A bright Spark
Dated : 25th July 2017 (Courtesy Times of India)
A single bright spark can illuminate an age. History is witness to this.
The future will belong to young women and men who are conversant with knowledge of the past, aware of the present, and ready to change their tomorrows.
This can happen only with reading. It always was, and remains, alongside experience, the only true education.
'Read to Lead' sums it up nicely. How else would you explain the trajectory of a village boy who grew up to touch the stars-quite literally, for he built rockets, and then went on to become President. His first 'job' was as a newspaper delivery boy. Years later he would acknowledge that it was reading those newspapers that fired his imagination and lifted him out of the drudgery that might have been his life. That boy was A P J Abdul Kalam.
Much before Kalam, there was Srinivasa Ramanujan who taught himself mathematics by reading books either lent or sent to him by other mathematicians. By 16, he was astounding his teachers; by 17, the larger mathematics fraternity.
The roll of honour of those from ordinary backgrounds who grew into men and women of eminence and purpose primarily through reading and learning would stretch into miles: B R Ambedkar, Edwin Hubble, J William Fulbright of the eponymous scholarship, Bill Clinton, Toni Morrison, to name but a few.
But no 'Read to Lead' list would be complete without that man of words and war, Winston Churchill. When he had nothing left, as John F Kennedy put it, Churchill marshalled the English language and sent it to war. He won a second prime ministership six years after winning that war-and then the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Churchill's story, one in which reading was all-important, really begins in India where he arrived as a young cavalry officer in 1896 and found himself unable to keep up in conversations with wellbred fellow officers. Not very good at his studies, he had thrice failed the military academy examination. Churchill's response to that intellectual pressure was to institute a regimen of reading in the hours between lunch and a few chukkas of evening polo in Bangalore.
Reading broadens vision. It serves to help distinguish between right and wrong and read the grey. Science explains the term as a cognitive function designed to decode symbols and derive meaning. While reading in one's adolescence has been linked by experts to greater vocabulary and mathematical prowess, the habit is also known to slow down cognitive degeneration- the brain grows older slower.
But it is more, much more. It can be an instrument of pleasure. It is an instrument of knowledge. And knowledge, and the wielding of it, is power. This power need not necessarily be political, or military. It can go beyond both. The word also implies a power over the self, something invisible that impels you to do what is right.
The world today is online. But the internet often drags up only what you search for, which suggests pre-knowledge of what you seek. It serves up data and information, but often without wisdom or knowledge. Indeed, deliberate misinformation is often passed off, and consumed, as fact-with horrific consequences.
At The Times of India , we believe it our duty to help create a generation of discerning readers who can differentiate between fact and fiction, who engage with the world with a sense of curiosity and an open mind, who read more than just their textbooks, and who see reading as a pleasurable means to empowerment rather than a drab duty to be endured. It is this belief that has driven us to launch Times SPARK — Scholarship Programme for Awareness, Reasoning and Knowledge. We're hoping to discover the A P J Kalams of tomorrow.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/education/news/a-bright-spark-can-light-up-the-world-the-times-of-india-launches-a-big-scholarship-programme-to-encourage-reading-among-the-young/articleshow/59748915.cms
Dated : 25th July 2017 (Courtesy Times of India)
A single bright spark can illuminate an age. History is witness to this.
The future will belong to young women and men who are conversant with knowledge of the past, aware of the present, and ready to change their tomorrows.
This can happen only with reading. It always was, and remains, alongside experience, the only true education.
'Read to Lead' sums it up nicely. How else would you explain the trajectory of a village boy who grew up to touch the stars-quite literally, for he built rockets, and then went on to become President. His first 'job' was as a newspaper delivery boy. Years later he would acknowledge that it was reading those newspapers that fired his imagination and lifted him out of the drudgery that might have been his life. That boy was A P J Abdul Kalam.
Much before Kalam, there was Srinivasa Ramanujan who taught himself mathematics by reading books either lent or sent to him by other mathematicians. By 16, he was astounding his teachers; by 17, the larger mathematics fraternity.
The roll of honour of those from ordinary backgrounds who grew into men and women of eminence and purpose primarily through reading and learning would stretch into miles: B R Ambedkar, Edwin Hubble, J William Fulbright of the eponymous scholarship, Bill Clinton, Toni Morrison, to name but a few.
But no 'Read to Lead' list would be complete without that man of words and war, Winston Churchill. When he had nothing left, as John F Kennedy put it, Churchill marshalled the English language and sent it to war. He won a second prime ministership six years after winning that war-and then the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Churchill's story, one in which reading was all-important, really begins in India where he arrived as a young cavalry officer in 1896 and found himself unable to keep up in conversations with wellbred fellow officers. Not very good at his studies, he had thrice failed the military academy examination. Churchill's response to that intellectual pressure was to institute a regimen of reading in the hours between lunch and a few chukkas of evening polo in Bangalore.
Reading broadens vision. It serves to help distinguish between right and wrong and read the grey. Science explains the term as a cognitive function designed to decode symbols and derive meaning. While reading in one's adolescence has been linked by experts to greater vocabulary and mathematical prowess, the habit is also known to slow down cognitive degeneration- the brain grows older slower.
But it is more, much more. It can be an instrument of pleasure. It is an instrument of knowledge. And knowledge, and the wielding of it, is power. This power need not necessarily be political, or military. It can go beyond both. The word also implies a power over the self, something invisible that impels you to do what is right.
The world today is online. But the internet often drags up only what you search for, which suggests pre-knowledge of what you seek. It serves up data and information, but often without wisdom or knowledge. Indeed, deliberate misinformation is often passed off, and consumed, as fact-with horrific consequences.
At The Times of India , we believe it our duty to help create a generation of discerning readers who can differentiate between fact and fiction, who engage with the world with a sense of curiosity and an open mind, who read more than just their textbooks, and who see reading as a pleasurable means to empowerment rather than a drab duty to be endured. It is this belief that has driven us to launch Times SPARK — Scholarship Programme for Awareness, Reasoning and Knowledge. We're hoping to discover the A P J Kalams of tomorrow.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/education/news/a-bright-spark-can-light-up-the-world-the-times-of-india-launches-a-big-scholarship-programme-to-encourage-reading-among-the-young/articleshow/59748915.cms
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