A man of learning

I feel that students today are too focused on their grades. I think it is more important for young people to develop intellectual understanding and an appreciation for the value of knowledge.

I cannot imagine a life without books.
No other medium imparts knowledge and pleasure – not even in an age where television and the internet offer instant gratification – in the same way that a book does. You can take a book with you anywhere you go; you can relax with it in bed or make it your companion while travelling.

Nothing else relaxes me in times of solitude as much as a book. I especially love textbooks. I have written, edited and produced scores of them. I also conduct numerous workshops on teaching methodology in science and maths for teachers all over India.

Youngsters today are more concerned with marks in their report cards than development of their minds. This is no fault of theirs but a result of our education system being intrinsically flawed. We have only just begun to understand that each child is wired differently and has different strengths and weaknesses.

Goals are met through encouraging each child's strong points and directing them towards a greater good. We should not herd our youth in the same direction. Until this realisation seeps in, there will continue to be unnecessary pressure on children from all directions – teachers, parents and peers – to 'score' high.

Teaching is an art that requires an ability to provoke thought and participation in children.
Being able to explain a formula well is not as important as making a child curious about it and interested in it. Ensuring a sense of self-motivation
in a child will instil a desire to learn.

I have never taught in a school except for a brief period in Delhi Private School, Sharjah, when they needed
a substitute science teacher. I had my fair share of headaches and successes with my '32 monkeys' as I used to fondly call my students. This period inspired a book on teaching methodology in primary science that I produced later on.

The best lessons are learnt by making mistakes.
Every adversity offers up opportunities and every mistake has a lesson to learn from. If we seize the opportunities and learn from mistakes, we grow to be stronger and wiser individuals. When I had to quit my job with Orient Longman in 1992 and take up another assignment that was not as challenging, I thought that it would be disastrous to my career. But because the new job gave me a lot of free time I started writing.

All the books that I have published were written during these two years. I later rejoined Orient Longman in 1994. I am where I am today largely because of those books.

Developments in technology have changed the way knowledge is grasped and distributed. Computers have necessitated a realignment of skills. Skills such as mental arithmetic are becoming obsolete now that we have computers and fancy calculators to do it for us. However, these developments have allowed new ways of knowledge production to enter – such as problem-solving skills – which in turn allow us to be more equipped to handle future demands.

Although the electronic media is not yet as convenient as books are, I believe it will get there. This means that the possibility of books becoming outdated is now a distinct and frightening possibility!

Having an educationist as a wife makes my world more interesting. We have a similar train of thought and always have a lot to talk about. Both of us love interacting with children. We have a daughter and a son – Neha, 28 and Vaibhav, 23.

The moment we became parents we decided that our priorities would be to give them the best education possible – both in academics and in extracurricular activities.

We also worked hard to teach them good values so that they could become sound and sensitive adults. We wanted them to develop their creative abilities, have disticntive personality and career. The choice was always theirs; we simply did our best to guide them.

My children are quite different from each other. Neha is a very responsible 'older sister' with a talent for the arts.

She has just completed her PhD in comparative politics from the University of Maryland in the US has started work with Pew Research in Washington – the kind of job she had always wanted. Vaibhav is very much a scientific person and displayed an interest in computers from an early age.

This was no doubt helped along by my own fascination for computers – we were one of the first families in India to own a home computer and spent many a happy time as a family playing some of the older computer games. Vaibhav and Neha both grew up with computers but Vaibhav took to them more readily. He completed his degree in computer science from Purdue University in 2008 and now works for the social networking site 'Hi5' in San Francisco.

While I am proud of the strong personalities our children have developed and the promising career paths they have embarked upon, I am doubly proud that they are sensitive and caring towards others.

– As told to Ruqya Khan, a Sharjah-based freelancer