Staying in one's hometown for a lifetime, and not moving

In today's globalized world, we witness people often relocating to different cities or countries for the purposes of education, jobs and even for 'better living conditions'. It is almost an indicator of your 'success' if you roam around the world for whatever reasons, and bring 'gifts' for your near and dear ones. While gifts are nice ideas and can be brought from home as well, the idea of 'going global' is a reality. However, one might decide to stay, settle, live out his life in his hometown or country, and that too, for very good reasons as well.

First of all, settling in one's hometown enables him to stay with his people, his parents, friends and relatives. If we consider this transient existence of ours, being with the people you care can be all that you would require.

Secondly, one doesn't have to roam around the world to know about it, in this age of information superhighway. As the popular saying goes, 'If you cannot travel, read', so, reading while staying in the comfort of your friends and relatives could bring in more reward and fulfillment to one's life. This way, you can have the best of both the worlds, i.e. stay home and know about the world.

Finally, if one settles in one's own country and community, one doesn't only stays back, he also contributes directly to the development of his own people, something which is priceless for the people and the country, and for one's personal satisfaction as well.

So, one can live, work and live out one's life in any way one wishes to. But the most satisfactory life and living would require his serving his own people and bring about change to his own country and community.                 

At the university: teaching or researching?

'Hope this year will bring peace and prosperity to the much grieve world!' was the Facebook status of one of my friends. He happens to be a PhD. in English Literature, well employed as an Assistant Professor in the Department. And by virtue of his Doctorate, he features in high profile forums and meetings and have been given some lead in the Department as well. But, as the quotation rightly elucidates, he is, in actuality, a very volatile 'scholar' having decided flaws and shortcomings when it comes to using English as a language. 'Scholars' like him are to be spotted quite frequently in Departments, who claim that they do good research. Therefore, people who do research are not always in possession of comprehensive knowledge, threfore those who have a strong reading habit should only teach in the Department, irrespective of their interest in research. 

However, researchers are important assets of a country. Their research creats new knowledge which in turn is fed into industries to value add products and services. Without good researches, mankind would've stuck in the same place, and societies wouldn't have marched forward and prospered. But since the researchers focus on a very narrow field for research purposes, they understandably don't possess a thorough and sound knowledge on the whole subject matter, quite unlike an engrossing and passionate reader who reads for pleasure and sheer knowledge. 

Since a reader's job is to read compulsively, it is more likely that he would take interest in his teaching assignment and read accordingly to deliver lectures worth the students' time. They would be able to explain better, due to their having an upper hand with the field of knowledge in general, and the teaching/ learning quality in the classroom would improve manifold. This is not to say that researchers will not teach, for they definitely will. But preferably to a limited extent. Their main job in the department would be to do research, coach students with their research projects and publish quality research for the consumption of all stakeholders, including the teachers who, obviously, would read and incorporate the new information in their lectures in classrooms. 

This arrangement of people having genuine knack of research doing mostly just that, and people who love reading and teaching doing so, would increase the research/ teaching objectives of the university, and be most beneficial for all concerned. This would also solve problems arising from the requirements that teachers would 'have to' do research even if it's not their first priority, and that researchers are expected to have a holistic knowledge in the field and teach flawlessly in classrooms.

As mentioned earlier, teaching and researching are both equally important and crucial for the success of any higher seat of learning. A good, well informed teacher can motivate and inspire students in more ways than can be imagined. Similarly, a good researcher plays a vital role in producing new knowledge for the society and mankind. Without needing one to have his finger in both the pies, both the teacher and the researcher can contribute for the benefit of students and the society at large.  

Good fences make good neighbors

Robert Frost said it rightly 101 years ago. Truly good fences make good, responsible neighbors who work together to ensure safety and peace for the entire neighborhood.

This is most in violation in today's world and in recent times. If we start from the beginning of it all: Saddam Hossain in Iraq was a despot and a tyrant. He murdered many people unjustly and finally invaded Kuwait and declared it a part of his own territory. He was a mischief and he didn't uphold the sanctity of the fence as a good neighbor.

But the US didn't do that as well, for that matter. Senior Bush ultimately invaded Iraq, for WMD or whatever, in an effort to redress a wrong with yet another.  

The first violator was Iraq, and that was followed by the US and its 'allies'. But the latter didn't stop there. Soon we saw the fall and devastation in Libya, Afghanistan and finally Syria. Saudi Arabia decided to join the party of 'invasion frenzy' as well, by cobbling up an 'Arab coalition' and starting to bomb Yemen.

Had all the parties maintained and upheld Frost's advisory of keeping to their own fences, none of these would've happened today. Now we have a distraught Middle East, and a perilous Europe, with war cries coming from all around.

That indicates the world must've been in the wrong set of hands. It needs a complete overhauling now.