Published in Bayalu, a monthly journal of Karnataka Field Institutes, Azim Premji Foundation, July 2017
My mother would sometimes ask me when I was a child what she should cook for our meal and I would respond saying, “Something easy”. I was unfortunately not referring to her job being easy, but my job of eating, being made easy. Rotis and vegetables invariably required more effort in tearing, picking up and chewing than simple rasam and rice. Thankfully, my mother didn’t fulfil my demands often.
There is a general practice of making things simple for children so that they will understand. This also applies to new concepts being offered to adults. They ask for an explanation, and if the explanation is not “understood” they ask for a simplified version. The way in which knowledge is sought is very similar to a consumer transaction, where the consumer is only satisfied if they “receive” something that fulfils their expectations. If there is an expectation of any new knowledge, how can it be new? The consumer is rarely willing to return with just a whiff, without knowing how it looks, where it was made and actually touching and tasting it.
In this regard, a few lines I read by Rabindranath Tagore reminded me very much of an approach that I believe many people of my grandmother’s generation followed.
“In our childhood we read every available book from one end to the other; and both what we understood and what we did not, went on working within us. That is how the world itself reacts on the child consciousness. The child makes its own what it understands, while that which is beyond leads it on a step forward”.
I distinctly remember my own grandmother saying something very close to “keeps on working within you” in the context of teaching music, and consciously kept a fair amount of complexity in her lessons. She probably felt that even though a child may not be able to capture all of the nuances and essences of a particular lesson, it was essential for them to be exposed to them repeatedly. There are so many things she spoke of when I was a child, the nuanced layers of which I am only able to discover today. There is a profound sense of value and belief that these discoveries instil in the path of learning; while also magically extending that conversation between teacher and student into a space and time that is independent of physical presence.
This is the power that the arts carry; and its potential can be tapped to enrich the learning experience. The arts work a lot like embedded system technologies – they offer wonderful experiences that make it look effortless and simple, but in actual fact, reveal many complex functions when they are examined closely. How deep one wants to delve into those complexities is entirely up to the learner, but they must neither be denied the possibility, nor be limited by time.
Malavika Rajnarayan
Fellow, Yadgir District Institute, Azim Premji Foundation
Malavika Rajnarayan 