In Educational institutions
you are considered a good student if you are very bright on the academic side and not very rebellious. But some students ask questions. Questions seem like a form of rebellion. Many of them are very valid
questions. They are considered rebels. How dare a student question the textbook?
How dare a student question authority?
Can’t authority be wrong
sometimes? Can’t authority be questioned sometimes? As a student I was part of
both the groups. I would not question, because I was worried it may have been
wrong. But then I questioned my reasoning behind not asking more questions.
Soon I was a menace in class.
The Death of Curiosity and Andy
Andy was in the seventh grade
at a local middle school in his town. He was a curious young boy, who liked to
understand how the world worked. His parents were very happy to answer all his
questions as a little child. So he was always filled with plenty of questions
for the people around him like,
“Mom, why is there light
coming out of the T.V?”
“Mom, how do birds fly in the
sky?”
In kindergarten, Andy kept
this up. He would often ask his teacher about alphabets, numbers and other
things he learnt there.
Andy enjoyed asking questions
because students do not laugh at you if you have a funny question in play
school.
But things started changing
as he got into junior school. There was now more too study and the teachers did
not have as much time to answer all the questions Andy had.
Andy thought he would ask her
the question after class, but he rarely got a chance to do so. In class his
teacher would rush through all the portions at school and then ask Andy and his
classmates, ‘Have you understood everything? Do you have any questions to ask
me?’
Now Andy looks around and is
waiting for somebody else to ask the first question. Andy had lots of questions.
The teacher would not encourage too much questioning during class time as it
would disturb the rhythm of the class and may result in the day’s portion not
being complete.
Nobody wants to ask a question. Why?
When Andy looks around and
notices that nobody has a question, he starts doubting his question and thinks
it is not valid.
Andy assumed that if nobody
had a question, everyone had understood everything. He was the only one that
had a question, so he was not listening properly. He starts thinking that if he
asks a question at that point of time and it was not valid everybody would
laugh at him.
So he decides to keep the
question to himself and discuss it with his friends after class. But not many
students want to stay back and discuss classwork after class.
When Andy grows up!
As he progresses to the next
grade, he has lots of unanswered questions. The student did not ask any
questions at the start of his education. So his basic understanding of many of
the subjects at school is not very clear.
The problem arises when he
gets to the sixth and seventh grades, where a thorough understanding of the
basics is vital. The teachers in the these grades assume that every student
knows the basics well. They would not have gotten to this grade with understanding
the basic and most simple concepts well. But these concepts do seem simple when
you are older and have worked on more complex issues for years. But it is not
easy, if you are a student who is learning it for the first time and not
thought it well.
But Andy’s school is wrong
again. Andy is not the only student in his class that has tons of unanswered
questions. Many of his classmates have the same unanswered questions as well.
Nobody is ready to accept this in front of the classmates and teachers, as they
would be considered stupid if they did so.
The students keep the
questions to themselves during middle school as well. High school starts and
Andy finds it very hard to keep his grades up now. One day he does not
understand a concept being explained in class. He noticed the teacher was in a
hurry, to finish the portion and did not explain that part well.
The End of the Class
At the end of the class, the
teacher asks the students if they have understood everything. Andy stands up and truthfully
tells the teacher he did not understand a specific part of the day’s lesson and
he would be grateful if the teacher could explain that part of the day’s lesson
to him again.
Now the teacher could have
told Andy to meet her after class and he would sit down and discuss that part
with him. But it had been a long day for the teacher and the question
frustrated him.
So he decided to remove all
his frustrations on Andy. He reprimanded Andy in front of the whole class,
telling him he was a bad student and was always talking and not listening in
class. The students see Andy singled out, and realize that no harm will come to
them. So some of them laugh. The teacher then brings up an old and completely
unrelated incident that Andy was unfortunately involved in at school. He had
gotten into some trouble for it. The professor then passes a comment on his
character. The student is not allowed to say anything, because he is a student
only and authority must always be right. He knows he was not wrong to put
forward that question, but he is not able to defend himself.
Never ask a question
This incident traumatized
Andy for the weeks to come. He decided never to ask a question again as he was
afraid of a rebuking. The funny part was that many of the other students in
class did not understand that specific part of the day’s lesson. The teacher
did not explain it well enough. But nobody was ready to question the
professor’s authority. You did not want to get on the professor’s bad side.
The professor had moved from
making a comment on his behavior to making a comment on his character. And the
professor had done this in front of Andy’s classmates.
Let us learn together
Tweet @AbhishekShetty_
Sat-chit-ananda
No comments:
Post a Comment