History tells us, great teachers didn’t travel across the globe, their teachings did. One of the greatest writers of all time, Leo Tolstoy, had been a teacher and an educationist at his core. His experiments and teachings, be it at Yasnaya Polyana or through The Kingdom of God Is Within You inspired revolutionary minds such as Vladimir Lenin and Mahatma Gandhi who even went on to set up Tolstoy Farm in Johannesburg, South Africa during his time there.
If Yasnaya Polyana, which began life back in the 19th century, was an attempt to challenge the then-existing conventional education system in Russia, in India, there has always been an alternate and supplementary educational system in since ages. The increasing reliance on edtech and online courses testify against the broken conventional educational system.
The fact of the matter is that Indian education has always relied on the teacher’s cult persona, from Gurukul period to today, when a movie (Super 30) personifying a math teacher in Bihar went on to garner INR 150 Cr at the box office.
If some teachers like HC Verma and Anand Kumar — portrayed in Super 30 — have become cult figures with their brand of teaching, another equally popular educator, Byju Raveendran, chose a different route.
