Skip to main content

Purity and Clarity

Taken during a trip to Meenmutti Falls (Wayanad, Kerala) with students

“There’s something that keeps us going because we know it’s right even when the whole world says it’s wrong.”  An 18 year-old student of mine wrote that in her FB status update a few minutes back.

There are more things I learn from my young students than from the wise adults.  That’s one of the blessings of the profession of teaching.  To be in touch with relatively uncontaminated minds is both a blessing and a hazard.  The hazard is the possibility of the teacher contaminating the young minds. 

Purity of heart and clarity of thought are quite likely to be perceived by the world as more dangerous than shades and shadows.  As an adult, I too feel burdened sometimes by such purity and clarity coming from my students.  But as a teacher I relish it because it’s a rare benediction.  


Comments

  1. AnonymousNovember 4, 2017 at 1:22 AM

    The hazard you speak of is the biggest obstacle to the life to life transmission that teaching/mentoring is. When I was addressing my troubled self many years ago, my mentor advised me to stop standing in the way of my own happiness and success. Later, as I took up training and mentoring as a vocation, I realized that our conditioning, cynicism, idealism, motivations, are often projected in a very unconscious, unintended way and cloud the process of teaching. The socratic method of leaving students with "what do you think" seems to be a fairer, kinder way than to offer perspectives and answers.

    Watching my toddler grow and learn, I realize this problem of projecting our beliefs, desires, aspirations, all the more. It is hard to rein yourself in, but it is worth the reward as you see these young minds sort things out on their own.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalNovember 4, 2017 at 8:27 AM

      As a teacher I go out of my way to avoid letting my cynicism, idealism, etc interfere with my classes. But as you say they do make their appearances even without our realisation. After all, as human beings we have our limits and limitations. I'm sure even students learn to adjust. Perhaps these are also part of their learning experiences.

      Delete
  2. Sapna DhyaniNovember 4, 2017 at 8:44 PM

    I really like this short write-up of your Sir. I related to to thoughts and words because I felt these same emotions during my innings as a teacher. Now I experience it with my children.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalNovember 5, 2017 at 8:39 AM

      Teaching is a difficult career especially these days when we are faced with a lot of students who have emotional problems. It's quite like bringing up your own children.

      Delete
  3. जितेन्द्र माथुरNovember 7, 2017 at 1:03 PM

    The hazard is the possibility of the teacher contaminating the young minds. You said it Sir. I am in complete agreement with the views expressed herein.

    ReplyDelete

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
47 comments
Read more

Bihar Election

Satish Acharya's Cartoon on how votes were bought in Bihar My wife has been stripped of her voting rights in the revised electoral roll. She has always been a conscientious voter unlike me. I refused to vote in the last Lok Sabha election though I stood outside the polling booth for Maggie to perform what she claimed was her duty as a citizen. The irony now is that she, the dutiful citizen, has been stripped of the right, while I, the ostensible renegade gets the right that I don’t care for. Since the Booth Level Officer [BLO] was my neighbour, he went out of his way to ring up some higher officer, sitting in my house, to enquire about Maggie’s exclusion. As a result, I was given the assurance that he, the BLO, would do whatever was in his power to get my wife her voting right. More than the voting right, what really bothered me was whether the Modi government was going to strip my wife of her Indian citizenship. Anything is possible in Modi’s India: Modi hai to Mumkin hai .   ...
16 comments
Read more

Nehru’s Secularism

Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister, and Narendra Modi, the present one, are diametrically opposite to each other. Take any parameter, from boorishness to sophistication or religious views, and these two men would remain poles apart. Is it Nehru’s towering presence in history that intimidates Modi into hurling ceaseless allegations against him? Today, 14 Nov, is Nehru’s birth anniversary and Modi’s tweet was uncharacteristically terse. It said, “Tributes to former Prime Minister, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru Ji on the occasion of his birth anniversary.” Somebody posted a trenchant cartoon in the comments section.  Nehru had his flaws, no doubt. He was as human as Modi. But what made him a giant while Modi remains a dwarf – as in the cartoon above – is the way they viewed human beings. For Nehru, all human beings mattered, irrespective of their caste, creed, language, etc. His concept of secularism stands a billion notches above Modi’s Hindutva-nationalism. Nehru’s ide...
14 comments
Read more

The Art of Subjugation: A Case Study

Two Pulaya women, 1926 [Courtesy Mathrubhumi ] The Pulaya and Paraya communities were the original landowners in Kerala until the Brahmins arrived from the North with their religion and gods. They did not own the land individually; the lands belonged to the tribes. Then in the 8 th – 10 th centuries CE, the Brahmins known as Namboothiris in Kerala arrived and deceived the Pulayas and Parayas lock, stock, and barrel. With the help of religion. The Namboothiris proclaimed themselves the custodians of all wealth by divine mandate. They possessed the Vedic and Sanskrit mantras and tantras to prove their claims. The aboriginal people of Kerala couldn’t make head or tail of concepts such as Brahmadeya (land donated to Brahmins becoming sacred land) or Manu’s injunctions such as: “Land given to a Brahmin should never be taken back” [8.410] or “A king who confiscates land from Brahmins incurs sin” [8.394]. The Brahmins came, claimed certain powers given by the gods, and started exploi...
15 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
19 comments
Read more