DECCAN HERALD (Decca, India) 28 May 05 Hooked on vipers (Dipti Nair)
Jerry Martin , herpetologist and one-time National Geographic Channel’s adventurer, has today gone back to school. Twenty-nine-year-old Jerry dropped out of school as he “did not see any sense in continuing his education.”
According to Jerry, it was not that he did not like going to school. “I just hated attending classes where all that was required of me was to memorise lessons and reproduce it during exams.”
Today he is knocking on the doorsteps of schools to show teachers and students a world not contained between the covers of course books. Jerry is an outdoor facilitator for iDiscoveri’s Youreka programme for children where he advocates the “learning-doing methodology” in school curriculum.
With schools reopening after a long summer vacation, Metrolife takes a peek into the life of this passionate adventure education specialist to find out what learning is all about.
There must have been some concrete reasons for quitting school midway?
None actually. It was a gradual realisation that I was not learning anything. Like when I was in class VIII, we were asked to do a project on pond eco-system. My classmates got neatly typed manuscripts and files with whole encyclopedias cut and pasted. I took an aquarium where I had put fish, mosquitoes, frogs, water plants and all that makes a pond ecosystem. My project was rejected.
Your parents must have been mad with your decision? My parents faced a lot of grief from others. And no they did not shield me but took the criticism along with me. You see my parents have always given me the security to explore. I got my first snake home when I was five. And though my mother was horrified, she bought me a whole lot of books on snakes. When I was 12 years old, my father got this expensive golf set and I turned them into snake hooks. When my father found this out, he wasn’t mad or anything. Whenever such incidents occurred, I was required to pay back in kind like a car wash or cleaning the yard. Of course, in this case I should have been grounded for life. What I am saying is that I had the security to explore.
How did you get involved with National Geographic Channel?
As an 18- year- old, I landed on the doorstep of well-known herpetologist Rom Whitekar’s in Chennai’s crocodile park. He initially refused me a job, but I stayed on doing odd jobs. When Rom was making the film, ‘King Cobra’ for NGC, he asked me to take care of the cobras. Finally, I was offered a job at the crocodile farm.
We made a number of films not only for NGC but for the BBC and Paramount Pictures as well. In 1998, I came back to Bangalore and NGC approached me to be their adventurer.
What made you switch from reptiles to children?
In 2003, I attended a Youreka programme in Kodagu. I realised I was good at communicating with children. There’s a system in society that tells what you cannot do. For that one week, children experience what can be done. The joy of learning is beaten out of all of us. And with our programmes we want teachers and students to experience that joy.
Hooked on vipers