Why is that WHY being discouraged?

Albert Einstein requested the doctor to issue a neurologically unfit (fake) certificate so that he could skip school. It pushes a sane mind to rethink why would a genius drop out? Yes! You guessed it right. He wanted to get rid of boring monotonous preaching.

The architect of E=mc2 was quizzical. But, he was asked to shut up and not to raise questions. When you, as a teacher, don’t let the child question, you kill their creativity and autonomy. Dictators don’t like to be questioned. Millions saw the apple fall, Newton asked why? Why is that WHY being discouraged by teachers in our educational institutions? A teacher, with the changing tune of the time, has to form, inform and transform a child.

Not letting your students ask questions is the betrayal of the very idea and imagination of the school. Good teachers don’t issue orders with authoritative tone. They come to the pupil’s level, put themselves in their shoes and talk the language the students understand. Teacher is a facilitator, not a policeman. A teacher is supposed to shape head, heart and hand. A classroom can’t be a totalitarian state where thought is controlled.

Greenhorn teachers are not trained that not just aptitude, but attitude determines the altitude of a personality. In a welfare state, talent is considered asset and teacher knows respectful responding to groom leadership qualities in an individual. But in India’s ailing education system, questioning the status quo is not encouraged.

A teacher is guide by the side not a sage on the stage. The teacher of Rabindra Nath Tagore (First Asian recipient of Nobel Prize) pushed him to quit. Why? Tagore’s questions were bouncing over the hot head of his teacher. Hot heads and cold hearts never solve anything. It was a blessing in disguise. He travelled places, met Einstein.

The Himalayan figure bowed in front of equally towering Tagore. Genius lives in a bubble- a dreamy world of innocence where ideal thoughts are nurtured. But our schools are killing curiosity. We need to stop telling to shut up and learn. Let’s start taking mental notes; store the lecture in our brains. Why to paste it on paper. What for? Dictation method, even for, kindergarten kids is out of fashion. We expect impromptu interactions.

We must celebrate similarities and appreciate differences. Like a mason, a teacher digs, ditches and drains. Student’s interpretation of a certain question is not encouraged. D.S.Kothari, a seasoned educationist, once said that the destiny of a nation is shaped in her classrooms. Our teachers have completely failed us as a society since they don’t teach us how not to fear failures.

The stigma around failure is perpetuated by our teaching community. Our potential is slayed by not respecting our space of dissent or disagreement. No theory is complete. I may have reservations with certain formulas. Why am I being evaluated on set code? Why can’t I come up with my own explanations? Failing is fine. Not making an enough effort is not.

Grades are not a fair way to test the capabilities of how genius your student is. Engineering the child’s likes and dislikes in academics or otherwise earns clashes and controversies and makes the child depressed. And parents unknowingly pressurize their kids without even realizing the hurt and harm they are doing.

That is where kids become rebellious and disobedient. Your child is not a blank state. Stop designing him/her. A child is a genetic mosaic of an extended family- a unique combination of genetic traits that run in your family. So, your intervention doesn’t make much difference. So the growth of the child has directly nothing to do with you.

Have we ever paused to think that why Finnish education system is considered the world’s best and what we can learn from it? The answer is simple: teachers in Finland go to classroom well-prepared. They don’t preach, they demonstrate, debate, dialogue and start the discourse around the idea.

In the middle of the class, if a student is not able to conceive what is being said, he/she makes a quiet exit and works in a student-run café in school as a recreational activity as a waiter for an hour or so. They clean up themselves, every single day.

That is how the concept of earning is developed. There is no rich or poor school. On the basis of internal assessments, students are promoted but the results are not published or shared with anyone. It is a protocol. Students don’t compete, they cooperate and collaborate. That is how they achieve the aim- to end social inequality. As a parent, you are not responsible for whatever characteristics your child possesses. Come out of the guilt. Child is not a vehicle.

You can’t overhaul a child. You can just do some denting and make changes. You can’t wipe out everything from your child and create your own prototype. You should stop thinking that you are an engineer of a child and start believing that you are a shepherd.

A shepherd doesn’t design his sheep. A shepherd takes the herd in a resource rich pasture at a feasible geography in appropriate times. He ensures that the sheep is protected from weather vagaries and wild animals. But remember, he doesn’t control the environment in vast green woods.

He can’t. That environment, far in the serene surroundings of forests, doesn’t change the nature of sheep. Once our shepherds come back from woods in late summer or early fall, we don’t see our sheep has turned out to be a dog, a goat or a cow. No. it doesn’t happen. Because the traits the sheep carries can’t be changed, nonetheless. A parent doesn’t deal with sheep here. S/he deals with a child, an entity full of feelings and emotions, wisdom etc.

Take a very good care of your future leaders. Like a genuine master, we must not expect absolute obedience. It amplifies fear factor. You might be well-versed with the experiment of goats by Ibn-Sina. Let me set the context. He got two goats, tied one in front a wolf for a week. Another goat was kept away from the watchful eyes of wolf.

Both were fed the same quality and quantity of food. It was observed that the mental stress of a goat tied in front a wolf increased manifold and she died eventually due to panic, fear and stress. The point is that if you think, as a teacher, you are smart because students are silent in your classroom, you fail as a teacher.

Let them question because that is their birthright. That is how today’s readers and tomorrow’s leaders are produced in classrooms.