Musings on Teachers Day
I have been a teacher for well over four decades and I share
the perception with my fellow teachers that we are a unique breed. We are
seemingly ubiquitous though we are noticed only once a year on Teachers Day
that commemorates the birthday of the Teacher among teachers--Sarvepalli
Radhakrishnan. During this week every year, we read and listen to the varied
views and comments by leading academicians and omnipresent seminarists on “what
ails our Indian education system". The consensual agreement among all of
them is to make learning less burdensome so that children and young men and
women learn better and enjoy the process of learning. These are words, words
and words- empty of content and intent (typical of our garrulous race that is
known to relish the sound of its own voice)- but no one has come forward with a
concrete proposal as to how to make learning enjoyable except to suggest
training workshops in pedagogy borrowed from Western practices. There is a
sizeable section among the educationists who seek an alternative in following our
own Gurukul system of education endorsing Guru-shishya parampara without
answering the question where to find the Gurus in adequate numbers to educate
our teeming millions! The more patriotic among our seminarists look wistfully
back to historical times with a wishful dream of making India the new Nalanda
and Ujjain while dreaming of the 21st century India as a Knowledge hub or a
Centre of learning. One can have no quarrels with such nostalgia, but the
unanswered question remains as how to reach that pinnacle of excellence that
was the pride of our ancient seats of learning.
Albert Einstein, speaking about tradition and knowledge
said: “the wonderful things you learn in schools and colleges are the work of
many generations produced by enthusiastic effort and infinite labour... and all
this is put into your hands as your inheritance in order that you may receive
it, honour it, add to it and one day faithfully hand it over to your children.”
Unfortunately we as educators have failed to pass our inheritance to our
younger generation. We have forgotten how we were schooled and how we learnt
our lessons. In those days, with no computer or calculator to our aid, we were
made to learn multiplication tables from one to sixteen ending with sixteen into
sixteen. The currency in those days was of three denominations- rupee, anna and
paisa with 16 annas making a rupee and 12 paise making an anna and 192 paise
making a rupee. We learnt to make the addition and subtraction with reference
to these three denominations by mental calculations- at times even converting fractions of rupees and annas to
paise with as much as speed as a calculator.
The substitution of mental calculations by calculators has
deprived our young children of exercising their minds. We are doing
incalculable harm to our young children by giving them soft options-- no need
to learn arithmetic tables, no need to strain the mind to do calculations as
the calculators can do the work, no need to read a book as there is a Wikipedia
to give the summary, no need to read a newspaper when there are any number of
24x7 news channels, no need to do any home assignment or holiday project when
Google is at hand. As young children we had the advantage of elders and
grandparents asking us to recite shlokas and Sanskrit verses merely to train the
mind to find its own strategy of retaining them in memory. The mind itself was
valued as a great computer that can store a vast amount of data and knowledge
that could be retrieved anytime in a trice. We did our homework without
resorting to cut and paste methods and we benefited by it as it reinforced in
us the lessons that were taught in the class. The sharpness and focus that we
see in the older people is due to the software they had installed in their
early years. But the educational administrators and policy makers today are
under a mistaken notion that children should not be subjected to mental work
forgetting that only the young minds,
‘unfettered by the fretful fever and stir of the world’(Wordsworth) are
fresh, fertile and capable of quick and easy absorption. Children are the best
learners and they acquire arithmetic skills, language skills and core values
with amazing ease.
Our modem
education system ignores the earlier concept of ‘ brahmacharya’ (this is not to
be limited to boys but extended to girls also) which is based on the fact that
the early span of 20-25 years is the period when the mind is at its best to learn,
concentrate, absorb, retain, analyze and rationalize knowledge. This is the
time to focus on learning and store knowledge and information for the years to
follow. But today these early years are wasted on a mistaken perception that
this is the time to enjoy! And what kind of enjoyment- not the enjoyment that
comes from learning or mastering complex subjects or sharpening one’s mental
skills but by aimless drifting and seeking softer options that gratifies the
superficial sensual life. Young people idle away their time working on social
networks like Facebook and Twitter, listening to music on the i-phone and i-pad
and talking on their cellphone that give
them an illusion of being alive and in touch with a host of friends. T.S.Eliot’s
lines on Television “Television is a medium of entertainment which
permits millions of people to listen to the same joke at the same time, and yet
remain lonesome” is true of digital communication of our times. The
young boys and girls are good with gadgets and expect more fun from technology
and less from human company. They hardly indulge in outdoor activities and
delude themselves that they are mentally alive sitting before the computer. The
clear signs of physical and mental atrophy among a large section of our youth
cannot be wished away. In a recent book,
Alone Together, Sherry Turkle writes: “Technology is seductive
when what it offers meets our human vulnerabilities. And as it turns out, we
are very vulnerable indeed. We are lonely but fearful of intimacy. Digital
connections and the social robot may offer the illusion of companionship
without the demands of friendship. Our network life allows us to hide from each
other, even as we are tethered to each other…we would rather text than talk.”
It is
imperative for us, teachers, to pull the young out of the deep morass into
which they have fallen. If we want to preserve the priceless asset that we have
in our youth (which is the despair of the West today), we have to instill in
them the need, the urgency and the compulsion to be disciplined and have
focused learning in order to acquire robust mental skills to meet the
challenges of life as they move into the next phase of life. We have to bring
back to them the wonder of the printed page. The experience of holding a novel
in hand and reading is a liberating exercise. It enables the young to be
liberated from the usual way of looking at the world and thinking about
themselves and about the world they live in. The world created by the author is
through his/her leap of imagination and helps the readers to create that world
in their imagination and share a glimpse of that hidden world. Teachers have to
be creative and imaginative to reveal the splendour of that hidden world in
books. This is the world that the young can share with the writer and with
their fellow readers. Unfortunately the teachers have also found shortcuts to
reading and are no longer in a position to inspire the young. Appreciation of great works of art and
literature stimulates the power within the readers and helps to apprehend the
transfer of power from the author to them.
Our modern
youth has to be taught that there is a time for fun, there is a time for study,
there is a time for Facebook, there is a time for reading books, there is a
time for twittering, there is a time for enquiry there is a time for passive
absorption, there is a time for active involvement, there is a time for
companionship and there is a time for
contemplation. Teachers have to provide the necessary impetus for the young
students to appreciate and value time so that the young enjoy learning
alongside having fun. This was the education the older generation had at a time
when there was no technology. Educationists may have to remind themselves that
the inheritance they had received from their elders should now be passed on to
their younger generation whose soft options are but an inhibiting luxury.
