Book Review of "VIRUTCHAME VELIYE VA" (Seed, shoot out as a beneficial tree!) in the Island newspaper

Book Review of "VIRUTCHAME VELIYE VA" (Seed, shoot out as a beneficial tree!)

Virutchame Veliye Va: Problems faced by the students
Reviewer: Dr. Jeyaseelan Gnanaseelan, Senior Lecturer, Vavuniya Campus of the University of Jaffna

Title of the book: Virutchame Veliye Va (Seed, shoot out as a beneficial tree!)
Subject: Problems faced by the students
Author: A. Nishanthan
First Edition: 7-05-2012
Pages: XIV, 93
Price: 300/=
Publisher: Thiruppumunai, Thottaveli, Mannar
Printing:G.S. Printers, Vairavapuliyankulam, Vavuniya
ISBN: 978-955-54484-0-6

The author of this book, Virutchame Veliye Va, written in Tamil, is Mr. A. Nishanthan, a young creator and palthurai viththakan ('gifted with multi-skills in arts') an honourific title awarded by the literates recently in public. This book infiltrates the macro-disciplines such as educational psychology, educational sociology, educational politics, and educational economics and investigates the micro-disciplines in the field of education. He presents them in simple beautiful narrative discourse language style in moderate quantity. They are practically useful and contemporarily relevant.

The students of the present era definitely know the importance of education but what confuses them is how it can be attained. A. Nishanthan's book is different from formal text books in education written in academic language in a disinterested, sophisticated style. Usually our students do not like these types of formal writings. Surprisingly, this book is designed as a guide and toolkit for both students and teachers.

Education does not aim to make all the students doctors and engineers but make them as valuable

human beings contributing to the development of human society, by getting professional training in all the physical and mental labour involved in human civilization. Consequently, they will be able to engage in creative, rational, critical and aesthetic activities. Virutchame Veliye Va loudly advocates this message, for, the purpose of education is to make the inner potential of each and every student be realized and materialized as beneficial human activity.

Its author, Mr. A. Nishanthan, experience wise, amply represents the contemporary Tamil students and Teachers. He shared and has shared the painful, traumatic and challenging experiences during the intensive war and post-war periods. So as he has noted, 'life is a footpath in a jungle full of wild animals; without the weapon in our hand, education, we cannot journey on it' (Anthonipillai, p.2). Accordingly, his book reflects the learning-teaching methods and the problems of the students and teachers in the Tamil areas, touching the heart and brain of each reader with clarity: 'Can we reach the intended destination by getting on the bus without reading the name board in the front?' (p.3). Thus he questions the students without any aim or target in their educational journeys.

If asked whether economic development or human development is important, the latter is the answer. Educational development is the root of human development. Teaching and learning should develop constructive and critical skills among the students. Therefore Nishanthan has created many contexts in this book. He has created many binaries such as student-student, student-teacher, student-parent, student-social economic background, student-learning subject, and student-spending time and has brought out their relationship and discourse in an emphatic as well as stylish manner.

Further, he illustrates the sexual attraction among the teens, teen love, their conversation and relationship of the students beautifully so that the students will be able to understand these complicated teenage issues. He advises how this sexual attraction can be modified or moderated to educational improvement constructively. Regarding advice, he says, 'if teaching is equal to watering a plant, advice or counselling is equal to fertilize the plant' (p.7).

It is not wrong to gain money, position and good status but how they should be attained and what social responsibility is to be fulfilled is illustrated as follows: 'when water is poured into a beautiful vessel, the water gains the shape of the vessel but when a roughly shaped block of wood is laid, it is not possible to get it shaped like that of the vessel' (p.7). Therefore, students should be like water which is poured into the right vessel of education and ready to be shaped properly.

The author, however, has avoided presenting the impacts of the culture, religious rituals and norms, art and tradition, politics and civil administration on teaching and learning. Perhaps he may have thought that these issues are beyond the scope of what he schematized in the book. Or there may be space limitation to develop these aspects in the book. One thing to be noted here is that we, from the eastern civilization, always used to glorify and praise these aspects and very rarely criticize them. This attitude should be changed, for instance, how many of us dare to promote and support the modern educational approaches like sexual education and gender mixed education? Surprisingly they have become so important in the western education and have contributed to the physical, psychological and rational development of the students. They can be proved with evidence. This idea may look foolish to those who criticize the western culture blindly and holistically.

In addition to the ideas, Nishanthan uses short stories, poems and metaphors to decorate and flavour the ideas developed. He compares the school and class room as follows: 'a classroom is the operation theatre of a hospital; teacher is the physician or surgeon; she removes the body part called ignorance and fit in the new part called education' (p.22). Some parents and teachers always scold the children causing negative psychological impact. Addressing the victims, he says, 'students, you should be like an antelope, which will die due to arrows like harmful words; you should become a person with strong ideological determination with like an elephant in rut' (p.27). The children who have been deprived of their educational rights or forcibly dropped out from school is equated to 'babies plucked out immature from the womb by force' (p.29). He reminds the teachers who hate the students who are not able to comprehend the lesson taught immediately as 'all the buds do not blossom at the same time' (p.44). The message given to the teachers who do not tolerate the children who make trivial mistakes is that 'a physician is needed for the patient not for the healthy' (p.47).

Thus he has produced this book in a compact way touching the heart and mind of the students and teachers. The students will really enjoy the writing style. It is contemporary, practical, real, confidential, transformable, retrospective, pleased with good activities and disappointed with bad activities. In brief, this book is the diary of and should be in the hand of each teacher and student; it is their conscience!