"Taare Zameen Par" (2007) is a movie about a dyslexic 8-year old child named Ishaan who initially wasn't understood by anyone (including his parents). He is passionate in art and likes painting. However, he failed Grade 3 once and finds his studies difficult, unlike most other people of his age.
When his neighbour Ranjeet and friends played cricket, Ishaan was told to take the ball and throw it to them. He threw it outside the house area which made Ranjeet annoyed and bullied him.
One day at school, during an English lesson, when his teacher told him to read a sentence, he said "the letters are dancing". He was being honest as he said what he feels as a dyslexic child but all his classmates and his teacher thought he was being funny. His teacher continuously scolded him and forced him to read the sentence loud and proper. Annoyed, he ended up saying something unclear which made his teacher tell him to get out of class.
Outside class, seniors bullied him and called him a loser after seeing him punished again and again. He then entered his next lesson but didn't do his homework and get his test paper signed. So, he decided to skip school to walk around some roads in Mumbai and see what he likes to gain ideas of what to paint.
Later that day, he slept in his school bus until it was time to go home. When he reached home, he painted based on what he saw on the road and his brother Yohan said it's cool.
After that, his mother told him to write but he misspelled every word which made his mother think he was fooling around.
When he was in bed, he told Yohan that he skipped school that day and told Yohan to write him an absent note.
Next day, he handed in his absent note to his maths teacher. Also, his maths teacher held a surprise maths quiz which made Ishaan dizzy. He only managed to answer one question out of all questions (i.e., 3 x 9 = 3 which is the wrong answer).
On Sunday, his father caught him skipping school on Thursday after seeing a fake absent note on the floor signed as his mother. This made him scolded badly by his father.
After some time, his school had a meeting with Ishaan and his parents to tell about how dumb he is when learning in class. The principal asked Ishaan's parents to put him to a special school after perceiving that Ishaan is abnornal. This made his father decide to put him to a boarding school in Panchgani. Although he refused and tried to convince his parents that he'll study harder, all his effort was useless as his parents' decision to put him to the boarding school is already final.
In his early days at the boarding school, he finds it hard to adapt and spends most of his time daydreaming about how unfortunate his life is being away from his family. He thinks that being sent there as a punishment from his parents for his disobedience.
Normal school days soon started in his boarding school. He still got treated badly. Every day, he got scolded and punished by his teachers. Also, his classmates, except his only friend Rajan who always stayed first in class, laughed at him.
Things got better once Ram Shankar Nikumbh (Nikumbh), a new art teacher lend from Tulips School started teaching in Ishaan's school. Nikumbh is able to understand dyslexia which Ishaan suffered under as he has thought in Tulips School (special school for unfortunate people) and also suffered dyslexia when he was young.
One day, Nikumbh came to Ishaan's house to ask about the reasons Ishaan got sent away despite being passionate in art. Ishaan's father complained about Ishaan's stupidity and attitude. Next, Nikumbh showed Ishaan's father about Ishaan's writing issues but Ishaan's father thought they're just excuses for Ishaan to avoid studying. Nikumbh then asked Ishaan's father to read Chinese writing on a box of a toy and Ishaan's father said he can't. Nikumbh called Ishaan's father insolent just to act as Ishaan's teacher scolding Ishaan to help Ishaan's father understand dyslexia. Nikumbh then mentioned about dyslexia in more detail.
The next day, Nikumbh brought the topic of "dyslexia" to class and asked the whole class to tell the names of famous dyslexic people based on the stories he told. After class finished, he spoke 1-on-1 with Ishaan about dyslexia.
Later that day, Ishaan created a toy boat which was able to move in the pool which made all his classmates and Nikumbh find it amazing.
One day when Nikumbh came to principal's office, he defended Ishaan to keep Ishaan at the school by telling the principal about Ishaan's strengths.
Nikumbh became Ishaan's tutor and helped Ishaan catch up in studies as Ishaan eventually learned to read and write.
When an art competition was held at school with teachers and students participating, Nikumbh finished second and Ishaan finished first. Ishaan's drawing was set as the yearbook photo.
Finally, on the day student reports for the semester are released, all teachers and the principal are glad to see Ishaan's improvement.
From the summary of the movie as shown above, there are several important messages.
1. To be a good parent, choosing the right school for children is important. This requires good understanding of children's character and how schools are like. The importance of doing so is to avoid having children feeling stressed at school like Ishaan due to getting inadequate support and understanding from school.
2. Scolding is not the best way to get children to learn better. As shown in the movie, Ishaan who often got scolded due to his inability to read and write properly before Nikumbh cane got frustrated and couldn't improve in reading and writing by that time.
3. Everyone is special.