education - a leveller

I have learnt a lot of chapters of history but don’t remember having learnt a lesson from it. Today, however, is different. I think I have had a very strong glimpse of the fact that education is a leveler – it is one of the children of development that remove barriers between people and put them on an equal footing.

Raghu met me a couple of days back, and again yesterday with the request of teaching him English; and Dilip joined in. both of them are fulltime house elves (no intention of comparing their state with those in HP). They got pens and old diaries. What next? I asked them to sit down. J And I could not possibly teach them if they were sitting on the floor. So naturally I sat with them on the table. This would not have been a big thing – if it would have happened EVER BEFORE. This was the first time when I was sitting on the same table with 2 of our house servants and it came to me as a surprise how smoothly we came over on the same footing as soon as we tried to connect with each other through the bond of learning.

But I have to confess I don’t know how to teach them from the beginning. Guess I will have to seek help from Neha, one of my students, who teaches tiny tots at Fountainhead. Now again this idea hits me – Neha teaches at Fountainhead, Vardan Kabra’s school. He claims to be adopting the methods and techniques of highest standards. How smoothly, again, these techniques will be replicated to teach a couple of absolutely uneducated kids.

I will sign off with an adaptation of Plato’s thought – “You get every wisdom at a small effort of thoughts.”