Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Essay The earlier system of education focused on academic excellence and competition.  The results in written assessments determined the future of the students.  One obtained the career of his choice depending on the scores obtained in various exams.  The system engendered a lot of frustration among many students whose career aspirations were snuffed out by the rat race.  Quite many lives ended even before they began.  Suicides were not uncommon even in institutions of higher learning.  Educators and other guardians of the society were alarmed.  They came to the conclusion that a change in the system was called for. Coupled with the gloom of frustration and suicides was the awareness that arose in psychology that IQ (intelligence quotient) was not necessarily the measure of a person’s intelligence.  Psychologists as well as educationists came up with theories that pushed abstract intelligence out of the limelight.  Robert Sternberg (1949- )posited the triarchic theory of

The above is a real picture of the condition of school education in India.  A front page report in the Delhi edition of The Hindu (13 Nov 2013) carries the photo from a teacher training institute in Dharwad.  The institute (DIET) which trains primary school teachers has only one student, and 6 teachers.  The previous batch had just two students. The Times of India carries another report on the same day: ' Need Parenting Help? Call a Coach .'  More and more parents are turning to experts for advice on how to deal with their children! Why have children become such a problem that parents need expert advice and teachers seem to be terrified of them - so terrified that teacher training institutes are running the danger of shutting down?

“We have all learned most of what we know outside school.  Pupils do most of their learning without, and often despite, their teachers.” I don’t know how many people will agree with the statements above.  Ivan Illich wrote that 4 decades ago in his deservedly celebrated book, Deschooling Society .  He argued that “Everyone learns how to live outside school.  We learn to speak, to think, to love, to feel, to play, to curse, to politick and to work without interference from a teacher.  Even children who are under a teacher’s care day and night are no exception to the rule.” I am a teacher who has been working in an exclusively residential school for over a decade.  I won’t disagree with Illich. Of late, my mind which is normally logical is flooded with fantasies.  The fantasies are all about a dream school that I would like to open.  A school where children will be free to bloom without constraints imposed by systems.  Play, sleep, eat, and let children do what

  Fiction “You’re under arrest,” said the visitor who was in the police uniform. The sun had just risen above the horizon far, far away, beyond the concrete jungle of the city.  Sunita was ready to go to her school where she was a teacher in the upper primary section.  The school would begin at 7.30 and she had to start from home at 6 am from home.  If she was late by a minute the attendance register would automatically mark her absent.   That was just one of the many miracles which the computer technology could perform in her school. “Arrest!?”  Sunita was both amused and surprised.  What crime had she committed?  She had slapped a boy on his back yesterday because he had fallen asleep in the class while an interesting activity was going on.  “Interesting”, according to the lesson plan given to her by the textbook prescribed by the school and produced by experts.   Physical punishment is an offence which can send a teacher to the jail.  But she had only patted the boy

“My children, jump, run and play and make all the noise you want but avoid sin like the plague and you will surely gain heaven.”  This is a sentence that I used to hear again and again during my youth.  In those days I was a member of a religious congregation founded by John Bosco (Don Bosco, more famously).  Later I left the congregation because I lost faith in “sin” and a few other religious concepts.  But I still believe that Don Bosco was bang on the point about the rights of children to jump, run and play and make all the noise they want.  Education is not about keeping students quiet in the classroom or even outside.  I have often wondered why children should keep quiet in the dining hall, for example.  Yesterday when a quiz was being conducted in the class (9) in accordance with the activities prescribed in the textbook and recommended highly by CCE (Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation), somebody from the administrative wing rushed into my class saying, “There’s too

Short Story Manmohan returned home from the market with a bottle –  among the usual things –  that was totally unfamiliar to Meera, his wife.  “The tide is turning,” explained Manmohan, “and I’m going to celebrate it.” Manmohan was a teacher in a residential school which was taken over by a new management a couple of months back.  The new management was of the opinion that the old faculty was responsible for the “downfall” of the school.  “A school is its faculty,” asserted the new chairman.  So most of the faculty was asked to leave.  Manmohan was among the few who did not merit the axe yet. Yet! That’s not what he was celebrating, however.  “I won’t be able to meet you the whole day from tomorrow,” said Manmohan to his wife.  “See, I work in a residential school where I’m not just a teacher.  I am a parent to the students in the hostel, a guide to the students when they are in study, a tutor to the weak students, and a mentor to those in need...” “What about

“Sleep tight, you morons,” muttered Arjun as he stepped out of his dorm with a bag slung over his back.   The security guard had rung two bells a few minutes back indicating that it was two o’clock in the night.   The guard must have gone to sleep after performing his duty perfunctorily.   This was the best time to run away. The annual exams were round the corner and Arjun was fully confident that he would fail in spite of all the efforts made by both his teachers and the Board of Education to make him pass by giving him free marks in the name of co-curricular and extra-curricular activities.   He wouldn’t score even ten percent in the written exams. Sreesanth, his hero, was in jail.   Who does not make use of a chance to earn a few lakh rupees more, wondered Arjun.   His father was making lakhs every day.   Arjun’s father, Nakul Kulapati, was a an MLA of the ruling party.   People came to him offering big packets or briefcases full of money.   Nakul Kulapati gratified

Tuskegee was a little town in Alabama, USA, when Booker T Washington was invited to establish there a school for the coloured people of the state in the year 1881, 16 years after the Emancipation of the Negroes.   The Tuskegee Institute became famous for the holistic education it provided to the coloured students.   Washington did not provide mere bookish learning; he taught the students one trade or another so that they could earn their living as soon as they left the school.   Mere earning of livelihood was not Washington’s objective, however.   Education is “any kind of training... that gives strength and culture to the mind ,” says Washington in his autobiography, Up from Slavery (prescribed as an optional supplementary reader by CBSE for class XII). Washington’s book is a heart-touching expression of a profound philosophy which seeks to discover the good in every individual and cultivate it irrespective of race or religion.   There is a passage in the book which eloque

Short Story Mr Sharma was sitting beside the bathtub with a fishing rod in hand.  The hook was in the tub.  There was water in the tub.  But wherever there is water there may not be fish.  That’s a natural law.  Mr Sharma was not in a mental status to recall natural laws although he could recall the whole of the Vedas from his formidable memory at the snap of a finger from his boss. Fishing in troubled waters was the lifelong hobby of Mr Sharma.  You can’t blame him for that.  What’s in the race cannot be erased even with Surf Excel Stain Eraser.  Mr Sharma’s grandfather is known to have planted an idol of Lord Rama in the Babri Masjid at Ayodhya in the night of Dec 12, 1949.  That was a smart move as far as grandfather Sharma was concerned.  Grandfather Sharma saw himself as the prophet of Hindustan that would become in his imagination the Hindu subcontinent in the twenty-first century.  But grandfather Sharma would not have imagined that his grandson would be toiling sev

With my students in the Himalayas (2012) A friend of mine who has opened a new school in Himachal Pradesh asked me to help him get a couple of teachers from Kerala.   I rang up more than half a dozen people (friends and relatives most of whom are teachers) all of whom seemed to mock me for some culpable ignorance.   The last person whom I called the other day is a politician.  I started by mentioning the salary of Rs25000 to Rs30000 thinking that the amount would be quite attractive to a fresh graduate.  “Even if you offer Rs50000,” said my politician-cousin, “you won’t get anyone worth his salt.” “Why?” I persisted. “Teaching is not even a career option for today’s generation,” he said. Teaching as a profession is facing the threat of extinction, I mused.   I had a reason to grin sarcastically.  A few minutes before I called my cousin I had signed a circular sent by my boss.  The circular was to inform the teachers of my school that the hostel supervisors would be

Teacher is a parent away from the parents.  Today’s Hindu editorial demands better teacher training institutions.  The editorial thinks that lack of qualification has led to deterioration in teaching.  I don’t agree. The plain truth is that lack of remuneration has led to the deterioration. Quality flocks to where the money is.  If money is the ultimate value in society.  We are not living in the ancient days of the Gurukala when gurudom was the noblest position in the society.  Guru was god.  Guru possessed all the knowledge and hence the power. Today knowledge is not power.  Money is power today.  Does India want good teachers?  Pay them – that’s the answer.  Otherwise, change the system based on economy. At any rate, who is a good teacher? Let’s forget the economy and ask that question. A good teacher is one who has a passion for learning.  One who has a passion for learning will keep learning his subject and that passion will automatica

So many experts have spoken so much about the most controversial rape in India.  I read quite much.  I viewed equally much on the television. My heart weeps for the woman whose dreams have been buried even before she started seeing them clearly. But why did it all have to be this way? I’m a teacher and I’d place the blame squarely on two entities: the parents and the schools. The parents want their children to outshine everyone else.  Compete.  Defeat .  That’s the mantra given by parents to their children.  Life is about competing with other students and defeating them.  If not in academic results, at least in sports, games, acting, singing, dancing… somewhere.  If not in any of those, defeat physically.  Win somehow, anyhow.  Use hook or crook or hit below the belt. The schools too want to publicise their performance.  On Honour Boards.  Performance matters.  And only performance matters.  Values and principles are no concern of anyone.  The teacher will be q

  Ready? Go ahead, don't bother about me. I'm just an intruder with a gadget. Yeah, that's it. You are a newborn calf. You believe my words. Soon you will learn not to. [Originally posted on 19 Oct 2010.  I'm posting it again because tomorrow my students will return after their Diwali break.]