The Edifier

I was educated like everyone around in a system which sent me to school and said that getting educated for anyone means going to school at various levels, kindergarten, primary school, middle school, high school, secondary school, college.....

Did all that education teach me anything that is useful in life?? I am not sure. I don't mean to say that there is nothing I got through the exercise I have gone through. Surely, it did contribute towards what I am, how I think, what I do.. today.

The Missing Objective

What is the objective of teaching? In my view, it is to make the other person understand. I strongly feel that this is missing from most of the class rooms now a days. The objective of teaching today has become "preparing for the exams". Preparation for the examination in many universities is nothing but making the student mug up 20/30 important questions or work out 25 to 50 models of problems based on the previous papers.

If so, what? what's the loss? The student is getting high percentage in his/her examinations.

Who judges a candidate by the percentage of marks earned in the examination? Everyone around knows, that they mean nothing. No, one is confident that a student with a 95% mark in a subject is proficient to that extent in the subject. Neither the person judging the candidate nor the candidate himself/herself can confidently say this.

Why?

It is because they have killed their instinct to question, their urge to understand, their enthusiasm, just because of the fact that they are scoring enough marks inspite of all these. How does a candidate accept being in such a state? I do know that no student will accept being in a state where he/she would be called a sub standard student and it might also be true that they are not.

Then why?

I did not understand!! or My teacher or lecturer did not teach me properly

This is the most common excuse that we hear from majority of the students. I had been a teacher/lecturer teaching/lecturing kids/students various subjects. This defence put up is not acceptable to me at all. I am not trying to blame the kid/student for the teachers/lecturers fault.

Notice that there is a difference between teaching and lecturing. A lecturer is an expert talking on a subject. A student may or may not understand what he/she has delivered. (A very convenient excuse to lecturers.. isn't it?)

But, isn't it required of a student to make enough efforts to clear his/her idea on the topic once he/she feels that they have not understood it or that it is not clear to them? True, it is the responsibility of the lecturer to make the student understand because in our system a lecturer's role involves him/her to play the role of a teacher many a times.

Even then, you (the student) cannot blindly blame the lecturer for it. Because you are the loser, whosever fault it may be.

I am not defending lecturers/teachers for their complacent role. No, I think they are equally or are to a greater extent, responsible for this. They are not conscious of the objective of teaching. Achieving ones objective gives satisfaction. The lack of satisfaction is not felt by the teacher/lecturer because he/she is not conscious of the objective.

In the present day world, the objective of any person performing any function is to derive economic benefit. Even teaching has adopted this objective. Had education retained its real objective, educational institutions would have been happy building careers/lives rather than ranks.

Messiah!! aha!!

For those who want to understand my work and pass on positive constructive criticism, it is this. I think there is a lot of difference in the way we are doing it and the way we may do it (I don't say have since my ideas may need correction which will be known only when they are tried).

I feel that learning anything with understanding would naturally give you a certain satisfaction. If you understand anything clearly, you feel like having a sumptuous meal. Yes, you will feel the difference. That's what I am targeting here. Anything presented here would never leave you in a position to say I did not understand.

Remember, I have started making a trial.

With regard to whatever I have authored I am always willing to improve upon the existing content. If there is some other way of presenting something that is here, I would be happy enough to allow the content I am placing to be modified and credit that person as the author of that particular page/part of the page. I have no objections at all, since my objective is to enable the students to get content that is the best.

What's my objective?

Strange objectives I have. One of the foremost is to make the process of getting educated easier, interesting and something to enjoy (call it fun if you can take things on the lighter side).

I do strongly (yes very strongly) believe that this drama and trauma being run in the name of education is not at all necessary. Kids/students can be more knowledgeable, better equipped, well positioned in their careers if they learn things in the proper perspective.

As far as I can and as far as I know I can show this difference i.e. share what I feel is a different kind of thought in teaching 12 different subjects. I would present my idea in all these 12 subjects (some of them are core to their fields).

Want to know more about me

Come on ... I too need to make money on my bio data... Wait for me to become popular and then read my biodata... (some publisher would be coming forward to do it then).

Was just joking. Please wait till I complete my work, I will have a lot of time to blah blah blah.... about myself... my work... and all my dreams...