F is for FISH is FISH

Last Friday, I went to the university library to hunt for a recipe on how to teach science to my kids in a better way. While in the process of revolving my eyeballs for the best shot to capture the perfect book, it accidentally happened to glimpse the lateral part of a book on the opposite shelf with the title How Students Learn: SCIENCE IN THE CLASSROOM.  

The title of the book was just enough to rape the whole share of my virgin attention on that cool morning. Without wasting the time, with the book stuff on my left palm, I tugged an empty chair standing vacant nearby. I followed my ritual of reading the blurb first to investigate whether my mind can release the verdict of acceptance in reading the book.

The blurb was capturing and mesmerizing though. It boasted the inclusion of voluminous pervasive scientific experiments and the exciting utility of the book that can revitalize the effectiveness of science teaching within the four walls of the classroom.

Since then, I was not able to complete the marathon of reading the entire page. Hence, I switched to the content page and slipped off to the introduction page by coincidence. My eyeballs remain glued here again.   

      

The story titled ‘Fish is Fish’, which originally hails from Lionni (1970) was exposed with all flesh-and-blood. Here it goes:

“In the story, a young fish is very curious about the world outside the water. His good friend the frog, on returning from the land, tells the fish about it excitedly.

“I have been about the world-hopping here and there,” said the frog, “and I have seen extraordinary things.”

“Like what?” asked the fish.

“Birds,” said the frog mysteriously. “Birds!” And he told the fish about the birds, who had wings, and two legs, and many, many colours. As the frog talked, his friend saw the birds fly through his mind like large feathered fish.

The bird as imagined by the fish    Photo Courtesy: Click the LINK

The frog continues with descriptions of cows, which the fish imagines as black-and-white spotted fish with horns and udders, and humans, which the fish imagines as fish walking upright and dressed in clothing” 
Courtesy: Brandsford, John. & Donovan, M. (Eds). (2005. p 2). How Students Learn: SCIENCE IN THE CLASSROOM. Washington: The National Academies Press

The cow in the mind of a fish   Photo Courtesy: Click the LINK

Human being in the mind of a fish   Courtesy: Click the LINK

This story by Lionni (1970) resonates with rhythms of so many philosophical understandings and interpretations. It shares the similar views of the constructivists where they believe that new knowledge is only constructed based on the prior experiences and the ideas of an individual.

The poor fish (as revealed in the story) which has never in its life gone out of the pond can only imagine the human walking in their form and a cow with udders and horns in their form too. The fish has constructed these images based on its prior ideas and experiences which Jean Piaget (1896-1980), the founder of constructivism, coined as schemata. Piaget firmly believed that our children learn through organization and schemas and construct their ideas through exploration. And philosophers like that John Dewey and Vygotsky have also supported the similar ideas of Piaget.

However, there is another reason for me to love this story. It has a strong philosophical flesh hanging on the skeleton of this story. This story reveals the truth that our life is a fair game. What a frog can do easily is something that the fish finds difficult to do. The frog can breathe outside the water but the fish can’t.

With this concept of superiority-inferiority imbalances, it gives me a thought whether my weakness is still a limitation to make me inferior to someone who can do it in a better way. Or does it mean that my strengths are really the true strengths to differentiate me separately from others?   

The moral in this story has honestly been a phenomenon that has affected my mind beyond compare. 

“People are always complaining that life’s not fair, but that simply isn’t true. Life is extraordinarily fair. It’s just not centered on you” – Lynn Marie Sager

 

E is for Excusitis

For the last few days, I had been seriously suffering from an incessant cough of Paralysis Analysis. Due to its inevitable outbreak that prevailed for quite a long span of time, I had to seal off even several of my professional works inside the envelope of procrastination.

It was terribly tough to grow under such circumstances, though I managed to break off its trouble-cocoon eventually. I found that when a load of works accumulated over the yoke of my brain and when all the works walked together to shake their hands with the dateline, it caused irresistible irritation and suffocation in my mind. The entire organs of my mind start to get frozen, its hand become unstable and its eyeball rotates its circumference looking for the shortcuts to complete all the works at once. 

One such work was the preparation of the Conceptual Test Questions for my research proposal. The questions will help in my study designed to investigate the Bhutanese students’ understanding of some Physics concepts.

But however, before I implement those questions, I needed some Bhutanese teachers to take a role of an expert to validate and verify whether those questions possess the right kind of muscle to realize the set research objectives and questions.

To fulfil this formality, I floated the requests to ten friends of mine who already have rich experiences in teaching Physics for Middle and Higher Secondary School students. I dropped an explicitly long and humble message into their inbox explaining every detail and was patiently waiting for their responses.

Fortunately, to save me from being dejected and wretched, a friend known by the name Rinchen Choden (M.Sc.) from a remote school managed to return my questions with her job done. I thanked her with all my heart for taking pain because she was the one who happened to fulfil my dreams despite herself being ONLY the one who does not have wifi facilities. A friend in need was a friend indeed, she proved. 

The picture speaks it all.                                       Courtesy: Click the LINK

But for the rest of them, it was awfully miserable and wrong to expect that they would do it for me. Actually, I had reasons to wait and expect because few of them have written to help me while some boasted of getting it almost ready. However that ready never gave birth.

Since I had no time to wait and was already delayed for my preparation, I was compelled to inquire whether they have completed my requests. And even at this hour, few of them still continued to write to me, “Don’t worry buddy. It’s almost getting ready”. But that ‘ready’ did not happen even today after my presentations were over.  

Having survived this dreadful event, I realized that it is never too good to expect too much from one’s own friends. However, I was disturbed by the fact whether they knew that we were suffering from Shiv Khera’s so-called “Excusitis”. People who are victims of excusitis always procrastinate their work by saying that ‘they are getting ready and after a few days later they are still getting ready and a few months later they are still getting ready.

People who suffer from excusitis keep on making excuses. Excuses are like cabbage to me. We may be able to hide the one with another like a leaf of the cabbage but as we peel it off one by one, that smallest embryo of excuses is found eventually.

     “He slept beneath the moon

      He basked beneath the sun

     He lived a life of going to do

     and died with nothing done” - James Albery