Real Life Story - Ravi Bhau

[Marathi] सोन्याची किंमत होईल पण शिक्षण हे अमूल्य आहे. (Everything has a price but education is inestimable).

The below story is of Ravi, Care Taker at Amity Future Academy, Mumbai office

[Marathi conversation translated in English]

I grew up in a small family in Mumbai. My father passed away when I was young and my mother was the only one who looked after us. I hated seeing her work hard every day to meet our daily needs.

Thus, as soon as I completed my SSC, I quit my studies and took a small job in a bank. Later, at the age of 22, I got married and now I am a father of 3 kids, Shreya, Shlok, and Nitara.
On March 25, as India went into lockdown our lives took a stroll. It wasn’t about the virus per se or the tension of being confined at home. It was about the huge part of our lives, the way we make a living being home. Living under a lockdown was an act of adversity to survive. However, It had its perks, too. In addition to the entire transition, home confinement and making a living, the online learning system was another obstacle I faced.

Till then I’ve only made enough to provide for the family, we didn’t have a laptop, broadband connection, or even a smartphone. So, fear ran through me as we came to know that schools are going to be conducted online. Although we had a little source I was not prepared in any way to compromise on the education of my children because as I always believed सोन्याची किंमत होईल पण शिक्षण हे अमूल्य आहे. (Everything has a price but education is inestimable).

My manager was kind enough to step up and assist me. He provided me a smartphone and other necessities to enable my kids to learn. Nevertheless, the problems have not ceased there. Two of my children were in school and we had just one smartphone. There were occasions when their lectures would overlap and they had to miss one of them. We agreed, therefore, to give Shreya to her uncle, where she could learn.

We had also experienced several issues on how to deal with the online lectures. We were unaware of the process and no training from the school was given. Earlier, both the work and the education of kids were difficult to manage. So I began to take shlok, along with me, to my office. I was afraid of risking his life, but that was our only recourse. While I was carrying on with my job, he used to sit in one corner of the office to attend his sessions.

The office personnel was very supportive of us. I remember this one time when I went to shlok after my work, he was already using a laptop. He told me he wanted one of these, and if given he would excel in his studies-I was elated with emotions that day. I slowly started to help him out with his studies and we began bonding over it. I could see when shlok paid attention to the session, when he was unable to comprehend and how he was being taught different concepts.

This was something I couldn’t do when they went to school. With the aid of gamification and the various mediums used by schools to teach, he also progressed in his studies. Suddenly, I was there for every step of his life. This helped me establish a bond I hadn’t had with him before. So, if I were to opt to substitute online education for classical schools, I would be more than pleased to do so.

This book is dedicated to all these parents, teachers who are fighting the odds to live the dream of their kids and all earnings of this book will be used by people like Ravi to buy smartphone, laptop, school fees

The Transformation of Indian Education

Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.

- G.K. Chesterton

Education is the most crucial criterion for the progress of a society or country. A nation with a skilled and educated workforce and other technological development factors, capital formation, and rich natural resources drive the economy on the advancement path. For example, suppose the human resources of an organization are made equipped with the essential skill sets. In that case, they know how to efficiently utilize the resources, apply scientific methods to increase employee productivity, and plan and implement various policies to create a healthy workplace culture. Thus, Education helps the company and the country lead the technological revolution with speed and scale.

India is one of the ancient civilizations with vibrant legacies of culture and literary pursuits. Ayurveda, an alternative medicine system with traditional roots in the Indian subcontinent, was developed by Charaka, 2500 years ago. Takshashila was one of the first universities in the world to have taught 68 different streams of knowledge. It was a dedicated center of learning in the ancient world for Indians and learners from Greece, Syria, Babylonia, Arabia, Phoenicia, and China. The university of Nalanda that has its origin in Bihar was one of the world’s most important learning centers that gained legendary status for its contribution to India’s development around the fourth century. And the long list of achievements and innovations of India in different fields goes on.

Until the early modern period (8^th century BCE - 1858), Indian scholars and inventors presented phenomenal theories and inferences to the world with their practical wisdom. They covered almost every aspect of the subjects namely -

Medicine- Veterinary medicine, Cataract surgery

Grammar- Phonetics, phonology, and morphology

Currency- Silver, Copper, Gold coins

Metallurgy and casting- Extraction and casting of iron and zinc, molding of glass, diamond mining

Architecture- Dams, bridges, step wells

Physics- Atomism

Agriculture and Textile - Jute, Muslin, Cotton, Wool

Mathematics- Pascal triangle, Binomial coefficient and Binary numbers (by Pingala), use of the law of signs in multiplication, Decimal number system, Trigonometry, Calculus

Engineering- Charkha (single roller cotton gin), sugar refining machine