let our minds be kindled

The great leader,,educationist and former president of India ,Dr abdul Kalam had said "For participating in the nation building tasks: the capacities required to be built among the students in their formative years by the educational institutions are: The capacity for research or inquiry; the capacity for creativity and innovation; the capacity to use high technology; the capacity for entrepreneurial leadership; and the capacity for moral leadership." His tounge had dropped manna by these words of wisdom propelling many of us to act with single minded devotion -In this context iam copying below my article which i beleive will reach far and wide and may assist many of us to partly achive some main goals of this mission.as it essays to make the students (in every sense of the term) to assimilate through a system of self enquiries /cross examinations and dissections, on applicarions/usefulness of the subject learnt inculcating and gradually making them realize / develop their own mental prowess laying a stong foundation for creative / innovative contributions and services emphasized by you to the society at large-iam ,aged 71 years and hail from a family of educators---L.GOPALAN

"LET OUR MINDS BE KINDLED" ARTICLE PUBL:ISHED IN BHAVANS JOURNE,JUNE30TH ISSUE-PAGE 77 Examinations nearing ,oh,what a torterous regime the students inflict on themselves.Literally with swollen heads ,unkept body and soul,eyes poping out as a result of sleepless nights ,consuming cups and cups of coffee,they go all out to injure their health only to cram up , vomit in the examinations and to forget most of them .Is that the objective of learning?That amount of drudgery whether at all is needed?Can we not mitigate the strain involved?Even though the semister system has gone a long way to alliviate this pain and much more can be done by all involved in the educational systems ,yet it is the students who have to help themselves takling it wisely adopting scientific and systematic methods.With the guidance of my parents and some of my gurus i have been fortunate to imbibe and improve upon such a methodology which has stood by me, well ,not only during examinations but also all along to sustain my higher learning rate.By learning i mean assimilating fully and quickly all that is read with the ability to retain and recapitulate when needed to reap the fuller benefits of a particular knowledge.For me any learning say of swimming or cycling or learning a new subject in sciences,arts , literature or philososophy is one and the same and once you learn, it should come with you to the grave .Did you ever forget swimming or cycling ?Does not this ability come to your help whenever you need ?Then why not learn other things in the same way.All you require for that is interest,involvement and commitment or in one word your attitude.It becomes relevent here to add that Karl Pearson in his book "Grammer Of science" points out that any learning is a mental construct and It is an attitude of the mind.Swami Vivekananda and many others perhaps cultivated such attitudes which enabled them to assimilate volumes with astonishing speeds, made possible by allowing their minds to leap forward to think what they would have written if they had been the authors,later browsing and checking it up and adding to their stock of knowledge all additional points.Thus they developed the attitude of putting the horse before the cart and cultivated the art of assimilating the spirit of the writing with all its nuances instead of merely making the eyes mechanically follow the display of printing ink on the paper.Why do you fretter the most powerful horse -the mind- by putting it behind the cart?If you wish to be systematic ,deep breathing exercises,meditation and mental mathematics etc can help you in a big way, to so cultivate your mind and attitude. Secondly it is axiomatic that nothing in the world should be learnt unless you know its usefulness to humanity and as a corollory, knowledge on any topic gets developed very rapidly only to meet human needs.That is why Tiruvalluvar says "karpavai karka "that which is fit to be learnt make it your own.When learning say Newtons Laws Of Motion you should first ask why at all you should learn this and whether heavens would fall down otherwise.What are all the end applications of such a knowledge ?It is a matter of great pity that not much attention is being paid to this important aspect even by renowned institutions of learning.The proof of the pudding is in the eating.Take a sample of 1000 students upto undergraduate level and ask them to mentally multiply 35 and 45 .Even though they would have crammed up (a+b)(a-b)=a2.--b2,u will find a few only will apply it limited to those who would have gone through such a mental drill earlier.More so 35*46or 33*45 etc which are nothing but 35*45+1*35 or 35*45-2*45 would be mostly beyond most.It is not my intent nor it is possible to exhaustively cover all such basic principles on which the methodology being suggested here is bult over the years-- nor i claim it to be its exclusive author --perhaps many thinking minds could have practised basically the same or in similar ways-but to come to brass tacks for the benefit of students and knowledge seekers at large.

Preferably the methodology being suggested should be adopted from school days , if not at least it should become second nature during the colligeate level . Since the collegiates are the worst affected this article concentrates on them.Annual summer vacations are not ment for merely whiling away the time .While the need for recreation is not undervalued it should have the undercurrent of enhancing your value and need based outlooks in life through continuous, silent and nonstrenuous craving for learning new things and about emerging technologies.Besides undergoing professional training programmes,and gaining hands on experience in the fields of your choice at least an hour or two every day ,should be set apart for preparations to meet the scholastic requirements of the next acadaemic year This prior preparation will put you ahead of your classmates and will serve to refresh when the teacher handles it in the class.Getting the syllabus in advance from the university , a separate note book of sufficient pages for each subject say maths,economics,history or physics should be kept in readiness and in each note book pages earmarked for each topic mentioned in the syllabus say 10 sheets for kinetic molecular theory of gases or 25 sheets for the golden period of Guptas.Keeping the syllabus in mind, each topic should be read not only from the prescribed textbook but also preferably from the classical treatises mentioned in the syllabus prescribed by the university .For this purpose one should draw deeply from public and other libraries or by cooperative arrangements between collegues.Internet and e learning by effectively using many highly proven web sites will be of immense help to enhance effortless learning.After studying a topic from a book you should try to mentally recapitulate step by step and Initially even though you may find it difficult few more readings could be given and topic should be run in mind or scanned from the begining to end. It willbe realized , that mentally reading a topic is faster and much more assimilative than verbally reading it and the results will be much more astonishing if the habit of running the topic or scanning it in mind is ultimately accomplished.Computers profitted through electronic speeds and the practitioner will now profit through mental speeds which is by far suprerior. Even if difficult to begin with ,with incessant practice as progress is made from from topic to topic, it will become your second nature since you have learnt to put the horse before the cart and in consonace with Gayatrimantra which says once the mind is kindled("prachodayat in Sanskrit") in a direction it is capable of building up at mental speeds and leads you up further and further in the right direction.Then in the alloted pages for the given topic you should write down a summary in your own words of what has been assimilated .Use of computer can greatly help in this regard The same exercise on the chosen topic should be repeated and mentally run reading from other two reference books especially to fine tune the understanding of basic concepts,removing doubts and noting down addtional points if any in the alloted pages.This will enable you to develop a total mental construct or picture helped by the summary you have written which can be recalled anytime to ponder over,cross examine ,dissect ,various aspects such as what are the end applications , at what extreme conditions say the kinetic molecular theory is not applicable and why retro rocket has to be fired for the space craft to return to earth,how the period of ocillation of a simple pendulam is related to gravitational force at a place etc.For a beginer this methodology may look cumbersome but if you are persistant you will find that the mind is helping you leapfrog almost involuntarily recapitulating and analysing things for you at an incredible speed . In due course when you study a new topic if you assume that you are the first person seized of the opportunity to develop a scientific model of it in the world and kindle your mind in that dirrection you will be astonished to note that you are even able to derive satisfactory model more or less on your own thus gradually enhancing and nourishing your analytical ,lateral thinking abilities,sharpening your originality and creativity making you stand out in competive exames and in other fields. No doubt you can also tend to assimilate as fast as Swami Vivekananda did .By this methodology your note book becomes the compendium of assimilated knowledge and aid- memoir minimising the use of going through the text and other books each time while revising .My father who as a practitioner of this methodology used to say that weeks before exminations he used to enjoy more leisure,keep his mind cool practicing music or pranayama and on the days of examination he used to complete his mental scanning in a jiffy at mental speeds in just two to three hours and ready an hour before the examination starts contrary to what we usually witness.He has also told me of many he knew who practised like this and became stalwarts and originol contributors in their fieds.You may say that this methodology is not for one and all but even if few are profitted sooner it will be emulated upon by others setting up a chain reaction.In consonance with Alvin Toffler since you have kept the end use of learning all the while you will be able to learn ,relearn and unlearn as the changing scenerios demand and will not lose labour learning without thought.Since empires of the future are the empires of the mind can india prove that Toffler is correct as india is showing up her mind now already in few fields and once again become the dominant empire by her mind ?---- by---L.GOPALAN,Additional GM,BHEL(R&D),-retd--29 MRC nagar,South beach av,Second street,Rapuram,Chennai---600028,ph-24935559 and Managing Director,HETROGENOUS COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES (P) LTD.