school.....chool ...hool...ool  !!!!!                         

               

 I keep wanting to write about this but somehow never got beyond my own experiences.  Do I have to personalize everything in order to understand someone else’s thoughts?  Do I have to empathize? 

One is the eternal nagging thought of having to send my child to school which drums into his head, routine, run of the mill type of education: a learning system which leaves no room for imagination, which does not in any way ignite the natural curiosity of a child.  This is perhaps the complaint of some parents, maybe in a way of all parents.  Enough has been said about this route learning practiced in school.  Or has it?   I am going in circles.  Talk about the mind of a woman who loves to jump back and forth not wanting to be boxed into the dull and dry logic of everyday talk and speech.  It’s fun to be disorganized. Every time you have to dig your way into something that you know you have but don’t know where you have placed it is quite demanding and exciting.  The eureka at the end of the search is so rewarding!!!  

So, back to the conditioned mind. I was telling you about school but not about the teaching.  Rather the news item was about doing away with corporal punishment and if flouted imprisonment!  Wow!  This should really put a scare into teachers!....

If a teacher so much as touches a student, oh boy do we have a swell time!!  But then we forget they are teachers!  They do not have to touch at all.  That’s the whole beauty of it.  The word is corporal punishment, not harassment you see so there’s nothing that teachers have to be apprehensive about.  Sound elusive and disjointed?  I love being elusive and so disconnected.  Let me share an anecdote.

A child had tummy ache at 8.30 in the morning.  By 9.30 the ache disappeared, school missed.  This was every day. The mother was perplexed, worried.  She took him to the pediatrician and the verdict, a mild infection.  Two doses of medicine did not work.  The ache was still there. The trip back to the doctor was with more apprehension.  The doctor listened patiently and nodded.  She turned to the child.  Where does it hurt? She asked.  The child was 5 and said ‘’here’’ pointing to the tummy.  When does it hurt? asked the doctor.  "When I have to go to school" said the child.

Is the story incomplete?  I prefer to leave it so

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Teachers can demoralize students without lifting a finger.  The reasons could be numerous.  Corporal punishment is the outcome, the reaction and not the cause.  The human mind is capable of such suave monstrosity which for a moment makes us wonder why on earth were we regarded as the crown of creation? My English teacher in school had hated me enough to fail me in the class test because i did not obey her!!!  My principal in college was shocked when i had told him that the English teacher there was boring!!! But he did not punish me.  It does not take much for teachers to be vindictive. Basically i feel that there is insecurity in their minds and the absence of the right kind of upbringing.  I will not call it education.  Today education does not make sense. There is a beautiful Urdu word for it ‘’thaleem’’ which brings into its ambit, culture, tradition, learning, respect etc.  If somebody can add more I would be thankful.  This thaleem is what makes one human.  And being human is being androgynous.  And this makes one complete.  There is something so incomplete in the teachers of today.  There is perhaps no commitment; no heed to the calling, in fact teaching is just another profession.  It is just another market that one caters to for a living.  You sell to live.  Of course i am not generalizing.  I am a teacher too.  I see and therefore I know. 

Teachers no longer reach out.  They are secluded, isolated and terribly afraid: afraid to connect and make meaning lest they fall short of expectations. But then that’s the fun of teaching, falling short means that one can gear up and keep learning, but perhaps not for everyone.  Hence the corporal punishment

A legislation making corporal punishment a punishable offence is quite welcome.  But how do we spare the child from different forms of psychological torture/pressure at school? How do we teach them to brace up against different temperaments of teachers at school?  And more importantly how do we teach teachers the art of bringing up a child?  A child, my son’s pediatrician had said, is like a blotting paper.  They soak up anything.  When that is the case, how do we teach teachers the art of pouring the right mixture and the right amount onto the blotting paper?

Children are curious and tender.  They need to be tutored with patience and understanding.  But schools do not seem to be doing that. Barring a few teachers, a majority of them have taken to the profession because it is just that, a profession.  Maybe I am old fashioned as a teacher, but it gives me immense satisfaction to know that I have been able to mold one tender mind into the correct form. To know that a student of mine steps into this confused world with balanced thinking and without prejudice of class, caste, gender, region, language, etc. is a great achievement. That they are emotionally secure is my trophy to myself when i retire.   

  At the end of the day, it is this that matters, not whether I have been able to teach a Dickens or a Lawrence successfully. The number of MPhils and PhD’s produced fails into insignificance before this.

Teachers ought not to bring in their personal prejudices into the classrooms.  They should not carry personal and professional baggage when interacting with children.  This is true of every class, more so for small children.  The tummy ache of a child should disappear. We really do not need doctors to cure tummy problems, we are the doctors.

Schools can be scary places for children.  It can make or mar them.  Teachers have to shoulder a moral responsibility for every citizen who has taken the wrong path.  We are the conscience builders of the nation and unless we have our conscience intact and ethics right, we fail in our duty as teachers.