Why Every Teacher and Parent Should Watch “Like Stars on Earth” at Least Once
I remember the first time I watched Taare Zameen Par—the Hindi film that most people know by its English title, Like Stars on Earth. It was during a teacher training workshop, and I expected a nice, motivational break from the agenda. Instead, I spent most of the film with my hands pressed together under my chin, watching a little boy named Ishaan slowly unravel.
There is a particular scene that undid me. Ishaan’s father, frustrated and at the end of his rope, packs his son off to a boarding school. He tells the boy, “We are doing this for your own good.” The camera stays on Ishaan’s face as his father drives away. The boy doesn’t cry. He just stares, like he’s already given up. The whole theatre of teachers was silent. When the lights came up, a colleague of mine quietly said, “That could be any of my students.”
It could be any of ours.
I teach fourth grade, and I have seen about five or six Ishaans over the years. Kids who stare at math problems like they’re written in a foreign language. Kids who are labelled as lazy, careless, or simply “not trying hard enough.” But recently, I’ve started to realise that we—the adults in the room—are the ones who need to shift the lens first. And that is exactly why I believe this film should be mandatory viewing in every class, for both teachers and students—though for different reasons.
The Scene That Changes How You See
The core of the film is simple. A boy named Ishaan struggles with reading and writing. His teachers punish him, his classmates mock him, and his parents, convinced that he is misbehaving, send him to a strict boarding school. There, a new art teacher, Ram Shankar Nikumbh, notices something underneath the child’s failure. He discovers that Ishaan has dyslexia, and that behind his silliness and distraction is a vivid, imaginative mind that simply processes the world differently.
What makes the film so effective is that it doesn’t just tell you these things. It shows you. You watch Ishaan dread each class. You watch him sit in the corner as his teacher reads out his marks. You watch him try to trace letters that seem to dance on the page. In a particularly poignant sequence, the film lets you literally see what his eyes see—letters spinning and shifting, refusing to line up and make sense. That visual moment is pure gold for any educator. It makes the invisible challenge suddenly tangible.
I have never once heard a child describe dyslexia that way, but I have heard them say, “The letters move” or “It blurs.” Adults often mishear that as excuses. The film reminds you that it isn’t an excuse. It’s an actual brain process.
What This Means in a Real Classroom
Showing the film to an entire class is not just a feel-good exercise. It gives every child vocabulary for their own experience—both the ones who struggle and the ones who sit next to a struggle and have no idea what to say.
After one screening in a school where I used to work, a sixth-grade girl went home and told her mother, “That boy’s brain works the same as mine.” She had never spoken up about her reading difficulties before. She wasn’t failing, but she was quietly drowning, doing everything with huge effort and ending up average. The film gave her a way to say, “This is hard for me because my brain is built differently. It is not because I’m stupid.”
That is a life-changing sentence for a child.
But I would also argue that the film should be mandatory specifically for teacher trainees and even for parents’ evenings. Because the most devastating scenes in the film aren’t the ones where the teacher yells. They’re the scenes where caring people, acting out of genuine love or duty, break a child’s spirit. Ishaan’s father genuinely believes he is helping. His boarding school teacher is not a villain either; he’s just a traditional educator who assumes every child should absorb content the same way.
That is the uncomfortable mirror the film holds up. It makes you ask, “What am I doing right now that might be pushing a child further into isolation?”
Practical Shifts That Should Follow
You cannot show the film and then call it a day. That would be entertainment, not education. So here are a few low-friction things I have started doing after watching it, and that any teacher or parent can try without turning their whole life upside down.
First, watch the film first yourself, then watch it with your child or class, and pause. Pause when Ishaan’s mother says, “He’s just playful, he’ll grow out of it.” Pause when the father says, “We didn’t have this dyslexia when I was young.” Ask the room, without judgement, “What do you think is happening here?” Let the children speak first. Often, they know more than we do.
Second, do a simple observation exercise. In the week after watching, keep a small notebook where you write down the times when a child looks visibly overwhelmed by a task. Not a tantrum. Just the pause, the long stare, the eraser rubbing a hole through the paper. Those moments are usually the entry points to a learning difference. The film trains your eye to look for them. It taught me to notice when a child’s hand hovers over the page instead of writing.
Third, change the language you use. Instead of saying, “Try harder,” say, “Let’s find a different way to get this done together.” That one phrase, put into the mouth of Ram Shankar Nikumbh, is simple but powerful. For a child who has already internalised failure, “try harder” sounds like an accusation. A child who is trying his hardest does not need more pressure; he needs a new method.
In practical terms, that might mean letting a child answer orally rather than in writing. It might mean reading instructions aloud instead of expecting silence. It might mean allowing extra time on a handwriting-heavy assignment. These are not complicated or expensive interventions. They are accommodations that cost nothing, yet can be the difference between a child who thinks he is stupid and a child who knows he has strengths.
The Part We Still Struggle With
I won’t pretend that showing a film changes a system overnight. I have still had moments where I fell back into old habits. Last term, I found myself getting annoyed with a boy who couldn’t copy homework from the whiteboard quickly. I felt my jaw tighten, and then I remembered Ishaan. I walked over and simply read the three sentences aloud to him. He wrote them down fine. The problem wasn’t his intelligence. It was a visual tracking issue that made copying from a board exhausting.
The film doesn’t give you a perfect checklist for handling every child. It doesn’t promise that a diagnosis of dyslexia will make all problems vanish. In fact, even the film’s ending is a bit too tidy. The art teacher wins the boy over, and the final scene is joyful. But real classrooms have thirty children, thirty histories, and one weary teacher. You cannot be Nikumbh for every single one. And that is the ongoing tension.
Where We Are Now
I still have a copy of the film on a drive in my classroom. I don’t show it every year. I wait until a child asks, or until I see a group of parents struggling to understand a boy who always seems to be in trouble. When I do show it, I watch the faces of the students more than the film itself. Some sink into their chairs. Others exchange glances with a friend. A few look at me, as if to ask, “Do you see me too?”
That is the real value of this film. It doesn’t solve everything. It simply opens a door. And once that door is open, it is a little harder to walk past a child who is quietly struggling. I still forget. I still rush. But when I remember the silent stare of a small boy watching his father drive away, I try to slow down, and I ask one more question before I assign a label.
For now, that feels like a step in the right direction.
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » Why Every Teacher and Parent Should Watch “Like Stars on Earth” at Least Once