Skip to main content

Shrinking minds in an expanding universe

From Pinterest


I picked up a 20-year-old young man the other day from a nearby town at his mother’s request. It was a cool evening and, as is my habit in pleasant weathers, I had lowered the windows of the car and switched off the air-conditioner. The boy got in on the front seat beside me and made himself comfortable by repositioning the seat and its back. Then he pushed the switch of the AC and turned its knob to the maximum. I decided to wait for him to switch it off himself after realizing that I wasn’t going to shut the windows. But he didn’t. So I switched off the AC and let the evening’s soothing air waft in from the lush green vegetation on both sides of the village road. The birds had already settled in their roosts and the crickets hadn’t started their eerie chirp. I love the evenings in Kerala’s countryside including the eeriness lent by the crickets.

The young man beside me was an utter bore, however. He pulled out his headphone from somewhere, fixed it to his ears, started up something on his mobile phone and let his soul shrink into his little world.

As a teacher who is in constant touch with 17-year-olds, I am all too familiar with the soul-shrinking activities of today’s youngsters. I start teaching and they start shrinking. They have their own private conversations or they just go to sleep with their heads down on their desks. Nothing elicits their interest, apparently. I try umpteen things. Leave the textbook and mount the political bandwagon. Embrace the environment and Greta Thunberg. Hobnob with Albert Einstein’s God who doesn’t play dice. Tug at the philosophical implications of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle. Nothing stirs. The shrunken little world of my young students recalcitrantly refuses to expand.

Once I asked one of those young students why he and his friends behaved like this. He was visibly flabbergasted. “What’s wrong with our behaviour?” He asked me. When I explained to him that they weren’t doing what students should be doing in classes, his answer was, “You teach, sir. We won’t stop you from doing that.” Leave us to ourselves – that was the implication.

You do your job and leave us to our own affairs. That’s the attitude. In that little world of theirs, there is no question of any sensitivity. No concern for what is right and wrong, what is moral and what is not, what is light and what is dark.

That is why, when I got a chance to address the whole school today in the morning assembly, I chose the topic of ‘Shrinking minds in an expanding universe.’ Do you think the speech made any difference in the behaviour of my students? I got some meaningful smiles from those who generally attend my classes seriously. The rest stayed confined to their shrunken worlds. I am no Cicero or Mark Antony, I console myself. But I am free to let my imagination soar in the interstellar spaces of the billionth galaxy out there. That’s enough for me.

Labels:

Comments

  1. Yamini MacLeanAugust 22, 2023 at 2:26 AM

    Hari OM
    I sense the exasperation! And sympathise... (empathise?... relate?...)... YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalAugust 22, 2023 at 6:32 AM

      Covid and the online classes had a huge impact on children. Mobile phones govern them now.

      Delete
  2. peppylady (Dora)August 22, 2023 at 6:11 AM

    I bee there a lot of galaxy out there.
    Coffee is on, and stay safe.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Pradeep NairAugust 22, 2023 at 12:04 PM

    I can fully relate to what you are saying. I have myself taken classes for students. In my office, I have youngsters in their 20s and 30s. They are all very different from what I was, or what people of my generation were, when we were of their age.
    They are all growing up or they have all grown up in a world that is very different from what we have grown up in. Their frames of references are all very different from those of our times.
    All said and done, coping with different value systems are challenging, no doubt.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Tomichan MatheikalAugust 22, 2023 at 12:33 PM

      I understand those differences and have come to terms with them too for the time being. But I can't take them for long. So I'm leaving the teaching profession at the end of this year.

      Delete
    2. a student from class 12 cAugust 22, 2023 at 8:50 PM

      It's clear that you've been through a lot while teaching us. However, before you make a final decision to leave the teaching profession, consider a few perspectives:
      Remember the positive impact you can have on our lives. Your experience and insights from a different time can have provided us with a broader perspective. You are helping us bridge the gap between generations and cultures, which can be immensely valuable.
      While there are generational differences, there's always room for adaptation and understanding. Engaging in open conversations with us about values and viewpoints might help you better relate to us. This could be a valuable learning experience for both sides.
      Just as you're navigating through the world, we are also adjusting to your expectations. By working with us, you have a chance to shape our understanding of the past and how it has influenced the present. Your insights can be invaluable in helping us gain a broader perspective.
      Teaching is not only about the present; it's also about leaving a lasting impact. The knowledge you impart, the relationships you build, and the understanding you foster can create a legacy that lasts beyond your immediate time in the profession.
      Your life experiences and wisdom can be incredibly valuable to our young minds trying to navigate the complexities of the world.
      Ultimately, the decision is yours, and you should prioritize your well-being and happiness. But before making a final call, take a moment to reflect on the positive aspects of teaching and the potential you have to make a difference in our lives

      Delete
  4. another student for class 12 cAugust 22, 2023 at 9:12 PM

    I understand that you think that your duty is over like Mr. lamb from today’s lesson, but unlike money, knowledge goes with you when you die. So spread your wisdom and knowledge to us and the coming generation until your last breath, because if my passion was to teach it would be my dream to die while I was teaching.

    ReplyDelete
  5. The match boxstoriesAugust 29, 2023 at 11:39 AM

    Thanks for sharing this blog post.
    diwali gift for boss

    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

The Veiled Women

One of the controversies that has been raging in Kerala for quite some time now is about a girl student’s decision to wear the hijab to school. The school run by Christian nuns did not appreciate the girl’s choice of religious identity over the school uniform and punished her by making her stand outside the classroom. The matter was taken up immediately by a fundamentalist Muslim organisation (SDPI) which created the usual sound and fury on the campus as well as outside. Kerala is a liberal state in which Hindus (55%), Muslims (27%), and Christians (18%) have been living in fair though superficial harmony even after Modi’s BJP with its cantankerous exclusivism assumed power in Delhi. Maybe, Modi created much insecurity feeling among the Muslims in Kerala too resulting in some reactionary moves like the hijab mentioned above. The school could have handled it diplomatically given the general nature of Muslims which is not quite amenable to sense and sensibility. From the time I shi...
13 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

The Real Enemies of India

People in general are inclined to pass the blame on to others whatever the fault.  For example, we Indians love to blame the British for their alleged ‘divide-and-rule’ policy.  Did the British really divide India into Hindus and Muslims or did the Indians do it themselves?  Was there any unified entity called India in the first place before the British unified it? Having raised those questions, I’m going to commit a further sacrilege of quoting a British journalist-cum-historian.  In his magnum opus, India: a History , John Keay says that the “stock accusations of a wider Machiavellian intent to ‘divide and rule’ and to ‘stir up Hindu-Muslim animosity’” levelled against the British Raj made little sense when the freedom struggle was going on in India because there really was no unified India until the British unified it politically.  Communal divisions existed in India despite the political unification.  In fact, they existed even before the Briti...
16 comments
Read more

Insecurity and Exclusivism

“ Hindu khatare mein hai.” This was one of the first slogans that accompanied the emergence of Narendra Modi on the national scene. It means Hindus are in Danger . It reveals a deep-rooted feeling of insecurity. Hindus constitute an overwhelming majority in India – 80%. All the high positions in governance, judiciary, academics, any significant place, are occupied by Hindus. Yet the slogan was born. Strange? It will be facile to argue that Modi used this slogan and its concomitant hatred of Muslims and Christians as a political weapon for winning votes. True, he was successful in that; he rose to the highest political post in the country using minority-bashing. But the hatred did not end with that achievement; rather it spread outward and became more exclusive. Muslim and European rulers of India were booted out from the country’s history books and wherever else possible like the names of roads and institutions. With vengeance. Now there is a concerted effort going on to place In...
29 comments
Read more