Ashok Mathur - The Veteran Educationist, Udaipur
Ashok Mathur, the 85-year old veteran from Udaipur has spent his life training thousands of English teachers. For the last 30 years, he has been designing syllabi, writing textbooks, setting question papers, training teachers and getting research conducted. As the former Deputy Director of the English Department in the State Institute of Educational Research & Training, Rajasthan, his contribution to shaping English Education in Rajasthan has been enormous.
Ashok Mathur’s life has had its share of struggles and challenges. But, his firm belief is that challenges are bound to come in your life. But, it is the ways you face and overcome them that matters.
Ashok Mathur started his career as an English teacher in a remote Rajasthan village. Teaching English to rural students was quite a difficult task but his enterprising nature led him to devise several specific techniques to teach English to the rural students in order to improve their English.
He recalls that being headmaster of a village school was not an easy task. There was communal disharmony and feelings of outsider versus
insider among the teachers. But he was able to solve that by creating and developing a fellow-feeling among the teachers. He also organized extra classes for the students for improving their result. Later, as deputy inspector, when he administered over 15 schools, he managed the task easily by treating all the teachers and the headmasters not as subordinates but as family members.
His stint at the British Council, English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad proved to be immensely fruitful and satisfying as he contributed a lot to English research and training.
When he became Deputy Director at the SIERT, he realized that there was a lot of scope to do a lot of work. He developed a good rapport with many agencies. During his tenure he co-authored 15 text-books which were prescribed in colleges and schools. He also regularly contributed to the Central Board of Secondary Education and the Rajasthan Board of Secondary Education.
Ashok Mathur believes that if one is determined, one can do almost anything. In his opinion you only need a sense of purpose, sincerity and perseverance to achieve your goals. His advice to the newcomers is that try to do things in a different manner in order to create a unique identity for yourself.
Ashok Mathur is fully satisfied with his life and has no regrets. He feels that he has done his best in life. Therefore, even if he is able to go back in life and change something in his life he thinks there is not much scope to do so. He, however, tells us that his first love was journalism. Even when he was working as an English teacher, he tried to do a little bit of journalism. Once, he was the correspondent of a monthly educational magazine and reported on many education-related events for some years. He also wrote several articles on various topics for many journals and other publications. He thinks that if you are sincere you can always find time to satisfy your passion and indulge in your hobbies.
October 16, 2020