Humming Birds

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I recall reading RKN's Swami, maybe, where he could never concentrate on what his teacher was saying, busy productively imagining things he would love to do to his teacher's pony tail etc.

This is the canonical dilemma of anyone paid to 'Teach' in a Lecture Hall: "How to focus the students' mind on what he says".

I was rather fortunate in that I had to teach IITians. By default IITians can concentrate; otherwise they wouldn't be there.

But by default, once they are in, they would like to relax, after a mighty struggle to be there.

July 1st, 1965: Bidhan Roy's Birthday. And my first interaction with IITians. I was lucky that I was in a Tutorial Class. My HoD told me to make them solve some problems in Physics.

There were about 12 Freshmen in a small room. Cozy as cozy can be. I dictated the first problem and relaxed in the Chair. 12 heady brains silently 'concentrating'. My first such experience.

The silence was not 'deafening'; It was 'humming'. I could almost 'hear' it sing. 12 'humming birds'.

It was at once pleasing and daunting. Then and there my problem started: How to engage these brains in a Lecture Class, where they are forced to be spectators than actors.

Physics has a lot of diagrams to draw and steps to write on the black board. That means I couldn't 'face' the students but 'back' them; and my back is not all that scintillating or inviting attention to what I say.

I wished I could convert every Lecture Class into a Tutorial and listen to their musical humming.

Where there is a will, they say, there is a way. Several.

One was to write a step and ask the students to 'go' to the next. It worked wonders. IITians are always happy when they are asked to 'do' things than 'listen'.

The other was to make one of them teach in my place. Students love such sessions and are busy trying to find fault and question one of their own kind who doesn't have marks in their pocket. And it would be their turn next. And all I had to do was to 'moderate'.

Three decades later, there was this 'Educational Technology Center'. They wanted to 'film' some Teachers' Lectures and 'distribute' (sell) them to other Colleges.

I was approached to permit their TV crew to enter my Electrodynamics Lecture Hall and take a Live Video. I smiled and said that it would be the dullest Video, for, most of the time I would be sitting in my Chair while the Anikets, Kedars, Indras and Arundhutis would be attacking their Note Books in a humming silence.

Then it was proposed that I could come to their 'Lab' where I could 'Teach' without the distraction of the presence of my students to an empty Class Room. I said it would be worse: "My teaching is my Love Affair with my students; and without them it would be ************".

I was never forgiven because I was decrying a brand new Teaching Tool.

I mailed this 'exchange' to my 'mouse-friend' Edwin Taylor of MIT, the Father of Educational Technology' so to say at MIT. He replied I did the right thing; showing 'Films' of Physics Teachers to remote students would be the worst kind of teaching.

My desire was fulfilled 100% when I was asked to teach a Jumbo Class of more than 300 enthusiastic Freshmen in an Air Conditioned Hall.

I prepared 'Transparencies' for an Over Head Projector. I used a thick blanking sheet so I could make parts of those transparencies 'opaque' at will. Diagrams were there and 'steps'. I would place the transparency, cover it up, and slide down the opaque sheet as though it were an act of 'inverse strip-tease'. I never had to 'back' my students but face them all the while, and go round the Hall inspecting their 'process' to their next step, giving hints, appreciating the first one to arrive at the next step etc before returning to the OHP to slide the opaque sheet by just one step and climbing the stairs and 'inspecting'.

It was a 'beautiful' experience as well as a pleasing application of the Principle of Least Action. At the end of an hour, my throat was as fresh as at the beginning after 'teaching' 300 students; when all the while I was looking at them imagining things like Swamy did instead of them doing it.

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