There was a huge furore in the Indian media with regards to Mr. Modi's speech telecasted live to millions of school children across the nation- was there choice in viewing or not viewing it? Why the afternoon time? Why not during school hours? (Had he done it during school hours, the critics would have raised yet another brouhaha over "Modi over Math"!)
Then came the actual speech/ interaction- a Q & A unseen before on Indian Television. Then the debates started- how well did it go down with the kids, the parents and the teachers?
In all the various aspects that were shared and dissected, nobody commented on a very telling point during the Prime Minister's response to a question as to why he was doing this- He said that it was to do a beta test to check if elearning could be done in a mass scale across the nation.
As an educator, I found the interaction to be extremely interesting. As a scientist, I found this huge exercise to be a big experiment set up in real time to see just how India can leverage the power of the digital age to bring students and teachers to interact across distances against a horde of infrastructure issues such as lack of electricity, appropriate equipment etc.
In a country that has an alarming number of children to be educated and a diminishing number of good teachers, access to digital technology is the most sensible way of solving the problem of scale. In that front, the Prime Minister's "speech" on Teacher's Day shall certainly serve as a "foundation Stone" laid down in the right direction.
Dr. Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan would be pleased to see that students actually got to know the reason behind celebrating Teacher's Day on his birthday. I still remember the story my Civics teacher shared with us when teaching us about civic freedom and responsibillty. She told us about how Dr. Radhakrishnan explained to his students the fundamental connection between freedom and responsibility with the following illustration: A man has the freedom to swing his cane and walk down a street, but his freedom stops where the next person's freedom on the street is affected. His responsibility kicks in when he ensures that his swinging of the cane does not harm or damage anyone or property on the street.
I have shared this story in my turn with some of my students in some classes, when the demands for freedom outweighed those of responsibility! Mr. modi has taken a step towards his freedom of speech while keeping in mind his responsibility towards the nation. What more can we ask for on this special day dedicated to the teachers of India?
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