Things that I think about

There are quite a few things that I worry about, no that does not sound right, let me try again. There are quite a few things that I think about, a lot. Things that I keep getting back to, again, and again, and again.

As a kid, the stars fascinated me. So did the television, and the remote that controlled it, I was fascinated by the workings of the machines, the hidden strings that were behind what was visible, pulling at stuff, so that the things just worked. I was lucky enough that the sense of wonder continued on till I was in the twelfth standard. I was lucky, that I did not just do it for the marks, the grades. Protons, electrons, neutrons, galaxies, supernovas, black holes, and the stories that they told, it all interested me. It was perhaps one of the reasons I took engineering after school, not that there was much of a choice, that I was aware of.

Then college happened, and I was systematically broken down. Or maybe I couldn’t cope. Or maybe, we were incompatible. I don’t know. I had big ideas, different ideas. After one point, I simply gave up. The inquisitiveness died.

There are a few things I think about a lot, the two paragraphs above, do not describe any of those things. They are things that needed to be said, the story that needed to be told.

The future of humanity, our survival, our journey out into the stars is one. Writing, telling stories is the second. And opening up a school, changing how we teach, what we teach, is the third one.

Look at the stars!

Space has always been interesting, I mean how can it not be, and as I read, and learned, more and more about the things out there, the massive scale of things, I got even more hooked. Then came the knowledge of the utter fragility of human life, of our home, and space became the solution, the only place we could go to. Then, after I wrote a story about AI, somebody said something about Asimov (I had no idea who he was till that point, but was too shy to admit, so I googled him, then thanked the person for the great honour of comparing me to him, then bought I, Robot) and I was introduced to these cool dudes, with these awesome stories, and I was even more hooked. Then I realized when these stories were written, and I got a little sad. We had messed up. That’s what I thought. Still do.

Then came Mr Musk, and he said he’d put people on Mars, and I let a sigh of relief!

We don’t need no education!

Pink Floyd had nothing to do with this. Education was not really something I used to think about earlier. In fact, it has been a fairly recent.. uh.. Obsession. Okay, maybe not an obsession. I don’t have obsessions, which perhaps is a bigger issue than I think it is.

There were a few TED talks, a few essays here and there (read Seth’s blog), and then, my own experience kicked in. I remembered my class, remembered the people in my class, the teachers who taught me, and the manner in which they taught. And while I remembered it all, I felt, again, sad.

Teaching, hadn’t really changed much. It was still crushing creativity. It was still creating cogs, workers for the factories. There was a time, when that indeed was the need, but that time, that need is now not really there. We have machines for the factories. AI is already here! And the schools are only making changes on the surface. Projectors instead of blackboards!

And well as for the writing, well go through the blog!