Education For Children - Our Experiences

So again from today the search for a school began, for my son who will be going into 1st standard starting next session. It was just this year that we were relieved that he had finally go admitted to what seemed a good school, and it is a good school. But the timings are such that a child would leave home at 7:15 AM every morning and starting next session he would be returning home by ~5;00 PM, this is just too much for a child that young
So the context is set, I am not satified with the way education is structured to be imparted.
I am sure there are a ton of documents that say why our education is structured that way it is and the objectives it believes to achieve are well thought out and accurately defined, and it is the interpretation and implementation that is not done properly.
No less than ten activity based books have books have been prescribed yet day to day classes consist of teacher writing out activities like gap-filling, matching, true and false etc. on the board which children are to copy mechanically. Where is the fun in learning, what is to be done with those books which are prescribed to reduce the burden on children? My child has learnt a lot but this kind of old time methodology has compromised his interest in learning more because on the basic level learning more means having to write more which is not very appetising for a five year old who has so many other distractions to lure his attention be it television, computer games or simply playing with his friends and toys. What needs to be realised by educators is that times have changed and new methods and syllabi have been created to accomodate the changing times. One cannot possibly adhere to old methodogy of teaching from the blackboard and retain the interest of the learner.
This morning while reading the paper I came across an article where NRI were recounting experiences of education in India and abroad, the jist of what they said was that education here was still knowledge-based whereas abroad it was enquiry-based. In a time where knowledge becomes obsolete over a number of years, it is the spirit of enquiry that enables individuals to break away and do their own thing. This confidence is what those young successful NRI entrepreneurs attributed to their education abroad.
So in all this we seek a system of learning that inculcates the spirit of enquiry in our children ... more to follow.