Survive from our awful History teachers

When Shakuni, his father and 7 brothers were kept in jail by Duryodhan, they used to be given food and water barely enough for one person. They decided that one of them must survive to take the revenge. Because Shakuni was physically malformed, his mind was the most developed and he was the chosen one. Everyday, he was fed the food and water and all others died in hunger and thirst, one by one. Shakuni arranged to get a bone from all and used them to make a “Pasha set”. ....Mahabharat

How many people you have seen who love history? Or read history once they go out of their school ? Some of them take it up as a subject later, but alas, 99% of them take it up because they have found no other options. And that explains why, as a race, we have failed to teach the real history to the generations, why we are failing to inculcate the sense of history – the sense of perspective – the sense of strategic importance of real-politic to our promising young-stars and inspire them.

We do not teach them Mahabharat, that is used mostly as a storybook that has no real mapping to the practical lives. We do not teach them Chanakya slokas, that can really set the foundations of the sense of realpolitic – the essence of strategic thinking. Do you know anybody who has read “the Prince” of Machiavelli ?

Then we wish our children to be bigger than all others, outshine all others by miles. We teach them logical thinking – the thinking that is also used by machines and if you train a goat and use them to run the machine, he CAN!! We only want them to get in the JOINT!! Only one question from my side, “Then ???” We are blissfully unaware of the need for lateral thinking – the creative and innovative thinking that can set one apart from all others, in all aspects of life – be it excellence in studies - survival in workplace or peace and harmony in relationships. It is the nectar, the Philosophers stone that can touch someone’s life and start a process of creativity that is irreversible, it can’s be stopped ever.

Let’s come back to the question of the sense of perspectives. We consider history to be a rubbish dump for the dates and place and people, maybe a bit of features, a pinch of characteristics, a dash of causes and effects – but where are the lessons ? History is like the only zero sum game where we can be the passive viewers to the strategies employed and look at the right and wrong decisions taken with a detachment. This is our only chance of learning the deepest lessons of life without actually paying dearly for it. And we just falter at the alter of the ridiculous and throw away that chance, and try to memorize a few dates .. and places .. and people.. There should be a limit to being dumb.

I teach history to my daughter slowly, as a lifetime job, as I myself go on learning. I am qualified enough to work on three technical areas – IT, management and Insurance practice and super-specialized on strategic management which I teach at the MBA level (to some brilliant and some dumb students) but the subject I mostly study even at this age is , well you guessed it – HISTORY. This was my first love and has remained with me ever-after. But every time I start teaching from her history syllabus before her exams, I get painfully aware of how dumb the teachers are (well, they had no other options for subjects – I told you nah!!) and so the students think “oh no, once I get out of the clutch of this subject.. never again”. We have failed to light their interest of the perspective – failed awfully to inspire the generations.

When my 85-year old Pop needs to blast the education system, he has a ready example of me. “If we had enough money to provide the support or we had a bit more faith in the running of the Calcutta University, he should have studied history. But NOOOOO. We probably sacrificed a top-class historian to make a very mediocre engineer”. Not a very flattering observation, but nevertheless true. I am a failure as an engineer. I never had my heart into it. I just loved History and I still do it. Only I hate these stupid teachers who cannot teach us the lessons, who make us hate the subject itself.