Friday, December 16, 2011

RIP : Farhan Mujib

Here we continue our tribute to one old departed friend Dr Farhan Mujib.

(1) For yours truly he was not from the age group - we was much senior but he had a near complete expertize to neutralize age difference. No wonder students would flock to him for all those informal chit-chats. He'll relish it when he'll get occasional emails from old students who'll tell him how they give their late sleeping habits to attend his first period or how wonder his teaching was or how he inspired them. Teaching perhaps is amongst most rewarding professions but its full potential does not manifest itself on everybody. Dr Farhan Mujib was one prime example where it did manifest itself in some glory. When yours truly once handed him over a book called On Being a Teacher, edited by Professors Amrik Singh and J.N.Kapoor his report was rather scathing. The books' chapters are by individuals who had great teaching careers and were adored by their students-we are talking about higher education. Gratification of teaching career comes out vividly in that book but Farhan Sahab's assessment was that these anecdotes are rather boring. Boring these are not at all but Dr Mujib was a somebody in his own right. (Psst!)

(2) He was instrumental in changing the question paper pattern of High School (Secondary School) and Intermediate (Plus Two or Senior Secondary) level examinations. Having got a doctorate in education he could talk about those aspects of education which others were not familiar with. He could talk about teaching methodology and he could talk about evaluation and he could tell how the distributions of marks differ in different examinations, how to set up good objective type questions papers and all that. Once he had set up the Physics question paper for Senior Secondary School Examination. It was a great experience for the students. Bright students were very happy because they liked the questions for the questions were not routine and completely new but these were not intimidating. By now that pattern of questions has become common so people will not know how the things were different before that. This was a sort of achievement that could be shared with close friends only.

(3) Yours truly pestered him, but he did not succumb to this, to create a wall size collage for the university using marriage cards. He was not amenable. On technical level he said that the cards are too thick to handle on collage and like anybody else he was piqued at the usual official attitudes. Plan in yours truly's mind was to edge some high university official to request Farhan Sahab to do this work gratis for the university.  Before that we heard this call of our Lord Most High that he is no more with us.

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