O Teacher!

“Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.” One of Bernard Shaw’s characters said that with the typical Shavian piquancy. I have been a teacher by profession all my life and I am on the verge of retirement. When a fellow blogger suggests a topic like ‘Can teachers today be called “the untalented leftovers”?’ and it receives a record number of votes from bloggers, I am more amused than chagrined.

Well, to start with myself as an example, I think the blogger who suggested the topic has a point because I was an “untalented leftover”. I was not particularly good at anything. I failed to secure even a bank clerk’s job. A conspiracy of chromosomes contrived to make me a priest and I failed absolutely by ending up as an atheist.

The mother of a student of mine met me the other day and complained that her daughter opted for English literature at college because of me. I swelled with pride, only to have that bubble of pride punctured by her next statement: “Why did she have to struggle with all that math and science if she wanted to pursue literature of all things?”

I smiled sadly before saying that it was her destiny to be my student as much it was my destiny to be her teacher.

“She wants to be a teacher of all things,” the mother grieved. She was a teacher herself, ironically. Being a teacher myself, I could understand her grief.

“She will love the job,” I said. “University teachers are paid well too,” I added implying that the girl needn’t necessarily become a CBSE school teacher like her mother and me.

Why has teaching become such a discredited profession? Obviously, there is no money in it unless one is lucky enough to get into a university or something equivalent. Money determines the worth of a profession today.

Whenever a student of mine expresses a desire to pursue literature, I try my best to nip that desire by telling them explicitly that it won’t do them much good as far as career options are concerned. Yet a lot of my students shifted from science to literature after school and I hope they are doing well. I know a few of them at least who are doing wonderful jobs as journalists or media persons. A few are teachers too. Are they happy? I don’t know. How do you assess people’s happiness?

Are they “leftovers”? I hope not.

I know quite a lot of my students who became doctors and engineers. Many of them were very mediocre people at school and secured admission to medical or engineering colleges by paying enormous amounts under the table. Such people run the medical system today, a system which sucks blood worse than vampires. Such people construct flyovers which develop dangerous cracks within three years of construction. But such people are never “leftovers” because they have money and they have influence.

We are governed today by politicians who have fake degrees. They shape our attitudes and our future. I wish they had had good teachers.

Good teachers touch hearts. Miracles take place in classrooms if the teacher is good. Teaching is never a profession for the mediocre, let alone for the “leftovers”.

PS. Written for Indispire Edition 280.

xZx

Here's a detailed review of my latest book, Autumn Shadows, by Amit Misra.

I certainly wouldn't mind your ordering a copy of the book from Amazon.