Teaching

Edited by Chatgpt

No teaching will be effective unless one is ready to learn. Once ready to learn, one will always keep their physical and mental faculties open to learn from everything. I may be wrong, but after the introduction of Western education in India (thanks to British rule), the concept of teaching and learning has become more program-oriented than life-oriented, which can be narrowed down to two levels: getting certificates/titles and using them to make a living.

I don’t want to brag about our past golden tradition of learning and teaching through the ‘Gurukulam’ process. Gone are the days when this tradition was carried out for its own sake of learning and teaching. Except for a few genuine exceptions, even such ‘Gurukulam’ type of teaching and learning has now become more program-oriented than life-oriented, which can be debated from different points of view.

Well, even in this idealism of teaching and learning, as far as I know, everything depends upon the person who wants to learn rather than the one who wants or is expected to teach. One who sincerely wants to learn will use every opportunity to learn through any means. Ekalavya learned archery just by keeping the idol of his guru Dronacharya. This may be a mythological story, but the lesson here is: once you are ready to learn, the method and means are secondary, and the entire cosmos is wide open for that.

So learning is not merely by a program based on printed text or audiovisual aids but by one and only one method: observance. Even in this program-oriented teaching era, one cannot learn by merely reading a text, listening to audio, or watching any visual aid, unless one is mentally ready to learn from those materials. When it comes to learning from another person, more can be learned by observing the life and activities of the one who teaches. In fact, the life and activities of the teacher are more important for one to learn properly. For example, even in a school, a teacher can teach more effectively by the way she teaches than by simply doing her duty of teaching (for a salary). Here, I don’t mean her personal life outside or inside her class or school. But even at the time of teaching, the sincerity, dedication, care, concern, and sense of responsibility could teach more effectively than a mere audiovisual presentation of her subject. However, if the students fail to notice this and merely pay attention to the subject without doing their part of learning with the same sincerity, dedication, care, concern, and sense of responsibility, they will miss a lot. Without a spirit of learning, all teachings will remain mere noise (which one could hear without listening), text mere words, and visual aids mere pictures.

Though the following is personal, it will help me communicate my thoughts with personal experience and illustration. I share this not to defend my role or criticize others. When visitors come here, I pay more attention to giving the best hospitality that I can provide apart from taking care of my mother. But some visitors get a bit disappointed for not receiving more or proper teaching from me, however much I try my best. But for me, the question of teaching and learning is not limited to what I could share orally for half an hour or one hour—it should come through my life itself. And any visitor who comes here to learn only under the faculty of listening will miss other opportunities to learn through my life.

Let me close this with a traditional example. A shishya approached his guru and asked him to teach about ‘Brahman’ or God. But the guru remained silent. So the shishya repeated the same question for the second and third times. Finally, the guru said, “All this time I was teaching, but you alone were not listening.”

So learning is more than listening to some speech, talk, discourse, or reading text or watching some visual aids. It is observance—not only of others’ lives but also of keeping our physical and mental faculties open to learning from everything.

DB. Gurukulam, January 16, 2012