Things To Do

The tumult and the shouting dies,
The captains and the kings depart;
Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice:
An humble and a contrite heart.

Kipling wrote these line a very long time ago, it seems, in his masterly poem Recessional. But as I walked out of the venerable hallways (a mere one-sixth the age of the Old Home itself) I realised that this is one of the foundation stones of the whole edifice. We as an institution have done well, but there are still areas for improvement.

Here are a few notes buzzing inside my head.

1. Surely we need not be so wasteful and inefficient in terms of time management. The effectiveness is there, but the pontificating should not take a week. (Etymological note: Latin pontifex, modern 'pontiff', means 'bridge-builder'.) In fact, the more we approach the 'just in time' paradigm, the more we will become like Toyota and other successful and intelligent corporations, where there is little unnecessary make-work.

2. The skills need to be taught more effectively. It cannot be true that extremely close and detailed supervision is something that is a sign of the self-directed learner. And it isn't always successful either. Sometimes, you need to have more experience as a supervisor and the student needs to require less supervision. Idle bums.

3. Knowledge can be over-compartmentalised. And also spammed. It is ridiculous for humans to chew up food, digest it, make it into neat lumps, and then feed it to others to eat. But this is what happens in most academic classes worldwide. Need it be that way here as well? I hope not.

4. Knowledge is a vast net, a great tapestry. But what happens is that people are making snapshots and passing them off as the real thing. The idea of weaving a large tapestry appears too daunting simply because the likely instructors are limited to hand-waving and knitting of small baby items, it can appear. Thank goodness this is not always true.

5. I am very optimistic about the future. I have great respect for the past. What presents itself as the truth tends to require both these perspectives in order for people to understand it and to feel secure about it. Only insecure people seek to control information without spending the necessary time to teach people about information in the first place. If anything, that is the one thing I am not so optimistic about.

Towards the end of Kipling's poem, he writes:

If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe –
Such boastings as the Gentiles use,
Or lesser breeds without the Law –

Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget – lest we forget!

Amen.