Few stray thoughts on the occasion of the Teachers Day-Without any offence…

By Philip Mudartha, Doha-Qatar

06 September 2010: Hi, here is an article that may not go down well with the noble teaching profession, who constitute some of your readership. No offense intended.

 

Disclaimer: This is not meant to make fun of any individual teacher or any specific school. This note represents my personal view of teachers caught up in the web of the system and their own inability to break free.

 

“Johny, Johny?  yes, teacher. Eating sugar? No, teacher. Telling lies, No teacher.”

 

Well, nursery rhymes are the only time, children can say: No, teacher.

 

Otherwise, it has to be a solid ’yes, teacher’.  When the teacher demanded “Did you do your homework? Did you write copy? Did you do this or that?”  The answer from the students had to be: “yes, teacher.”

 

 

When the teacher explained, "India is a great country. Our civilization is five thousand years old. We had great kings, noblemen, artists, mathematicians, scientists, architects, astronomers. We discovered zero and algebra. Honey and milk flowed. It was truly golden era".  The student had to nod, “Yes, Teacher.”

 

Now,  dare to re-write ’that history essay" this way. "For centuries, we fought among ourselves. The warlords controlled their feudal fiefdoms like despots do, forcing their subjects to bonded labour and treated like slaves. The kings ordered the masons and architects to build temples, mausoleums, and other facades to commemorate their own power and glory".  The teacher might retort and shout, “You fool, that is not in the textbook. Who told you that?  If you can’t write  what is not in the textbook. You will fail. You will fail. Do you want to fail? Does your father send you too school to learn, pass exam and go to next class or fool around?”

 

State the year of the Battle of Panipat. Don’t remember? Zero mark. However one teachers could be magnanimous to think, does it matter when the Battle of Panipat took place?  It is important to note that there are lessons for us to learn from the Battle of Panipat.  Is it possible that the  teacher would gather courage and award full marks? How could he or she? Teachers have to conform to the system. It is ‘Yes Sir,’ for them too.

 

That is the law of the school. Learn the textbook. Mug by rote, recite, vomit on the answer paper exactly what is ’taught’ by the textbook. The teachers and students are being tied down with the sacred syllabus and the textbook. The law of the school is to prepare the citizens to conform. To do what is told to do. To be ‘Yes, Sir.’

 

And the child before it joined the school, came to this world and knew something else. On mother’s lap, the baby as it suckled the milk from its mother’s breast, it learnt by self-discovery that there is life besides itself. When it began to wean, it learnt to chew. It learnt to use the jaws, teeth and tongue to process the food.

 

 

Chewing the cud is the law of the farm. The law of the farm is in sowing, sprouting and harvesting. It is about creating abundance from nothing, well practically  from a tiny seed. The law of the farm involves the ’process of thinking, analyzing, reasoning, evaluating, and concluding’. It is about keeping the feet firmly to the ground, rooted in the reality and not up in the air of fantasy of textual claim.

 

However, the law of school is different from the law of the farm, can be said to be quite contrary. The teachers serve this law and prepare armies of kids who stop sowing, sprouting, and blooming but instead copying, and reproducing. They serve the system to make us all Lord Macaulay’s children.

 

When mother’s day comes, it is courteous to say: “God cannot be everywhere. So He appointed mothers.” Let us worship them. But, is it not a mother’s duty to look after its young and suckle its own. Why should a woman be great mother if she suckles her own? She would be, if she suckles and provides for those not of her own.

 

Similarly, it is mere courtesy to speak of great teachers when they have only taught the syllabus and textbook content. Only those teachers are great, who dare to go beyond the syllabus and let the minds explore the subject being learnt. Only those are great who teach to question and to instill the habit of inquiry.

 

“Teacher, teacher, the Indian Mutiny was in 1857.”

 

“ Well, that is fine answer, Philip. But, I can’t give you a mark for that. Would you tell us how relevant is that to our lives today... and would you team up with a few boys and girls and reconstruct the scenario..?”

 

“No Teacher? That is a tough and tall order. Is it not out of the syllabus?

 

“ Well may be...but that is what I want you to be..thinkers.”