Before I answer your question, I would like to express my appreciation for your sensitivity to an important aspect of learning. Miniscule but highly important aspects like this are not taken under consideration while parents select schools for their children.

It is important to realize that good space is not a luxury but a key determinant of what children learn. A healthy physical environment is where you have ventilation, light, hygiene especially in the areas where water is used, where waste is not exposed and you have greenery. A 'healthy learning environment' indicates a creative space where a student can move around and experience things. Children's learning habits today, emerging technologies, and new active learning pedagogies require learning spaces to be transformed from being confined to a singular physical space to diverse use of the available spaces.

Producing energy efficient architecture or climatically suitable architecture is one of the big challenges we face today. Schools are no different. While the public sector suffers owing to lack of resources and fails to provide a healthy environment for children, a big part of the mushrooming private sector is running in small premises which are neither properly lit nor ventilated.

So when making a choice of school for your children while you must keep in consideration the standard of academic staff, it is equally important to consider the physical environment of the school. Please know that I'm not ignoring the constraint on resources we face. But nothing stops a school from making innovative use of whatever resources they have. For example if the premises has tree plantation, children can be taught about the various varieties and their names. Or along with the toilets there can be a septic tank or a small treatment plant and children can learn the concepts of waste disposal. Parents can work with the schools to create such spaces where interaction is easy for children, recreation is possible and healthy learning is possible.

You must have consulted your acquaintances and closed ones about which school to put your child and concluded that reputation should not be compromised. That is not a comprehensive approach. There are other factors to consider when deciding on schooling for your child.

Distance is a grave problem. Don't make your children leave the house at 6.30 in the morning for school starting at 8.00 am and make him come back home at 3.30 pm for classes finishing at 1.00 pm. That will make a child hate learning for the rest of his/her life no matter what you do. You pack off a child to school, tired, and possibly hungry so early in the morning and make him/her come back so late in the afternoon, and you expect him not to have a lack of concentration while doing his homework? So survey your area for good schools where you can potentially put your child, if not right away then starting the next academic cycle.

Moreover set a routine and facilitate the child to follow it by engaging in the tasks alongside the child. For example do not expect the child to read a book or do homework while you watch TV. Remember children imitate. When he doesn't see you read or follow routines, it is unfair to expect him to pick up a book or organize his study time. Also parent assistance with homework should also be considered, an important mode of engagement. This may be the most time-consuming thing to do but it is important for you to guide your child, while also motivating him to study.

You could try to show curiosity in what the child does at school as well. Parents' enthusiasm and interest in meeting with the child's teacher and attending various school events makes the child settle at school in a better manner.

Children respond with interest and motivation to teachers who appear to be human and caring. So besides delivering the well-prepared lessons in advance, it is a good idea to be an approachable personality rather than an aloof authority figure.

Secondly, it is a myth that work and play are two distinct entities that should never overlap. Children love to work while playing and it is a natural way for them to learn. Lessons can be made more interesting through use of active learning. For this you need materials that the children are familiar with (for example, daily use objects, boxes, safe bottles and tins). Also, you need to provide them with materials that the children are interested in, that they can manipulate and discover from. Please note that children don't take an interest in very expensive toys for very long unless they are open-ended. For example, blocks are something I really do endorse the use of and these don't have to be the special kind imported from abroad. You can make blocks yourself, like wooden blocks and for very young children you can have blocks made with soft cloth. Materials can also be made with throw-away stuff. Hence people get into the habit of recycling. Instead of throwing away what is generally considered as "junk" we should all re-use safe, non-toxic trash, to make materials that hold young children's interest and at the same time teach them different concepts. The objectives of activity based learning can thus be achieved in a cost-effective, eco-friendly manner.

Finally it is preferable also to give children materials and I give them choices. They can then work individually or in groups to solve a problem, do some research, find the answers to questions and understand concepts. It is minds on - something that engages the learner. You can implement active learning at whatever level you want.

Although it is difficult to point out just the right cause of the problem from a few cues mentioned above, I can surely suggest a few pointers based on common observations in children these days.

Children who watch violent television shows tend to display the same behavior or attempt to repeat what they see on television. Television tends to exterminate the communication bridges from people since everyone gets engrossed in the shows and seldom discuss what they see and how they interpret it. As a result children tend to try to relate themselves to the images they see in the television and often times imitate the violence which is part of majority television programming these days.

Moreover, family time is often mistaken to be attributed to the time spent by a family watching a TV show together, whereas it can only be called family time when the parents and the children watch it together and then discuss it. This decrease, in the habit of talking to people around oneself is giving rise to anti-social behavior in individuals.

Another important thing is the social support system that a child observes in his surrounding. This social support system enables him to gain the confidence to go out with confidence and talk to different people. One of the ways to make of the most of a social support system is to grow up with an extended family. Many young families in particular, do not have such support systems around them while they are raising children because urbanization has resulted in parents getting busier and stressed out. Are you a single parent? Single parent households (mostly women) particularly come across this kind of a situation. The pressures are often devastating and can spill over to the home environment, especially when one has to worry about everything from economic survival to children's development.

So create an environment which allows for greater human interaction and open communication. Also remember, set a good example of the behavior that you want your child to demonstrate because parents are the child's first teachers.