"The mediocre teacher tells.
The good teacher explains.
The superior teacher demonstrates.
The great teacher inspires.
-William Arthur Ward"
Working as a part time lecturer is giving me newer perspectives about the thoughts in the emerging youths. A thoroughly enjoyable profession, as it has appeared to me over a year. Waiting to engage a class, last week, I was chatting with a Assistant Professor who suggested me to do something else since teaching, he felt, was a thankless job with no scope for achievement!!
With all due respects to the gentlemen who think so, here is an excerpt from an article entitled "Good teaching qualities" authored by Premchand Palety:
Sharu S. Rangnekar, a leading management teacher and consultant, told me how his teacher induced in him an interest for Sanskrit:
In the first period he taught us, we were 40 boys ready to listen. The first sentence he said was, “Boys! You are lucky.”
We asked him in chorus, “Why?”
“Do you know what you are going to learn?” he asked.
“Sanskrit,” we replied.
“What is Sanskrit?” he asked.
Most of us replied, “A language.” One student said, “A scoring subject (in our time there were only three subjects in which one could score 90% or more: mathematics, science and Sanskrit).”
“You are all wrong,” he said. “Sanskrit is not just a language or a scoring subject. It is a key to 3,000 years of culture. With this one key the whole treasury is yours.”
Not everybody believed him—but 10-12 of us did. After matriculation, Sanskrit was of no use to me in chemical engineering or MBA—but I still read Sanskrit. It is a virus that cannot be removed.
When my Sanskrit teacher retired after 35 years of service, I visited him. He started as a Sanskrit teacher and ended as a Sanskrit teacher; did not become even a vice-principal!
“What did you achieve in your life?” I asked him.
“Sanskrit is becoming a dead language; but I got every year a batch of 40 students. I tried to infect them (with interest for Sanskrit)—I know I could not infect everybody, perhaps 10-12 in each batch. After these 35 years, there are 400 former students of mine who must be still reading Sanskrit—this is my achievement.”
The research on the impact of expectations was done in the 1960s by Robert Rosenthal of Harvard University and Lenore Jacobson of South San Francisco Unified School District. They showed that when a teacher has positive expectations of a student, the student’s performance improves.
When we teachers look at ourselves as being in an inferior profession, visualizing to have been dumped into this job because we could not pursue our dreams or were pressurized by life to feed ourselves, then we would be deliberately placing ourselves at the bottom of the table of social eminence.
Paying attention to a conversation between a post graduate student and a senior lecturer on career options, I ended up listening the student say she would prefer to stay unemployed rather than 'ending up' as a lecturer. To my then shocking disappointment and disbelief, the so called Senior lecturer encouraged this decision of hers!! (Incidents like these do not give me shocks anymore, as I am accustomed to their frequent occurrences.)
The sorry state of affairs in the domain of education today is clearly a measure of the extent to which education has become a commodity to be sold and bought rather than a life lesson which has to be learnt and cultivated.
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| Robin Williams playing the character of John Keating in the movie "The Dead Poet's Society" |
Speaking to a friend on this issue, he asked me "Do teachers like Mr. John Keating(The Dead Poet's Society), Ms.Erin Gruwell(Freedom Writers) and Mr.E.R.Braithwaite(To Sir, With Love) exist only in stories and movies?" No, my dear friend, there are a lot of inspiring and extraordinary teachers around us. I take pride in being a student to a few of the great breed and believe all of us have had the privilege of learning from some great masters, at some point of time in our lives. To all those teachers of the great legacy who once existed, who are amidst us today and who shall be born in time -
dvandvAtItaM gaganasadRuSaM tatvamasyAdilakShyam |
EkaM nityaM vimalamacalaM sarvadhIsAkShiBUtaM
BAvAtItaM trigunarahitaM sadguruM taM namAmi ||
- Guru Gita ( from Skanada Purana)
I prostrate to that Sadguru who is Brahman that is bliss, who conferrs happiness, who is the incarnation of pure consciousness, who is unaffected by the pair of opposites, who is like the sky, who is the implied meaning of mahavakyas like tat tvam asi (thou art that); one and only, eternal, pure, immutable, the witness of all intellects, transcending existence, free from the three gunas(sattva, rajas and thamas.)
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