BROKEN PATH

One morning I was sitting at my home & was watching TV with my family members, I was physically present but consciously my mind was bombarded with various thoughts & emotions My post graduate examination results were out, Campus placement was over most of my friends were placed & still I don’t have a job, I was feeling low, College life was over I was feeling the pressure of time.

My aunty was sitting next to me & she was shuffling channel, suddenly a headline on one of the news channel attracted our attention and it was “Are you worried of not getting job instead of having good qualification and experience? Do not worry! Try Once! One mantra for your entire job related problems”

And my aunt increased the volume of TV, after 15 min lecture finally guruji revealed the mantra, It was

                                            वक्रतुंड महाकाय कोटिसूर्यसमप्रभ ।

                                            निर्विघ्नं कुरु मे देव सर्वकार्येषु सर्वदा ॥

It is one of the sloke in Hinduism.

Guruji told to repeat the mantra 30 times in a day & promised that problems will be solved if the process is pursued for 3 weeks but he didn’t tell the meaning of sloke.

Immediately My aunt wrote the mantra on her mobile phone & text-ed it to me on watsapp, She told me to take a snapshot of the mantra & set it as a Wallpaper on my phone so that if I forgot to chant the mantra, It will help me in recollecting the process.

Two days passed & I noticed that this mantra is written on wall of various temples, on car windshield, on door frame of houses. I find it difficult to pronounce the mantra, it arouses my curiosity to find out the meaning of that mantra so I started asking the meaning of the above mantra to people who have written this words on their property & I was shocked with the answers I received Not even a single person was knowing the meaning of the mantra. Finally I decided to ask this question to the 21^st century guru GOOGLE & I find out it means.

“O, Lord Ganesha of the curved trunk and massive body, the one whose splendor is equal to millions of Suns, please bless me to that I do not face any obstacles in my endeavors”

This phenomenon of learning anything by memorizing it or technique based on repetition is called ROTE learning. The idea is that one will be able to quickly recall the meaning of the material the more one repeats it.

The system is widely practiced in schools across India, Brazil, China , Pakistan , Malaysia , Singapore, Japan etc.

In the united nation Arab development report for 2004 the Arab researchers claim that rote learning is a major contributing factor to the lack of progress in science and research & development in the Asian nations & Arab countries though scoring well on skill tests.

While studying standards of nations such as the United States promote active learning,critical thinking,communication,innovation and creativity.

 

 “The spirit of learning and creative thought were lost in strict rote learning”-Albert Einstein