the ‘principle’ — or, as some teachers put it, “it’s in the curriculum,” when they recognise the problems but feel obliged to follow the given international or local standards anyway.
Rethinking preschools
It’s true that growing up reciting, Machli Ka Bacha didn’t turn us all into sadistic animal abusers. And we learned some good rhymes, too. And we also celebrated the Earth Day every year.
But it’s also true that our society is not particularly sensitive to animal welfare or environmental preservation, generally speaking.
Just look at the horror practices of dairy and poultry industry and our passive complicity as consumers.
![The author's empathetic take on the popular children's rhyme.](https://i.dawn.com/primary/2018/05/5b0e9739adf9e.jpg)
Education could be a progressive force for social change, but we seem to be adapting our children into the convoluted attitudes of our society.
Our children deserve better rhymes and stories, and they have a right to wholesome childhood experiences that would nurture their hearts and minds and help them become conscious and caring human beings.
Our teachers need to see deeply — even if they were not trained this way — and they need to probe into all aspects of their training and practice.
And this would involve many moments of pause and reflection, critical analysis of 'the curriculum', unlearning aspects of training, courage and perseverance, and above all a strong commitment to ensuring a wholesome childhood.
I use 'curriculum' in quotes because the word conventionally hints at formal education and enclosed spaces, both of which I wish to avoid for preschool age.
It would also help if teachers specifically develop and sharpen their critical analysis skills.
In day-to-day practice, preschool teachers usually find considerable room for selecting aspects of content, pedagogy, and environment. Quality resources can be quite scarce in the sea of information and products out there.
Having these skills can empower them to make careful choices and even generate their own solutions. I ended up composing my empathetic, make-do version of Machli Ka Bacha, in which the baby fish enjoys life in the open sea.
Towards developing these skills, perhaps a starting point is to look into relevant texts and resources on critical content/discourse analysis. One of the first books that got me thinking deeply about content issues was Ibne Insha’s Urdu Ki Aakhri Kitab.
More examples can be seen in James Loewen’s Lies My Teacher Told Me and Jean Kilbourne’s Can't Buy My Love. Some useful case studies and documentaries can also be found online.
Teacher training institutions can support teachers — and transform preschools — by incorporating research and critical analysis as a substantial component of their preschool training programmes beyond a day or two of lectures and beyond teaching arbitrary questioning as critical thinking.
It would also help to have regular workshops and refresher courses for parents and teachers. Websites and social networks can bring together like-minded individuals to share quality resources and coordinate efforts.
Similar training programmes can also benefit teachers at the primary (elementary) levels and above.
More generally, we need to raise public awareness and concern about the seriousness of these issues.
And we need a vibrant, substantial, and sustained public discussion on the state of our preschools and the future of our children, society and environment.
Illustrations by Zoha Bundally
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