Thinking Tangentially  (Paperback, Jose K Chacko)

Education, etymologically from ‘educere’ (= drawing out), is the unfolding of the enfolded. The germs of knowledge, skills, attitudes, values and intuitions are already enfolded in a novice-scholar, an LKG student, if you will. The teacher facilitates the unfolding of these germs, which hatch in the teachers’ warmth in the temple of a school. Parents and the community play their roles in shaping a child into a true-fit in society. A raw trained post graduate from Kerala, a diffident fledgling, equipped with a couple of years of teaching experience, I travelled to Bhutan to occupy the grand office of the teacher. Thenceforth, the metamorphosis of the teacher in me had been momentous. Like P. B Shelley, I fell upon the thorns of teaching life; I bled. Such falls, thorns and bleeding episodes on varied stages and platforms of teaching fed me immensely; daring pedagogic experiments thrilled me to the marrow and I was awakened. Eureka, I screamed. Salute to Bhutan, the GNH nation, who enabled me. The following leaves portray such extemporaneous falls, unwelcome thorns and tales of teacherly romances and ventures, not to mention close encounters with raw human beans (Pre-primary urchins) and groomed human beings. This made me think out-of-the-box. ‘Thinking Tangentially’ was thus engendered and now released to my readers to ponder over, respond and critique. -Jose K Chako (Author)