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 is 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 every day
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 the
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 poker face
younger one the hopes 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 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 learnt or
encountered in life we very early on
decide what is relevant and what is not
relevant become art 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 too 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 child
when is 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 top
cricketer like a Tendulkar or Gavaskar
but have you ever realized that in that
straight drive or a comma 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 we
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 math English general
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 your colleague
picks up a past time witness with the
toolbox encourage him let him be if he
has been able to create a parallel world
where he can be lost in it please let
that happiness bloom 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 if what 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
what is thinking on the education of our
side and led us to experiment the first
experiment let me undertook was setting
up a not-for-profit tennis academy 10
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
muscle a strong muscle in his body but
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 jhooth poor at 44
degrees Celsius as a ball picker you
have fellow players while they’re
playing the match is a much bigger
lesson in humility in any classroom can
teach so sport like a whole host of
other things
if played for the pleasure of it it can
implicate a whole lot of characteristics
friends in you and teach you life
lessons a few years ago possibly most of
us if not all saw the movie Slumdog
Millionaire placed on 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’s 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 leaf foundation the three of us
went up to set up Keith Abu The
Children’s Literature Festival for
jhooth poor 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 see
it as something to be read to do with
languages and 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
when a whole lot of us especially in
India communicate with a whole lot of
other people specially 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 needa mention ‘le
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 is 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 every day
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 the
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 poker face
younger one the hopes 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 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 learnt or
encountered in life we very early on
decide what is relevant and what is not
relevant become art 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 too 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 child
when is 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 top
cricketer like a Tendulkar or Gavaskar
but have you ever realized that in that
straight drive or a comma 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 we
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 math English general
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 your colleague
picks up a past time witness with the
toolbox encourage him let him be if he
has been able to create a parallel world
where he can be lost in it please let
that happiness bloom 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 if what 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
what is thinking on the education of our
side and led us to experiment the first
experiment let me undertook was setting
up a not-for-profit tennis academy 10
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
muscle a strong muscle in his body but
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 jhooth poor at 44
degrees Celsius as a ball picker you
have fellow players while they’re
playing the match is a much bigger
lesson in humility in any classroom can
teach so sport like a whole host of
other things
if played for the pleasure of it it can
implicate a whole lot of characteristics
friends in you and teach you life
lessons a few years ago possibly most of
us if not all saw the movie Slumdog
Millionaire placed on 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’s 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 leaf foundation the three of us
went up to set up Keith Abu The
Children’s Literature Festival for
jhooth poor 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 see
it as something to be read to do with
languages and 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
when a whole lot of us especially in
India communicate with a whole lot of
other people specially 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 needa mention ‘le
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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