If you can't hook...

After that drubbing by Aus and SL yesterday, India has almost become history. So, something on History for a change...

Harsha Bhogle wrote this.

Apart from Buchanan and Rod Marsh, Singapore's Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew had said the same thing many years ago, to his everything-begins-and-ends-with-marks-educators: "LEARNING OVER TEACHING"

Junior used to mention this more often than not, whenever he was frustrated by his teachers not imparting even the basic knowledge on certain areas so that the wards can go and figure the other stuff themselves. Well do get some bad apples, yeah?

Funny, Harsha mentions learning History - true, it is a mundane thingy in India; mug and regurgitate!

It is precisely with this view that I was approaching Junior's history lessons a few years ago, when he first had the taste of the subject. And in no time, my entire (Indian) notion of history education went out of the window. It was so refreshing that sooner than later Junior was swearing by History and to-date he loves History more than anything else.

Case in point: There was this exercise that the students were asked to do in one of their tests. Remember these are 12-year-olds hardly out of the nappies.

You are to write two-100-word paragraphs about David Beckham - one as a ManU fan (yes, he was playing for them then!) and one as a Liverpool fan. Fine! Your average football fan will go ballistic at such an assignment. But the twist was in the next part of the question. Now wearing a historian's hat, analyse what is right and wrong about the two writeups.

The last part, definitely gave a very good chance to the pupils to put into use what they have learnt about respecting the sources, getting the right perspective of the material, how to achieve a balanced-view from two contrasting pictures etc.. All important for Historians in particular and Humans in general.

Just a thought...

Enough sermonizing.

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Answer to BQ-3:

No, it is not what Napoleon told his soldiers before that ill-fated journey towards Russia. It is the Maori war dance that was made famous by the New Zealand All-Blacks Rugby team. Check the Haka here.

Anand Re, Ishan and Siva* got it right. Go do the dance in front of your kids, guys! Ishan: If you don't have one, then the girlfriend is the most obvious choice. ***dread*** ;-))

No quiz question today.

See you tomorrow.