Showing posts with label Education. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Education. Show all posts

Thursday, September 27, 2012

Good Will Hunting

Sean Maguire to Will Hunting in one the best lines from the movie Good Will Hunting; Sean hits back at Will's reluctance and arrogance, and Will begins taking Sean seriously and opens up.

You're just a kid, you don't have the faintest idea what you're talkin' about.

It's all right. You've never been out of Boston.

So if I asked you about art, you'd probably give me the skinny on every art book ever written. Michelangelo, you know a lot about him. Life's work, political aspirations, him and the pope, sexual orientations, the whole works, right? But I'll bet you can't tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel. You've never actually stood there and looked up at that beautiful ceiling; seen that.

If I ask you about women, you'd probably give me a syllabus about your personal favorites. You may have even been laid a few times. But you can't tell me what it feels like to wake up next to a woman and feel truly happy. You're a tough kid.
And I'd ask you about war, you'd probably throw Shakespeare at me, right, "once more unto the breach dear friends." But you've never been near one. You've never held your best friend's head in your lap, watch him gasp his last breath looking to you for help.

I'd ask you about love, you'd probably quote me a sonnet. But you've never looked at a woman and been totally vulnerable. Known someone that could level you with her eyes, feeling like God put an angel on earth just for you. Who could rescue you from the depths of hell.

And you wouldn't know what it's like to be her angel, to have that love for her, be there forever, through anything, through cancer. And you wouldn't know about sleeping sitting up in the hospital room for two months, holding her hand, because the doctors could see in your eyes, that the terms "visiting hours" don't apply to you. You don't know about real loss, 'cause it only occurs when you've loved something more than you love yourself.

And I doubt you've ever dared to love anybody that much. And look at you... I don't see an intelligent, confident man... I see a cocky, scared shitless kid.

But you're a genius Will. No one denies that. No one could possibly understand the depths of you. But you presume to know everything about me because you saw a painting of mine, and you ripped my fuckin life apart. You're an orphan right?

You think I know the first thing about how hard your life has been, how you feel, who you are, because I read Oliver Twist? Does that encapsulate you? Personally... I don't give a shit about all that, because you know what, I can't learn anything from you, I can't read in some fuckin' book. Unless you want to talk about you, who you are. Then I'm fascinated. I'm in. But you don't want to do that do you sport? You're terrified of what you might say. Your move, chief.

Monday, January 18, 2010

Montessori method

Esmeralda Davis runs a Montessori school in east Bangalore. Montessori method is where a child is allowed to develop according to his or her natural inner directives, through self-directed learning. The school allows students to choose their activities, make discoveries about language, art, mathematics, music and culture in non-graded classes of mixed ages. As I read more about this method, I am impelled to explore this and see if I can become a practitioner.

I'm reading about this on the back of 3 Idiots taking the entire country by storm. Even if the movie manages to change a few lives, it would have been a great service. After watching the movie a couple of times, I have a noticed a certain gap that the movie leaves unaddressed. While it is recommended that we do what we love, it doesn't address the point that our system does not allow a student to find what he loves to do. That would be possible only with a system of counselling and discovery that spans over many years, depending on how much time an average student would take to find his or her true calling.

The Montessori system seems to provide the solution. We need to do what we love, no doubt. But the education system needs an overhaul to ensure that we know what we love. Otherwise the current education system is capable of ruining our natural instincts and direction. I'm reminded of a t-shirt quote 'I was intelligent, but education ruined me'. How true! 

I'm off to understand and discover more!