I think the biggest challenges the present generation will encounter when they become the youth of tomorrow shall be the excessive use of machines in the ordinary life. The second challenge shall be the high pressure of working conditions with more machines and less people. What we lose is the happiness of being in eye-to-eye relationship. So, when an eye-to-eye relationship is lost, what could engulf our minds shall be quick anger, impatience, feeling of loneliness, and the demand for everything to happen in no time. The achievement results into anger, frustration, and hatred.

So, 25 years later the best I can predict is a young society working with different kinds of machines and the highest IT technology with a desire to achieve comfortable living immediately, wanting to have satisfaction of needs immediately, driven for money aggressively, and distancing human beings far away. Human beings are electronically available as I repeatedly say, eye-to-eye contacts shall be far way. So this is a very, very difficult situation. Fragmented minds – how people will react nobody knows, when a person will be happy or unhappy, when a person will like you or dislike you, and what a person will do against you in the slightest provocations. Hurtful reactions,mental torture, physical torture, and blackmailing will be very frequent because relationship of one-to-one, eye-to-eye, and self-respect shall be challenged in an emerging society. I am sure that in such a society people will not listen to understand, to ask questions, and to clarify what the other person is speaking. Instead, people will be very anxious to react and reply quickly.

Quick reactions, quick communications, and most of the present-day jobs may be taken over by machines replacing man. Man can either be machine operators or ‘yes or no’ communicators.Only a few would be needed to think and take actions.
In the Indian mythology it is said that in the Kaliyuga — where anger, hatred, and greediness shall prevail over everything — man will tend to do anything for the sake of money, comfort, and personal happiness. And, values shall take a back seat. If these thoughts and predictions are true, then the modern education needs a lot of modification to raise children’s mind to levels in order to safeguard humanity’s peaceful existence.

What are those requirements of education that should build a futuristic society?
The basic values of education which is a non-discriminated way of school learning can never change. In other words, all children are treated alike, in the school, in the classroom, and in the heart of teachers. What binds a non-discriminated learning and teaching is basically love and respect. Give love, give respect, and build self-respect.Love binds children together and the children with the teacher. This aspect of learning shall not be sacrificed for acquiring knowledge.When children are tested or evaluated,they should not be discriminated. Multiple talents and multiple capabilities together can help form a futuristic society. The love of self-respect, patience, understanding, and answering should not be taken out of learning at any cost.

The second factor is collaboration. Collaborating is the only way forward where children work together, learn together, help each other, and are able to share and care. Future relationships will be lost if children do not have the ability to tolerate each other and work together.

Tolerating each other and working together is a serious subject. Today, as the machine related independence come to man, he doesn’t need the help of others. He can manage many things himself. But working with each other is inevitable. As collaboration is necessary, schools should not promote collaboration without individual freedom. So, every child would learn to respect himself/herself, own his/her freedom, understand that his/her freedom has to be united with the freedom of his/her friend as they have to work together.

However, how much of this can be imbibed into a child to be self-independent and learn to collaborate? If this is not taken care of, healthy relationship will be lost, and people will fail to tolerate another person even for an hour. So, the collaboration methodology needs a lot of improvement and schools should always focus on collaboration.

The third thing is critical thinking which should bind learning freedom and learning in collaboration. Critical thinking allows children to explore further. One cannot think unless one has a sharp vision,so schools should always focus in building sharpness of observation.

The next generation children may have to observe and identify problems. A minor issue can lead people to lose money and/orto lose life. So, micro observations on a macro platform should be the basis of critical thinking to save people, their values, and their money.

Let us hope that the next generation is emotionally balanced on impatience, frustrations, and relationship.

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In society we come into contact with people with various attitudes every day. There are some people who are very proactive, smiling, innovative, talking, and makes everyone happy. They won’t insult others and respect everyone. We also come across people who are very serious, do not smile and talk to the point. There are also some others (the fault finders) who always criticise others, and yet others who are silent listeners.

What happens when you recruit the different kinds of people into a job? What type of working atmosphere are they going to create?

Subject to their intellectual levels, people love to work with positive people who respect others, are always supportive and kind. The second set of people who are very serious, subject to their intellectual level, might execute a job but you will not feel any warmth of an employee, colleague working with you because they have nothing to speak to you.

The third type of people, who are sharp criticisers subject to their intellectual levels might do a job well but they will be more focused on finding the fault of the boss, colleagues, the system and even with material things such as chairs, tables, and air-conditioners. Their focus will be mostly on the negative side of a given situation.

One thing that binds all these categories is their intellectual level. If intellectual skills intellectual things are missing, life with our colleagues will be miserable. Intellectual level is the ability of a person to respond, to respect, and to obey public regulations, and to use intellectual skills while doing a job. Such individuals become very important people in society.

Intellectual skill is about application of knowledge in a given situation. Classrooms should teach children more about life speaking skills, behaving skills, respecting skills, and accepting skills. It helps child to become a useful youth for tomorrow.

A person becomes very important to a society when three integral forces merge in a person: Vikara, Vijara, and Viveka Vikshobham. Vichara is thinking and vikara is feeling. Both have a strong connection. There cannot be one without the other. But if these two need to unite a third ingredient is needed and that is viveka (wisdom).

When feeling and thinking are blended with wisdom what comes out is a new river from the triveni sangama. If the teacher knows how to blend the talents of every child in the classroom, he or she will be a wonderful youth for the country tomorrow. If this doesn’t happen, what would be the end result of that classroom? Children may memorise things but do not understand what they learn. So, even if the child is talented, the purpose is taken away. It is like cooking food that nobody can eat.

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My last article was on critical thinking which we sometimes interpret as the ability to discover something and the ability to think in a different way to think from the bottom up. All these are critical thinking.

One of the main things of thinking backwards is something very important in our life. In fact, if I refer to my personal life, when I organised the engagement of my daughter. I did everything but I failed miserable. At the culmination of the event, many things failed. I learned from the mistakes I made when I organised the engagement. I was very careful in organising my daughter’s wedding. Everything went on so well.

Why did the function we organise fail to finish the way we wanted? We did everything but failed. We had teams, sub teams, groups, and we held meetings. Despite doing everything we fail at the culmination point.

How many times the Indian cricket team failed? Individual batsman played very well, but the fielding was bad. Or during other occasions, the team fielded very well but they didn’t bat well. At the culmination point the other team took the game away even though India was well-prepared. So why does this happen in our lives?
The answer is simple. An organisation fails due to the lack of critical thinking. And what is critical thinking? Critical thinking is where we take the ownership of a thought. Even though it was passed on to us by someone else, maybe a leader, the boss or the parent, or a friend, but we own that thought. That’s called thinking critically. This means you were disconnected to this thought early, but now you have connected it, you own it, you interpret it. Now you do it in your own way. In such a situation you don’t need somebody to order you. Somebody to tell you do this, do that, because you know. You have taken the thought to yourselves. This is the way I think about critical thinking and this should start from a school where the teacher transfers the thought to the children. Then collaborate to share the thought. Together they own the thought, together they know how to do it. Individually he/she owns the thought and does it independently. If that habit is cultivated, then later in our life we will become productive people.

Critical thinking also has another aspect. It cultivates the ability to organise events in later life as well as in my present day life. Every event is an organisation for me, even the breakfast in the morning is the net result of the ability to organise. The way I get ready for office is the net result of the ability to organise. Was I planned with the dress to wear, With my dressing style? Did I plan my time for doing different things, such as the time for commute?
Many times I was not planned for anything. If I start thinking of going to office 20 minutes before I have to go, I will be in a mess. Because I don’t know where the dress or other things are. Then I grab everything, have a quick breakfast and I run to my car. Out on the road, I am faced with a traffic snarl. Somehow I reach office late, put on a blushed smile and enter the office and I start the day. Half the day is gone and my mind is 70 per cent disturbed.
Isn’t this an organisational inefficiency?
Critical thinking is the path to how to organise ourselves. The biggest thing a teacher should do in a classroom is to give the child an answer. Please give the child an answer. Let him find out the question.

Why should this be done? Is it to understand a concept? No. Understanding a concept, a context, connecting to the real world, connecting to the real skill of life, all these are necessary. But when all these are done, why give the answer and ask the child to find out the question? To understand it? No. The teacher should know that this child in tomorrow’s world should be an efficient planner of time. He/she should be good at organising his/her daily events.

How is it possible for a child to organise the events in his/her personal life in the future? The child has to develop the skill of thinking backwards from the finishing point. From the end to the beginning. There are many things you plan from the beginning to the end as it happens in many projects. If you have to run from the beginning to the end of a project, of an event, then you should always know how to run backwards in your mind. This is the answer. What could be the question? If you have to think this is the answer, what types of questions should we address to reach this answer?

This is what we learn in a classroom when we do a project work, when we do a collaborated work, when the teacher gives you a question. In an examination, you give a question and ask the child to find an answer. That could be to address the child’s level of knowledge. But there should be innumerable formative question. For the answer is, for example, plants make food. Now ask the child, ‘why do plants make food?’ That’s a thinking challenge. To give the answer the child has to think backwards from the formation of a seed to roots to stems to leaves to flowers to fruits.

Critical thinking should become embedded in one’s life. One should have critical thinking and planning abilities which in effect is thinking ahead from the finishing point backwards. When you have both these organised well, you will have a 360 degree understanding of the whole thing. And you become an efficient person wherever you are in the world.
A teacher should teach his/her students how to own a thought as well as forward and backward thinking because the teacher creates the next generation. Teachers create the personalities of the future world. If anything in today’s world is not happy and good for us, it is because teachers failed to focus on developing critical thinking in children. If teachers understand the huge role they play and try to develop critical thinking in the children, then the future generation will have a fair chance at a good life.

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If education is for my benefit, if education is for my career building, if education is to help me to find a job, like my parents who lived before me, then why doesn’t education give happiness to me? This is a big question. Being a grown up person today, if I understand the problem associated with this issue at least it will help the next generation of children to be happy to go to school.

We are happy to be at home. We meet and interact with our mom, dad, brothers, sisters, relatives and friends at home and we are happy. May be we have a slight fear of father as he may be unhappy if we do something he doesn’t like and he may scold us. But otherwise home is called a home because it is a place of bonding and bonded by happiness. It is love. We know that everything that happens around us build happiness in the mind. Home also shapes our character and our behaviour.

Whatever happens at home is engraved in our mind as we copy it subconsciously. If the environment at home is not good, you would not be imbibing good values from there. The behaviour of your father and mother, how they talk and how they treat each other, how your relatives behave with each other, how they express their emotions, anger and happiness; how they smile, the language they use, their facial expressions; all these are easily picked up by a child. If a child is not using good language while interacting with others outside the home, if he does not behave well, he or she steals, is selfish, fighting for things, taking away other’s toys and so on, where do you think the child learned all these?
Certainly, such behaviour has less binding on his birth but more on the home environment where the people close to him behaved and showed him the way. This should be well borne by every parent that ‘Use good seeds and those seeds will grow to a big, healthy tree before your eyes’.

What is the difference between a school and a home? The moment we go to school, something happens there. We are very happy until the first bell rings. The moment that happens, we have to go inside the classroom and sit on a bench. And we wait for the teacher to come. In those days, the way teacher comes to the class itself was often a problem. The teacher would come with a cane and some books. What catches the student’s eye first is the stick that’s brought by the teacher.

So what is the connection between our mind and the cane? We know that if we are not going to follow what the teacher says, there is going to be a punishment. Why is that warning necessary? The very sight of the cane pulls the mind down. You may think that the cane is the reason why we behaved well in school. Maybe and may not be. But I still believe there is no need for a cane in a classroom. If a cane is required for punishment it can come later. But I don’t think we really need a cane. And if I need to be caned, what I learned at home does not fit well in a public place or in a group.

When the teacher enters a class, there are going to be lessons to be learnt. But why doesn’t learning give me happiness? Every learning is new knowledge. And every knowledge should be a new feel. If my mind is not feeling what I learnt, then it is definitely going to be boring, it is definitely not going to give me any excitement. If learning is an excitement, a new knowledge, a new feeling, then I would have been so happy to enjoy that feeling.

If at home every day mom makes dosa, and another day she makes idli, and yet another day she makes puttu, I am so happy because I have a new excitement, a new taste of my palate. So is education and learning. Learning gives me a new feel of the mind. Learning happens to me mostly through two of my senses. Through my eyes or through my ears; either I will learn through hearing or I will learn through seeing. So, anything connected to the feel of my mind, happens through my ears or through my eyes. And whatever happens through my eyes in the modern language is spatial ability, the ability to picturise, have a feel through a picture. And ability to listen and create a feel is called numerical skill or cognitive skill.

If a teacher comes to the class, teaches something that don’t give me a feel either through my ears or eyes, then that teaching is simply by hearting. It is knowledge that I don’t know what feel it creates, a knowledge I don’t know why I should know it. Don’t you think this is the first reason of unhappiness? It is boring and then we are just being there in the class. Or in between the classes we do a lot of funny things, with friends, hanging umbrellas on others’ collars, or throwing papers at each other. Why do we do that? It is because whatever happens in the front of the class gives you the feel of excitement. Isn’t it true?

It is the way the teacher imparts knowledge, which has no excitement or feeling, which has no motivation of a new feeling, is the cause of our first misery in the classroom. And the moment we are excited we will go in search of it. In the educational language it is called formative assessment feedback system. What is that? If the teacher knows that I got a feel, the teacher comes and asks me a few questions. That I feel, ‘Okay teacher’, how good that can be? Okay how does that happen? I start searching for it. Then the teacher asks me to go to the nature outside the classroom. Maybe it is a botany class.

You have seen the beauty of a flower; the teacher can show me the flower. The teacher can ask, “How this flower is born? Early morning, who makes it wake up?” And have you ever asked a child, how the fragrance comes? How honey comes? Who makes it? Why the plant has made it? From where it made it? A million surprises to me. Now, I don’t need even a teacher. Because the teacher is born inside my mind, as my inquisitiveness to learn. I don’t need anybody now. I will run, I will search, until I find answers. I will come back to my teacher with a feedback. “Teacher I find this, but still I have a problem.” The teacher gives me another challenge.

So what is teaching and what is happiness? It is an excitement and exploring by a child. It is nothing but exciting the mind with the new feel of knowledge and then taking the child to nature and showing him/her what happens in nature and telling the child why this has happened. And ask me ‘Can you go and find out and then come back with feedbacks?

If classrooms miss formative systems and feedbacks, and teachers fail to ignite young minds and bring feelings to the mind of excitement, then children would start feeling ‘I am bored, I am unhappy. I will continue to be unhappy’, This is the starting point. There are a million things that happen in a classroom that add no new knowledge to me, that don’t ignite my mind, that don’t excite me more, that don’t allow me to dive down into the depths of my mind, and that don’t make me more excited and happy in a classroom. It is only the beginning of my unhappiness. As I continue the story I will discuss how schools and classrooms became my problem and why I hesitated to go to a school.

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