Skip to main content

Teaching – a cheap profession?


Teaching extends far beyond the classroom
A few of my students on the bank of the Ganga

The above ad appeared in today’s [10 Sep] Times of India (Ascent, the job vacancies supplement).  The school wants both teachers and “coaching experts.”  While the teachers will be paid a salary of Rs 22,000 per month, the coaching experts will be paid from “Rs 9 Lac to 12 Lac” annually.  Moreover, “Higher start can be considered for highly deserving candidates” in the case of coaching experts – but apparently not in the case of teachers. 
As a teacher I was amused by the discrepancy between the remunerations of a tutor and a teacher.  The job of the tutor (or coaching expert, as the ad calls him/her) is to prepare “students competing for Board Exams & for IIT, AIEEE, PMT, NDA etc.”
Why is there so much discrepancy between the remunerations, I wondered naturally.  Is it tougher to prepare students for competitive exams than teach them the subject, instil values in them and mould their personality, the latter of which is a teacher’s job?  In a residential school like mine, the teacher’s job is even more onerous; s/he has to provide counselling and guidance, spend time even in the night helping students with their studies as well as other activities (co-curricular and extra-curricular) and also help them solve their emotional and behavioural problems.  In addition, the teacher is to keep records of these activities as well as submit occasional reports on them to the Principal.  The teacher in a residential school like mine gets no extra benefit for providing the extra services!
Contrast this with the job of a tutor.  S/he has to teach the subject with the explicit goal of getting the students clear the competitive exam and nothing more.  But the tutor (expert?) is paid 4 times or more than a teacher.  Why?  This ‘why’ is what amuses me.
Is it because of the general perception that teaching is not a skilled profession?
George Bernard Shaw said in his characteristically scathing way, “Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.”   The implication of Shaw’s statement is that teaching is a profession of the impotent.
In the beginning of my teaching career I agreed with Shaw.  I joined the profession when I failed to get any other job.  Having failed in many an interview, I came to the logical conclusion that I belonged to the group that Shaw labelled as “those who can’t.”  Eventually, however, I began to enjoy my job.  Later, when I got an opportunity to change the profession for a much more lucrative one (money-wise), I opted to stay put in my original profession.  Now, when people ask me why I don’t try to become a Principal or at least a Vice Principal, I say that I’m not interested in administrative jobs.  Teaching is my job.  Is it because I’m incapable of being an administrator?  Could be, I don’t deny that.  I don’t think I’ll ever learn the kind of manipulative strategies employed by administrators that I’ve been familiar with from the time I started working. 
But, I’d like to look at the situation in another way.  I enjoy the job of teaching.  I’m fairly passionate about it.  No other profession arouses such passion in me.  I also feel that I’m doing the job (of teaching) fairly well.  In other words, it’s not necessary that I am a teacher because I am not good for anything else, but because I am good for this particular job.
Isn’t teaching a skill just like, say, writing, engineering, acting, etc?  Teaching is, after all, not merely imparting knowledge.  It’s more about dealing with young individuals.  The patience it demands is not minuscule. 
Yet why does the profession remain so discredited?  Even teachers don’t seem to like the profession themselves.  Most teachers I know are happy to be promoted as administrators (coordinator, vice principal or principal).  Does that mean that these people became teachers because they couldn’t get any other job?  Is Shaw vindicated?
On the other hand, could it be that the meagre income derived from the profession makes it unappealing?  I’m inclined to think this is the real reason why teaching remains the last choice in the career preferences. 
Going one step further, I’d say that if the remuneration of teachers is enhanced better people (those who love the job) will enter the profession.  After all, the “noble task of nation-building” need not be a cheap endeavour.

Comments

  1. Well, it will be idealistic to say that teaching is NOT a profession ... having said that and not being and idealist, I admit I do not know what teaching is.

    But mundanely reconstructed, teaching IS a profession. But, is there any way other than by comparing remuneration, one can evaluate teaching? My father did not think so (and this was a sore point with him as it appears to be with you), but I do.

    If only my father could enjoy vicarious pride, I am ready to offer much. I am 58 years old, and the only people who have mattered to me and whom I remember in my life are teachers. I say this most sincerely and with much humility.

    Why humility? I am enjoying the lifestyle of a non-teacher (still being exploited, to be sure) but I teach, in my own way and unfettered by pedagogy, and am being respected as a teacher.

    So, I conclude that teaching from within the profession is a dead-end, but from without, its remuneration cannot be matched. I am eating the cake and having it too. So, as I am teaching I am also cheating.

    RE

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. First of all, Raghuram, I'd whole-heartedly agree with you that teaching is not a profession; it's a mission.

      Right now I'm aware of a school that has been taken over from a trust by a religious cult. One of the first things that the cult did was to curtail the remunerations of all the teachers who were on contract. More, they shortened the contract period from one year to periods of 3 months. One of the teachers commented wryly that religious people are only used to receiving and not giving. In such a world, where religion should be the greatest mission, how can teachers afford to be missionaries?

      Personally, my concern is not as much with the remuneration as the financial security of a teacher. When holy gurus start asking questions like "Are teachers getting this much?" when they the (gurus) are wallowing in wealth and luxury, the situation is not just ludicrous, it's alarming.

      Delete
  2. Thought provoking! I believe a tutor is essentially a teacher only.
    The difference in remunerations perhaps is due to the fee receipts for respective courses. I also do agree with many of your views though.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, Amit, students are ready to pay huge amounts to their tutors for helping them pass the exams with whatever short-cuts are available. While teachers have to do many more things than merely impart knowledge, the tutors have to do a highly focused job. We live in a focused world, focused on "success" - not on knowledge or anything else. The remuneration is for that "success".

      Delete
    2. Dear sir, having been a college lecturer myself twice in my career, and coming from a family of dozens of teachers including my parents, I know everything about this profession, that is why I found myself agreeing with your views!

      Delete
  3. i think this has got to do a bit with PGT, TGT thing the coaches are here what is purely my thought PGTs who are paid as per the UGC grades for lecturers...also the TGTs here appear graduates while for coaches they are asking for higher qualification. Probably a call to them should help.... all said and done teachers play a key role in anybody's life specially in formative years..

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. No, this has nothing to do with the PGT/TGT distinction. I have been a PGT ever since I was appointed in my present school more than eleven years ago. My current emolument will not even come near half of what's being offered in this case to the "experts". Moreover, I know how some such experts were charging fees which were much higher than the school's tuition fee for their coaching classes which run for just a few hours a week.

      Coaching is just a business, and business sets its own price!

      Delete
  4. dear sir,
    i have been your student for a very short time. even then, i have come to one conclusion: teaching is a noble profession which deserves much more respect and lucre than at present. you are right when you mentioned that teaching cannot be bound by the classroom walls. i never learnt anything within the classroom walls anyway. i propose a better pay-scale for professionals who are directly involved with nation-building, starting with those in the teaching profession.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. What students remember of a teacher is usually not what was taught from textbooks! Interesting, isn't it?

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl

Florentino’s Many Loves

Florentino Ariza has had 622 serious relationships (combo pack with sex) apart from numerous fleeting liaisons before he is able to embrace the only woman whom he loved with all his heart and soul. And that embrace happens “after a long and troubled love affair” that lasted 51 years, 9 months, and 4 days. Florentino is in his late 70s when he is able to behold, and hold as well, the very body of his beloved Fermina, who is just a few years younger than him. She now stands before him with her wrinkled shoulders, sagged breasts, and flabby skin that is as pale and cold as a frog’s. It is the culmination of a long, very long, wait as far as Florentino is concerned, the end of his passionate quest for his holy grail. “I’ve remained a virgin for you,” he says. All those 622 and more women whose details filled the 25 diaries that he kept writing with meticulous devotion have now vanished into thin air. They mean nothing now that he has reached where he longed to reach all his life. The

Country without a national language

India has no national language because the country has too many languages. Apart from the officially recognised 22 languages are the hundreds of regional languages and dialects. It would be preposterous to imagine one particular language as the national language in such a situation. That is why the visionary leaders of Independent India decided upon a three-language policy for most purposes: Hindi, English, and the local language. The other day two pranksters from the Hindi belt landed in Bengaluru airport wearing T-shirts declaring Hindi as the national language. They posted a picture on X and it evoked angry responses from a lot of Indians who don’t speak Hindi.  The worthiness of Hindi to be India’s national language was debated umpteen times and there is nothing new to add to all that verbiage. Yet it seems a reminder is in good place now for the likes of the above puerile young men. Language is a power-tool . One of the first things done by colonisers and conquerors is to

Diwali, Gifts, and Promises

Diwali gifts for me! This is the first time in my 52 years of existence that I received so many gifts in the name of Diwali.  In Kerala, where I was born and brought up, Diwali was not celebrated at all in those days, the days of my childhood.  Even now the festival is not celebrated in the villages of Kerala as I found out from my friends there.  It is celebrated in the cities (and some villages) where people from North Indian states live.  When I settled down in Delhi in 2001 Diwali was a shock to me.  I was sitting in the balcony of a relative of mine who resided in Sadiq Nagar.  I was amazed to see the fireworks that lit up the city sky and polluted the entire atmosphere in the city.  There was a medical store nearby from which I could buy Otrivin nasal drops to open up those little holes in my nose (which have been examined by many physicians and given up as, perhaps, a hopeless case) which were blocked because of the Diwali smoke.  The festivals of North India

Unromantic Men

Romance is a tenderness of the heart. That is disappearing even from the movies. Tenderness of heart is not a virtue anymore; it is a weakness. Who is an ideal man in today’s world? Shakespeare’s Romeo and Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay’s Devdas would be considered as fools in today’s world in which the wealthiest individuals appear on elite lists, ‘strong’ leaders are hailed as nationalist heroes, and success is equated with anything other than traditional virtues. The protagonist of Colleen McCullough’s 1977 novel, The Thorn Birds [which sold more than 33 million copies], is torn between his idealism and his natural weaknesses as a human being. Ralph de Bricassart is a young Catholic priest who is sent on a kind of punishment-appointment to a remote rural area of Australia where the Cleary family arrives from New Zealand in 1921 to take care of the enormous estate of Mary Carson who is Paddy Cleary’s own sister. Meggy Cleary is the only daughter of Paddy and Fiona who have eight so