Saturday 25 January 2014

A TEACHER CAN DO MAGIC-PROMISE AND WISHLIST



“I am not a teacher, but an awakener.” 
 Robert Frost






          Unlike other disciplines, literature mirrors life with all its pros and cones. A literature classroom is an open window that guides the students to explore the new continents of knowledge and experiences. Literature has a unique capacity to educate, transform and mould an individual. It represents a world of ideas, ideologies, perspectives and emotional insights.





How can we make literature classes more effective?
1. Benjamin Franklin once commented “Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn”. So more than teaching the students, involving them in the learning process is important.  We have to train the students to become the higher level thinkers by generating the skills of interpretation, argumentation, critical analysis and writing in them.
2. The study of literature must help the students to see the world, people, place, things and events through different view points and which enables them to develop their own belief set, opinions and views.
3. By realizing the fact that a class room is conventionally anti-democratic by allowing the dominance of  the former in the binary opposition “extroverts/ introverts”, we should give equal priority and enough space to all students to raise their voice in the microcosm of the world called classroom.
4. Teachers must ensure the students enough freedom to interpret the literary texts as once I.A Richardson, the New Critic, once did in his classroom. (He threw a poem at his students without its title, author’s name and biography and it has been said that Richardson himself amazed after hearing the various interpretations given by his students).
5. Understanding the genre that you are going deal with does matters a lot. A poem is different from a drama, a novel and a prose. We can not use same teaching techniques for these entirely different genres. A drama is something that meant to be staged. Suppose if you are dealing with Wole Soyinka’s  ‘The Lion and the Jewel’, let the students enact the play or at least some scenes of the play in the classroom and let the students experience the play.
      Thus  a TEACHER can do MAGIC in a classroom and make the students interested in leaning.    
4th semester PG    

Saturday 18 January 2014

Association Inauguration Of The PG Department of English 2013-14


`Thozhil Kendrathilek` Documentary Film By MG Sasi


                 Thozhil kendrathilek (workplace,ahoy!) is an hour long documentary by MG Sasi.The play staged by a women's commune at Lakkidi village near Palakkad in the year 1948.It was for the freedom of a group of Namboothiri brahmin women who set against patriarchal system.They declares their victory at last.By watching the documentary Thozhil kendrathilek we have getting the history of Brahmanical society and the ills existed with in them during 1900's.MG Sasi remarked that it was a period of cultural transformation and students used literature and theater to get into the ideas of feminism,Dalith emancipation and women empowerment.

                 The director MG Sasi has successfully portrayed the oppressed women in the Namboothiri community and their reaction against gender inequalities.In 1947 EMS Namboothiripad inaugurated the Thozhil Kendram with the aim of giving basic education to the members along with training in stitching, weaving,cooking etc.The script of Thozhil Kendrathilek was based on the life of Kavungara Bharghavi who was forced to marry against her wish.

The women Lysistrata in Aristophanes play, and Nora in Ibsens Doll's House have been included in the documentary.Lysistrata persuades the women of Greece to stand against the sexual need of their husbands and lovers while Nora in Dolls house does not want to be chained to the conventional duty of women, but to be considered as the human being first.It also recreated the angles of the life of Kuriyedath Thathri .She was bold and stubborn woman who questioned the ills existed in the Namboothiri community.
                 
                  The documentary is really a torch which hold back to the feminist beginnings.Director MG Sasi depicted the clear cut theme of the play and relevance of showing it before the contemporary society.
                                                                   

                                         JUMNATH .KV
                                         Ist SEM MA ENGLISH