Musings on Teachers Day

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.