Unfolding

     The School of Athens , a fresco by the Italian Renaissance Raphael, shows Western Philosophy’s iconic figures, namely Plato and Aristotle. The two giants in the academy are surrounded by people who are either engaging with each other through discussions or listening attentively to the great two. Trivially, this painting can be seen in our ordinary classrooms— a mere sight of disorder. But one must ask these questions: “Do our schools have the same spirit?”   “Do our schools engender an environment for the growth of authentic discourse? How does the school appear to the common students and their respective parents? It is already embedded in society that school is a gateway to employment. Students and parents alike see school as a ticket to a job; thus, a strong necessity to finish even in the most complacent and mediocre path possible. By Raphael - Stitched together from vatican.va, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4406048  ...

     Exquisite! By comparison, you are yet the students I handled as a batch for two consecutive years. Forgive me, knowing that I was going to be omnipresent in your senior high school life, I got excited to do an experiment. After a tiresome rubbish of an experience during the pandemic and your previous batch who were at most still having a hangover of simply passing by shitty compliance of modules (with few esteemed exceptional students), I pushed you into overdrive in a manner that I usually would when I taught in college before. And it worked!      I was engaged with the expected frustrations. The extreme poles were there, but those who were deserving of pity are not shameful in the sense – just minor outliers and I am leaving up to their gods for their character growth, that is all. A worthy spectacle was seeing how those who were already at some capability struggled to be better under pressure. An even better feast for the eyes were those who outshin...