Tomichan Matheikal's blog

I met Ms Dhanya Ramachandran a few years ago at one of the centralised evaluation camps of CBSE. Then we met again every year for the same purpose until I retired from teaching officially. I’m not sure whether it’s her Mona Lisa smile or her commendable efficiency with the job that drew my attention more to her. Last week I came to know that Dhanya (let me take the liberty of calling her so) received an award for her contributions to the cause of education. I wished to bring her to a wider audience for the cause of education and hence requested an interview. What follows is the result. Since it is an email interview, it has its limitations. Nevertheless, Dhanya comes alive here. Over to the interview.  Tomichan : Hi Ms Dhanya Ramachandran, please introduce yourself for the sake of the readers of this blog. Dhanya : Hello. I am Dhanya Ramachandran, a passionate educator with diverse background. My career journey began in journalism, but life took me on a different path, lead...

From the time I started teaching English in school, I’ve been hearing complaints from science teachers and also a few mathematics teachers that their students got poor grades in the final exams because of their students’ limited knowledge of English. I usually don’t take such complaints seriously. I take them as convenient excuses, the normal human tendency to pass the blame on to somebody else for one’s own inefficiency. In the first place, my students score excellent grades in English which means their knowledge of English is good enough as far as the Education Board’s standards are concerned. Secondly, I started my career as a maths and science teacher and got brilliant results from my students whose knowledge of English was not particularly great. Those who know mathematics well will also know that mathematics is a language by itself, a language that has almost nothing to do with the normal human languages like English or Chinese or whatever. Mathematics is the language of ab...

Teacher was very fond of parrots.  They keep repeating A, B, C... And when they grow up they repeat s = ut + ½ at 2 or sin 2 Ɵ + cos 2 Ɵ = 1.  When they grow up more they keep repeating “Yes, sir; Yes, madam.”  That’s why Teacher decided to take over the caged parrot from his cousin who was leaving the village to settle down in one of the posh apartments in Delhi.   The cousin had just won the Lok Sabha bye-election. Teacher was not characteristically ignorant and so he knew that keeping birds in cages was against the law.  Love does not follow laws, however. Teacher was very upset when Parrot spoke.  It did not speak the formulas.  Instead it uttered expletives.  Teacher decided to teach Parrot.  “A, B, C...” Parrot said, “AAP, BJP, Congress...”  As if that were not enough, Parrot added some expletive to each word it uttered. Teacher presented the problem to Counsellor.  Every school must have a counsello...

A friend who wished to start a school of his own approached me the other day with a request: “Please draft a vision and a mission for the school.”  “The vision: Earn profit,” I said; “The mission: Earn more profit.” Being familiar with my cynicism, he said without batting an eyelid or even smiling, “Of course, you’re absolutely right...  I’m here to get a vision and a mission that’s different from the ones we usually see on websites...” I drafted something which I can’t recollect now!  [You can guess how serious I was about what I wrote.] Education today is another commercial enterprise.  Students as well as their parents want it that way too; they have been “schooled” to want it that way! In 1971, in his book, Deschooling Society, Ivan Illich blamed the education system for institutionalising values.  He argued that the schools put undue emphasis on process rather than substance .  “Once these become blurred,” wrote Illich, “a ...

Had it not been for a couple of messages I received, I would not have known that today was Friendship Day.  One of the messages said, “Happy friendship day to the most fantastic friend.  Thanx for being my frd sir...”  It came from a past student.  I found it both amusing and encouraging.  Amusing, because the sender of that message is 36 years younger than me.  Encouraging, because I believe the best teacher is a friend to his/her students especially if the students are adolescents.  Teaching adolescents is fun.  Because they teach me more than I teach them.  Also because I think I’m an adolescent at heart.  In fact, a few months back one of my present students remarked that in the class.  And I laughed nodding in agreement. Adolescents are excellent friends.  In fact, their loyalty in friendship has no parallel in any other period of human growth and development.  Every parent who is struggling to deal with...

With my students in the Himalayas (2012) A friend of mine who has opened a new school in Himachal Pradesh asked me to help him get a couple of teachers from Kerala.   I rang up more than half a dozen people (friends and relatives most of whom are teachers) all of whom seemed to mock me for some culpable ignorance.   The last person whom I called the other day is a politician.  I started by mentioning the salary of Rs25000 to Rs30000 thinking that the amount would be quite attractive to a fresh graduate.  “Even if you offer Rs50000,” said my politician-cousin, “you won’t get anyone worth his salt.” “Why?” I persisted. “Teaching is not even a career option for today’s generation,” he said. Teaching as a profession is facing the threat of extinction, I mused.   I had a reason to grin sarcastically.  A few minutes before I called my cousin I had signed a circular sent by my boss.  The circular was to inform the teachers ...

Teacher is a parent away from the parents.  Today’s Hindu editorial demands better teacher training institutions.  The editorial thinks that lack of qualification has led to deterioration in teaching.  I don’t agree. The plain truth is that lack of remuneration has led to the deterioration. Quality flocks to where the money is.  If money is the ultimate value in society.  We are not living in the ancient days of the Gurukala when gurudom was the noblest position in the society.  Guru was god.  Guru possessed all the knowledge and hence the power. Today knowledge is not power.  Money is power today.  Does India want good teachers?  Pay them – that’s the answer.  Otherwise, change the system based on economy. At any rate, who is a good teacher? Let’s forget the economy and ask that question. A good teacher is one who has a passion for learning.  One who has a passion for learning will...

So many experts have spoken so much about the most controversial rape in India.  I read quite much.  I viewed equally much on the television. My heart weeps for the woman whose dreams have been buried even before she started seeing them clearly. But why did it all have to be this way? I’m a teacher and I’d place the blame squarely on two entities: the parents and the schools. The parents want their children to outshine everyone else.  Compete.  Defeat .  That’s the mantra given by parents to their children.  Life is about competing with other students and defeating them.  If not in academic results, at least in sports, games, acting, singing, dancing… somewhere.  If not in any of those, defeat physically.  Win somehow, anyhow.  Use hook or crook or hit below the belt. The schools too want to publicise their performance.  On Honour Boards.  Performance matters.  And only performance matters.  V...

I am very wary of people who are religious by profession.  My experience is that they are more eager to receive than give.  They look for donations, offerings, and other means of accumulating wealth without doing any creative or productive work.  So it did not come as a surprise to me when a friend of mine narrated his experience. His school was taken over recently from a Trust by a religious cult.  One of the first things the cultists did was to curtail the rights and privileges of the staff.  Given below is an extract from a letter issued by them to some of the staff members, most of whom have been working in the institution for about ten years. Name of school and designation of staff blacked out The Trust which was running the school formerly was paying the staff according to recommendations of the Sixth Pay Commission, though a few allowances were not given due to financial constraints.  Had it not been for the financial constraints,...

Teaching extends far beyond the classroom A few of my students on the bank of the Ganga The above ad appeared in today’s [10 Sep] Times of India ( Ascent , the job vacancies supplement).   The school wants both teachers and “coaching experts.”   While the teachers will be paid a salary of Rs 22,000 per month, the coaching experts will be paid from “Rs 9 Lac to 12 Lac” annually.   Moreover, “Higher start can be considered for highly deserving candidates” in the case of coaching experts – but apparently not in the case of teachers.   As a teacher I was amused by the discrepancy between the remunerations of a tutor and a teacher.   The job of the tutor (or coaching expert, as the ad calls him/her) is to prepare “students competing for Board Exams & for IIT, AIEEE, PMT, NDA etc.” Why is there so much discrepancy between the remunerations, I wondered naturally.   Is it tougher to prepare students for competitive exams than teach them the su...