Who is a leader?

 Teaching English and/or Additional English at the F.Y. to T.Y. level, whether for Arts/Science/Commerce, is no longer merely  literature-focussed subject-specific activity. It has to be an orientation to life skills as well.

I am indeed proud of the fact that once the BMCC became autonomous, i attempted all these possibilities such as situational-communicative speaking abilities, developing vocabulary the fun way, narration, jokes and cartoons to develop language skills and multiple intelligences as well as critical thinking, the Abrams triangle and PD, preparing project reports, research paper writing skills, and so on. 

 There was a literary section obviously. For Compulsory English, i related it to watching concerned films in English or Hindi films based on it. Unfortunately, all of these efforts were scrapped.

Once i started teaching the recently developed syllabi in the SPPU affiliated colleges, i was pleasantly surprised to see that all such items i had long time back included in the autonomous syllabi were now in the new SPPU syllabi. I did feel validated. 

One such skill I had to teach was the leadership skill. What i attempted was as follows: with some inputs i provided, we prepared two lists. One dealt with the positive characteristics of a good chief. I chose to to call it "team leader". The other list consisted of the bossy bore. We chose to name it the "Big Brother" which gave me a chance to introduce George Orwell to them.

Next we discussed suitable examples or "case studies", to use a technical term, of both these categories. Thus i tried to establish that leaders are not only in politics, but everywhere, in each field.

 Finally, to drive this point nearer home literally, i asked them to discuss the woman in the family as a leader. After our discussion, they all arrived at the conclusion that whether she was a housewife or a career-woman cum home-maker, a woman is always the best leader.

Want to know why? Well, a sensitive and sensible woman is always mission driven. Forever team-oriented, she is selfless and open-minded. Being thoughtful, she is solution driven. Her ability to empathise easily makes her the perfect leader.

Thus we finally arrived at the conclusion that a true leader is someone who brings out the best in everyone. Such a leader can be in the private space or in the public sphere. Mostly a she, such a  figurehead leads by example!

Pratima@ "A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will all say: we did it ourselves," said the ancient master,  Lao Tzu.