How to find what student loves

Having understood the dynamics of how one loves a subject (See the blog of 18 August), it is important to understand how to monitor a student’s growth and channelise his growth intelligently.

We give below five possible methods:

1. Pursue growth in subjects where a student gets higher marks

Although marks are earned by smart studying and reproducing, they also represent a student’s engagement with that subject. It shows that the student is growing incrementally and gracefully in that subject. That also means that a student’s skills are expressed well in that area. This clearly points to the fact that the stock of ‘liking’ may get converted into ‘interest’, ‘Love’ and ‘Passion’.

For students with higher marks, help them pursue growth and kick start the virtuous cycle in that subject/area. Get them to compete with other students in other schools and towns. Make them attend the Olympiad exams. Find the best teachers in those subjects and see how they are growing in that ‘subject area’. If a student does not grow in that subject area, it gives us a clear indication of ‘what student will not love’

2. Disregard marks and recalibrate

A student may miss learning of a lesson for some reason, such as illness, distraction or because he or she is a slow learner. Once a student falls behind, he/she cannot catch up easily because ‘school system’ of teaching is like an assembly system of car making: if one car accidentally misses a fitting attachment, the car cannot be stopped in between.

In a student, this may lead into another dynamic. As the next lesson is based on the earlier lesson, he/she may not understand the next lesson. A student unknowingly falls in this trap, which non-linear thinker calls, 'success to the successful pattern'. A small initial difference in understanding something can become larger and larger with days and years.

If one can ‘spot’ this early, it is easy to get them back on track. Time is of essence here, because the farther he falls, the difficult it is for him to get back on track. Getting a person back on track may be redoing the entire set of lesson once again. Or it may mean getting a brilliant teacher who has a knack of simplifying a complex subject.

3. Beware of subjects that are not mainstream

A student, who understands a ‘niche’ subject deeply, is penalised by the system. For instance, students excelling in languages are not encouraged for their excellence, but are compared with others on other mainstream subjects like mathematics or physics, which is supposed to be an indicator of ‘good student’. Abilities in languages, extensive subjects like geography or history are ignored. The same attitude is displayed for students excelling in fine arts, music, elocution and other ‘senses-based’ subject.

For such students, it is important to nurture their growth in this subject. Paradoxically, it is difficult to find good teachers in these subjects. But the effort is worthwhile, because it saves a child from being sidelined.

4. Beware of skills and strengths which are not measured by a school evaluation system

Another flaw in a school’s evaluation system is inability to measure a student’s skill of managing relationships. Managing relationships is a critical ability for successful jobs in an organization, besides being critical in ensuring that an individual can find ‘love’ and happiness in his relationships.

Another critical skill to succeed in future life is a student’s ability to take charge of one’s self. Now a day’s this ability is measured by Emotional intelligence. However, emotional intelligence, as is done currently, is not enough. One needs to understand and monitor how beliefs and stress are generated and managed by a student.

Such ‘soft’ skills can only be measured and monitored by observing students, and by offering them ‘assignments’. This is what we call ‘Prolifing’. Prolifing is a method of gaining self information by observing him/her in different settings, and by tracking his record in select assignments.

5. Use the wider definition of ‘learning’

Learning does not mean reading books, giving tests, and appearing for exams.

Learning means learning to apply the knowledge learnt in real life. For instance, learning means understanding how student uses mathematics to understand the EMI on House loan, or to calculate the interest earning on savings deposit.

Learning means exposing students to different situations and observing how they respond to it. The situation could be a picnic or it could be a simple method of ‘preparing’ for a elocution competition.

Learning means using a student’s various ‘support systems’ to help him/her explore. For instance, students learning in Mumbai learn a lot by using the ‘commuting’ time.

Beware of the career advice 'Choose what you love'

Kamal Hasan, in his interview with Mumbai mirror, says that ‘I was a reluctant actor who was cajoled into acting. Now I enjoy it too much to give it up’.

Sonu Nigam, who is now recognised as an accomplished singer in Indian Bollywood industry, says that after having accomplished everything, my dream is to ‘get into agriculture farming’. He says he will spend rest of his life in it.

Jessica, one of the interviewees in the Po Bronson’s book of What should I do with my life, found that ‘Medicine’ is not her love after spending 30 years of her life in undertaking the course of medicine.

Abhijit Kunte, the Pune-based ecologist researcher, found that he loves ‘forests’ when he was forced to accompany a researcher into a forest after he failed in his first year science. It took him 5 years to find that he ‘loved’ forest.

Love is not an emotion which sprungs from within. It is not something that resides ‘deep’ in the recesses of unconscious which suddenly emerges from the inside one fine day and, lo behold, one has discovered one’s love. This image of ‘love’ is not only inaccurate, but also invalid.

Love is a stock which accumulates with our engagement with that object or action.

First, we take action based on our liking. Let us call it a stock of liking. When we like something, say dancing, we do it. We watch dancers on the TV. Suddenly we meet someone who is a dancer. The stock of ‘liking for dancing’ grows. Then we meet a person who is learning dancing. Stock of ‘liking’ has grown now. It now becomes stock of ‘interest’.

Once the stock has grown to ‘interest’, we dance gracefully and easily. People tell us we have talent. Stock further grows. As we learn dance, we realise that it helps us express other part of our Self - such as our love of music, or our fetish for exercise. Stock further grows. We appear in a dance contest. We win, or we get special recognition from some known dancer. The stock grows. As we engage with ‘dancing’ more and more, we start liking the people around it, the work around it, the work-related beliefs about it.

Once this stock of interest has grown beyond a ‘threshold level’, we call that stock ‘love for dancing’. Once the stock has grown beyond threshold level, the stock takes hold of us. Now instead of waiting for opportunities to come, we start finding opportunities. That is why we call this stock ‘love’. At this point, the stock of love drives our actions, decisions and priorities.

As the stock of love takes us into more and more actions and opportunities of dancing, we start learning it more and more. We become known as a dancer. Our self-belief changes. We love the way we think about ourselves, the people we meet, the Selfs it helps us to express. The stock if it grows further becomes ‘passion’. Now the passion of dancing envelopes us.

As we engage with the world outside, the stock of ‘liking’ got converted into ‘interest’, ‘love’ and later to ‘passion’. This has perhaps happened with Kamal Hasan and Abhijit Kunte.

However, at any point of time, the stock may also stop growing; either because we do not find the right people to engage or because we do not get the right opportunities. This is what happens when many of our childhood interests vanish away.

Or because, after engaging for a long time, we do not find that it is helping us to express our Self fully. Or the beliefs that it entailing us to ‘imbibe’ are not compatible with the beliefs we advocate. Or we do not like to be called as ‘dancer’. This perhaps happened with Jessica and Sonu Nigam. I have met many people who, after years of working in a profession, leave it for something else. Or they keep on changing their professions because they do not find a ‘calling’ which expresses their multiple talents into one calling. Like for instance, Robert Fritz.

In other words, we cannot tell our future and guess what will happen to us. We cannot guess which ‘stock’ of liking will become ‘love’ and which will vanish away after engaging with real life. And we cannot understand what we love and what we do not until we engage with life.

On the contrary, lack of understanding what love is can mislead a person. I know of a student, Jaya. She was excellent in drawing. But since her childhood she wanted to become a doctor. She was caught in the horn of what love is and what it should be. She continued to believe that she should become a doctor, while on the other hand, she continued to engage and excel in drawing. Her special abilities with drawing and singing clearly told her that her engagement with life, based on her senses, is far more pronounced than her cognitive abilities of understanding biology or medicine. But she refused to heed to the feedback of the environment. Even when she entered HSC she continued to strive for CAT exam for medicine.

Therefore ‘do what you love’ is a catch 22 advice. We cannot love until we do it. It is therefore a trap.

One cannot determine what one loves while deciding the course or discipline to take. Based on the ‘liking’ and ‘interest’ at the age of 15, one has to choose a path and hope that the engagement with the path will convert the initial ‘liking’ into ‘love’. But there is no guarantee that it will. We are human beings who know what we know. We are not gods who can peer into our future and determine what we will continue to love.

Children are not confident, shy or impatient

I had gone to meet a friend of mine. He introduced me to his young daughter, Cheryl, and said that she is very shy. After being with her for more than a day, I realized that she is as ‘forthcoming’ as any other person.

Ritika is a good painter. She was told to draw a painting consisting of a background of a box which is shaded with a pencil. On that box, she had to draw three birds. She drew the box beautifully. But she botched up the birds. Her teacher complained that ‘Ritika’ is impatient. And if she could learn to build patience, she has a bright career for herself.

I met Siraj. He looked withdrawn and isolated. Her mother told me that he is an average in his studies and lacks confidence. When I started playing ‘chess’ with him, I saw a different Siraj.

What is the mistake that parents of Cheryl and Siraj or the teacher of Ritika make? They are assuming that ‘confidence’, ‘shyness’ or ‘patience’ are absolute traits. They assume that these traits are within a person and a person displays them ‘irrespective’ of a situation.

Now look at the following examples. Have you met Amitabh Bachan, the famous Bollywood actor? People who know Amitabh Bachan say that he is a very shy person. The same is true about another Bollywood actor, Dharmendra. Shahrukh Khan once told in an interview that going in a new country is very nerve wracking for him because people do not know him. And remember, these are actors, who are in a profession which demands outgoing nature, confidence posture and vocal articulation.

Confidence, shy, patience are context-dependent attributes of a person. A person may be very confident in buying a company worth millions, but can become very diffident when buying a vegetable. Do not get misled by the newspapers and other discussions which brand a person as ‘confident, disciplined, and matured’? Psychologists call this fundamental attribution error. It means that we ascribe many behaviors of a person to his ‘fundamental nature’, when they are infact ‘contextual’.

Psychologists also say that individuals make this mistake because it is simpler to do so. Instead of saying Harish is ‘honest while dealing with friends, confident while studying mathematics and impatient while studying painting’, it is more easy to say that Harish is ‘honest, confident and impatient’.

One of the problem of attributing these traits to a person is that the person himself/herself starts believing in it, and slowly ‘develops’ that trait. A child called ‘shy’ becomes more and more shy, a child branded impatient becomes more and more impatient, a child branded untidy becomes more and more untidy and so on. It is a surest way of ‘making’ your child acquire all the wrong traits and habits.

The second problem in attributing these traits is that it could be totally wrong. For instance, when i talked with Ritika and managed to ask her ( in the right way) why she did not draw the 'birds' properly, she said that she did not understand the 'relevance' of birds in the drawing. Because she did not understand the relevance, she simply lost the interest and drew the bird 'shoddily. Being a child, neither she could articulate her thoughts well enough and therefore could not muster the required conviction in questioning her teacher's wisdom. In other words, Ritika's 'impatience' was absolutely appropriate to the situation.

Therefore, please take care, next time, when you are branding children, friends and others in a specific manner. It may be true in a very specific situation or may be completely wrong description of a person, as was in the case of Ritika.

Why famous colleges of yester years will flourish for a long time

Mr Anirudh, one of the parent of an engineering student, was arguing that he has put his son in one of the best colleges, where teaching is done seriously. He was citing examples of a famous engineering college, where many students bunk classes because the teachers are not good enough. He was arguing that this 'famous' engineering college will soon 'vanish' because of its ill attention on the faculty, student teaching and so on.

Mr Anirudh was underestimating the importance of ‘stock’, virtuous cycle and contagion effect, the three concepts in non-linear thinking, because of which the famous engineering college will not only exist, but continue to flourish for many more years.

Stock of reputation is a stock which does not get erase easily. The famous engineering college will still be visited by the best of the companies for getting their fresh engineering students because the stock of reputation of this college will remain intact for a long time.

Morever, these companies will get the ‘best’ students because ‘best’ students will keep on joining the college. Why do best students join this college despite the information that college faculty is not so good? Bright students join because they know the engineers get the ‘jobs’ quickly after passing the degree exam. They therefore join this college because of job assurance.

Paradoxically, these bright students ‘somehow’ manage to fair well in the exams due to ‘contagion effect’. Bright students fare well because they remain in a group. In a group, they challenge each other, and therefore learn from each other. Because of the lack of good faculty, they compete less and collaborate more. Collaboration creates good learning for them. It is this same contagion effect, which is also called diamond effect by strategy guru Michael Porter that makes companies in a ‘cluster’ flourish than the companies in distant locations.

When companies therefore visit the campus of this college, they get ‘best’ students, despite the difficulties. Companies therefore return again next year because they get good students. Virtuous cycle is complete. Because of companies, bright students keep on preferring this famous college despite the difficulties. Virtuous cycle is reinforced.

When will this cycle break? What effect has to become more pronounced to break this virtuous cycle?