A typical question in our high school certificate physics examination would go, “What is the definition of pressure?” Learn the definition by heart and you could get full marks without understanding the concept at all.

If instead, the question had been, “Why does being poked by a pin hurt more than being poked by a finger?” or, “Why does it get harder to pump up a tyre as it fills?”, then merely learning up a definition wouldn’t have been enough. The student would have had to understand the relationship between force and area, and also be able to put their ideas into a cogent, structured argument. The exam becomes a test of education, not of memory.

The fact that education and examinations are at loggerheads was hard on the teachers at my school. The challenge for them was to create an environment that imparted an education (in every sense of that word), and still prepare students for a system that gave them just one chance to demonstrate their knowledge of 10 years of schooling.

Education is on my mind today because I just heard of the death of Anne Warrior, my school principal and English teacher at Aditi School in Bengaluru.

I love how Aditi alumni remember Mrs Warrior’s punishments with as much fondness as her teaching. My classmate V. was bellowing in the quadrangle one morning, breaking the strict rule about no shouting near the classrooms. His punishment? To stand in the quadrangle after classes had begun, and shout as loudly as he could for two minutes.

Then there was the carpet in front of her desk where students were sent when they got into trouble. It was a way for people to sit under her supervision to make sure they stayed quiet, or finished their homework or read a book. Students would often come back with a little something she’d given them — a sweet, or encouraging words, or a scratch-and-sniff sticker. She understood that sometimes all the “punishment” a child needs is encouragement.

This doesn’t mean she was a softie though. She could have a formidable temper, and as students we feared as much as respected her. Two well-known triggers were if students walked past litter without picking it up, and if anyone was heard talking rudely to the maintenance staff or drivers.

Terrible handwriting

Hearing this, you’d think her classes were a call for “pindrop silence” but actually, you’d get pulled up for not asking enough questions. She once began an ethics lesson by playing a Queen song. My other shortcoming was my terrible handwriting and Mrs Warrior took a lot of trouble to correct this. “There’s no use knowing all the answers, Gautam,” she’d say to me in her British accent, “if the examiners can’t read them!” She’d set me exercises every day, written in her own beautiful hand until all my teachers were able to read my work again.

But to me, her greatest legacy was her love for the English language. In a culture where young children read Enid Blyton and the Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew series, she called for a library filled with Roald Dahl and C.S. Lewis. She once told my mother, who was also a teacher at the school, that she hated Enid Blyton. Everyone is too good in it, everything is too neat, she said. “Life isn’t like that — everything does not always end so well.”

Dear Mrs Warrior, I would like to think of this ‘Off the Cuff’ as your last assignment to me. (I’m just glad I don’t have to handwrite it!) Thank you for your words; every last one of them.

Gautam Raja is a freelance journalist based in Los Angeles, USA.