Today morning greeted us with the news of a huge David-over-Golliath like triumph! The David team is a 14-yr old boy, Sahal Kaushik and his doting doctor-turned-fulltime-mom Dr. Ruchi Kaushik, and the Golliath in this case was the IIT-JEE exam which is a very difficult nut to crack, going by the accounts of hordes of hard nuts who try to crack it every year. Parents and students alike are gushing over his success, and I too LOUDLY join in the cheering.! I am experiencing a very strong connection with the event.
Being something of an off-roader myself during my school and college days, (never got more than 65% upto graduation even though I figured in the National Merit List of IAPT Physics NGP Exam), I can understand the plight of gifted children much better than some so-called educationists. Not only that, since earn my bread and butter by teaching process design, I also understand the limitations of the school-as-a-system. So, here, I share my views of the event from both sides.
The SCHOOL SYSTEM is designed to handle masses of students in a wide band of intake quality. Regardless of the money spent in making the school LOOK good, (and maybe some of them also spend to BE good), the school nevertheless remains a SYSTEM and therefore cannot be an absolute fit for any INDIVIDUAL. The difference between ready-made shirts and tailored ones will always be felt most acutely by those who are in search of the perfect fit. The best any school can guarantee, is very high-quality MASS PRODUCED talent. Individual merit like Bhimsen Joshi, Amitabh Bacchhan, Madhuri Dixit, Pramod Mahajan, Lata Mangeshkar, Ram Jethmalani, Narayana Murthy, Azim Premji, Sachin Tendulkar, Ankit Fadia, Saina Nehwal, et al CANNOT be produced by any school. In fact these people have been successful, not because of the school, but INSPITE of the school! No system can fully cater to an individual. This is a universal law. You will see this in all fields of human endeavor where high individual merit is required. Music, Drama, Literature, Politics, Science, Technology, Law, everywhere. Every time you create a system, you crystallize your thinking into the rules and regulations of the system, and before you realize it, the SYSTEM becomes more important than the SUBJECT! The classic frame-vs-picture dilemma!
What is more important, school or schooling? It seems, Dr.Ruchi Kaushik realized that to answer this question correctly for HER SON, she will have to become Ruchi. She did. And we are seeing the success of her decision.
Sahal Kaushik, on the other hand, is an individual who has (proven) high merits. His blessed mom, Dr. Ruchi Kaushik realized soon enough that the conventional schools are not fit for schooling her son. What a bold decision it must have been!! I can almost hear the friends and relatives, "in which class is your son? waaat, no class? no school?? tutt, tutt.. ouimaaa my son is only 11 yrs old, but they took him in seventh class..! My son is soooooo clever.. your son too must be getting atleast 70%, no?" I can imagine the frustration Ruchi might have faced when dealing with people who will never understand the difference between Mass Produced Standardized quality and individual excellence which comes from original merits which don’t have to be certified by any system.
Sahal is a high-performance individual. And having interacted with a number of high-performance individuals all my life, I can see what the system would have done to him if he had been put through the grind.
His brain is very strong in detecting patterns, and such brains are excellent knowledge organizers. So, he has no difficulty in understanding logical systems built upon axiomatic concepts.
I would like to caution two things here:
Firstly: please protect him from the media glare: His unseemly age is a major factor in all the celebration. If he had been an 18 yr old who had gone through the regular system, we wouldn’t have seen so much national gushing. But in the long run in his life, unless he can sustain such spectacular success every year, he will soon find that the world is very cruel and ruthless in dropping him from the limelight. There are quite a few studies about the fate of individuals who were thrust in the limelight and faded in a few months. Winners of national singing competitions and various Idols find it very difficult to cope with life after the cameras have found other Idols. As far as I know, he has shown success in understanding the existing knowledge. His REAL LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT will come when he is able to Synthesize new knowledge. At his level of spectacularity, a mere run-of-the-mill PhD won’t suffice. People would expect it to be a landmark PhD..! Till these things happen, his mom would be well advised to protect him from the media, or his success is likely to be adversely affected by continuous publicity. After all, come on, he is a 14yr old boy!!! Some principles from the story of Young Archimedes by Aldous Huxley may not be entirely irrelevant here.
Secondly: His entire support system should aim to make him a successful human-being, not a spectacular human showpiece. Such a mind needs to be protected from isolationism. He has to connect with other humans who may not be as sharp as him, and that can cause him to lose interest. Logic is great, but almost all major decisions in life are taken illogically. His mom too took a very illogical decision in home-schooling him! Selection of friends, career, love, marriage, job changes, affairs, all extremely important decisions in life are taken OUTSIDE the logical realm. Logical people (programmers are the best example) think in black-and-white, whereas the real world is made of many shades of grey. It becomes extremely difficult for very logical people to come to terms with grey areas in life. I have seen this very often in my training sessions, when very logical people cannot read simple questions and write sensible answers.
Ultimately, he should become a well-balanced human being, not a demo of a spectacular performance! He should do what makes him happy, and if he doesn’t know what makes him happy, then he should be allowed to discover it himself. So far, he LIKES logically organized systems of knowledge, it is ok. Tomorrow, if he loses interest in logical things, and his mind seeks higher levels of fulfillment which are above logic, he should not be driven to become a ‘great scientist’. So far, he has mostly experienced a protected environment. At the appropriate time he should get opportunities to explore his world and stand up on his own feet. At the moment, his support system consists of his mom and a few others. Over time, this support system will expand to include bigger stakeholders who would want the success to be repeated regularly. The best success of his life will come when he lives a happy life. “Making a spectacular success of his life” could be a dangerous project which his support system might take on. And in chasing their (possibly well-wishing) dream of MAKING HIM SUCCESSFUL, they might make him unhappy. And, here, the ENTIRE STORY of Young Archimedes might be relevant.
Sorry, got carried away – but this is a subject close to my heart, so couldn’t stop.
Well! I am sure he has a bright career and life ahead of him and the whole world would bless such a brilliant mind.
And Salutations to Ruchi! Sorry, do I have to call you Dr. Ruchi?
No comments:
Post a Comment