Recently, to my pleasant surprise, I met some of my former students from the seminary. They are priests now, some of them doing distinguished and creative work. The seminary was a real home, where they felt at home, and free to be themselves. For instance, many of them called me “Joe” (I was their professor, or dean, or vice-rector).
Meeting on the Net, one of them said, “Joe, you let us ask questions and let us think. This was a great help.” Others agreed.
This is not my merit. I owe this to professors I had in Rome and in the US, where we were encouraged to think for ourselves, ask questions, express different points of view. We were not told to “shut up and listen.” I remember one brilliant professor who made changes in the textbook he had written as a result of our classroom discussions. He felt that some of the views we, students, expressed were worth integrating into the text. He said that he had gained new insights from the classroom discussion.
Education has three basic goals: to pass on existing knowledge to a new generation, to help them use their brains in creative ways, to develop soft skills (character, communication, relationships), including basic human values.
In the Indian way of teaching (in both schools and colleges—including seminaries and other formation houses), handing on existing knowledge is the priority. “Mugging up” is encouraged. Whoever can repeat correctly what the teacher taught in class will get high marks.
Creativity and thinking for oneself are not encouraged. At times they are positively discouraged, or even punished. The assumption seems to be: The teacher knows; the pupil does not. Let the pupil keep quiet and learn.
Fr Joe Mannath SDB
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