As I reflect on life one of the many blessings that one had was to do with being in the company of excellent teachers that exploited one's mind and removed viruses in the mind, as they emerged. For them it was not a case of rigid formal education but one of camaraderie with students. They were available whenever and wherever. There were no favourites and every one was equal and no one more than the other. Those teachers had time for you and your idiosyncrasies.
Finances as students were always short and, for me, after cricket net practice hunger excessive. So off I would go to the Superintendent of the Quadrangle hostel, where Dr M. Ajmal was to be found every evening caring for the needs of the students in the hostel. I was not good at attending classes and these were occasions to have informal and practical sessions in psychology from him. It was the art of knowledge being applied, ideas into action.
So when it was my time to teach I worked on trying to stretch the minds of the students and to make them ever more curious. Is teaching then telling the students what to memorise or is it the tinkling of the mind so that the student learns how to not only question facts but to not accept them at face value? The way forward in life is through innovation. Innovation is always through what Jung called 'Enantio Dromia' (the friction of opposites). Facts have ways of being different in different times and in different spaces. The cultural aspects are only one facet of the difference. The clear articulation of varying views requires that the teacher himself goes prepared for being questioned. I started teaching after my Masters and was very soon elevated to teaching senior classes. Nervous as one was the initial classes were not very well taken. I knew that something was missing. So one had to go to the planning of lectures eventually graduating by giving open-ended questions for examinations where the students were allowed to take the papers home and they were told that there are no wrong or right answers but the logic of their argument would determine how they have developed their answers to seriously-posed questions. They could come back with answers whenever and they could go to the libraries and their peers. The reasoning was what mattered.
Iconoclastic questions seemingly from anywhere were placed before the students and they were then asked to take a bash at determining the answers. Some of the arguments developed in the given course would be the use of concepts in everyday functioning. This was to give them a flavour of what they could expect from a highly uncertain world. Why does one go out of one's way for other people's children? The concept goes back to Jung for where there are individual parents there is a collective parenthood that must be made available to all. It provides the first base for love and affection and hence essential ingredients for leaders of the future. In caring for one's students one has to put in a good deal of work and develop a different level of effort at the cost of one's own conveniences.
The teacher's code is different and definitely more subtle than we tend to think. His wards are from every socio-economic status and it is the ability to bring them all together on the same level and scale. When the WB/ADB make a lot of song and dance about education it is not this kind of education that they want to develop but a more insignificant kind. The one that does not develop the mind and when HEC through its former boss wanted to help his elitist friends he started this major scheme of foreign education. Why do we need hybrids from the USA/the UK/Norway/Denmark/France and how are we going to cope with their kind of education that will be and is elitist. They are misfits unless some of them undergo a different kind of re-entrance to their own countries human space. So where one has taught one has also to be a learner and a student; in that sense foreign education is a kind of singleton opportunity with no interactive base. Unless we are fundamentally honest with ourselves and our co-workers the trust does not go very far. That comes with educative interaction.
Formal or informal one never graduates from a learning position. It is inherent in this world where knowledge is dependent on so many kinds of influences that one gets. The principal function of leadership is teaching. If the trick is to be a leader but not to be a teacher then I am afraid that one is short lived. The issue with students and with me is not what to think but how to think. That is what the students also require. There are many ways to skin a cat - appropriate as well as otherwise. That really means the students should ask questions. The right answers would follow but if the questions are not there how can there be answers.
The other important aspect is foundation of thinking. This base must be on values. My values may have merged from cricket, not only studies, and so have the values of many of the greats. Value-based thinking process and precluding the personal interpretations of these values. This eventually enters the decision-making process and the quality of leadership in Pakistan is such that the weakness is now reflected in the kind of personalised and selfish decision that we make. There are very few decision-makers who are properly selfish. The ultimate of values is ethical development of the self. The moment of doubt is also the moment of discovery. This doubt spurs the students to more effort.
Learning is guided discovery. The teacher's scholarship and kindness develops this everlasting relationship. The moral basis is provided by the teacher's personal example and upfront behaviour. What then is the teacher's competence? It comes in two parts. He must know his subject beyond doubt and he must be qualified in his leadership ability. Technical competence is not enough. Leading and teaching from the above treatise go together. One cannot do without the other.
I have been able to take my cricket experiences and education to real life and one is not the worse for it. One has learnt the art of art. Agriculture where I have spent the better part of my public life is an art. There are no scientists in agriculture just because some of them have PhD degree made ridiculous by the money payments of Rs 15,000 per month. Degrees are never for sale. I protested when Dr Mehbubul Haq (late) announced that every PhD will get Rs 5,000 per month. Why? Are the PhDs now merely decorative words? They have not done anything. When can we see a leader - by his power - might or by his influence when he has no power to back him? Despite a messy Pakistan we must try and do our thing and not copy or emulate the West. But we must remove the vulnerabilities. We can. `
But how many can really say that they prepare for their daily teaching task as well as they can or are they merely going through the paces? Are the teachers developing leaders? A bookworm as a teacher and as a leader? Boring.