You live, You learn!!!!

You live, you learn, you love, you learn,
You cry, you learn, you lose, you learn!
You bleed, you learn, you scream, you learn.
You grieve, you learn, you choke, you learn,
You laugh, you learn, you lose, you learn!
You pray, you learn, you ask, you learn.
-Alanis Morisette

Experience they say is a harsh teacher as she gives the exam first, before giving the lesson. But is the retention of the lesson learnt from experience higher than that learnt from a teacher or from other's experiences? Perhaps yes.

In a recent interview on television, I saw Arundhati Roy (Booker prize winner for "The God of small things") speak eloquently on a plethora of topics ranging from US invasion of Iraq to the Narmada dam project in India, freely expressing her opinion with passion and emotion. She was talking about her new book consisting of a set of her interviews between 2001 and 2003 (The cheque book and the cruise missile). After the programme, I wanted to see how exceedingly well educated Ms Roy is to speak with authority on these subjects and write books of world appeal. It turns out that she is not a graduate from Harvard nor a double doctorate from a prestigious university. At the age of 16, Ms Roy left her hometown in Kerala only to live in a tin roof hut within the walls of the Feroz Shah Kotla in Delhi before getting a degree in architectural art. Where does she get such abundance of knowledge from then? Personally, I feel she has gone through the "been there and done that" school and that has enriched her persona.

But does that mean that education or a teacher is not useful or necessary? No, Teachers and education are a must. I feel education is nothing but a tool that helps us extract learning from our experiences. A good teacher should be the one who shows us how to use this tool. They say that whenever you lose never lose the lesson. The lesson is lost if education is not applied to the loss.

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