Conventional wisdom assumes human beings to be somehow superior beings compared to animals. It assumes that man reached fulfilment with the advent of civilization and science and art and all that, and considers the prior tribal existence of man for almost 200,000 years as inferior intellectually and spiritually.

So, from the point of view of conventional wisdom, the problems of man have always existed, and it’s just human nature, and all you can do is pursue the path of spirituality to become a “better human being” yourselves. While the new findings suggests that man was better off in small groups which made a living together, where there was no concept of private property and so on.

It seems almost impossible that human beings will get out of the mess they have created over the last 10000 years or so. The social systems in place are so rigid and unrelenting. Now it doesn’t even haunt me, or affect me, and I don’t even feel interested in the question of change.

Interestingly for me, the question comes back to who am I and what am I doing here? But it makes sense to me when I think of myself as an animal, an organism that is seeking “survival” and “play” when I ask myself, what am I doing here? And it’s not even a metaphor for intellectualising. I am actually an animal seeking “survival” and “play”.

But over the last few decades, it seems like science has a better way to offer. Disciplines like evolutionary psychology, neurology and anthropology seem to tell us much much more about what we are, and why we are the way we are than spirituality ever could.

Spirituality seems to be obsessed with something that’s ideal and unattainable, probably because of man’s innocent desire for perfection, but often exploited by spiritual ‘gurus’ to keep the masses coming to them for answers. Science, on the other hand, looks only at what we actually are, thereby creating a possibility of using that knowledge to make our lives more sensible.

There has been a widespread public sentiment against violence in children’s media in the US since the 1960s, based on the fear that exposure to a lot of violence in the media during childhood could desensitize children, and potentially make them violent persons later in life. There have been many studies which have attempted to find a link between exposure to violence in the media during childhood and violent behaviour later in life, but they have all been inconclusive.

Most caring parents and adults find it abhorrent that their child is so engrossed with something that they find distasteful and fear that their children may get desensitized. Nevertheless, have we stopped to ask why our children are so glued to cartoons and games embodying so much violence? What are they taking away from it? How are they looking at it and making sense of it?

Gerard Jones says that most of the time the children are not passive consumers of the media, but are actively engaged in weaving their own fantasies around the content that they are engaging with. This, he says, is a way for the children to make sense of the world they live in, and a safe place for them to explore and understand what they find intriguing and disturbing in it. So the violence that they are being exposed to in the media may indeed be benefiting them. There are no studies which have conclusively shown it either way.

Jones says it is important that the adults, repelled by the literal meaning of the content in the games or books their children play or read, do not impose their anxieties onto the children. He says that most of the time, children know the difference between their fantasies and the reality, and imposing our anxieties on them would mean taking away this safe haven, and blurring the boundary between fantasy and reality, making them doubtful of their own control over their emotions.

Why do children need to fantasize? Right from birth, a child has to struggle to learn about the world she finds herself in, to learn to stand, to walk, to run. And all these involve innumerable failures. Every day of her life, she has to come face to face with her own inability. What keeps her motivated to persevere in this extremely difficult and potentially demoralising process of learning? She needs a sense of triumph, a sense of being in control, of being powerful.

This struck a chord deep within me. I could feel this child within me, with the insecurity of feeling unequipped to face the world. Especially since middle-adolescence, probably because around this time the fantasy worlds of my previous years disappeared, due to my evolving outlook of the world and life. I still feel completely unequipped to face the world today.

I had always thought that the purpose of education should be to prepare a child for understanding the world she finds herself in and enable her to act in it. But can there really be such a state of being prepared to meet something as complex and unpredictable as life? Can we be educated enough to act coherently and intelligently always?

And this is where the book struck a chord within me. Perhaps it’s not just children, who need fantasies to live with their incapability. Even adults have to face the fact of their inadequacy every day of their lives. And even they need a fantasy world to help them feel as if they are in control, and get on with their lives.

Whereas children’s fantasy worlds seem to be dynamic and ever changing just like them, the fantasy world of adults seem to be static and stagnant- it is embodied in the notion of settling down in life, getting a job, marriage, building a family and so on. Most children lose the colourful worlds of their fantasy as they grow into adults, and it gets set into the world of security that helps them meet the challenge of life and feel in control.

But can education help them meet the challenge of life differently? Can it help children to grow to be able to live with their incapability and not be intimidated by the world in the wake of their incapability? Can it help children realize that it is alright to be incapable, and that there is no one in this world who is actually in control outside their fantasy worlds?

Governments and corporations and advertisements and the media will tell you that they are in control and if you want to be in control, all you have to do is to follow them. But doesn’t anyone who has looked at the world a little more closely know that that is just fantasy? Wouldn’t you say that the world is just tumbling through time and space somehow, if you look at the massive inequality and ecological destruction and violence in the world?

Why do I need to live in a fantasy world to be secure? Can I feel secure in my incapability and continue to learn and do what I can without needing to feel in control?

Can education help a child do that?

I had to look because I had obstinately decided within that I would not follow the two common paths that engineering graduates normally choose- get a job or go for further studies. That much was clear to me. The world was on a head on collision course with catastrophe. We humans had become hopelessly dependent on a crude oil that was past its peak production, pollution and disease were increasing while today’s children had hardly any idea where the food on their plates came from, the world’s poor were getting more helpless by the day, and worst of all no one around me seemed to care, or even to know.

There was no way I was going to be a passive cog in the wheel and put my shoulder also to the wheels of the machinery that was speeding the world on the path to destruction. That had been the result of almost four years of an obsession with reading about the dire state of our world through articles and books written by environmentalists, activists, philosophers, “alternative living” pioneers etc. I had no idea what I would do if I didn’t take up a job or go for higher studies, but then my philosophy was, “if you are not sure what to do, do nothing.”

Though I describe two obvious options available to me, they actually comprised a wide range of options which can be categorized into two umbrellas. There are several kinds of jobs which electronics and communication engineering graduates normally opt for. The most highly coveted and difficult to get is in chip design/signal processing which is described as a “core job” in engineering college lingo (‘core’ because the job is supposed to be related to the core courses you undergo in college). The next kind is a software job in the countess companies that now operate a variety of services. The third is a job in public sector companies like ISRO, BARC, DRDO etc.

These distinctions were irrelevant because I wasn’t motivated to take up work that any of these organisations did. Besides, I had decided as far back as twelfth standard that I will not live in a city. One smart way to be living in a place away from cities seemed to be to become a professor. Most institutions of higher education seemed to be located in beautiful places. Which brings me to the second umbrella of options.

To do a masters. But in what? The easy option would be to do an MTech, for which one had to clear the entrance exam called GATE. But my interest in my BTech courses had been sporadic at best. The other option would be to do an MS abroad. Which would be more glamorous and flexible. You needn’t stick to what you did in BTech. But what else could I do? I hadn’t developed any serious interest in any particular field by then.

I didn’t want to do any of these. I wanted to do something different. Not for the sake of doing something different, but because it seemed like doing any of these would essentially mean saying to myself, “Well, the world is what it is, and there’s nothing much you can do about it, so stop cribbing and move on”. I did masquerade under the guise of preparing for GATE, but deep within I knew I was going to do something different.

And my reading slowly shifted from reading about the problems of the world, to people and organisations who were actually doing something in real life to explore a different way of living. Thanks to the internet, stories of dozens of such people are only a click away. Without this wealth of information I would never have gathered the courage, without knowing that there are so many people who are living a saner life.

There were so many fascinating stories of people who had set out on their own paths in life. I was often bursting to talk about them with someone. I used to do that with a few of my friends who were sympathetic to my concerns, but were intensely sceptical about my intentions to do something in real life, given my extreme passivity and reputation as a sleep maniac. At every opportunity they took a jab at me, calling me a future greenpeace activist or even a Himalayan monk!

Though they were just friendly jabs, they brought home to me the fact that I had taken virtually no concrete steps to fulfill my ambition of finding a different path for myself. It was all empty thought and talk. And the months were passing by.

Meanwhile I had taken an initiative to search out people nearby, who had done something different in life. I visited a man named Roy Jacob, who had left his job in the US to do farming in Wayanad. I visited another man named KB Jinan, who had revived the traditional pottery in Nilambur. I had read about both of them on the internet. It was great to meet them in person, and talk to them about my urge to find my own path in life, and hear from them about their own journeys in life. At the end of it I was inspired but still without any concrete idea of what to do.

That was when I came across the Krishnamurti Foundation schools and other alternative schools in India. I had been concerned with the problems with education along with everything else, and had been reading and thinking about it quite a bit. Also it was one thing which I had a lot of first hand experience, having been on its receiving end as a student for much of my life so far.

Though I had been a “good student” and had done well in school, during the last few years I had become quite fed up with it and had begun to realize that it had done little more than prepare me for taking exams. It all seemed to be pretty pointless. I also felt that the numbing of the mind due to the education we get is one of the reasons why we fail to look beyond our own narrow lives and respond intelligently to the situation our world is in. In short, it makes us incapable to do anything but follow the rat race.

So here at last I had something that I felt some connection to, something that could be a serious option to consider after college. I had several questions in mind, of course. Most of these schools, even though they had an unconventional outlook and philosophy and offered a different environment for children to grow in, they still had structured classes and subjects and their students did take exams conducted by some board or the other. Was this option a path that was fundamentally different? Wouldn’t I be serving the same machinery, only a different part of it?

Being a teacher in one of these schools seemed like an attractive option nevertheless, because these schools were all located in rural settings, “close to nature”. Anyway, I would need a job to support myself and what more could I hope for than the opportunity to work with people with a similar outlook of life and education.

My biggest doubts were over my own ability to assume the role of a teacher, young as I was, with virtually no experience of working with children or handling a classroom or planning a lesson. It was definitely going to be a challenge, especially given my virtual isolation from everything around me for the last four years or so. I would be putting myself in a situation in which I would be forced to connect with the people and activities around me. But I believed that was the way to go.

Thus I set out looking for a job as a teacher in a residential school run by the KFI, 70 km from Pune, on the top of a hill on the Bhima river. I eventually joined the school and am half way into my second year as a teacher there.

If I’m asked to name one significant challenge I’ve faced so far, I would say it’s been how to relate with the role of being a teacher and all that it entails, in the context of the questions and the discontent that brought me here in the first place. Without that connection, it’s a floating, aimless existence. It’s been a struggle, and I’m still in the midst of the struggle. That’s as far as I can say at this point in time.

One can only look back later and say in retrospect, “Ah, this is what this experience did to me!”

I liked chemistry as a student. I first started learning chemistry as a subject when I reached the eighth standard. I studied in a CBSE school, and chemistry was not really a separate subject, but part of the science paper. We had separate classes for chemistry, nevertheless. I don’t remember much of what I learnt back then, but I have a vague remembrance that there wasn’t much that was taught. It was mostly the basic ideas of elements, compounds and mixtures, atoms and molecules, carbon compounds etc. I also remember quite clearly an experiment demonstration in which our teacher showed us the preparation of soap from oil and sodium hydroxide solution.

My real association with chemistry started in the eleventh standard, when I took up physics, chemistry and maths along with computer science as my subjects in higher secondary school. It was truly a time when the horizons of knowledge just broadened like anything, and I seemed to learn so many new things about the world we live in, that all seemed to fit into each other perfectly.

Chemistry, along with mathematics and physics, seemed to offer glimpses of an insight into what our world really is made of, and how it works. It made one pause and wonder and appreciate how intricate are the mechanisms that drive chemical reactions in plants which convert useless carbon dioxide into the invaluable carbohydrates which we eat, how the energy locked up in a particular arrangement of atoms and electrons in the carbohydrates is released when it is broken up again into carbon dioxide, how a similar reaction powers our cars and thermal power stations, how we are made up of atoms that were formed billions of years ago in stars and so on.

It was a truly revolutionary, worldview shaping body of knowledge. Perhaps because of the intense connection I felt with it, and the power that I felt it gave me in knowing the world better, I had a good relationship with the subject. I never struggled to find any motivation to learn the rules for writing electronic configuration, or memorize facts about the transition elements, or learn different reaction mechanisms in organic chemistry. I had taken this group of subjects under the guise of preparing for engineering entrance exams. To be honest, right from the beginning I was not convinced that I really wanted to become an engineer, but the subjects were intrinsically interesting, so my reservations about taking up engineering didn’t stop me from engaging with them fully.

So I studied chemistry for two years, engaging with it as deeply as I could with the resources at my disposal. Then after twelfth standard, I joined the National Institute of Technology Calicut for BTech in electronics and communication engineering, and thus ended my relationship with chemistry as a student. We did have a laboratory chemistry course during the first year at NIT, but it was a set of highly specialized experiments which none of us really knew why we were doing them.

It is in this context that I happen to join Sahyadri School as a chemistry teacher. Many people ask me why I wanted to teach chemistry, of all subjects. The truth is, I never wanted to teach chemistry. In fact, I didn’t have any particular subject which I wished to teach. I just wanted to be a teacher in a school like Sahyadri. Given my education after tenth standard, physics, chemistry and maths are the three subjects I could have taught. They needed a chemistry teacher at the time and I thought, Why not?! I could give it a try!

In my first year of teaching, I was asked to handle chemistry for classes 8, 9 and 10. I was momentarily taken aback when I first saw that. I had said I could handle chemistry, but I had not realized that I was going to join as a “chemistry teacher”, that I would be the only teacher taking chemistry for the entire senior school. I remember walking into the chemistry lab for the first time, seriously wondering what I had gotten myself into! It brought back memories of working with salts, and pipettes and burettes back in eleventh and twelfth, but I realized that now it was different. I was going to have to handle the lab when there were twenty odd highly energetic adolescents moving about under my charge!

Before long I had started teaching chemistry to all the three classes. The ICSE curriculum, I learnt, was much vaster than its CBSE counterpart and as far as chemistry was concerned, this meant having to learn many more facts than a student in a CBSE school would learn at the same stage.

In tenth standard, I started with topics like the periodic table and chemical bonding, where there was at least some logic and conceptual understanding involved, where I could start conversations with what the children had learnt earlier. In eighth and ninth standards, I started with the study of matter, and ended up spending class after class on meandering discussions and conversations which practically led nowhere, and bored both the students and myself.

Having dived into teaching without any training in classroom teaching, I found myself just walking into the class with virtually no preparation other than the patchy and limited knowledge base that one gathers as a student in the process of studying for exams. The first thing I had to do was to read up more about the history of how ideas came to be, and what were the experiments and observations which led to different scientific concepts we take for granted today. That turned out to be an interesting and absorbing endeavour, and led me to several good resources for teaching chemistry, on the internet.

Even if one knows thoroughly the complex and interconnected web of concepts, it’s a challenge to present them in a coherent and engaging manner. Needless to say, I felt totally unequipped to teach chemistry. I wondered whether I had taken up the wrong subject, but then I felt it would have been the same whatever the subject I taught.

One really starts learning when one teaches, because when you are teaching, inconsistencies or gaps in concepts stare you in the face. You realize, for example, that you’ve taken it for granted that water contains some H+ and OH- ions and find it difficult to explain to a student why it should be so since I had never asked the question before myself. It forces you to look further to understand better since you need to put forth a coherent explanation. Not that one always finds the answers, but at least you know better what is it that you know, and what is it that is beyond your current scope of understanding. Which is everything, I feel.

Every now and then I come across some such gap in my conceptual understanding, as well as the conceptual gaps in the curriculum. Either through questions posed by students, or through questions which occur to me when I try to prepare for a class or through the “wrong answers” which students give. I scribble them down here and there, but need to find a systematic way of doing it.

Out of necessity I had flung myself full length into learning more about chemistry, but I decided to stick with chemistry in my second year of teaching, to carry forward all the work done in my first year. I had become quite fascinated with the conceptual domain of chemistry- especially how one looks at atoms, molecules, ions, chemical bonding, reactions, and where all this fits in the larger picture of how one looks at the world.

Despite this potential richness in the subject, chemistry remains a difficult subject to teach. The curriculum demands that the student learns so many facts- most of which wouldn’t make any difference to a student’s conceptual understanding if they didn’t learn it- for which there is no reason why anyone should learn them unless one would like to pursue higher studies in the subject.

You can only teach parts of chemistry, and tell the student to memorize the rest. Unless the teacher is so deeply immersed in the subject that she has enough stories about all the little details that the student has to learn. Even then I have my doubts about how effective one can be with so many facts to transmit.

I used to feel very confused about teaching chemistry. It was a subject that I liked, but still it felt strange and frustrating often. It was an important milestone for me to realize for myself which parts of chemistry I liked and which parts I didn’t really care about. More importantly that there was such a distinction, and a blanket statement like “I like chemistry” needs to be examined further.

It is true that a teacher has to be passionate about the subject she teaches, but when you don’t identify with the topic, I think it’s important to be honest and say, “I don’t know what more is there to this chapter than a set of facts and have no idea why the board wants you to learn it. Anyway, let’s see how we can effectively learn it.” Without accepting that, I’ve found myself teaching a topic, and in the middle of the class wondering what was the point of it all, and getting derailed.

It’s been an interesting experience. I’d never imagined I’d teach chemistry one day, but that’s what I’ve been doing for the last year and a half! Along with the learning in the realm of academics, equally important (or perhaps more) has been the learning in the realm of how to look at the work you are doing, and how to establish a meaningful relationship with it.

All your life compresses itself into an image and flashes across your eyes.

There are no desires left, nor are there any laments. Only the plain fact of life remains. And the smallness of me in it.

I look at the world for the first time with open eyes, and try to see everything in it… because I’m curious to know more about this world I happen to inhabit.

Nothing more to rebel against… no more dreams to pursue… I’m free. I can live now. I can learn now.

It’s not just the sound of the music. The sound of the piano is magnificent, but it’s deeper than that. This is where I have known myself. This is where I have seen myself eye to eye. The beauty I have experienced here is what gives meaning to my life, and living is to share this sense of beauty with people around me. That is the core of me.

This me, the core of me, doesn’t get to be expressed often. Most of the time, when I’m relating with others, it is a fragmented me that presents itself. It is nothing short of living a lie. I wonder why this happens. Is it that when you take up a role, you stop being your entire self? Why do I stop being me?

I rebel. I rebel against taking up roles in life. I long for freedom. Freedom to be me. But I know there is no absolute freedom. To be me, is to share my sense of beauty, and this takes establishing a relationship with my fellow beings. There can be no freedom from roles. Can one take a role lightly and bring the whole of one’s being into it? Can this be done with only certain roles, or is it possible with any role?

What am I longing for that I don’t already have? I know it doesn’t exist out there. It’s inside me. The brilliance is made dim by a dark layer of doubt. Doubt about what is practical and what is ideal. Doubt about where truth ends and fantasy begins.

Art removes the doubt and lets the brilliance shine through clearly. Art makes you whole again. It makes you feel fragmented no longer. It is that which I long for, that which is not out there, but inside me. How do you bring art into everything you do? How do you bring art to the forefront of your life, and centre everything else around it? So that living becomes sharing one’s sense of beauty…

There was no one within sight to ask, “How much more?”, but it seemed unimportant anyway. As the guides say, distances don’t mean much in the mountains, you always talk in hours. And surely I have to keep walking for a few hours more.

The straps of my rucksack are biting into my shoulder, my legs are tired with hours and hours of walking, my oxygen deprived brain is throbbing with a headache- but strangely it didn’t really seem to matter. I know I can go on walking this way for a few more hours yet.

After the lunch break at Phetang, I seem to have figured out a way to climb without exhausting myself. Without having to constantly ask, “How much more?” when you know you have several hours ahead. Walking with the rest of the group had been very exhausting.

Having to respond to children’s queries of “How much more?” became extremely irritating after a while, partly because you had the same question in mind and didn’t know any better except that asking the question was futile. Also talking, for many, was the way to keep their minds away from the hardship of the walk, but for me it was something that got on my nerves. And lastly, pulling stragglers along, when you yourselves are struggling, is draining.

I decide to be a bit selfish and hang back at the rear. And it has worked wonders. Despite all the physical pain and hardship, I seem to be enjoying the climb. I even feel like I don’t want it to end too soon. I’m going along at a snail’s pace, my each step almost stroking the mountains. But it’s as if every bit of energy I spend is going into getting me to Dzongri. I am fascinated and humbled to think about what my body and mind are capable of.

***

After a few hours, I arrive at the camp in Dzongri. I had seen the group up ahead when the path had come into a valley and they must have reached 15-20 minutes earlier. You can see one of the large huts in Dzongri from far away. With self-restraint I had stopped myself from speculating how much more time it would take, and told myself to just keep walking.

As always, the guides have affectionately kept hot water and tea ready for us. All of us are huddled together inside sipping our cups. Some of the kids are singing. Everyone’s elated to have made it to Dzongri. I’m still enchanted by the magic of the walk and don’t seem to take in anything. I’m lost in solitude amidst all the talking and merrymaking.

***

It’s extremely cold outside. Inside the cabin, completely made of wood there is some respite. It’s small, though, and some of us would have to sleep outside in tents. None of us are particularly looking forward to the night, even though we are all weary and ready to crash into our sleeping bags.

***

At the break of daylight the next morning, I eagerly step out of the tent to look at the sky. Not only is it overcast and misty, but there is some light rain too. The weather gods had been kind to us so far, but we didn’t seem to be fortunate enough to get a glimpse of the great Kanchenjunga.

Disappointed, but also buoyed by the thought of descending to Tshoka, we start off, still with a faint hope that the sky would clear up by the time we reached the view point on the way, the highest point we have crossed, at 4150m above sea level. The sky does clear up a bit, but not enough for us to see Kanchenjunga. We do get a glimpse of Mt.Kabru though.

***

Later in the day, just past noon, we are all safe and sound in the wooden lodge in Tshoka, the same place where we stayed on the way up. A beautiful triple rainbow had adorned the mountains to welcome us. For the first time in three days, we have the whole afternoon to ourselves to rest.

It suddenly struck me that the trek was almost over. It’s been too short, really, but no complaints. The range of experiences it’s taken us through had been really worth it. And for me, visiting the Himalayas for the first time, it’s beyond words.

Laziness is the mood in general, as we just relax and recover from three days of punishing hard toil, but not amongst our guides. They are running about as usual, getting food and drink ready for us. They entertain us inside the dark wooden cabin, with a Nepali song full of the warmth, life and joy of the mountain folk (play the video at the end).

I’m again lost in solitude amidst all that is happening around me. It seems unbelievable- only a few days ago we had boarded the train from Pune to Howrah and then Sealdah to New Jalpaiguri and then travelled by jeeps to Yuksom. And here I am, in the Himalayas, in an eerie, yet cosy wooden lodge dimly lit by candles, listening to a song of the mountain folk, allowing myself to be carried away by it.

Tomorrow we descend to Yuksom and the trek will be over. It’s been an unbelievable first experience of the Himalayas. I’d like to come back here sometime. Also visit the other regions too. But for now, I’m left with a resonating memory of the second day’s walk from Phetang to Dzongri. That has been the defining experience of the trek for me.

While there is no denying that there are variations in children’s ability, aptitude and interests, I’m gripped by the question whether everyone can be given a meaningful and enriching, and not painful science education. And if so, what would that be like.

One of the approaches that could be taken, perhaps, is to study how science is normally taught and what are the sources of the difficulties which children face. How is scientific knowledge organised in our brains and what are the factors which make this process so difficult for so many? It might require some thought about the very nature of science and scientific knowledge.

While I’m not an expert in any of these areas, some of the problems which I myself have faced as a student provides some hints. The problem may not be such a big mystery if you look a bit closer.

Much of science is abstract, counter intuitive, and removed from real life experience. Take, for example, the kinetic theory of matter, which says that the particles which make up matter are in continuous motion and that the temperature of a body is a measure of the average kinetic energy of its particles. Most text books don’t explain why people came to believe that the particles are in motion, or why a body is hotter if the particles are moving faster. There is a lot that ends up having to be taken for granted.

This is not an isolated example- far from it. Every theory or topic that children have to learn has some gap like this, and after a while instead of the concepts building up nicely into a jigsaw puzzle- an understanding of the way the world works, they end up being isolated and unrelated fragments that have to be “mugged up”.

Related to this is the fact that scientific knowledge is often presented as absolute truth. Very little, if any importance is given to the process of discovery and the evolution of scientific knowledge. Text books do mention some history, but it is often lost within the vast sea of facts which children have to memorise. And in the process, only the end product, and not the evolution of the idea or the real life phenomenon that led to it, is given importance.

Another difficulty which students often face is in forming mental pictures or representations of concepts or processes. If you are unable to visualise it, it quickly becomes abstract, meaningless information.

For example, consider the case of common salt dissolving in water. I, the teacher, have a vivid picture of differently sized Na+ and Cl- ions packed tightly in the solid crystal, and water molecules floating (or flowing!) around with their partially positive H and partially negative O ends. And the moment you put NaCl in water, the partial charges of water molecules arranging themselves around the ions in the salt and pulling them apart. It is a complex mental representation, built up over time, with connections to many other concepts like kinetic theory, chemical bonding etc. How can a teacher help a student build her own mental picture? Some students do this effortlessly, but can the others do it with some help and more importantly, can having such coherent mental pictures help them learn science more easily and connect with it better?

Most text books would introduce this concept with a sentence like “Sodium chloride dissolves well in water because it is a polar solvent.” And then go on to beat around the bush with all kinds of irrelevant information. How does the student visualise the term “polar solvent”? Does she think about it at all, or switch off completely? Or does she memorise the term without any clue as to what it means and move on and write the correct answer during the exam?

It’s important to note that the problems I have mentioned are not solved by just doing “more practical work than theory”. The same problems arise in lab sessions also, because doing an experiment is one thing, and understanding what happens behind it is another. Of course, being usually more engaging than theory classes, there is a greater chance that the student will apply herself better and get the concept. But one cannot assume that the student has understood it just by carrying out the experiment.

Again, let’s take an example, say precipitation reactions where solutions of two soluble salts are mixed together to form an insoluble salt.

Some children are immediately able to connect the above equation to their understanding of ionic compounds and solutions. They will immediately conclude that calcium and carbonate ions can’t stay together in the solution and that’s why they precipitate, and if they had come across calcium carbonate in earlier experiments, they would already know that it is an insoluble salt, which all fits in nicely into a perfect mosaic of knowledge. They would already be predicting which other pairs of solutions would give precipitates.

But for most, the equation wouldn’t mean anything deeper than what it literally states, and it needs to be made explicit to them what all information it represents and a visualisation of the process that is taking place. Otherwise, it is not unlikely that many would do this particular reaction, learn the equation by heart, do the next one, again learn the equation by heart and so on.

It’s fortunate that I have had these problems myself as a student, especially during engineering days, so that I can connect with the difficulties which students face. It’s not as if only “non-science-persons” face these difficulties, and “science-persons” don’t face them at all. I, whom many would classify as a “science-person”, have had experiences of having gone through entire courses without being able to make out head or tail of what was taught, and having to mug up to pass the exams. The moment you are unable to form coherent mental pictures of a concept, it is going to become more and more meaningless.

• Almost made me lose interest in everything that I loved learning/doing. Just beginning to overcome the effects of that. Started again with science and other related technical stuff.
• Made me unable to think beyond go for higher studies/get a job. It’s a serious dream of mine to overcome this one day. To be able to truly walk on my own feet, depending not on degrees or employers but my own faculties to find and do meaningful work and earn a livelihood. I know it’s not easy, but I’d like to try sometime- this was perhaps the most damaging effect of education. In the meantime, I’m content to be able to work with institutions whose work is more or less aligned to my outlook, and enrich and empower myself.

This was not meant to be a well thought out post, but just an expression of some thoughts that had been lingering at the back of my head for some time, so it may be rather crude and incomplete.