ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the common conundrums about the best school, the best teacher and the best student. The discussion claims that schools, being complex systems, can never achieve a state of equilibrium, and thus the proverbial best school is a fallacy. Moreover no one school can be best on all parameters. It is argued that the best schools are those which are run through a system of micro-feedback loops. Similar arguments are made while determining the best student and the best teacher. The chapter augments these arguments through the works of Rabindranath Tagore, Sri Aurobindo, Bertrand Russell, Plato, Mark Twain, Howard Gardner, Carol Dweck, Daniel Koretz and Eric Berne, among others. Philosophical input from the Upanishads are presented, along with incidents from the Mahabharata. The points are also explained through various real-life cases. Thus the concepts of best school, best teacher and the best student are posited to be fallacies which are redundant and self defeating.
