Lesson 1
a family visits our family, in middle of conversation
mom : beta, which class you are in ?
aunty : She is in 11 now, today only results came out.
my mom : yeah, I saw in paper today.
aunty : Yeah, this year her school’s result was too good. She scored 96.2% marks and still has 4th rank is class. Just 3 more marks and she would be first.
my mom : good work beta
moral : Getting marks is the sole aim of every child, whatever you score and if there is anyone with a mark more than you, the effort is not appreciated fully.
Lesson 2
On NDTV or CNN-IBN, during one of those open discussion
One Lady : “How can I send my child to the same school where my servant’s kid goes?”
moral : Even today, all kids do not have equal opportunities to study and compete.
Lesson 3
During my engineering, we used to have a subject called ‘ analysis and design of algorithms’. Our course book was ‘Sara Baase‘ but I never liked it, and tried hard but could never develop interest in subject. One of my friends from other colleges, she told me that algorithms is her favorite subject. She asked me to try Thomas Cormen. After few days, I bought it and algorithms became my favorite subject. I studied hard and understood most of the things, and even studied parts which were not in syllabus. Then came exams, went well, did excellent in algorithms. Result came, was usual got average marks, but surprisingly I barely managed to pass algorithms. Rest of papers, where my understanding was not good, but I followed books and was managed to “remember” stuff, I got good marks.
moral : understanding of a subject mean nothing, stick to syllabus and course material and marks will follow. Once again, marks are everything in life.
FYI : one of the reviews of ‘Sara Baase‘ on Amazon @ ‘Dancing monkeys can teach better algorithms than this book’
Lesson 4
This happened at one of the families I know.
Daughter was a very good basketball player, and have represented state at national level for under 18. She had a good chance to get into national team and move forward. But unfortunately she passed her 11th standard exams. Her parents did not allow her to play basketball, as she had to score more than 90% marks in 12th. She was a good student with always 90%+ score ( with basketball), but 12th standard is a very important part of life and she had to drop off basketball.
moral : once again, marks are everything and parents have all the right to comments on India’s poor performance in Olympics. and they have complete liberty to make statements like “Even with a population of 1 billion, we can’t win a single gold medal”
My Dream
My dream is to start a school, a different school. I school where anyone can take admission, all people will have same opportunity to study. Anyone who is willing to study in the way I want, will be admitted. There would be no exams, no competition for marks, only aim would be to develop the thirst for the knowledge. A school where students will not learn how to answer, they will learn how to find an answer, how to question? A student can choose whatever field he likes, there will be no importance for a particular subject. A school where Humanities would be the subject with highest priority.
Any resemblance to any person living or dead is purely coincidental. All ideas are mine, but influenced by my experiences, Feynman and movies like Dead Poets Society.
Tags: Masti Ki Paathshala
