Introductory Thinking Task on T P Kailasam's The Purpose

Every turn of life gives us a teacher, so much so that, sometimes the moment or our own mistakes become our teacher. And each teacher has something new to offer, disregarding the idea of whether we like the teacher or not. Speaking more specifically, the best teacher, in my opinion, is the one with whom the students can relate, the one who can consider the students his\her friends. On other hand a teacher is also someone who insists time and again the students to develop their thinking faculties and in turn make them open minded. The reason behind these generalizations is the picture in my mind of my favorite teacher. I won't name her, for no reason😅. She taught me literary criticism, during my bachelor's course in literature. May be this was also one of the reasons why, as mentioned earlier, she was able to open up our "closed minds". Her famous words before beginning the lecture were,  "books, pens and brains out". This was because, the criticism lectures were conducted in the morning at around 7:45 and characteristically students would be sleepy at that time. However, the interesting thing is that after that lecture, we would be so much 'awake' that it's really difficult to describe the feeling in words. Someone would think we were over-active for no reason 😃 Her lectures were full of  knowledge(of course), laughter and innumerable curious memories. Usually, literary criticism is one of those subjects which the students find really boring and difficult to understand. Whereas, she made it so interesting that I literally would wait for criticism lectures. She appreciated us for asking questions rather than shunning us down. I will always remain indebted to her for turning criticism into one of my favorite subjects ever.

I don't consider myself an ideal student. I think, I am the one who would bore the teacher with my questions. I listen to people patiently, but then I also have the habit of asking questions, which are not always welcomed by people. So, in terms of the types of students, I am the curious one, because I like to learn more and more about the subject of my interest. The moment when I don't have any questions is when either I am bored 😅 or when I already have studied the subject. And when a familiar subject is taken up I look for the novelty element. I don't know if there are any other specific characteristics of me as a student.

One of our professors used to tell us that if we want to sit in his class we must be there with the aim of learning and not with that of educating. The reason for mentioning this is quiet simple. The level at which people are educated may differ but the level of learning remains the same, since there is no fixed end to it. A good beginning for the answer😅 Anyways, I wasn't able to spend more than 20 minutes for this topic, for many reasons. However, I'll try my best to answer. So, basically, during my parents' time of education, the English schools were not much in vogue. The general public was still sending their kids to vernacular medium schools and colleges, which now are considered as lower mediums of education among the Indian public. Evidently, there was no use of technology, since there was no such development in the first place. The absence of social media and internet made the teachers stick to the classicist ideology, unwelcoming any moderation in the method of teaching as well as the subjects. Considering the biased attitude of the Indians towards gender, girls were usually sent to a girls' school instead of the modern co-education system. Teachers were not friends but were an authoritative figure. The most difficult parts were the exam days and the study materials. It is obvious to infer that the exam forms, hall tickets, exam centers and collection of study materials would have been nightmares for the students. Girls were usually not sent to colleges, and if they were, they had their own 'security systems'. Also, their college study was not considered much important, since all they had to do once they were grown up, was to become someone's 'housemaids'. There was no semester system 😂 which made life more difficult. Thus, there is a vast difference in how we, as modern students perceive education and how the students of that time used to do so.