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Dons unlearn at experts' classes

Last Updated 22 January 2012, 19:09 IST
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‘Don’t be helpful’ is an intriguing slogan for display at an event purporting to promote some advancement in education.

Deccan Herald in Education (DHiE) had arranged the one-day seminar here on Saturday for principals and heads of schools in its annual bid to contribute its mite to value development in education.

Very good, conceded Shekhar P Seshadri, author of the slogan above and prime participant in the seminar. He elucidated, however, the problems that justified the message in the slogan. Mandatory cautions could annihilate all effort at social good.

This import of the slogan held good for education in facing ‘New challenges in the class room.’

The only other prime participant, Ian Faria, spun magic circles too around the relatively elderly gathering to drive home his point on ‘Making education succeed in a fast paced world.’ His cautioned that education is inadequate.

Catchy computer presentation helped him to project the truth that most of the top seven billionaires were moderately educated or less. Both speakers, in distinctive but contrasting fashion, lead the audience into a baffling maze and then dramatically showed the simple way out.

Seshadri is eminently qualified to pose tricky questions to subjects because he works as a professor in the department of child and adolescent psychiatry in Nimhans. Standard education, he feels, has fallen into an abyss in corporate, competitive circumstances.

“Children are not an amorphous mass of humanity. A child uses people as subjects. A teacher therefore has to be a role model but not in the customary fashion.”

Seshadri’s message is amazingly simple: ‘Help the children to learn how to learn.’ Using his hands like a stage artiste, he quotes what he calls Vigotskyan principles - theory of knowledge, theory of value and theory of human nature. This sounds like material that he would give to psychology students but he succeeds - again using theatrical tools - to apply the notions closely to alter the form of education of children.

Ace trainer of top CEOs, Ian Faria’s theme is success. It is his day’s mission to tell the principals, ways of ‘Making education succeed in a fast paced world.’ He does not say don’t be helpful. Conscious mind is what education seeks to change.

He draws a striking verbal chart of how principals can work wonders. Underlining the importance of the sub-conscious, he says, “If your attitude to teachers changes, the teachers can pass it on to the students.”

He calls for ‘change in ourselves before we bring about change in children.’

In the end, principal Joy Fernandes felt inspired, headmistress N Sharada discovered that her team can explore more of what they are doing already and Sabeeha picked up a simple clue - have discussion, allow students to come up with ideas.

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(Published 22 January 2012, 19:09 IST)

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