The thing is, today at 7pm on TimesNow, Arnab (Chief editor for TimesNow) was discussing and exchanging ideas about how to improve the quality of education and the capability of educating in India and the US, with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and our "Bollywood" star Aamir Khan.
There were ideas shared and one of which was wishing and working towards making the educator the highest paid. Aamir's belief was that People go after all kinds of things.. Management, engineering, medicine and high tech and famous high paying stuff. And that Nobody comes back to teaching the upcoming minds. Aamir's thought went by supporting the notorious and not famous mind you - general saying that those who cant do, teach.
This brings a couple of things to my mind. Well firstly, if everyone comes back to teach, I mean if all the bright minds take up teaching then what will happen to actual industry and its quality and value? Secondly, no matter what field people take up.. why is it the common belief that the concept of learning and teaching is lost or diminished after leaving the traditional rather institutionalised learning environment?
Letting myself to attempt to answer my own questions... firstly nobody is stopping the brightest ones, for that matter, anyone from making their mark in the fields they chose to work in. All we are being asked is to come back and share what we have learnt or experienced regularly and religiously with the learning ones so that they get on to the right track of seeing and perceiving things the applicative way before they get biased by the traditional ideas leaving the innovative side to rust. Probably this way we wont shy away from the whys and the hows at whatever stage we are at.
It hit me when the last question was being asked on the program, a St.Xavier's student asked the guests how she could tackle a situation that she faced in trying to educate a bunch of slummers. She said she could not get the kids to come to her lil classes regularly coz they were poor and their parents needed them to sell stuff or go beg and that she was disappointed for the sorry state of those slummers. The guests asked her not to give up and to persist and find some way to get to them to come or find some other bunch to help learn. Even if one of em benefited from what she taught, it would be one less underprivileged and perhaps one more possibility of a new teacher that could create more of the kind. Imagine the chain reaction. It would be a lot like the thing a kid starts as part of a class project in the movie "Pay it Forward".
Coming back to what hit me, an idea - why not ask the kids that we know to find out about something that is part of thier subjects or curriculum by asking people. I mean anybody and everybody... parents, relatives, techies, non techies..people on the roads or in the school or movie theatres or busses and so on. Ask them to gather all the answers they get and go to their teachers and try to discern and deliberate on them. Ask them to find out whats the right answer and what are the wrong ones and why they are so. That way they ll know why and where to apply what they have learnt. Probably they ll tell someone else about it. Be it showing off or just simple plain being proud of what they know. Wouldn't it be great! Well its an Idea. Might work really well.
Secondly, generally speaking, I have observed that majority of the people get into thier fields and undermine the fact that sharing what they know only makes them work to know more and do better whatever it is that they do. Usually we go on to concentrating more on how to advance by knowing more than others and keeping it to ourselves in the name of competition. The teaching goes out the window. Lot of the industry installations insist on mentoring and stuff like that. It is sometimes effective and sometimes not. When we truely create an evironment of learning and sharing, the idea of advancing in our respective fields and being the leads becomes more rewarding and exciting.
Otherwise, with the inner selfish deceptive nature taking us over, we will be only cheating and not teaching... others and perhaps ourselves and the nation that we are from advancing.
So how about changing our nation a lil for the better? How about taking some time out to participate in TeachIndia initiative?
As the new TATA add campaign says, Lets DOCOMO. Lets do the new way. What say?
