(Continuation...)
Oh God, I had never imagined such a day comes in my life...
Everyone in the class were shocked and looked us like we were some kind of criminals.
We were taken to the head of our campus.
He: Why are you not taking notes? You must take notes.
We know each other as I won prizes in couple of talent exams so I took little daring steps here.
Me: Taking notes or solving problems, which is important Sir? I am solving the problems on this paper and I don't have proper note book for this subject.
He: You need to have a separate note book and you should take notes properly as it is part of your discipline and we give more importance to discipline than anything.
Me: I am understanding the answers and I don't want mug up the solutions so I am not keeping a proper note book. If I forget the solution, I will try to solve the problem again.
He: Doesn't matter, you need to take notes, it is our policy. Now, you all write a letter accepting that "you have committed a sin and never do it again".
Me: I have not committed any sin so I am not writing any letter.
He: I will not allow you to sit in the class, if you don't write the letter.
My hands were totally chained, I didn't want to make the situation more worse so I wrote a letter as I felt but not what he told. He didn't say anything about it but he told, P.T. teacher to put a stamp on our school dairy to inform our parents about the incident.
Thanks for reading. Please watch following video: An Inspiring Teacher Who is Changing Lives.
Keep planting good seeds with smile and one day they surely give you and everyone fruits.
When I first met her, she was way complicated for me. The way I grew, it was bit hard from me to understand her initially.
Being grown up in middle class Indian background, only thing that really mattered in my school days was studying. No encouragement for any kind of fun with girls; I couldn't even talk to any girl in my school time, and that was actually kind of taboo in my school at that time, I don't know the situation now. All the fun I had in my school days is with my buddies, we used to play games, fight for silly things, copy in exams, tease teachers and what not. But now everything is changed in my life after meeting her.
Actually I wasn't quite ready for her when we first met. Only focus was her sexy figure and I used dream all the time about it. I didn't know what to speak with her, I was totally nervous in our initial days. You know those background thoughts about her figure while we were talking, at times she gives strange looks and shouts in sweet tone, where were you lost? Oh God please help me, handle this girl.
I realized that God already gave me sufficient strength to handle everything but it just took sometime for me to see that. I started observing how she interacts with others. Wow!! she is totally cool and cute. Slowly as time passed many events happened in our life and now we love each other so deeply.
She asked me many times about my childhood stories but I never shown interest to tell her about them. I thought they are boring so I kept on postponing but one day she insisted so I had to tell her. Amazingly she was not bored at all!! We enjoyed those moments with kisses and hugs.
Later when we met, she asked me a question. Can Indian kids directly learn from internet without any teacher? I knew where this was coming from...
While I was telling my childhood story, I said to her that I didn't know, why I went to school and why I was studying all these subjects. Even though my parents kept on saying that if you study well you will get good job then I asked, what happens next they said, you will get good girl to marry and you will have good family. And then I asked what happens after that and they were surprised as the never thought beyond it so they just said to me that you were asking to many questions. I was not convinced with their answers but there was no one to provide the right answer to me at that time.
She was then talking about self driven learning where one start from the big picture and come to tiny pieces. I said, "Wow that is very interesting!!". I was influenced by her idea. We started looking for answers and to our surprise many people around the global are using internet to improve education and make it self driven. Big thanks to Sugata Mitra, he is doing great work in that area.
He conducted several experiments with children of various ages. He provides computers with good internet connection to the children and let them explore on their own. We couldn't believe our selves, we thought, to learn anything we need a teacher but these kids did wonderful things without any teacher. Then we realized, actually internet is a collaboration of teachers across the globe and that is how all these are possible.
"Just as eating against one’s will is injurious to health, so studying
without a liking for it spoils the memory, and it retains nothing it
takes in." -Leonardo Da Vinci
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." -Mark Twain
"Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is." -Isaac Asimov
Yes darling, It is the time, we should provide our children the power of internet and let them see the big picture and learn on their own at their own pace.
I was introduced to my internet friend by Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur where I went to do graduation in Computer Science. I opened my first email account at IIT Kanpur. It may be little surprise for you but believe me there are many like me.
I loved my new friend very much she then introduced to many other friends in Google, Yahoo and Orkut etc. I fell in love with her and it went well initially. But then she and her friends demanding too much from me, I can't spend all my time with her but again I can't leave her for long also. I was totally screwed up by her.
She is a beautiful devil and very dangerous and attractive so I decided to avoid her. I couldn't avoid her completely but I got used to her so that initial excitement was gone then interesting things start coming into my life.
Now she looks like an angel to me and there is so much to explore in her. She knows many things like my engineering subjects, human evolution, politics, sports and what not. She even talks about GOD. Then one day I asked what are you, Angel or Devil? then she simply smiles and says it depends on what are you looking for. I have to agree to her and it applies to anything. Nothing is good or bad absolutely and it just depends on who is using it.
"Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school." -Albert Einstein
It is not surprise to think that way for a genius like Einstein. We all can see what our schools are producing every year. I think he sees the school education as dumping information and facts into young mind rather than making them observe, think and learn.
We are trying to provide ready made answers to many of the basic questions without even allowing the children to think for their selves. Sometimes we ourselves don't know the answers but we don't hesitate to give borrowed answers to our children; and if the child asks further follow up questions for which we don't even have borrowed answers then we use several tactics to deviate the child from the topic. We may think that we are escaped from that situation but children can easily see that we don't know anything about it; this little EGO is killing their inquisitiveness.
"Play is often talked about as if it were a relief from serious learning. But for children, play is serious learning. Play is really the work of childhood." -Fred Rogers
Can we let our children play and learn for them selves? Then we just need to watch and pad them for their new inventions. I believe every child has potential to do great things. Internet helps us to find answers to many questions with proper understanding. It is an action time to let go our little EGO and allow our children to do research, understand and learn on their own.
