On Teacher's day

 

I remain reflective over the last twelve years of my life as a teacher.  I ponder over myself, my students, and my experience of teaching and learning. My previous blogs on such reflections are here, here and here.

One such occasion for reflection is Teacher’s day when I receive many – general and personal – messages from the students on phone and email. This is also the day when students put together a formal function for all teachers at the institute.

The messages that I received this year were from a few old, many current, and some new students, who have joined us a week ago. Many of these messages had personal gratitude of what my teaching meant for students, and how interactions with me – inside and outside the classroom – helped in transforming themselves. Going through the messages, and sending similar messages to a few selected teachers who transformed me, I pondered over a few more things about the teachers, the teaching, the teacher’s day celebrations.

I understood that it is important to celebrate the teaching rather than the teachers.  It is important to highlight the process and not the position. In celebrating the positions, we acknowledge all teachers equally, irrespective of their contributions. But, in appreciating the processes, the gratitude would be equitable. For example, while most of the new and current students would wish every teacher at the institute, the ex-students would choose to reach out to only those who mattered to them.  To me, this remembrance of a few students to the few teachers of their choice, is true gratitude, beyond a formality.

The formality has become part of our age-old rituals. One such formality is to celebrate ‘days’ – that of authoritarian figures who we have been taught to ‘respect’ for their positions. “Matrudevo bhav”, “Pitrudevo bhav”, “Gurudevo bhav,” etc.  Lately, it has slipped to idolizing our leaders too; for some, it is now “PMdevo bhav” too.  In idolizing people for their positions, we stop questioning not only them but about them too.  We neither question them nor do we question ourselves.  We do not question even if we are unhappy with their attitude, behaviour, and outcome of our interactions with them. We merely celebrate the authority as the day of their praising come, without pausing to reflect on their responsibilities, be it parents, leaders, or teachers.

As I sat through the Teacher’s day function this year, I reminded of all the similar functions of the last few years. It all had the same pattern; invocation of ‘Guru’ through dance and recital, speeches by teachers, game for teachers, and some gifts.  All the years, these things were in the physical mode from the platform that teachers use to teach. This year too, it was no different; the programme was on the same WebEx platform that teachers use to teach.  To me, such teacher’s day functions are plain usual.  I find no novelty even in the forms of entertainment, and no deep sentiments, beyond shallow gratitude.  This is not to demean the efforts of some of the students.  What I miss is the creativity and freshness in the approach.  May be, students learn this from their teachers too; we teach monotonous things in a mundane way, all the years, every year, don’t we?

In such customary formal celebrations, students celebrate their teachers and do not reflect on the teaching of different kind and level.  By participating in such customary celebration, one stops being an active thinker.  In any case, our education system invests in making us better at ‘doing’ a thousand things and ‘answering’ other hundreds.  It does not invest in making us think and question.  This culture and system put energy in making only a good horse Instead of investing in making one into a good rider.  As a product, most of us keep going every day - running faster and better.  We keep leaping and jumping at the signals of the rider – parent at home, teachers at schools and colleges, and leaders of different kinds in public life.  Over time, we idolize the rider for making us do better at running, leaping, and jumping.  And ultimately, instead of choosing why, how, and where to ride, we end up becoming a mere vehicle of their competition and fight.  That is what horses are for, after all.  We celebrate horse rider’s day, every now and then without realizing that we need to strive to become a rider and not a horse.  

The horse riders must also be told to pause and harness the skills and purpose of riding. If the rider is too busy riding all through the year and is on the high even on the rider’s day, it is the high time the horses must stop and tell the riders that the riding needs to have a meaning for the horse and for the society in general too.

The ‘One-day Mataram’ kind of customary celebrations on the Teacher’s day must change for good.  Instead of entertaining the positions, there need to be discussions around the processes.  The students must share their gratitude but do it wholeheartedly beyond entertainment and superficial praises. They must question their teachers. They must give suggestions and feedback to the positions so as to improve the process.  Teacher’s day must be observed to reflect on improving teaching and its outcome beyond celebrating the teachers so that the current students become the better version of teachers in the generations to come.