Making Good Human Beings!

 

-

“Data is not information, information is not knowledge, knowledge is not understanding, understanding is not wisdom; education is understanding these facts about the life” ... Clifford Stoll

Clifford Paul "Cliff" Stoll is an American astronomer, author and teacher & only a hard-core teacher can differentiate in all above terminologies with clarity, which definitely, Paul is one such! Well, I am not a teacher, I mean in conventional sense as I have never taken teaching as a full-time job (though it’s a bucket list wish) yet I have my exposure for academics & gong by later age experience (i.e., post my education), whatever my interactions with students have been, I agree with Paul hundred percent! And then this is age of Internet (read as google) where every information is available on touch of a screen which makes you feel that you are most knowledgeable person, actually,  you are just an observer of information & postman to carry that information to others, is a bitter fact; all of this has only made job of a teacher harder!  Well, the subject of sharing is I have been invited as panel speaker for setting up a course of Post Graduate Diploma in Construction or say Site Management for architecture as well civil engg. students graduate (actually for anybody) & it’s by a renowned architecture i.e. Bhanuben Nanawati College of Arch (BNCA), Pune & their partner university i.e. Liverpool John Moore University & British Counsil, UK. I have been invited for my field experience & what I expect from the pass-out students on site as an employer as well part-time teacher too!

There were many dignitaries, seniors from construction field as well from real estate & academics too & they all expressed giving exposure to new technology, what is happening at world level & even introduction of Ai (Artificial Intelligence) type in things in the industries. As well there were suggestions about site or say field experience, which is a must & make the students understand what their employer needs or expects from them, though I personally doubt how many employers themselves know what they want, (lol, sarcasm)! Joke apart, the team from the college has already made a list of their course’s aspects & grades each of these aspects will be having & we were supposed to go through the list & discuss about the same & give our opinions. The aspects included which topics or subjects are compulsory as well which can be taken as electives & how we will be teaching these & what kind of improvisations can be done to all these fronts of the course! Obviously when you are supposed to teach about construction then there are a few things you can’t neglect & one of them is site exposure as unfortunately in our country construction has less R & D done in past or even in present because man-power is a lot cheaper than machines. For e.g. plastering of walls is still done by hands in eight percent of the constructions, making four walls of a room of different quality if they have been done by four different masons! Now, how are you going to assure the quality in such a case, & this is the scene for many construction activities such as painting, tiling, plumbing & list is on! At the same time there are no central certified courses for many trades or works which are all listed above, barring electrician or welder. As here on site, a person who comes to the contractor (thekedar) with a thapi (plastering equipment) is a mason, a person who has saw in his hand is carpenter & the one who carries pana (nut-bolt fixing equipment) can claim that he is a plumber, no more qualifications are asked or needed! And as a site engg or supervisor, you are supposed to manage such lot, I am sorry there are big shots like L& T or Shapoorji Palanji (civil engg firms) who may be having their own trained people of above trades but we are speaking about entire country’s construction industry & jobs in them & not with just some select few, that’s why I felt it was necessary to make the teachers aware about these facts, which I did!

A good plaster or good painting or good plumbing or good water proofing or good tiling, there is very less scope to judge it on the scale of some machines but one has to develop his or her own judging sense is something missing in present young lot & the reason is not in engg but in the way engg or any knowledge is taught to them! Do mind, you can get examples of good quality from Google but Google can’t teach you what good quality is, rather what right quality is! That, an engineer has to develop by exposing himself to as much works, he can & that needs one thing which no school teaches you & that is, patience! Here I remembered a story from Zen (I am diehard follower, not fan, of Zen), which is about Master & his Disciple, like most other such stories. A boy goes to a master who was known to be best in teaching swordsmanship & asks how many days he can become the best swordsman? The master says, it will take ten years for the boy to become the best swordsman. Hearing this the boy says, that’s too much of time & he doesn't have that much time to spend on learning & he will have to inform his parents, so he will be back the next day. Next day the boy again comes to the master & says, he has informed his parents & he is ready to leave his home & stay with the master & will think of only training in sword fighting, now how much time will it take for him to become the best swordsman? The master replied, maybe twenty years! The boy is baffled, as when he asked in a normal course, he can become the best in ten years & when he is ready to leave everything & focus on only sword fighting training then the master is saying time will be double to become best, how is that possible? The master was right as what the boy was missing was not skill or will for learning swordfight but patience & that’s why when the second time the boy came back, the master increased the period of training!

This Zen story stands true at the time & today if someone asks me what’s the basic characteristic or quality I would expect from the new apprentice or a beginner site engineer who wants to join my team, its patience! Because one may be good or bad with knowledge or even its application but if one doesn’t have patience to gain what he (or she) is lacking then that candidate is useless by me whatever qualification from whichever institute he may be from! As first one has to have dedication & will to learn but if you lack patience then however dedicated you may be it's not going to work. And then comes the next aspect of character of a candidate & that is the ability to accept our weakness. The biggest problem with new genre (well, it’s with even many grownups too) is, “I know it all “, an attitude which not only makes you a fool but it stops your improvement. And when you are laced with this attitude then everything which your boss or colleagues tries to teach you, you think you are being insulted! I have seen or worked with many youngsters who when has a degree of engineering with good grades thinks they are already the boss at site & don’t need anybody’s guidance, actually any field work is new learning everyday & the teacher can be even a fitter or mason, who is working at site from the decades before you even entered in some technical school & no shame in learning from him! I shared my these views as they haven’t been taught to me also & it took me years to understand its importance.

Next thing I put forward was, about the proper communication & observation aspect of the students which is never taught or given importance in any stage of education, especially in the technical branches, is my observation! Outcome is, most technical candidates are extremely poor in communicating things in proper manner & in time causing chaos where multiple agencies are involved. A site or project engineer is supposed to coordinate also with all the concerned agencies & for that a proper system of communication is a must. Fortunately, there are many means of communication available to this genre such as WhatsApp, email, SMS, mobile but unfortunately, they lack in using them in the right manner! And then there is this “I assumed so” wala attitude (mala Watala, in marathi)! This is the worst thing that has happened, rather “I assumed so’ i.e., “Mala Watala” is the biggest curse to the youngsters by me, as in any work your decisions must be based only on the facts & figures & not on your own assumptions (that too one way), high time to teach this basic about work to this genre! Right from communicating meeting time to the concerned people to supervising the work done, most of the mistakes happen because somewhere someone assumes that the other person will do it or already knows what to do, which isn’t the fact & what follows is a cascading effect of assumption generated errors! And the problem is not about just relying on the assumptions as with experience you are permitted to assume certain things, problem is all the assumptions of this genre are as per their convenience & that’s very difficult to handle for any sane employer, please do mind this, while we design the syllabus, is what I shared!

And when it's about elective subjects, I suggested one as psychology as when you manage a site, it's more like managing people & for that one must have knowledge of human psychology, is my logic. The second elective I suggested on which many frowned & or thought its my passion (read as madness) as the elective was, Wildlife! But trust me, wildlife teaches you patience in the best practical & interesting way, for e.g., one can wait for a glimpse of a tiger for hours without making a sound, that’s how you learn patience. And in the wildlife, nothing happens by chance or coincidence, everything has got a purpose as no wild animal can survive on assumption theories of its own. In the forest, a deer can’t wander in the open assuming there won’t be a tiger around, neither a tiger can chase a lone deer assuming it can easily outrun its prey, just its alone! And looking at these phenomena, one can learn so many things about his or her own life, I myself am a beneficiary!  And then by being in wildlife which is the best form of nature one learns aesthetics also as in nature there is nothing disproportionate or ugly & aesthetics is an important part of life, right?

To conclude, I appealed to all the teachers to make the parents of these students also as part of syllabus as occasionally they must call or talk to the parents about upbringing of their students because any student spends more time at home than college, so how he behaves at home, does matter a lot! As an employer, first I need a good human-being as my site engineer, whether he is a good engineer or bad, that doesn’t matter much, so, lets focus on creating good humans out of the students; with these words I thanked to the BNCA, John Moore university teams for not just their invite but for the opportunity which made me able to soul search myself along!

-

Sanjay Deshpande 

Sanjeevani Dev.

Please view my sharing about real estate in Pune at You Tube link below..

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4xX7eopH5o&t=5s

 

Please do visit my blog links below to read about real estate & home buying! 

https://visonoflife.blogspot.com/2023/01/defining-good-home-real-estate-in-2023.html

http://jivnachadrushtikon.blogspot.com/2023/02/blog-post.html

Creating Togetherness; team Sanjeevani Way (Click link below) 

https://www.flickr.com/photos/65629150@N06/albums/72157627904681345

For any of your complaints about city, log in at link below

www.punecorporation.org

Take your issues to Hon PM at link below..

https://secure.mygov.in/

Think Green, Think Life

www.sanjeevanideve.com / https://junglebelles.in/