“I cannot teach anybody anything; I can only make them think.” -Socrates

The above philosophical quote by Socrates, the Greek philosopher who is credited for founding the Western philosophy, was quoted during one of our morning assemblies by students of class 12. This quote left me pondering with the thought, as educators, our goal is to kindle the mind into thinking about a subject. Once that is accomplished, you give a new dimension to teaching that subject. To get the cognitive mind to use its application power and to develop critical thinking, the role as an educator reduces drastically to guidance only.

In this time and age where Artificial intelligence seems to be flooding its way into all segments of human life, based on specific set of logical steps, our greatest strength as human species is the ability to learn how to think. On a deeper reflection, if educators & education have to have an impact in the life of students, then it is necessary to follow a different path. Therefore as teachers, before we take up this vocation, we need to comprehend what are the various pedagogical styles of how human beings learn. We can then with our experience, design our own approach to make our students think critically, and help them to discover this potential within themselves, and provide them a conducive atmosphere in which learning takes place.

Experiences of variation, innovation, and ambiguity are common to all humans. Over a period our beliefs & understanding changes, as a result we are always assimilating new information and experiencing new practices that are out of our control. How effectively we integrate & adapt to these changes will enrich our lives and will accordingly adjust our thoughts, actions and emotions. As teachers, if we do not follow this, encountering a diverse range of learners, we end up doing something that does not bear fruit in the learning outcome of students. This results in wastage of time, energy & effort. As an educationist, over a period, we become so complacent, that we do not introspect on our past habits, unexamined dogmas and become fossilized and frozen in our belief system & are not versatile to changes, which is so essential in the life of an educator not realizing that we too are learners.

Mr. Naresh Chopra
Headmaster (XI and XII)