A Revolution In Letters

THE BRIEF

X dropped out of college when she’d had enough of the prevalent state of education. Wanting to change its fate, she exchanges letters with her pen pal, Professor Gyaan.

Now while that does make her an ex-student of this flawed system, she’s still a student. A curious cat. A learner, for life, with vengeful purpose to turn things around.

At the heart of education, is a teacher and a learner. Hence, the Professor’s answerable. And he’s responsible, to initiate that exchange; to fire up the future; to effect that very vital transformation; to usher in that revolution, in letters even, if that’s square one.


THE STORY

Extreme dissatisfaction with the status quo often leads to rebellion.
It should.
What are we doing here otherwise, sitting around, swallowing the indigestible, lying down?
When the very thing that was meant to grow us starts to decay, we have got to hit the brakes, rethink what way we want to go and then ironically, step on it!

At some point in the course of our education, we all break, take breaks or both.
It’s just as sad as it is startling that systems that were designed to facilitate learning – the simple act of gaining knowledge – would ever cause a breakdown or prompt escape or be anything but joyful and fulfilling.

May be it’s the forced schedules and the forced learning and the forced (unhealthy) competition and the forced irrationality to excel at everything you study and the forced day you pull through at school or college when you’d rather be somewhere else doing anything or nothing else.
It adds up to a monotony that can and does drive us mental; we simply have different thresholds for when the seemingly forced becomes monotonous.
With water levels going over most people’s heads, the pumps will have to surface to suck the dullness out.

Mankind has always needed a holiday from structure. That hardy word that spells discipline, order, method and is very often a madness marauder; a chaos killer.
We soon realize though that coping with chaos is the only lesson we’ll ever have to learn.

The letters that X exchanges with a Professor not so faraway record a watershed in approaches towards education today together with proposed solutions, crucial advances, even thorough transformations tomorrow.
They’re the necessary stories of change in exchange.

Mankind has always needed a holiday from structure.
Holidays are fun.
Learning was always meant to be fun.
These letters might just bring it back.

LETTER ELEVEN

Hi X, As you sit by the sea, I insist you read this. Sonali Pattnaik, a mother, writes and you can’t miss a word, a...

LETTER TEN

Prof. Gyaan, I am writing to you from the moist eventide on the shoreline of Pondicherry. Your letter gave me reason to come and SHARANA...

LETTER NINE

Hi X, Schools are shelters. And here’s the necessary knock: Everyone is entitled to them! Some are even named so. I want to tell you about SHARANA. It moved...

LETTER EIGHT

Prof. Gyaan! Your ode to books and reading and inevitably, dreaming, was a joy to receive. In ‘Art Matters’, Neil Gaiman maps out these clearly...

LETTER SEVEN

Hi X, You wrote about reading. That might be where we make the start. To make readers out of children. To let their imaginations run...

LETTER SIX

Hey Prof. Gyaan, In a life so little and experiences so scarce, I saw the ideal teacher in Robin Williams in movies like Good Will...

LETTER FIVE

Hi again X, Since I didn’t hear back from you, I thought I should pick up from where I’d left off. You’re likely mulling over...

PODCAST: LETTER TWO

   

PODCAST: LETTER ONE