When I look back and try to identify, what was the most useful thing I learnt at school, it is not the formulae and equations in mathematics ,physics or chemistry, nor the grammar in languages, it was just “learning to learn”. Once a teacher kindles the curiosity in you rest is an automatic process ; one just needs to be allowed to learn by experimenting and the teacher just needs to provide the timely help when one is badly stuck and there’s the danger of losing interest. Kindle the curiosity and keep the interest alive and that’s all there is to it.
Today there’s a lot of talk about technology aided teaching. There are three dimensional multimedia presentations to explain every principle and process in Science. Even the text books have color graphics. Those days a teacher was everything; even complex subjects had to be explained with just chalk and talk augmented by the experiments in laboratories and even outside them.
When I try to recall the lessons taught by Mr Venkateswaran, it is not just the subject , I still remember the way he went about introducing an idea. It was the first lesson on singled cell organisms . It was in class VI, Venky sir walks in , asks a boy to open his mouth and proceeds to pick a bit food debris from between the teeth and make a slide then and there. Then we all trooped into the lab to peer at that slide. We could not make out much , but sure we saw some living things moving about. It could have been shown on a pre-prepared slide or a chart . But the fact that my classmate Sivakumar, I still remember the boy with the open mouth, could be hosting an universe of micro-organisms in his mouth kindles the kind of curiosity, that one wants to learn more and more.
The same teacher , to introduce the human digestive system, made a boy do a headstand in the class. It was Satyanarayanan, I wonder if he remembers. He made the boy drink a sip of water in that unusual position. Then he went on to explain that food we eat does not travel through the alimentary canal by gravity , but through a muscular process , and is independent of the position you are in . It was called peristalsis, a word that I can never forget ,even If I wanted to.
I can go on and on from circulatory system , skeletal system to reproductive system, I can still recall the way the subject was introduced and an interest created.
As for mathematics , we were taught just the theorems and principles in class. We had to do a whole lot of exercises on our own to be discussed in the class the next day. When Mr Ram Kalia , terror to some, inquired to know who all could get the solutions right, it was absolute thrill to put up your hand and walk up to the board. The prospect of this moment motivated me to work and solve it on my own the previous day. This is one thing I missed , be it in college or anywhere else.
Mr Cherian introduced the idea of the first law of motion like this. He took an ink bottle from a boy , placed it on a piece of paper on the table. The idea was to show that as long as he moved the paper slowly, the ink bottle would move with the paper; but if he did it in one quick motion the paper would come free leaving the ink pot at the same place. Easier said than done. The way he was charged up I was expecting the ink bottle to go flying across the class room , break into pieces splashing ink all over. As it happened , he took a ruler from another boy and with one quick whack on the paper, released it clean off the table. There was so much energy put into teaching. The entire picture and the law of inertia is etched in my brain for ever.
As for English, I can say, we did most of the exercises in Wren and Martin book , and on our own. Then we had English Today, by Ronald Ridout, generally referred to as just “Ridout” , a gem of a book. We never heard about anything called “learning questions and answers” . The only thing we learnt probably was how to question yourself, how to push yourselves and find the answers. After all what is better learning than learning to learn ?
May be it was just Zeitgeist; the spirit of the times, and I am making too much of it. There was an enthusiasm to share knowledge without thinking of marks and competitions. It was truly lighting a lamp rather than filling a bucket.