Don't be a teacher, be a super-hero

"No.."
I said into the microphone, standing on stage in front of thousands of students and all my teachers. I had participated in the personality contest for first year engineers organised by the senior students of the college. I was being asked if I would like to be a teacher and why. I was looking at the panel of judges, all teachers, all of them looking at me expectantly. I knew the expected answer was to say yes, and then praise the job of the teachers. But I had already said no impulsively, and everyone in the audience had become silent and was staring at me. I had to continue,
"No, I don't want to be a teacher. I don't think I have the strength and the right qualities that is needed to be a teacher. The job of the teacher is of great responsibility. You have the power to make or break the future of the youth. You are the tools to influence the future of our country. At this moment, I don't know if I can do that."
The face of the judges, and the claps from the students, told me that I had saved myself in that round. I didn't end up winning the competition (due to my lack of knowledge on a current affair question), but that is beside the  point now.

The point is do teachers understand what role they are playing in the lives of their student? We don't just go to school/college to study a syllabus, get marks and get jobs. We go there to get an experience. To get an exposure to different aspects of life. We can all read our books and study the chapters on our own. But we all need the motivation. We don't need teachers to teach us the obvious. We need teachers to tell us what is not there in the text book. We need teachers who inspire us and push us and believe in us. We need teachers who are interested in us. Some one who can give us more feedback than just the marks and grades on our test papers. Someone who can touch our lives and send us off on a journey to discover ourselves armed with the some fundamental real world knowledge.

Now then, do you want to be a teacher? And why?

Perspective

We all see things differently just by virtue of being different people. Why then do we strive so hard to be the same person as our neighbour? How is it that most of us believe that the definition of being a successful person is to earn a lot of money, have a house, own a car, have the latest gadgets, afford to go to the posh restaurants, have a good looking wife/rich husband, have cute kids eventually who go to the best schools etc?
I like to think of this visually as a circular set path. But this path is overloaded with people. There must be and I know there are other paths and orbits which are not so crowded. Why don't we explore these? What stops us from finding out? We are the mighty humans, we built this modern world and all its facilities. We have started off as cavemen and yet managed to discover fire and electricity. We figured out hunting and agriculture. We were not always spoon fed and our paths were not always set in stone. Why then do we not draw from that and aspire to do and achieve more with the limited resources we have? Why don't we sit and think what success means to us. Forget about the successful neighbour, what about you? Why do you want the money, the car, the house, the gadgets? What will you do once you have them? Do you think its enough?

To me starting a family means I am in a position where I feel I have achieved something in life and have learnt something unique. And the desire to pass on this trade of lessons learnt makes me want to have a kid, to influence a mind, to create a life-form which starts with the basis and fundamentals of my cumulative experiences and lessons.

What does starting a family mean to you? Do you have conversations with your family about your life, dreams and what makes you happy? Do you ask them the same questions? How much weight or importance to you give to this knowledge?

What is your take on life?

Lesson 1 - Origin

I had read these lines when I was in school and they never left my mind.

"Men must be taught

As if you taught them not

And things unknown

Proposed as things forgot"
                      - Alexander Pope (from "An essay on criticism")

I have forgotten about them for many months at times, but have always found reasons to come back to them. I want to use this blog as a space for jotting down my thoughts on alternate learning and teaching methods. I want to try and collect data and conduct experiments to support or refute these lines. A big motivation for doing this task is because I come from a society which is severely facing the problems of:

Illiteracy

Sub-standard quality of education

Rote learning

Cut throat competition

Lack of all round development of a child

I will try and write down ideas here which I think can make an effort of solving these problems