Reading about the current Nobel awards in various fields, I recalled what J.W. Gardner, President of the Carnegie Foundation, writes in his book, Excellence: “Excellence implies more than competence. It implies a striving for the highest standards in every phase of life. We need individual excellence in all its forms, in every kind of creative endeavour, in political life, in education, in industry – in short, universally!”
In India, we are fortunate to have excellent human raw material. But the opportunities and incentives for its development are sadly lacking. The lack of focus on work ethics is at the root of our problem. Traditionally, religion provides society with ethical frameworks for an active work culture. But due to our unfortunate circumstances, religion misinterpreted has had a blighting effect on secular professions. In many spheres, there has been a visible tendency to encourage subservience and sycophancy rather than initiative and talent. But wherever we have paid proper attention to enterprise, our country has produced successful innovators in every field of endeavour. It is our pride that V. Ramakrishnan has received the Nobel Prize for Chemistry but we need to add to the numbers of such men and women.
We need to exalt work and to discover and encourage talent wherever we can. We must produce not only great lawyers, politicians, doctors, engineers, businessmen, and managers, but also – eminent scientists, farsighted statesmen, dedicated administrators, educationists, inventors, sportsmen, artists, explorers, writers, industrialists, philosophers, dreamers, as well as selfless organisers and leaders.
Hence, those of us who are fortunate enough to be working with young learners, have a significant role to play in ensuring that our students first learn to accept responsibility for their own development. This is not as abstract as it may sound. We have to begin by setting targets in real life that learners can identify with. Thereafter, matching their performance output against their effort input, they will be able to measure the standard of their own achievement. This is the reason why we insist that our learners compete against their own last established record. We also believe that it is against the nature of the brain/psyche to remain stagnant. If you are not improving, then you have to be moving in the opposite direction.
Many busy parents pay more attention to periodical school reports rather than to their children’s daily routine. Instead, I suggest, that we focus on the present moment. How many hours does your child spend in sleep, work and play? And does your child’s diet contribute to overall health and stamina? These details are our present building blocks to tomorrow’s success.
The mid-term newsletter is the school’s way of focusing on the passing moment and assessing what use our learners have made of their days. If we focus on today, tomorrow has a fair chance of turning out well. With this in mind, I invite you to look at the October 2009Issue ofTapi Tarangand to praise your children for the plenitude of their daily contribution to life at DPS Tapi.
We have not done our duty as parents and educators unless we have motivated our children to make excellence their daily pursuit. With this idea in mind, I would like to share this anonymous poem with my students:
The Best We Can Be
If you can’t be a pine on the top of the hill,
Be a scrub in the valley – but be
The best little scrub by the side of the rill;
If you can’t be a bush, be a bit of grass,
And some highway happier make;
If you can’t be a highway, then just be a trail.
If you can’t be the sun, be a star;
It isn’t in size that you win or you fail;
Be the best of whatever you are.
Dr. Sanjukta Sivakumar
Principal