Remeber how teachers day we use to celebrate in school with so much energy to play the role of your favorite teacher for a day. Whole nation is celebrating Teachers’ Day in the memory of Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, former President of India and an iconic educationist.
We are perhaps the only country where any untoward incident within or outside the school holds the principal and teacher immediately accountable. On the one hand, the government speaks of restoring the professional dignity of teachers and heads of schools and on the other, there seems to be a societal and systemic aggression directed against them, resulting in disrespect. This is disturbing because it is creating a culture of suspicion between the teaching community and the system, and more crucially between teachers and students. Vulnerable as they have become, and regardless of whether they belong to a government or a private institution, it has now become a battle of survival for teachers.
The mind is a garden that contains seeds of understanding, forgiveness and love along with seeds of ignorance, fear and hatred. It is only an enriched nurturing environment that will help to water the positive seeds.
Preparing children academically, inculcating values and moulding them into competent and compassionate human beings is expected from a teacher. The role of the teacher remains unchanged but they have to do all this without authority, with a trust deficit and lack of belief in the tenets of their profession. They are expected to assess students with objectivity and yet accused of harassment by deliberately failing them. The government itself in its new policy has created a system that fails students, by amending the no-detention policy. How are schools supposed to move forward on this stand on failure, where a principal or a teacher becomes the immediate victims of the system?
India needs 1.3 million teachers at the elementary level. The shortfall is more glaring at the secondary and senior levels. There is also the threat of the new generation ignoring teaching as a profession because of more lucrative and seemingly attractive alternatives.
The teaching community has kept quiet so far. We need our voices to be heard. The government must react positively and judiciously by drafting legislation to protect the rights of teachers who are facing attacks not only on their integrity but also on their person. Wrongdoing cannot be tolerated, but the treatment must be fair and just.
Does all this mean that we are ready for the demise of the brick-and-mortar school and the formal instructor-led learning system? That would script the obituary of the teacher and the profession.
