Very often people come to me and say, “Bob, I can write very well!” I nod respectfully, because one must encourage confidence in people. Then I ask to see what they have written. Most times, what I see is not writing.
It is typing with excellent grammar.
Now don’t get me wrong. Good grammar is important. Spelling is important. Knowing where to put commas can save lives. “Let’s eat Grandma!” and “Let’s eat, Grandma!” are two very different family situations. But real writing is not about language alone. It is about thinking.
A person may know English beautifully and still not be able to write a story, hold an audience, or move a crowd from a podium. Why? Because stories and speeches are not built with words. They are built with thought.
You can teach somebody vocabulary in six months. You can teach them pronunciation. You can even polish their accent till they sound like they studied in London though they have never crossed Bandra. But teaching someone to analyse, observe, question and think deeply is another matter altogether.
I remember one sad episode, when my family shifted from one city to another and I landed in a school, where an Anglo-Indian teacher gave us a precis writing exercise. We were supposed to compress a full passage into a small number of words. I did exactly that. I rewrote the whole thing in my own words and cut it down beautifully. I was thrilled with myself. The teacher was not.
She failed me.
Why? Because I had not used the same words from the passage. Apparently, thinking independently was not encouraged. Repeating was.
Luckily, it did not affect me much. I continued doing the same thing. Then came another teacher, the headmaster, who looked at my work and smiled. “Excellent thinking,” he wrote. Suddenly I realised the problem was not with education. It was with educators who were frightened of originality.
And that is where our country suffers today.
We have millions who can memorise facts, pass exams and shout slogans, but very few who can stop, analyse and ask, “What exactly is happening?” We forward messages without checking facts. We cheer speeches without understanding consequences. We clap because everybody else is clapping.
A failed educational system does not create fools. It creates people who are afraid to think for themselves.
So if you want your child to become a writer, speaker or leader, do not merely teach language. Teach thinking. Teach observation. Teach analysis. Let them question. Let them disagree. Let them use their own words.
And the day our people start thinking deeply, many who are ruling, by making us stop thinking, will suddenly find themselves without an audience, and finally find themselves out of job, and out of Parliament...!
The Author conducts an online, eight session Writers and Speakers Course. If you’d like to join, do send a thumbs-up to WhatsApp number 9892572883 or send a message to bobsbanter@gmail.com
