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I am told that, in the Hindu Code Bill, father is the natural guardian of the couple's children.
Be that as it may, but according to me, father is the natural teacher of his son alright.
Sons have a different relation with their father, very unlike with their mother. It is not too intimate...sons tend to regard their fathers as role models in the beginning but rivals later on. They tend to be critical of their father when he is around, and then grow very fond of him when he is no more.
Feynman talks fondly of his father who was not a Nobel-winner but just a salesman selling uniforms and dresses and such. But he comes out very wise and practical and smart.
The best lesson his father taught Feynman was when he said about generals and military men that there is no difference between a general when in his uniform and when he is out of it...he is the same man.
Also, talking of birds, he points out the difference between knowledge and nomenclature. And teaches his son many other tricks and treats.
I myself was very fortunate to have a father who was an English Teacher. And Headmaster to boot. No doubt I was very critical of him all the time for his short temper...but nowadays I forgive him....he had all of 9 mouths to feed in a post-war India of scarcities and famines and hoarding and black-marketing. But now he figures in hundreds of my blogs...I miss him and wish he had read my Ishani booklets...and corrected their many bloomers.
He was of course my walking dictionary and encyclopedia when I was at school.
I recall the afternoon when he lampooned me for my poor English, after I stood first in the subject in my B Sc (Hons) Part I. I was then summer-vacationing at Kovur where he was posted as HM. And I was in my late teens. I was getting bored of mugging up the seven odd methods of measuring surface tension, and asked him for the key of his office where there was an almirah of books that served as the school library. And fetched the 'Complete Works of Oscar Wilde'.
And stared reading all those stories like the Happy Prince, Nightingale and the Rose, Selfish Giant...lying down on the cool floor. And Father was pressing my pants and his shirts standing by his makeshift iron-board. Perhaps he was watching me out of his eye.
I closed the book and proclaimed:
"Oscar Wilde's 'Nightingale and the Rose' is written very sentimentally"
And he laughed and corrected me:
"Sentimentally has a negative nuance...what you mean is lyrically"
Father didn't make any explicit effort at teaching me English. But he was always there when I had a question to ask.
That is in general the best way of teaching...wait for the question hour.
There is this famous example from the Chandogya Upanishad when Svetaketu asks his father, Uddalka, about that knowing which all else is known. Uddalaka then teaches his eager son by an example. The son was hungry for more and his father gives another example...and another...and another....all of 9...till his son says he now understands what is meant by Tatvamasi Svetaketo!
I recall a morning when I was walking to the Gate # 5 of IIT KGP sometime in the mid-1990s. Sougato Bose, a student of second year physics, stopped me. I was not teaching second years then but knew Sougato as this campus kid who rejected a seat in Mech Engg in preference to his first love, Physics. And since his father was a friend of mine in the Metallurgy Department and since I knew Souagato since he was a toddler, he didn't have much hesitation in stopping me, his pseudo sort of dad.
And asked what is the best way to learn QM from scratch.
I asked him to open his Feynman Volume 3 and start reading the chapter titled: 'Two-State Systems', and go on to the next chapter titled 'More Two-State Systems', and then to the next chapter titled perhaps 'Still More Two-State Systems', and continue till the end.
And we split...
And a decade later this was the delicious Reco I got from him in my Sweet Sixty Tributes:
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I am told that, in the Hindu Code Bill, father is the natural guardian of the couple's children.
Be that as it may, but according to me, father is the natural teacher of his son alright.
Sons have a different relation with their father, very unlike with their mother. It is not too intimate...sons tend to regard their fathers as role models in the beginning but rivals later on. They tend to be critical of their father when he is around, and then grow very fond of him when he is no more.
Feynman talks fondly of his father who was not a Nobel-winner but just a salesman selling uniforms and dresses and such. But he comes out very wise and practical and smart.
The best lesson his father taught Feynman was when he said about generals and military men that there is no difference between a general when in his uniform and when he is out of it...he is the same man.
Also, talking of birds, he points out the difference between knowledge and nomenclature. And teaches his son many other tricks and treats.
I myself was very fortunate to have a father who was an English Teacher. And Headmaster to boot. No doubt I was very critical of him all the time for his short temper...but nowadays I forgive him....he had all of 9 mouths to feed in a post-war India of scarcities and famines and hoarding and black-marketing. But now he figures in hundreds of my blogs...I miss him and wish he had read my Ishani booklets...and corrected their many bloomers.
He was of course my walking dictionary and encyclopedia when I was at school.
I recall the afternoon when he lampooned me for my poor English, after I stood first in the subject in my B Sc (Hons) Part I. I was then summer-vacationing at Kovur where he was posted as HM. And I was in my late teens. I was getting bored of mugging up the seven odd methods of measuring surface tension, and asked him for the key of his office where there was an almirah of books that served as the school library. And fetched the 'Complete Works of Oscar Wilde'.
And stared reading all those stories like the Happy Prince, Nightingale and the Rose, Selfish Giant...lying down on the cool floor. And Father was pressing my pants and his shirts standing by his makeshift iron-board. Perhaps he was watching me out of his eye.
I closed the book and proclaimed:
"Oscar Wilde's 'Nightingale and the Rose' is written very sentimentally"
And he laughed and corrected me:
"Sentimentally has a negative nuance...what you mean is lyrically"
Father didn't make any explicit effort at teaching me English. But he was always there when I had a question to ask.
That is in general the best way of teaching...wait for the question hour.
There is this famous example from the Chandogya Upanishad when Svetaketu asks his father, Uddalka, about that knowing which all else is known. Uddalaka then teaches his eager son by an example. The son was hungry for more and his father gives another example...and another...and another....all of 9...till his son says he now understands what is meant by Tatvamasi Svetaketo!
I recall a morning when I was walking to the Gate # 5 of IIT KGP sometime in the mid-1990s. Sougato Bose, a student of second year physics, stopped me. I was not teaching second years then but knew Sougato as this campus kid who rejected a seat in Mech Engg in preference to his first love, Physics. And since his father was a friend of mine in the Metallurgy Department and since I knew Souagato since he was a toddler, he didn't have much hesitation in stopping me, his pseudo sort of dad.
And asked what is the best way to learn QM from scratch.
I asked him to open his Feynman Volume 3 and start reading the chapter titled: 'Two-State Systems', and go on to the next chapter titled 'More Two-State Systems', and then to the next chapter titled perhaps 'Still More Two-State Systems', and continue till the end.
And we split...
And a decade later this was the delicious Reco I got from him in my Sweet Sixty Tributes:
...Few
people in the world are fortunate enough to have a teacher like G. P.
Sastry at some point in their life. His approachability, the lively
manner of his teaching and the uncomplicated nature of his explanations
kept me hooked to physics during my years at IIT Kharagpur. He is the
person who first suggested that I start reading quantum mechanics from
the most 'quantum' of all systems, namely the two-level system. This
approach has much to do with the kind of physics I have taken up as a
profession...
Sougato is now a
highly regarded Professor of Physics at the University College of London, and
winner of the Maxwell Medal and Prize of the Institute of Physics,
rubbing shoulders with the likes of Abdus Salam, its first winner.
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Tailpiece
I started this series of posts with the vehement proclamation of the rule:
"The first and foremost rule is that a husband should never try to teach his wife. Never."
I must now talk about the famous teaching of Yajnavalkya to his wife Maitreyi. The good sage had two wives, Katyayani and Maitreyi. Katyayani was a typical wife of olden times interested in gold, wealth, and gossip. But Maitreiyi turned out to be different.
After a long stint of husbandry, Yajnavalkya decides to renounce and go forth as a mendicant. And he calls his two wives to sit by him and makes a settlement of his ample wealth...recall that he was the Guru of King Janaka.
Katyayani was happy but Maitreyi turns round and asks her hubby whom she was about to lose:
"Can wealth give me the knowledge I desire?...Please teach me all that you know"
And the Sage was only too happy and says:
"Come, dear, you are very dear to me, and you speak of things dear to me; sit down, I will teach you the gist of all I know before I leave. Wealth makes you rich and you will lead a life of riches but it doesn't give you wisdom"
And then Yajnavalkya talks to Maitreyi of the loving self inherent in all of us, in a couple of dozen most charming lines of Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, starting with:
Na va are patyuh kamaya pathi priyo bahvati,
Atmanas tu kamaya patih priyo bhavati
Meaning, 'Husband is not dear to you for the sake of the husband, but he is dear to you for the love inherent in your own Self'.
And it goes on and on...the Secret of Love.
Thus, such an exception to my Golden Rule implies that husbands should teach their wives only when they are about to separate from them by sanyas or otherwise...
...Posted by Ishani
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