55. LEISURELY LEARNING
Here, a class in Vishwabharati, Shantiniketan!
I have studied like this!
OVER the years, we all studied much, and forgot much more! We may say, after Chesterton, that what remains after all that we studied and forgot is education or true learning!
Academic knowledge- a waste?
If we ponder, we would be struck by how much we remember that we did not study as part of our formal education. Unless we are a professional like a physician or a lawyer or an accountant, we do not have need or occasion to remember what we studied, especially as part of some compulsory requirement. Most of us who have been pen-pushers in some bureaucratic jungle had no use at all for all or any of our college-acquired academic notions or potions. In fact, display of such knowledge could invite the wrath or repugnance of our bosses. They would think that we were trying to show off, and that would surely reflect in the way they wrote on us in the annual performance assessment, called in India "confidential report". The system was a cooker of lies, half-truths and prejudices but we lived with it. So we had to be careful not to display our learning! This was especially so when we, graduates and post-graduates directly recruited as probationary officers, had to work under seniors who had long service but were short on college education and academic taste or interest. It was enough for them if we mastered the officialese. So, in course of time we forgot what little remained of our wisdom acquired in the college for which our parents had paid through their nose! Truly did the Peter Principle say: In every hierarchy, the employee tends to rise to his own level of incompetence.
In other words, the hierarchy tends to make you incompetent, so that you would fit into the system. Unless you fall in line, you can't survive. A less charitable way of saying it would be : you can't teach old dogs new tricks!
Rather the old dogs taught us something. I am not joking but would relate two incidents. When we were on probation, my colleague V.Nayar had written a note. His boss saw it and made him rewrite it 7 times, so that not a single unusual word would be present in it!. Once during probation,I had written something. My supervisor called me and said we South Indians were fond of writing too much to show our knowledge of English,and got into trouble! He asked me to touch his palms. He was a Punjabi, but his palm was smooth! He told me: Jee, yahi tho cheez hai! Jo neeche se aata hai, upar bhejo and jo upar se vapas aata hai ,neeche bhejo! Aap kahe ko jyada fiqr karte ho? Office aapke dimag se nahi chalnewala hai. Upar tho koi baitha hai, hukum dene wala! Usko apne kaam karne do aur aap aaram se rahiyo! Main tho pachees saal yahi karte raha, ab dekho, mera life smooth hai, mere paam jaisa! [ Mister, listen. What comes from your subordinates, send up; and what comes back, send down! Why do you trouble yourself ? Do you think the office needs your intelligence? Someone is sitting up, giving orders. Let him do his work, and you relax. I have done this for twenty five years, and see, my life is as smooth as my palm!] Over the years, I found it to be sensible advice.
Management theories and real life bankruptcy
We have heard of so many theories, new practices: Management by Results, MBO, Quality Circles, Kaizen, 6 Sigma, Core Competence etc. Have you seen a corporation which adopted such things and succeeded for long? They adore management books, but corporations survive in spite of them! When GM failed and filed for bankruptcy, it was not Harvard or Wharton or Kellogg and their fancy theories that helped it but Federal funding! GM failed because its cars were not bought! How could management theory change it?Management schools are mental institutions on the reverse: they turn the heads of normal , sane people! A great thinker like Peter Drucker is original, and not a product of any business school. He educated us, not taught us theories or formulae.
Remembering poems
I happen to remember poems both from my school days and later. But I have not been a teacher or academic. Whenever I interact with school children, I ask them to recite the poems they studied. Almost all of them say : 'uncle, that portion was done in the last year or last semester. The test is over, and we don't remember'. Once I was asking a relative's daughters, and they also said the same. My relative intervened and remarked that I might be an exception that I remembered so many poems; how many of my old class mates did the same?
May be there is something here. But these children remember so many film songs which they do not study formally! Even three- four year olds listen to some Ads on the TV and repeat them nicely!
This is a paradox. What we study laboriously we forget; what we listen to almost casually sticks to us. But this also contains a secret or a clue. We remember songs which we do not formally learn because of the music, mainly. We remember something which we like, for which there is no compulsion. Sometimes, the words too are attractive.
From: Wikipedia
Good teachers recite poetry!
In our school days, the teachers of English and Tamil recited the poems , did not merely read them ! The Tamil pundits would recite them in the fixed meter, set to a specific tune. And the words would often be rhyming. Consider these lines:
கானகத்தே காரிருளில் காதலியைக் கைவிட்டுப்
போனதுவும் வேந்தற்குப் போதுமோ தான் -என்று
சாற்றினான் அந்தவுரை தார்வேந்தன் தன் செவியில்
ஏற்றினான் வந்தான் எதிர்
These are from the long Tamil poem Nala Venba. We know the story of how Raja Nala is made to leave his kingdom, and separate from his wife, Damayanti.. Here, someone is asking the king in disguise whether it was proper for the king to have abandoned his loving wife in the forest at dead of night and gone away! This was in my 7th or 8th standard- 1953/54 but I still remember because I heard my teacher recite this in the set tune!
The English teachers could not sing to musical tunes, but they would recite without seeing the book, and the rhymes would come out:
I come from haunts of coot and hern,
I make a sudden sally
And sparkle out among the fern,
To bicker down a valley.
By thirty hills I hurry down,
Or slip between the ridges,
By twenty thorpes a little town
And half a hundred bridges.
It is not a question of remembering; I wonder how any one can forget this if he had heard it recited as a poem? Sound is important in poetry, and we must hear and recite the poems aloud! Mixed with music, it is really like honey on ice cream!
Children under stress
I can't blame the children now. The burden of syllabus is heavy; the distractions are many; the pressure of the test is severe; the teachers are so incompetent. The children read too much, and learn too little!
How can the teacher induce love for poetry or song if he himself did not enjoy it? If he taught it merely as a duty? And how can children enjoy poetry, song or dance if they did not have all the time in the world to indulge in them as they pleased?
We struggled and enjoyed!
In our day, we simply had all the time we liked! In the Pre-University Class, we had a textbook of English essays; we had a selection of poetry; we had two non-detailed texts: Tom Sawyer and a biography of Albert Schweitzer! We had a similar syllabus in Tamil. Then we had Maths,(or Biology) Physics, Chemistry, World History and Logic! All this to be studied in ten months. Above all, we had just switched from Tamil medium to pure English medium! So, for the first time in our lives, we studied for the exam! And did we struggle!
But things changed at graduation. We still had language as an important component , in spite of our major
subject. The English paper consisted of Prose selection with essays by all the leading English essayists: E.V.Lucas, Robert Lynd, A.G.Gardiner (Alpha of the Plough), G.K.Chesterton, R.L.Stevenson,Max Beerbohm, Arthur Quiller Couch, J.B.Priestley, and others. In poetry we had a selection of longer poems from Milton, Goldsmith, Keats, Coleridge, Robert Browning,Francis Thompson, James Elroy Flecker, etc. Shakespeare was honoured with two selections: Macbeth and Much Ado About Nothing. For non-detailed study, we had Hardy's Trumpet Major and a book of biographical essays by Arthur Quiller Couch: Roll Call of Honour. Yet this was only one subject. We had a like portion in Tamil, besides our Major subject with its two ancillaries! And there was a minor subject too: a humanities subject for science students and science subject for humanities students. The idea was that a graduate should be rounded, and not be an example of the Two Cultures by C.P.Snow!
But we had three full years to study all this! For our higher studies, only the major subjects mattered. So most boys concentrated on them. But those who had a liking for literature could really thrive! Our college library was well stocked. I liked Hardy and so read all his books- except Jude The Obscure which was not issued to the students on the orders of the Principal. There was no question of reading much poetry then, for in the absence of annotated editions, it was difficult to follow. There were many books on Shakespeare, like that by A.C.Bradley. There was real pressure only in the last year and for two years we did have pleasure from our prose and poetry. Today, the major subjects we studied are irrelevant- having been overturned by new developments, or simply ignored by the authorities: which Finance Minister bothers about the Canons of Taxation, or Banking by Sayers or Central Banking by M.H.Dekock? Which Prime Minister of India knows the meaning of Cabinet Government or Separation of Powers or Checks and Balances? But there has not been another Shakespeare or Milton, Wordsworth or Goldsmith! They did not teach us language- they taught us the secrets of life, which are eternally relevant! This is the beauty of literature: it is part of life.
We could enjoy this because we learned at leisure! We had all the time to read or be idle, dream and imagine!
Our future did not depend upon getting 96.7 %! We enjoyed what we liked! We were exposed to the cream of English writers! Compared to this, Tamil literature lacked variety and was plainly boring. As Shakespeare said in Taming of the Shrew:
Glad that you thus continue your resolve
To suck the sweets of sweet philosophy.
Only, good master, while we do admire
This virtue and this moral discipline,
Let’s be no stoics nor no stocks, I pray,
Or so devote to Aristotle’s checks
As Ovid be an outcast quite abjured.
Balk logic with acquaintance that you have,
And practice rhetoric in your common talk;
Music and poesy use to quicken you;
The mathematics and the metaphysics—
Fall to them as you find your stomach serves you.
No profit grows where is no pleasure ta'en.
In brief, sir, study what you most affect.
In fine, we should study what we enjoy!
No profit grows where no pleasure is taken
In brief, sir, study what you most affect.
Bad state of literature teaching today
It is one thing to read a subject to qualify for the examination but that does not necessarily lead to enjoyment. Poetry today is dissected, like they dissect a dead frog or cockroach in the biology class.They are made to master theories, not the poets!
from: www.slideshare.net.
We may not remember much if there is no test at the end- the stress caused here, within limits, is in a way good- Eustress, (Hans Selye), not distress! But the final mark alone cannot be made the arbiter! But that is what actually happens,and students under stress even commit suicide! No academic system has yet found a method to assess students without causing acute distress! No one looks at a candidate without first looking at his mark sheet. What brutal and foolish tyranny!
Literature is especially suited for leisurely learning.We continue to discover new meanings in old tales or poems,as we move under the arches of the years! The Brook might have been a simple poem while at school, but later we would discover its metaphorical significance and philosophical meaning! Tess might have been the story of how the President of the immortals played with the life of an innocent village girl, but later we would discover how it was the critique of an age and its mores! Dickens did not write stories merely ; he was doing through his stories what Marx was attempting through his economic and political writings; and Dickens succeeded more than Marx because he touched people's hearts and conscience! He was fulfilling the old epic function of telling a story to straighten society! Thus there is no limit to the way we can enjoy the Classics. If we want to enjoy any aspect of literature, it is enough if we read that literature, and not comments about that. Especially the comments by modern academics should be totally ignored. What does it matter what Harold Bloom thinks about Walt Whitman or Oliver Goldsmith? We can read and try to figure out for ourselves. Yet, Bloom is better than some others. Some old authorities are very helpful, though. If you like an author, read him, not about him. Something like Norton Anthology is very helpful with annotations. No British edition comes near it.
Look beyond the school and university for true learning
The secret of true learning is learning at leisure, at our own individual pace! And enjoying what we read! We should be able to laugh and play! As E.M.Forster asked: "Can a man be perfect if he never laughs and plays?"The present academic system coaches candidates for examinations, and does not truly teach anyone anything! True learning today lies outside the academies- the colleges and universities! If we can find a like minded friend or a mentor, it is a blessing. Hang the universities, but hang on to the great literature!
Thoroughly enjoyed.
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