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.

Comments

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

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

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

    ReplyDelete
  3. 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. 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

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

The Second Crucifixion

  ‘The Second Crucifixion’ is the title of the last chapter of Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins’s magnum opus Freedom at Midnight . The sub-heading is: ‘New Delhi, 30 January 1948’. Seventy-three years ago, on that day, a great soul was shot dead by a man who was driven by the darkness of hatred. Gandhi has just completed his usual prayer session. He had recited a prayer from the Gita:                         For certain is death for the born                         and certain is birth for the dead;                         Therefore over the inevitable                         Thou shalt not grieve . At that time Narayan Apte and Vishnu Karkare were moving to Retiring Room Number 6 at the Old Delhi railway station. They walked like thieves not wishing to be noticed by anyone. The early morning’s winter fog of Delhi gave them the required wrap. They found Nathuram Godse already awake in the retiring room. The three of them sat together and finalised the plot against Gand

The Final Farewell

Book Review “ Death ends life, not a relationship ,” as Mitch Albom put it. That is why, we have so many rituals associated with death. Minakshi Dewan’s book, The Final Farewell [HarperCollins, 2023], is a well-researched book about those rituals. The book starts with an elaborate description of the Sikh rituals associated with death and cremation, before moving on to Islam, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, and finally Hinduism. After that, it’s all about the various traditions and related details of Hindu final rites. A few chapters are dedicated to the problems of widows in India, gender discrimination in the last rites, and the problem of unclaimed dead bodies. There is a chapter titled ‘Grieving Widows in Hindi Cinema’ too. Death and its rituals form an unusual theme for a book. Frankly, I don’t find the topic stimulating in any way. Obviously, I didn’t buy this book. It came to me as quite many other books do – for reasons of their own. I read the book finally, having shelv

Vultures and Religion

When vultures become extinct, why should a religion face a threat? “When the vultures died off, they stopped eating the bodies of Zoroastrians…” I was amused as I went on reading the book The Final Farewell by Minakshi Dewan. The book is about how the dead are dealt with by people of different religious persuasions. Dead people are quite useless, unless you love euphemism. Or, as they say, dead people tell no tales. In the end, we are all just stories made by people like the religious woman who wrote the epitaph for her atheist husband: “Here lies an atheist, all dressed up and no place to go.” Zoroastrianism is a religion which converts death into a sordid tale by throwing the corpses of its believers to vultures. Death makes one impure, according to that religion. Well, I always thought, and still do, that life makes one impure. I have the support of Lord Buddha on that. Life is dukkha , said the Enlightened. That is, suffering, dissatisfaction and unease. Death is liberation

Cats and Love

No less a psychologist than Freud said that the “time spent with cats is never wasted.” I find time to spend with cats precisely for that reason. They are not easy to love, particularly if they are the country variety which are not quite tameable, and mine are those. What makes my love affair with my cats special is precisely their unwillingness to befriend me. They’d rather be in their own company. “In ancient time, cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this,” Terry Pratchett says. My cats haven’t, I’m sure. Pratchett knew what he was speaking about because he loved cats which appear frequently in his works. Pratchett’s cats love independence, very unlike dogs. Dogs come when you call them; cats take a message and get back to you as and when they please. I don’t have dogs. But my brother’s dogs visit us – Maggie and me – every evening. We give them something to eat and they love that. They spend time with us after eating. My cats just go away without even a look af