The Forgotten Einstein

“Don’t worry about your marks. Just make sure you keep up with your work and that you don’t have to repeat a year. But it’s not necessary to have good marks in everything. You learn the most from things that you enjoy doing so much that you don’t even notice time is passing. Often I’m so engrossed in my work that I forget to eat lunch.” These words were written by the great physicist, Albert Einstein in a letter to his son, Hans Albert. Einstein was not exceptional in all the prescribed subjects during his school days. He was rather excellent in physics and mathematics right from a very young age. We cannot even imagine the thought process that Einstein had undergone at a young age to churn out such a contribution to the history of physics. Einstein was a genius of his own without a doubt. At the age of 9, he was shown a compass by his father and he understood that there are forces that can’t be seen (magnetic forces). He had extreme curiosity in physics, philosophy and mathematics. Max Talway, a friend of his father and Jacob Einstein, his elder father helped him get all the latest scientific and philosophical books that further kindled the boy’s passion towards the field. Talent of Einstein was perfectly nurtured.

Coming to our era now, we have school students breaking their brains to push in all the matter from their textbooks and vomit them in examinations to score full marks in their 10^th and 12^th standards. The alluring State ranks drive most parents to put all the pressure on their wards. Students are pathetically driven mad in order to fetch more marks and get into a better college (Medicine and Engineering were always chocolate cakes.). Competition has its nose at front always. Comparison of their wards with other students makes parents’ day busy. Race is on for State ranks. Interest and thinking are all secondary. Everybody forgets the question of “Why these students are sent to school?” It is like a dog being trained to fetch a thrown ball. Schools end up producing mark-obtaining mug-heads rather than innovative jackpots. Some parents shuttle their wards for schools and tuitions right from morning 5am to 8pm. Does it not sound brutal? Money-making is priority for tuition centers. The concept of tuition was started to support slow-learners in the classes. But today main teaching happens only in tuition centers. School is only a formality and a necessity for students as they pay fees. Parents and teachers need to understand that students are humans at the end of the day. Each individual has got a specific concentration time span in a day. Students get tired because of previous day exhaustion and they fail to listen in schools. They always have the option of listening in tuitions as lessons are taken twice. The purpose of schools and tuitions is extremely misunderstood.

For postulating, the General theory of relativity, he had to take the views of so many physicists across the globe. Einstein was against competition. The students bring in the culture of competition and spoon-feeding from their schools. It becomes very difficult for the college lecturers and professors to mould these students from mark-oriented racers to concept-oriented thinkers. The stress takes a toll on the student, for the change demanded is drastic. By this time, the student loses interest in whatever he/she is doing. Brain is only trained to take in concepts with abstraction. Workplace expectations are different altogether. Companies are happy to take in Einsteins straightaway. At this stage, external world makes the individual succumb to economic pressure as well. What is lost throughout this process is a “Thinking Individual” with the potential of contributing to the larger world.

Education is intuitive. It must flow in, stimulate a thought-process and push out innovation or new thinking. Einstein said in one of his interviews that “Education should train the mind to think beyond the things inside the book.” Education is not hammered in. It is let in. The teachers are driven by the time frame and the syllabus they need to hammer into the brain of the student. The student, on the other hand, is stressed out with the abstraction of material. Finally, both decide to work for the marks.

We need to focus our education towards inculcating cognitive flexibility and towards arousing the curiosity of the student. Passion was a by-product of Einstein’s curiosity. That passion changed the fate of this world. The aim of every school should be to create passion for the subjects. Though we cannot churn out Einstein out of every student we can at the least stop churning out mechanical mark-making machines.

-Satz 

Yeah E-Q-U-A-L-I-T-Y

I have been involved in working for a NGO called NIN Society. It was started by some of the youngsters of my age in the year 2009. I have already posted about our philosophy (http://freshlypenned.blogspot.in/2013/07/helping-being-contagious.html). I quite liked the idea with which they work. Make helping contagious. Making people realise that helping is their duty. It struck a chord with what I already had in mind. A sole reason for me to associate with their activities.

I have been involving myself in many of NIN Society's projects now and it has always been a fascinating experience altogether. I cherish the opportunity for sure. I have been able to know more about the attitude of people towards the society and the impact of their individualistic nature on the growth of the society. The magnitude of the task that we have in hand is humongous when we see it at a micro level. Make helping contagious. Given the status quo at one end, it is like taking the world towards the ideal end. From my experience, it is hard to crack the shell. Egos. Some people do not want to help others. It is like they do not have it in their genes. When they do not have enough time to think about their own life how is it virtually possible to think about others? Tough and good question. The hardest nut shell to crack. Some people in spite of their life commitments have the intention for sure but nothing would materialize into actual help. I appreciate the intention though. Some people help a little but not fully. I appreciate the little help but it would seem like they should have been quiet in the first place rather than take the decision of helping others. Only a few really want to make it big. They really influence the society. They make a huge difference in the community and take it to another level. When we are able to dissolve these differences in the helping nature of people and make people realize that helping is their duty, then even our profession becomes a help and thereby our duty. If this is the perspective with which a teacher and student operate then we will have every student successful with highest quality. Salary and money are then mere words.

I have been a part of a program that involves the uplifting of educational status of students of a village. The thought of helping those students came out when we identified that education can be the only tool to make the economic status and cultural status of the locality better. We are currently providing education for the students by using Skype sessions through a passionate teacher and also guiding them to get fluent with their English. Basically the interaction with them is almost every weekend. We help them with their English language. It is mutual learning. I learn a lot of Tamil words that I normally don't use when I speak to people by teaching them English through Tamil. 3 or 4 sessions have passed by and it is getting interesting. They have started asking doubts. They are involving themselves and showing the interest to learn. They come regularly to the classes. Given their conditions, I would have not studied till what I have studied for sure. You might ask me what difference we have made. The difference is not much. But for a 3-4 session period we have made them realize that language is around them like everything else. I consider it as a great achievement. They see language with a different sense now. Our success is making them ask questions to us and improving their inquisitiveness.

A few days back, a friend of mine called me. We had a chat after a very long time. He told me about how scary it is to see the generations after us. He told that it is very scary to see the smartness of 10th standard students and their exposure to technology. He added that we need to expose ourselves and update ourselves much more than what we are doing. In a sense, he is right. I was travelling in a bus the other day when I saw a final year student having a Samsung smart phone in his hand and interacting with his friend on the other side. After the interaction, he was typing in the small screen. It would have most probably been a WhatsApp or a Facebook. Thanks to Zucker.

I was actually travelling towards the village. It was the start of the English class for the students. We wanted to know where to start their English from. So to test their vocabulary we told them to write 10 words in English with their meaning in Tamil. We expected inhibitions but they in fact were ready to write more than 10. After making them write, we checked what they had written. It was scary. For many basic words like "She", they did not know the correct meaning. They are 11th standard students.
When compared to what my friend told the other day, what I was seeing was exactly another world. There was a world of difference between the smart kids of the city that my friend told and the ones that I was seeing. Why is there such a difference? After moving with the teachers in those schools and the students at village school, we clearly understood one gap. All that the students needed was someone to spend the time with them. They have the same capacity as that of the students of the city. They in fact have more interest in the subjects given their economic circumstances and family background.

The real scenario at schools in villages is that the desired quality that city students come out with is not to be seen in some students in the villages. On inquiry, one problem that we found out with the village school is that teachers come to the locality with the aim of having a work experience of 1 year. Because as per the government norms they are in need of the rural background experience of 1 year for getting transferred to the city and to have a good life for another 3 years, after which they get confirmed. They slog for 1 year in the locality tolerating the elephant-human conflicts that prevail and other transport problems and get transferred. They are able to follow their students for 1 year and then the new teacher comes in. He/She starts afresh. The attention on the students are very minimal in this case. Again the teachers cannot be blamed. They have their own lives to look at. Probably there should be a better system devised to handle the problem. Parents also play a very important role in the quality of the students. Parents should do their part of imparting the right atmosphere to the students as the time spent at home is more than at school.

When I came back down from the village on that day, I was thinking all along the way about why they need us. In fact the country should be able to work without the help of NGOs. Or in the other way, working of NGOs have to have a positive effect on the growth of the country. Tangibly or Intangibly. Have we got a measure of how much NGOs should contribute and how much the government and other agencies should contribute to the growth of such villages? We can't change the parents or teachers but maybe we can have a better system of handling the problem.Why can't every student at villages get the standard education that city students are able to get easily? In what way is there a difference in potential of the students? When you take ourselves as one entity, then we will have the differences made clear to everybody. There is difference in standards and it is hard and tough reality. As far as I have read about brain studies, skill development is common for all. If it is so, why is skill GIVING not made common for all? When a cricket match can be played with the same pitch conditions for both the teams, why can't education be the same for every village and city student? Aim should be to make the system like a parade wherein everybody moves to the same drum beat.

Yeah, we are talking about EQUALITY. Yeah E-Q-U-A-L-I-T-Y.

-SATZ