Skip to main content

From a Teacher’s Diary


Henry B Adams, American historian and writer, is believed to have said that “one never knows where a teacher’s influence ends.” As a teacher, I have always striven to keep that maxim in mind while dealing with students. Even if I couldn’t wield any positive influence, I never wished to leave a scar on the psyche of any student of mine. Best of intentions notwithstanding, we make human errors and there may be students who were not quite happy with me especially since I never possessed even the lightest shade of diplomacy.

Tactless though I was, I have been fortunate, as a teacher, to have a lot of good memories returning with affection from former students. Let me share the most recent experience.

A former student’s WhatsApp message yesterday carried two PDF attachments. One was the dissertation she wrote for her graduation. The other was a screenshot of the Acknowledgement. “A special mention goes to Mr Tomichan Matheikal, my English teacher in higher secondary school, whose motivation and kindness was one of the paramount reasons behind my decision to pursue English Literature academically.”

Krishna Hari was a science student at school. But she wrote excellent poems in English and that’s how I, her English teacher, took note of her. I featured her here on my blog when she was in grade 12. See: Where do old birds go to die? Now, four years after she left school, I’m proud to read the dissertation she wrote for her bachelor’s degree. I’m even more proud to realise that I have a place in her heart.

Titled 'The Confluence of Marxist Ethics and Religion in Cinema: An In-Depth Analysis of Ranjith's Pranchiyettan and The Saint', Krishna’s dissertation is a scholarly study of an unforgettable Malayalam movie in which the protagonist Pranchiyettan struggles to realise the meaning of his life. Pranchiyettan – a hypocorism for Francis – is a successful and wealthy businessman who is driven by an acute sense of inferiority complex due to his lack of education and sophistication. He wants to get a Padmasree award to compensate for his lack of public validation. But a character no less than Saint Francis who appears in person to Pranchiyettan teaches him that the greatness of human life lies not in public validation but in faith, love, and compassion. 

A still from the movie

Krishna’s paper critiques the movie through two lenses: Christianity and Marxism. “Though Marxism opposes institutionalized religions’ upholding of the exploitative monopoly of the bourgeoisie, modern Marxist theorists cite compelling links between religious values and Marxist ethics, predominantly Christian,” Krishna writes in her dissertation. I used to describe Jesus as the first Communist in my classes. You never know where a teacher’s influence ends, though Krishna’s collocation of Marxism and Christianity may have nothing to do with my observations.

In Krishna’s interpretation, Saint Francis in the movie becomes a symbol of the eternal values versus the ephemeral capitalist values of Pranchiyettan. Eventually, Pranchiyettan moves from his ephemeral world towards the sublime heights that Saint Francis beckons him to.

A fortuitous coincidence is that Krishna’s dissertation came just when I stopped teaching at school officially. I bid farewell to school on 28 Feb. I’m thrilled to start my retirement with a reading of a former student’s brilliant dissertation.

Comments

  1. Yes, indeed! " One never knows where a teacher's influence ends." This is been my experience also, looking back over my experience as a teacher of Philosophy, Religious Studies and Social Sciences, in the seminaries of the Catholic Church,for almost forty years. In retrospect and hindsight, my teaching has had a Ripple Effect of having triggered liberative impulses in the students, like setting time-bombs for the future. The least expected seem to have e received the great impact...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The least expected seem to have received the greater impact... That has been my experience too. And those whom I regarded as my best, many of them have never turned back even to say an occasional hi.

      Delete
  2. Hari OM
    I am inclined to think that those teachers (or any adults) who leave their mark on young minds do so not because they are offering wisdom via words, but that - via those words - something beyond the mind and intellect is touched within that youngster. For me, the English teacher I had in my first year of higher school took the time following an assignment we'd been given to say that I should never stop writing, for I had talent. I haven't stopped - although I may not have fulfilled the promise he saw in me. Another was my computer science lecturer who saw the philosopher in me and whose words meant much more to me several decades later... "It doesn't matter". To explain that would take a dissertation - which is what I did for gurukula! YAM xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, indeed, it's not the knowledge or even wisdom we provide as teachers that touches hearts.

      Delete
  3. You never know what lessons will resonate with students. Or even what off-hand remarks. Nice she reached out to you. Interesting dissertation.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I was thrilled to get that message. A sense of fulfilment.

      Delete
  4. Happy second innings.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Thank you for sharing this insightful post!

    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 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...

India in Modi-Trap

That’s like harnessing a telescope to a Vedic chant and expecting the stars to spin closer. Illustration by Gemini AI A friend forwarded a WhatsApp message written by K Sahadevan, Malayalam writer and social activist. The central theme is a concern for science education and research in India. The writer bemoans the fact that in India science is in a prison conjured up by Narendra Modi. The message shocked me. I hadn’t been aware of many things mentioned therein. Modi is making use of Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan’s Centre for Study and Research in Indology for his nefarious purposes projected as efforts to “preserve and promote classical Indian knowledge systems [IKS]” which include Sanskrit, Ayurveda, Jyotisha (astrology), literature, philosophy, and ancient sciences and technology. The objective is to integrate science with spirituality and cultural values. That’s like harnessing a telescope to a Vedic chant and expecting the stars to spin closer. The IKS curricula have made umpteen r...

Two Women and Their Frustrations

Illustration by Gemini AI Nora and Millie are two unforgettable women in literature. Both are frustrated with their married life, though Nora’s frustration is a late experience. How they deal with their personal situations is worth a deep study. One redeems herself while the other destroys herself as well as her husband. Nora is the protagonist of Henrik Ibsen’s play, A Doll’s House , and Millie is her counterpart in Terence Rattigan’s play, The Browning Version . [The links take you to the respective text.] Personal frustration leads one to growth into an enlightened selfhood while it embitters the other. Nora’s story is emancipatory and Millie’s is destructive. Nora questions patriarchal oppression and liberates herself from it with equanimity, while Millie is trapped in a meaningless relationship. Since I have summarised these plays in earlier posts, now I’m moving on to a discussion on the enlightening contrasts between these two characters. If you’re interested in the plot ...

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...