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बोधन-कुतूहलम् – A Sanskrit Online Teaching Contest

About बोधन-कुतूहलम्

MIT School of Vedic Sciences, in collaboration with Indic Academy, Hyderabad has announced a contest titled bodhana kutūhalam for teaching the śāstras in Sanskrit. MIT SVS hopes to foster a community of young Sanskrit scholars who can teach in the Samskrit medium and to help boost the number of academically rigorous śāstra courses online.

The focus shall lie on making the content and method of teaching śāstras more interesting and relevant to learners who’ve undergone modern education.

Motivation

Saṁskṛta teaching-learning has been one of the most underrated and underutilized spheres of higher education in our times. While some Saṁskṛta Universities cater to teaching and learning śāstras in Saṁskṛta medium, the ‘mainstream’ higher education is greatly blind to the potentials of Saṁskṛta as a medium of knowledge.

The apathy of teaching a ‘language’ through a ‘different language medium’ is unique to Saṁskṛta! And this is widely prevalent in the modern universities all over our nation. That the products of this kind of learning form the upcoming Saṁskṛta teaching community is a concern that can no longer withstand indifference.

Again, the contemporary relevance of Indic śāstras is an area which deserves its due attention. Indic knowledge embedded in the śāstras need to be studied and taught in the light of contemporary utility. Indic tradition has always maintained śāstras in an ever-evolving mode, even until recently, and that tradition needs to be revived. It can only be done by resorting to mainstream study of śāstras in their native medium of Saṁskṛta.

Who Can Participate

Any person above 18 years of age interested and confident in teaching the notified śāstras/topics in Saṁskṛta medium is eligible to participate. No formal degree or educational qualification is required for this contest.

Benefits Of Signing Up For The Contest

  • This is an opportunity for scholars to showcase/hone their capability to teach śāstras in Saṁskṛta medium to modern-educated learners, in an intuitive manner
  • Participants will get a Proficiency Certificate rating for their teaching and/or material preparation skills by peer scholars as well as by prospective learners. This may be used by educational institutes as a criterion for selection in the future
  • Achieving a victorious position may add to your qualifications while applying for job positions etc.
  • High-scoring participants might attract teaching and/or facilitation opportunities for University-level courses in Sanskrit
  • A network of capable and interested teachers will be formed for various disciplines of Samskrit through Samskrit medium. They will be invited to participate in further deliberations, policy-making, projects, workshops and application in their domain

Target Learner Profile

  • The lecture should be targeted for students with the following profile:
    Understands conversational as well as classical Sanskrit
  • Expected to independently search for meaning of unknown words by themselves
  • Not expected to have any background in the particular subject matter taught
  • The audience might have diverse professional and educational backgrounds and will be aged 18 years or older

Important Dates

Registration: March 7, 2019 to April 30, 2019
Submission of Lecture Video and supplementary Material: June 17, 2019
Announcement of Winners: July 16, 2019 (Guru Purnima)

For more details regarding the participation guidelines, evaluation criteria, registration, prizes and other details, please refer to this link.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article belong to the author. Indic Today is neither responsible nor liable for the accuracy, completeness, suitability, or validity of any information in the article.

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