One of the many ways in which I have been disappointed with this blogging experience is that I thought it would become an extension of my classroom, so that many current pupils as well as ex students, and perhaps some who have not studied with me, would have resources available to them beyond what I can do in my classroom. Unfortunately, most youngsters who pass through my classes 'find no time' or too little interest to become serious readers.
I keep telling all my wards that writing an essay is the hardest thing they have to learn in school (because you can depend not at all on memorization, which is otherwise about the only skill they learn in all other classes), and right from childhood they have been taught literally nothing about this art, so they remain woefully deficient, and will go on being so all their lives, unable to express their ideas and opinions coherently, articulately and persuasively, in their personal as well as social and working lives, and that will be a major handicap which they will rue for years to come. I read out good essays to them, ask them to edit bad ones, dictate model essays, and urge them non-stop to keep writing their own, which, under meticulous guidance, is the only way they will ever learn. Most avoid it; the few who try do it half-heartedly, only once in a while, seem to learn very little from mistakes strenuously and repeatedly pointed out (look up three earlier posts, titled Writing an essay), and that is good enough to get absurdly high marks in their board examinations, which is all they and their parents (well, at least 95% of them anyway) care about. Thus they grow up into degree-holding yet linguistically challenged adults, who can only stay quiet or scream abuse in the name of debate: witness everything from what goes on in Parliament these days, to the kind of 'arguments' that take place on twitter. I never could make my wards either well-informed or well able to express themselves.
Yet at least the ICSE school examination board seems to be doggedly (and forlornly-) determined to go on testing this skill, setting topics that need, besides a decent grasp of language, considerable general knowledge and the capacity to think deeply and organize those thoughts systematically. Animals should not be used in drug development research, Democracy is the best form of government, Private tuition is a necessary evil, Moral Science is the most important subject taught in school, Describe your first parachute jump, Narrate what happened after your aircraft developed engine trouble in flight, Mobile phones deaden social life... any adult will admit that unless one has had long training, one cannot write sensible essays on such subjects even if you have a college degree. And exactly like basic math, this is a skill which, if well cultivated, will benefit you lifelong.
So here's urging my old boys and girls, as well as those who are currently paying me for tuition, to make better, more frequent use of this blog: if nothing else, it will help you to think and write (or speak) better on myriad subjects. And who knows, given that there are so many different kinds of posts, including those tagged under travel and humour and stories, it might entertain you too. Why stay glued to just YouTube and Instagram?
4 comments:
Dear Sir,
I thank you everyday for urging me to write essays regularly. I knew I could put pen to paper, but the challenges of writing coherently and without self contradiction became clear to me only after I had started writing longer essays than what schools instruct. To think is not enough, expressing one's opinions in clear and civilised language is one of the basic necessities of education. I would urge your current students reading this blog to submit to Sir as many essays and translations as they can. This blog is a textbook in itself, it would do them good to view the labels on the web version, and try articulating their thoughts as comments. And if, like me, they revise their comments before submission, they have already been trained in Suvro Sir's pedagogy!
Regards,
Sunandini
Dear Sir,
I sense a calmness in the tone of this blog post, while at the same time a deep concern. Perhaps this is due to the fact that now you are reaching an age where you are tired of saying the same thing, but continue to do so with the hope that at least your students get the point. I believe that those who are close to you, certainly benefit from this blog. Although most of us would never be as perfect as you are in language skills, we would certainly be aware of its importance. However, I am not at all optimistic for society in general. I think written language as we know today might become extinct in future; in less than the time that it took for languages to develop since the time the alphabets of the most ancient languages were invented. Writing will become a thing of the past, and voice commands will become the norm. A few hundred years from now, even the spoken language will be very different as it will be completely abbreviated. I hope I am wrong, as I might be sounding overtly pessimistic at this moment.
Best regards,
Subhanjan
Dear Sir,
This is in response to Subhanjanda's comment.
I would differ from Subhanjanda in this case. I do not believe that all education can be brought down to a complete aural tradition. I am fully aware of the fact that the Vedas were composed and passed on aurally for generations, but I do not think that the written tradition that has existed for thousands of years now, will simply disappear.
To examine this, first, we must posit that if writing becomes extinct, a lot of information has to be carried around in the minds. From the time of the Vedas, the quantity of organized knowledge has grown enormously. If we look at the current trend of merely a few decades, the ability to hold information in memory is steadily on the decline. Can this turn into a scenario where numerous school students will be able to hold entire textbooks in their heads? I think not.
Secondly, the system of record-keeping has to be practised in written script. Transactions and figures have no alternative other than being in the written language.
Thirdly, I have studied and taught a bit of science and maths. I have already heard from my students that they can write the equation down, but they cannot speak it. Now one can rebut that an equation is essentially a set of instructions. Yet I do not think that all those complex equations be brought down to voice instructions.
Fourthly, let us examine the possibility of voice commands. To learn to operate any device through voice commands, one needs a primer and that primer cannot be in audio for obvious reasons. The most common use of voice commands today, the Google Assistant has written instruction 'Say OK Google'.
Lastly, I know for a fact that any rudimentary human practice that has been going on for centuries does not become extinct in a jiffy. I can elaborate with an example. When railways and motorcars arrived, people thought horse-riding will disappear off the face of the earth. Horse-riding still exists, as a skill in rodeos and races, as recreation, and as the only mode of travel in some remote places. The biggest saving grace in such a scenario is the variety in the human species. A small group of people will always keep the flame alight.
Although this is not an exhaustive list at all, I think we have satisfactorily established the impossibility of the extinction of written language. Let us now assess the question of written literature becoming extinct. Well-written books are still being published all around the world, implying that they do have a readership (The vastness of that readership is a different question altogether). More fundamentally, the existence of literature is the result of human emotions and passions. These are basic human characteristics that, if removed, will stop making us human.
If the question is, has writing as a skill declined? I shall affirm that it has. The number of well-written works might decrease over the years, but that is far from extinction. If we do turn away from written language in the future, it will not be due to mere voice commands. The possibility of written language disappearing has already been examined in written literature - Isaac Asimov's Someday. I urge everyone to read that story in connection to this debate(a short article is also available on Wikipedia).
Regards,
Swarnava Mitra.
Three very thoughtful and interesting comments which should have been attended to sooner, so my apologies and thanks. Sunandini, I am grateful that you think 'this blog is a textbook in itself'. I wish many more people will take advantage of that. Subhanjan, I hope Swarnava has reassured you adequately, and Swarnava, I do hope you are right. However, I believe the long-term scenario is very uncertain. Will there be human 'writers' for much longer? On the other hand - an intriguing thought - is a time coming fairly soon when mankind will have had enough of computers and AI taking over everything, and shut them down with a vengeance ... a scenario like what has been described in the 'Dune' sci-fi series, written more than half a century ago?
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