Every afternoon at 5 p.m., he is on Patna television in a children’s program. He is Ghufran Malik and he is a dadaji (grandpa) who teaches science to children. The ratings have gone up since Dadji came on. Before his arrival, the studio set looked like a classroom and the children were taught mostly by using blackboard and charts. He explained, “I introduced practical learning. If we talked about absorption in plants, I actually dipped a root in water and showed it. Nowadays the children have the remotes in their hands and if you don’t grab their attention in the first ten seconds, they will change the channel.”
Ghufran Malik knows. He is a retired teacher and educator. He has an MA and M.Ed in Horticulture from India and from Reading University in England. He worked in some fine and some poor institutions, from the famous Nitarhaat to the notorious college at Begusarai. Malik was recently in Jeddah and he spoke to Arab News about the changes in education and how parents should broaden their horizons and keep up with the latest trends and developments. He explained, “In the past intelligence was tested according to how well a student did in math and language.
“They were considered duffers if they did badly in those areas. Now researchers have identified eight other areas in which a child’s intelligence is reflected. For instance, there’s body language. A talented batsman such as Sachin Tendulkar barely passed matric and did so with difficulty; yet he has great intelligence in the area of body language. That is why he is such a genius in cricket. Amitabh Bachchan is also an example. And look at Manoj Bajpai. He ran away with the money he was given for going to college. Math and science are not the only measures of intelligence. Intelligence is also measured by art and pictures. M.F Hussain had a high IQ there. Then there is interpersonal intelligence. People with an abundance of that excel at management. So parents need to be aware of where their children’s intelligence lies.”
Ghufran Malik said that unfortunately in India even today the emphasis was primarily on dull classroom teaching methods. “I put up a sign in my class in Nitarhaat School which read ‘Teachers don’t teach. Students learn.’ You can never teach a student unless he is willing to learn. And the only way to get him going is to get his attention, to arouse his curiosity. We are still drawing leaves and parts of flowers on the board. If a teacher took apart an actual flower, the student would show more interest.”
It was this love of teaching that prompted Ghufran Malik to revolutionize his methods. “I didn’t do anything new. I just performed practical demonstrations of what was in text books. If I had to teach rays in Physics, I made a ray box and showed an actual ray bending.
“My difficulty, however, was that I had to make some of these instruments myself and found that in some of the Indian science magazines, the methods were faulty. For the ray box, for instance, the magazine said you had to punch holes. Every time I did that, it failed. Ultimately I found that a slit rather than a hole was needed.”
Ghufran Malik also made gardens in his school. He made bonsai of big trees. He even crossed cauliflower and broccoli. He also crossed a tomato and a potato. “The advantage of this vegetable was that it produced tomatoes at the top and potatoes in the roots. It took very little space and was ideal for a small kitchen garden.”
Ghufran Malik’s fame grew so that it landed him in trouble. “I was made principal of Nauv Vidaya College in Begusarai. Nobody lasted there more than six months. I begged, ‘Send me to Andaman Nicobar but not to Begusarai.’” Nauv Vidalaya benefited from Malik’s devotion. The college with a building worth 35 million but not a single tree had 2,000 revenue-producing trees when Malik left after three years.
Ghufran Malik is now working on some American-sponsored projects in which he is working on methods to improve learning. “How to get a student interested in his studies is my only focus. I feel I’ve achieved something when one of my students who has become a commissioner or an IAS tells me ‘I became what I am because you got me interested in education, which I had earlier found boring.’”
Arab News Community News 16 April 2003