CHILDREN

Best wishes for 2013

Dear Children,

Another New Year has dawned. What did you do on January 1st? Hope you enjoyed a piece of milk rice prepared by your mother or guardian. I am sure you must have got quite a number of New Year Greeting cards, phone calls and text messages etc. It is a pleasure to get a note wishing you the best from friends and relatives.

Each of you may have different plans for the New Year just begun. But remember that all of you have to work hard towards achieving one common goal during your school days. Hope you all know what I mean. Excelling in your studies. Remember that you have to give priority to your education, all the other plans should be secondary. It is important to obey your parents and teachers and try to fulfill their aspirations.

Some of you may have already noted down your New Year resolutions - may be in an exercise book or in a diary. Those who have not done it yet, should do it today. You should have set - plans and targets to be achieved in 2013. Better take them down in a book and keep it in a place easily accessible. Some of you are good at Mathematics and there are others who are better at aesthetic subjects. Those who have scored lower marks for Mathematics during the last few school terms should determine to do better at the next term test. The others should put extra effort on aesthetic subjects.

What about your behaviour? Have you ever been unkind to any one by word or deed? Has your behaviour made other people unhappy and sad? If so try not to continue these habits in 2013. Try to be a nice child/student, be pleasant to everyone, but speak out whenever you see injustice.

Hope you will spend your New Year meaningfully also keeping these guidelines in your mind.

Bye for now, Sanju :- [email protected]

Great Minds:

The Master of Them that Know - Aristotle

Have your friends ever called you Aristotle? If they have, you can be proud you earned such a title. If they have not, it might not be too late yet to rise to the lofty heights scaled by this Great philosopher and scientist, hailed as one of the most intellectual figures of ancient Greece. Chances are Aristotle himself will show you the way, through his work covering almost every topic known and at times unknown to mankind, and through his simple theories, beginning with this particularly appropriate quote “knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”

Aristotle - whose name means “the best purpose”

Aristotle who was born in the summer of 384 BC,in Stageira on the Chalcidic peninsula of Macedonia, in northern Greece, unlike most of us, did not begin his formal education until he was 17 years old. The son of a doctor called Nicomachus, Aristotle spent his early childhood probably in Pella, the Macedonian capital where his father worked as the personal physician to King Amyntas. After he lost his father and mother Phaestis, his sister Arimneste and her husband Proxenus looked after him, till he reached the end of his teens. Proxenus then, sent him to Athens to enroll in the school run by another well known Greek philosopher – Plato.

Aristotle was so impressive as a student that he soon became a teacher himself, remaining at the Academy for 20 years. While we know little about the subjects he studied at the Academy, it is said that when he became a lecturer he taught rhetoric and dialogue (the art of persuasive speaking or writing).

The events leading to Aristotle’s departure from the academy are a bit cloudy. Some say that after Plato died in 347 BC, his nephew Speusippus became the head of the Academy. Perhaps Aristotle left because he disagreed with Speusippus’ views, or because he did not get the opportunity to be the head of the Academy, as many imagined he would.

Probably to get over his disappointment, he left Athens and traveled to Mysia at the invitation of his friend Hermias, the king of Atarneus and Assos in Mysia (modern day Turkey). During his three-year stay in Mysia, Aristotle met and married his first wife, Pythias, who was Hermias’ niece. They had a daughter, Pythias, named after her mother. After the death of his wife, Aristotle remarried and had a son whom he named Nicomachus in memory of his father.

In 343 BC, Aristotle went home to Macedonia to start tutoring King Phillip II’s 13 year old son, who in time to come would become one of the greatest conquerors the world has ever known – Alexander the Great. Appointed as the head of the royal academy of Macedon, Aristotle gave lessons not only to Alexander, but also to two other future kings: Ptolemy and Cassander. In 335 BC, when Alexander was crowned as king after his father King Phillip passed away, Aristotle returned to Athens where Plato’s academy now run by another philosopher called Xenocrates was still the leading school in Greece.

With King Alexander’s permission, Aristotle started his own school in Athens, called the Lyceum. It was here, at the Lyceum that he would spend most of the remainder of his life, working as a teacher, researcher and writer.

Unlike Plato’s Academy, the doors of Aristotle’s Lyceum were open to all who yearned to widen their knowledge, with Aristotle himself giving lectures to the public on popular subjects every evening. In the mornings he conducted more advanced lectures for a selected group of students. But not in a classroom.

Aristotle taught as he walked around the Lyceum and his students had to run behind him, straining their ears to hear the deep philosophical theories he was explaining. Soon the Lyceum was known as the peripatetic school (due to Aristotle’s habit of walking to and fro when he taught) and Aristotle’s students as peripatetics meaning “a person who walked about.”

As a writer and a person of wide ranging knowledge, Aristotle changed almost every field he touched. His intellectual range was vast, covering most of the sciences and many of the arts, including biology, botany, chemistry, ethics, history, logic, metaphysics, rhetoric, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, physics, poetics, political theory, psychology, and zoology.

He was the founder of formal logic, and explained how a valid argument could be built through this classic example: All men are mortal; Socrates is a man; therefore, Socrates is mortal. He pioneered the study of zoology, both observational and theoretical, in which some of his work remained unsurpassed until the 19th century. But he is, of course, most outstanding as a philosopher. His writings in ethics and political theory as well as in metaphysics and the philosophy of science continue to be studied, and his work remains a powerful source in today’s philosophical arguments.

Though he was happy at the Lyceum, often lecturing on topics which had never been studied before, in 223BC when Alexander the Great died Aristotle was forced to move out of Athens. He retired to Chalcis, his mother’s homeland, where he moved into a house once owned by his mother which still belonged to her family. He died there, one year later at the age of 62.

Among some of his most memorable quotes is his description of happiness - “happiness depends on ourselves.” To the query, “What is a friend?” his reply was “A single soul dwelling in two bodies.”

This towering figure in ancient Greek philosophy, who wrote as many as 200 treatises in his lifetime was simply referred to as “The Philosopher” by scholars like Aquinas. According to the British poet and author, Bryan Magee, “it is doubtful whether any human being has ever known as much as he did.”To this day Aristotle remains thus: The Master of Them that Know.

- Aditha ([email protected])