During the vacations I was at my cousins’ place for a few days. One of them, being in Class XI, had taken sanyaas from social life to crack his engineering entrance tests. The other was younger and was my sole pastime. Not that we compromised on having fun due to lack of sufficient manpower. In the morning we cycled to the beach, chased waves, flew kites on the shore, played Frisbee and had street food. An ideal and clichéd holiday. It was great to be carefree and young again.
While cycling back home in the evening, my cousin with a troubled face mouthed his predicament — he had tuitions in the evening, which obviously he did not wish to attend. More so, when I was holidaying at their home. To reinforce my sympathy for him (which he had already won), he went on to complain of how the tutor used to just Google all his doubts to forcibly convince clarification. Tuitions are bad and I could not agree more! I assured him, in the ‘cool cousin’s’ voice, that I would persuade his mother (my aunt) to get them cancelled for the two days. His mother agreed, but only on one condition. That I take the classes instead — one class by me compensating two by the tutor.
The deal sounded reasonable to both me and my cousin. After all, an hour of nostalgia it would be! He went on to fetch his science textbook and I started off explaining to him, the image formation in spherical mirrors. After noticing some helpless nodding, I bothered to ask him which class he was in. Apparently, it was too much for Class VI. I tried going slower, starting with the geometry of circles. I realised he did not know what ‘perimeter’ meant.
Realising that all effort until now had gone in vain, I then decided to give him a crash course in geometry. We started with 2πr and then proceeded to grocery shopping analogies for unitary method (hadn’t we been taught unitary method at least by Class VI?) to find out the length of arcs. He somehow knew that if two brinjals cost Rs. 20, he would be charged Rs. 30 for three. When I asked him how he got that, he replied it was just his intuition which was too pure to be put into mathematical equations. I then learnt he hadn’t even been introduced to algebra at school! Now, this was ridiculous! What on earth do kids in Class VI even learn? Geometry, algebra, optics and even unitary method were alien to him!
Frustrated, I gave him a problem to work on and started gobbling up dinner which was ready by then. Seeing me devour the food, my aunt asked my cousin too to join in. To this, I replied, making sure it was audible to him too, that he would get to have dinner only after he finished those problems.
Questions of sensitivity
That struck me hard. I felt sick of myself! Although a stereotypical statement to make, I never expected myself to say it. That was so not me! How could a teacher be so rude! I’m sure he’d have considered going to the tuitions instead! Where did the ‘cool cousin’ suddenly disappear? What would I have felt if I were in his place?
“But empathy is not putting yourself in somebody else’s shoes to see what it would be like for you. Empathy is less selfish and less vicarious, for it is more directly seeing what it is like being the other person.”
This incident also led me to think of something so commonly prevalent in teaching-learning setups. I always used to wonder of how present day ‘cruel professors’, even managed to make friends in their past. Weren’t they too normal jolly kids in their childhood who too had their set of ‘cruel professors’? How did they end up being so nasty? I had just found an answer to my question! Shortly, I myself had been nasty to my cousin — unknowingly and instinctively, assuming it to be a part of playing the role of a teacher.
I later realised that this stint of mine and the storm of thoughts that followed, answered another persistent question of mine. How could these nasty professors assume us to know it all during viva-voce and why their lectures whiz past my head.
Well, I too could not recall the mathematics syllabus of Class VI. In fact, I initially did not even care to ask in which class my cousin was studying! Maybe it was just some pedagogic empathy that was lacking in either case.
Anyway, he finished the problems and we cheerfully again discussed action superheroes over dinner.
vasishtasetty@yahoo.co.in
