it’s been a pleasure hearing everyone
this morning late one evening my older
son came clutching a hardcover Calvin
and Hobbes and with a twinkle in his eye
I could sense that you know a good joke
just like juicy gossip one cannot keep
to oneself has to be shared immediately
with the right people so he points to
the monochromatic cartoon strip where
Calvin
very philosophically puts in a question
why does mother back us off to school
every day and doesn’t fail to add in the
same tone and so his father packed off
to work every day
well expectedly the answer comes from
Hobbes saying you know mother wants to
drive all trouble out of house everyday
so that you see are the two children
that we have Calvin and Hobbes and you
know I’m a lawyer as well and we are
modern-day gladiators trying to go and
fight other people’s battles it’s very
common for somebody in the family would
say in the morning and you are dressed
up like a unit within uniforms like
schoolchildren all the best
there’s a battle to be won you’re going
off to battle ground so one day doesn’t
find me in the quad dress and I again
the older one asks the pertinent
question where are you heading after
today I say today I’m going to deliver a
lecture this is okay all right then all
the best for your lecture Pat came the
reply or like an afterthought by the
polka phase younger one
the hops in the family hi today he
doesn’t need the best wishes if the
people are going to listen to him who
need the best wishes so that’s the the
kind of treatment I get indeed most of
us at least idols
have had a deep a moment of relief when
the children are packed off on a bus to
school every day or some relative kindly
consents to take care of them in holiday
trouble for us is out there the schools
have taken over the space of modern-day
child monitoring mechanism and therefore
and this is a change from our joint
family mechanism and therefore it’s not
too late in the day to ask ourselves the
question what is the education being
supplied to our children and also a
point of introspection for institutions
as what they are giving in modern day
education as always has been favored to
instill learning whether experience and
experiments with schooling institutions
another education mechanism has shown us
that broadly we have a fixed menu of
curriculum which is being dished out
we’ve got the standard to staple
languages some introductory math some
basic science social sciences and like a
fixed lunch menu we have a number of
forgettable side dishes which may not be
fresh like dance music crafts sport
physical education and a whole host of
activities but I think we all of us at
some point realize that none of them
have been undertaken to provide a
certain level of expertise of
proficiency in those areas we really
don’t expect that schools or all of us
would encourage them to take it up as a
profession or take it as a life mission
well that’s a question to ponder over
when you try shows some genius at math
or physics
your face lights up with a smile there’s
a future engineer a scientist researcher
but how many of us have had that same
excitement when the child shows promise
in sport possibly because we do not have
an evaluation mechanism for these side
dishes thank God
we do not have an evaluation mechanism
for that but one of the side effects is
that since you do not have an evaluation
mechanism all of us and the children
miss out on some very important things
that they could have learned or
encountered in life we very early on
decide what is relevant and what is not
relevant become part mentalize things
between relevant and irrelevant and make
a curriculum out of it therefore our
education system looks to be a little
boring
well the age-old question education for
employment earning livelihood or for
learning because all of us expect the
result of a subject being taught to gain
immediate employment well that brings to
the other question that I wanted to
raise before I go on was the correlation
between the relevant and the non
relevant and two seemingly completely
different things
early in the day we heard the talk of
Miss Parekh she embodied that two things
can be brought together now studies have
shown that things like math and music
music are highly correlated so a child
when his learning piano or playing a
piano
using both hands legs all senses is
possibly more adept at learning math and
vice versa and you’ve seen that in sport
as well how many of us have felt the joy
when we saw a perfect cover drive or a
blistering straight die by a tough
cricketer like a Tendulkar or Gasca but
have you ever realized that in that
straight drive or a covered drive there
is a lot of physics in it all of us
a lot of us have been mesmerised with
that elegant single-handed on the run
back and winner by Roger Federer he
applauded of him he gloated over his
shot but how many of us thought and saw
it as a lot of having a lot of physics
and mechanics in it well
that unfortunately has been missing from
our entrance exams as well let’s take an
example for low entrance test that’s my
background
you are when you give a class you are
tested on maths English general
knowledge legal reasoning logical sense
and a little other things what are we
missing there
what about leadership qualities
management skills emotional quotient as
a lawyer I can say for myself and for
others these qualities if not more are
equally important or making of a
hopefully our entrance test will try and
build in some of things for tomorrow the
point I’m trying to underline is it when
your child or when you Kelly picks up a
pastime fiddles with the toolbox
encourage him let him be if he hasn’t
been able to create a parallel world
where he can be lost in it please let
that happiness loom as an advocate and
also very importantly a person or
generation between a father and a son
who missed out on considerable school
before the teenagers euro illnesses and
thank God they fought successfully with
illnesses which were considered terminal
we saw at that loss did not get them to
lose out anything in life in fact they
were possibly better equipped to handle
life and their peers not to speak that
they were not lagging behind
academically possibly were a step ahead
that
got us thinking on the education of our
faith and led us to experiment the first
experiment letme undertook was setting
up a not-for-profit tennis academy ten
years ago which at any given point of
time
coaches 100 kids and i am all the time
asked this question have you produced
champions are we proud of those
champions yes of course we produce some
champions we are proud of them but with
that question and answer the larger
story goes untold and unrelated when a
child comes in and learns to play he
learns to play a game he learns to lose
he learns to win a match and play harder
he learns and experiences the pain of
building a muscle in the body and then
discovers the joy and importance of that
what’s the point of all of this does it
help our experience has been that a
child who is learned to lose who’s
learned to play an opponent without the
feeling of an enmity who’s learned to
play in tandem with another player while
playing doubles is far better equipped
to handle the uncertainties of the world
trust me serving for a day in the
sweltering heat of truth pour at 44
degrees Celsius as a ball picker your
fellow players while they’re playing the
match is a much bigger lesson in
humility in any classroom can teach for
sport like a whole host of other things
if played for the pleasure of it it can
implicate a whole lot of characteristics
trends in you and teach you life lessons
a few years ago possibly most of us if
not all saw the movie Slumdog
Millionaire
please Don a novel written by
an Indian bureaucrat and brought the
Indian scenario to Hollywood after a
long gap and underlined the old adage
you never know what will come handy when
so that was a story of a young boy who
was raised in slums of India who through
his growing up freely with no pressures
on him gather snippets of informations
and then goes on to win the most coveted
quiz contest on television and
consequently whole lot of money what it
awakened us was to a modern-day fable
that if the best thing that you can do
for a child is to let him free and lose
and that brings me to where I started
off the correlation between the relevant
and the irrelevant if you recall the
movie the snippets of information was
considered absolutely irrelevant when he
was growing up but that’s what helped
him win we are when he grew old a lot of
especially the commerce students are
told that you read management books even
things like how to become rich because
they considered relevant but how many of
us consider the stories of rigid and
data very relevant in a modern day
curriculum data if I may point out has
been one of the keenest voices of this
region and marathi literature over the
last century a lot of people would
consider him great literature and
possibly to an extent a social comment
but again i think i’m missing the larger
story how many of us consider those
stories as an equally important tool
possibly if not the best to teach some
of those relevant subjects if you’re
read stories of data you would realize
they would be a supremely effective tool
teaching things like social sciences
history and oral traditions the
contemporary social and legal structure
of those societies feminism and gender
equality and a whole host of things but
we fail to see that it’s ironical and
slightly unimaginative of me – now say
so but Ruth poor being the hub and the
most important center of the handicraft
and furniture industry in this country
possibly does not get its institution to
introduce even preliminary introductory
carpentry in their school curriculums
you cannot be devoid of your immediate
ecosystem and the society that you grew
up in a common curriculum as a standard
set menu is possibly taking us to a
desired direction which may not be great
for all of us that brings me to another
of my experiments that we ended up doing
much later after the tennis academy the
desert Lee Foundation the three of us
went up to set up Keith’s Abu The
Children’s Literature Festival for truth
board and in 2070 in December when we
did a second edition we ended up being
India’s largest Children’s Literature
Festival and when I say largest it’s in
a measure of more than 250 sessions
spread over three days over 15 platforms
with over 10,000 children coming in with
a number of adults in tow but that again
is not the larger story there is theater
music literature storytelling author
speaking workshops creative writing and
a whole host of things that’s there but
the question that I got asked and I’m
glad that question was asked to me as a
founder was what is a cookery session
doing in a literature festival
thankfully we got to bring out that was
a session there thankfully it got us to
bring out the philosophy that with which
we set it up literature we normally feed
as something to be read to do with
languages derive pleasure out of it and
communicate we thought let’s bring
literature out of the classrooms and
into the lives of children and while
doing so expand the mere the the
definition of literature itself for us
any form of communication that is
beautifully or aesthetically done is
literature cookery back to that question
well a whole lot of us especially in
India communicate with a whole lot of
other people especially mothers and
homemakers on food and if we can learn
food and cooking a little better we will
not just be able to communicate better
with them but also respect the effort
that goes into cooking food for us so
why a person like me who takes a session
there on law through stories for
children we think it’s equally important
that you must have stories for children
through food let’s weed the sum and
substance of what we have been trying to
achieve how many of us have thought over
getting across border specialization we
only think you need dimensionally
thankfully today we are all waking up to
the ideas of letting our children free
and work towards it if we are to
reinvent and reinvest the trust and
faith which ought to have been the
repository of the educational
institutions we must go back to learning
life skills and bring into the system
some of those irrelevant subjects for
the Eureka moment invariably
comes to you sitting in a bathtub or
sitting under an apple tree for the
curate for the creative juices to flow
freely it’s important that they are not
circumscribed by any assumptions or
ambitions so all of us let’s come
together listen to some pointless
stories myths and mythology’s let’s run
and play leave the door open for the
moments of happiness to come in let’s
celebrate
irrelevant and pointless stories in a
life thank you doctor valya very well said
this morning late one evening my older
son came clutching a hardcover Calvin
and Hobbes and with a twinkle in his eye
I could sense that you know a good joke
just like juicy gossip one cannot keep
to oneself has to be shared immediately
with the right people so he points to
the monochromatic cartoon strip where
Calvin
very philosophically puts in a question
why does mother back us off to school
every day and doesn’t fail to add in the
same tone and so his father packed off
to work every day
well expectedly the answer comes from
Hobbes saying you know mother wants to
drive all trouble out of house everyday
so that you see are the two children
that we have Calvin and Hobbes and you
know I’m a lawyer as well and we are
modern-day gladiators trying to go and
fight other people’s battles it’s very
common for somebody in the family would
say in the morning and you are dressed
up like a unit within uniforms like
schoolchildren all the best
there’s a battle to be won you’re going
off to battle ground so one day doesn’t
find me in the quad dress and I again
the older one asks the pertinent
question where are you heading after
today I say today I’m going to deliver a
lecture this is okay all right then all
the best for your lecture Pat came the
reply or like an afterthought by the
polka phase younger one
the hops in the family hi today he
doesn’t need the best wishes if the
people are going to listen to him who
need the best wishes so that’s the the
kind of treatment I get indeed most of
us at least idols
have had a deep a moment of relief when
the children are packed off on a bus to
school every day or some relative kindly
consents to take care of them in holiday
trouble for us is out there the schools
have taken over the space of modern-day
child monitoring mechanism and therefore
and this is a change from our joint
family mechanism and therefore it’s not
too late in the day to ask ourselves the
question what is the education being
supplied to our children and also a
point of introspection for institutions
as what they are giving in modern day
education as always has been favored to
instill learning whether experience and
experiments with schooling institutions
another education mechanism has shown us
that broadly we have a fixed menu of
curriculum which is being dished out
we’ve got the standard to staple
languages some introductory math some
basic science social sciences and like a
fixed lunch menu we have a number of
forgettable side dishes which may not be
fresh like dance music crafts sport
physical education and a whole host of
activities but I think we all of us at
some point realize that none of them
have been undertaken to provide a
certain level of expertise of
proficiency in those areas we really
don’t expect that schools or all of us
would encourage them to take it up as a
profession or take it as a life mission
well that’s a question to ponder over
when you try shows some genius at math
or physics
your face lights up with a smile there’s
a future engineer a scientist researcher
but how many of us have had that same
excitement when the child shows promise
in sport possibly because we do not have
an evaluation mechanism for these side
dishes thank God
we do not have an evaluation mechanism
for that but one of the side effects is
that since you do not have an evaluation
mechanism all of us and the children
miss out on some very important things
that they could have learned or
encountered in life we very early on
decide what is relevant and what is not
relevant become part mentalize things
between relevant and irrelevant and make
a curriculum out of it therefore our
education system looks to be a little
boring
well the age-old question education for
employment earning livelihood or for
learning because all of us expect the
result of a subject being taught to gain
immediate employment well that brings to
the other question that I wanted to
raise before I go on was the correlation
between the relevant and the non
relevant and two seemingly completely
different things
early in the day we heard the talk of
Miss Parekh she embodied that two things
can be brought together now studies have
shown that things like math and music
music are highly correlated so a child
when his learning piano or playing a
piano
using both hands legs all senses is
possibly more adept at learning math and
vice versa and you’ve seen that in sport
as well how many of us have felt the joy
when we saw a perfect cover drive or a
blistering straight die by a tough
cricketer like a Tendulkar or Gasca but
have you ever realized that in that
straight drive or a covered drive there
is a lot of physics in it all of us
a lot of us have been mesmerised with
that elegant single-handed on the run
back and winner by Roger Federer he
applauded of him he gloated over his
shot but how many of us thought and saw
it as a lot of having a lot of physics
and mechanics in it well
that unfortunately has been missing from
our entrance exams as well let’s take an
example for low entrance test that’s my
background
you are when you give a class you are
tested on maths English general
knowledge legal reasoning logical sense
and a little other things what are we
missing there
what about leadership qualities
management skills emotional quotient as
a lawyer I can say for myself and for
others these qualities if not more are
equally important or making of a
hopefully our entrance test will try and
build in some of things for tomorrow the
point I’m trying to underline is it when
your child or when you Kelly picks up a
pastime fiddles with the toolbox
encourage him let him be if he hasn’t
been able to create a parallel world
where he can be lost in it please let
that happiness loom as an advocate and
also very importantly a person or
generation between a father and a son
who missed out on considerable school
before the teenagers euro illnesses and
thank God they fought successfully with
illnesses which were considered terminal
we saw at that loss did not get them to
lose out anything in life in fact they
were possibly better equipped to handle
life and their peers not to speak that
they were not lagging behind
academically possibly were a step ahead
that
got us thinking on the education of our
faith and led us to experiment the first
experiment letme undertook was setting
up a not-for-profit tennis academy ten
years ago which at any given point of
time
coaches 100 kids and i am all the time
asked this question have you produced
champions are we proud of those
champions yes of course we produce some
champions we are proud of them but with
that question and answer the larger
story goes untold and unrelated when a
child comes in and learns to play he
learns to play a game he learns to lose
he learns to win a match and play harder
he learns and experiences the pain of
building a muscle in the body and then
discovers the joy and importance of that
what’s the point of all of this does it
help our experience has been that a
child who is learned to lose who’s
learned to play an opponent without the
feeling of an enmity who’s learned to
play in tandem with another player while
playing doubles is far better equipped
to handle the uncertainties of the world
trust me serving for a day in the
sweltering heat of truth pour at 44
degrees Celsius as a ball picker your
fellow players while they’re playing the
match is a much bigger lesson in
humility in any classroom can teach for
sport like a whole host of other things
if played for the pleasure of it it can
implicate a whole lot of characteristics
trends in you and teach you life lessons
a few years ago possibly most of us if
not all saw the movie Slumdog
Millionaire
please Don a novel written by
an Indian bureaucrat and brought the
Indian scenario to Hollywood after a
long gap and underlined the old adage
you never know what will come handy when
so that was a story of a young boy who
was raised in slums of India who through
his growing up freely with no pressures
on him gather snippets of informations
and then goes on to win the most coveted
quiz contest on television and
consequently whole lot of money what it
awakened us was to a modern-day fable
that if the best thing that you can do
for a child is to let him free and lose
and that brings me to where I started
off the correlation between the relevant
and the irrelevant if you recall the
movie the snippets of information was
considered absolutely irrelevant when he
was growing up but that’s what helped
him win we are when he grew old a lot of
especially the commerce students are
told that you read management books even
things like how to become rich because
they considered relevant but how many of
us consider the stories of rigid and
data very relevant in a modern day
curriculum data if I may point out has
been one of the keenest voices of this
region and marathi literature over the
last century a lot of people would
consider him great literature and
possibly to an extent a social comment
but again i think i’m missing the larger
story how many of us consider those
stories as an equally important tool
possibly if not the best to teach some
of those relevant subjects if you’re
read stories of data you would realize
they would be a supremely effective tool
teaching things like social sciences
history and oral traditions the
contemporary social and legal structure
of those societies feminism and gender
equality and a whole host of things but
we fail to see that it’s ironical and
slightly unimaginative of me – now say
so but Ruth poor being the hub and the
most important center of the handicraft
and furniture industry in this country
possibly does not get its institution to
introduce even preliminary introductory
carpentry in their school curriculums
you cannot be devoid of your immediate
ecosystem and the society that you grew
up in a common curriculum as a standard
set menu is possibly taking us to a
desired direction which may not be great
for all of us that brings me to another
of my experiments that we ended up doing
much later after the tennis academy the
desert Lee Foundation the three of us
went up to set up Keith’s Abu The
Children’s Literature Festival for truth
board and in 2070 in December when we
did a second edition we ended up being
India’s largest Children’s Literature
Festival and when I say largest it’s in
a measure of more than 250 sessions
spread over three days over 15 platforms
with over 10,000 children coming in with
a number of adults in tow but that again
is not the larger story there is theater
music literature storytelling author
speaking workshops creative writing and
a whole host of things that’s there but
the question that I got asked and I’m
glad that question was asked to me as a
founder was what is a cookery session
doing in a literature festival
thankfully we got to bring out that was
a session there thankfully it got us to
bring out the philosophy that with which
we set it up literature we normally feed
as something to be read to do with
languages derive pleasure out of it and
communicate we thought let’s bring
literature out of the classrooms and
into the lives of children and while
doing so expand the mere the the
definition of literature itself for us
any form of communication that is
beautifully or aesthetically done is
literature cookery back to that question
well a whole lot of us especially in
India communicate with a whole lot of
other people especially mothers and
homemakers on food and if we can learn
food and cooking a little better we will
not just be able to communicate better
with them but also respect the effort
that goes into cooking food for us so
why a person like me who takes a session
there on law through stories for
children we think it’s equally important
that you must have stories for children
through food let’s weed the sum and
substance of what we have been trying to
achieve how many of us have thought over
getting across border specialization we
only think you need dimensionally
thankfully today we are all waking up to
the ideas of letting our children free
and work towards it if we are to
reinvent and reinvest the trust and
faith which ought to have been the
repository of the educational
institutions we must go back to learning
life skills and bring into the system
some of those irrelevant subjects for
the Eureka moment invariably
comes to you sitting in a bathtub or
sitting under an apple tree for the
curate for the creative juices to flow
freely it’s important that they are not
circumscribed by any assumptions or
ambitions so all of us let’s come
together listen to some pointless
stories myths and mythology’s let’s run
and play leave the door open for the
moments of happiness to come in let’s
celebrate
irrelevant and pointless stories in a
life thank you doctor valya very well said
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