Teachers, Students and Humanities

With some former students

One of the happiest things in a teacher’s life is former students contacting after many years to show their affection. It so happened that two of my former students texted me on WhatsApp yesterday. One of them was a poet while at school. I once featured her in this same space with one of her poems, Where do old birds go to die? Yesterday, she texted me to say, “I wrote something after ages… Hope you’ll read and let me know what you think.” She is a student of literature now in a prominent college of Kerala. She has learned professors of literature as her present teachers. But when she sought the opinion of her schoolteacher, I had reason to feel proud of myself. And her story is excellent. Let me give you the link: Wounds.

As I read the last line of the story, the first question that sprang to my mind was: O my god! Why don’t we have this sort of students anymore?

I quit teaching precisely because I couldn’t find the classroom rewarding in any way. Until two years ago, the students were very different. They liked to listen to what I had to tell them. They participated in discussions. They voiced their opinions. They had their own views.

Now students don’t seem to have any of these. They just want to pass the exams and get on with higher studies preferably somewhere abroad where they will have far better prospects than in India. A good life, that’s all what they want. Without doing much work. Without even having to think for themselves. There’s no poetry in their hearts. Even their brains are in a state of inertia.

A couple of months back, I read in the New York Times that the students in America were losing interest in humanities and hence “universities and colleges are increasingly putting humanities departments on the chopping block.” Studying humanities is of no use, a lot of students think now.

It is quite a curious matter that the students of my last batch were not interested in any subject whatever. Their math and science teachers made the same complaint as mine. Maybe, this is a temporary problem caused by the fallout of the Covid pandemic and the students’ romance with their mobile phones during those days. The romance is still continuing. Maybe, the batches coming up will be different though my wife who teaches grade nine doesn’t seem quite optimistic about that. Maybe, a lot of things in the school curriculum have to be consigned to the chopping block.

It so happened that another former student of mine who is now pursuing her studies in Developmental Social Work in Canada texted me also yesterday. She also works at a school as an Educational Assistant. One of the old teachers in Canada told this former student of mine that the present Indian students lack the standards the earlier one had.

Something is going wrong somewhere, seriously. I wondered aloud with this Canadian student whether it was because our present leaders lack any depth: intellectual, moral and emotional. Everything about them is hollow or fraudulent. Is it affecting the moral fabric of the nation?

I’m not sure about that. But I’m sure that when meaningless trumpets are blown day in and day out, the citizens can’t but go crazy.

PS. The student of literature mentioned in this post was a science student when I taught her. She opted for humanities after school. Quite a few of my students migrated from science and commerce to literature and a sizable number of them told me that I was the inspiration. I’m proud, of course. But the point I wish to make is that humanities isn’t marching gloriously to the grave as the New York Times essayists laments.