Being a Teacher

Corrections! Corrections! Corrections! Set the papers, correct the papers – one bundle done, two done, three…. Oh! How many to go?

Walking into the class, full of enthusiasm, waiting to impart all that is within; the preparation took hours, all the books referred, all the sites visited – all this done to pass on to the next generation, with a hope that they are eager to learn. Enter and the whole enthusiasm seems to fly out of the window. No one seems to care, not even the children.

I am sure; all know what I am talking about. Yes, a life of a teacher in India today. It is a known fact that in earlier days, a teacher’s profession was considered as a noble one. It simply meant, “Don’t expect any monitory gain” in other words, “Charity work”. But has the situation changed today? No, except in a few schools who pay the teachers according to their worth.

Even today, teacher’s job is to just keep doing duties without expecting anything in return. The irony of this situation is that even a person working in a call center having a mare high school certification today earns more than a well qualified teacher.  

When the government has to implement any new rules and laws in the field of education, it quickly gets administered in all schools, especially when these laws are regarding increasing work hours, more number of teaching periods, more number of subject allocations, but never does it get implemented when the law is about the green bucks.

It is observed that, in any industry today, the youth hops, jumps and skips from one job to another in pursuit of gains. Gains in terms of growth, experience and of course finances. Whereas, in a teacher’s life, these don’t seem to exist. Gain definitely is in terms of experience and learning, but never in any other form. A well experienced teacher, when working for more than a decade changes school from one to another, looses all the benefits and the experience is never counted. At this point, the law of ‘equality’ is imposed. But this equality ceases to exist when the responsibilities are handed over. This paints a very sorry figure of the monitory situation of the teaching faculty today.

The world today, is talking about Indian schools, Indian curriculum, Indian education – we all are proudly raving about ‘India Shining’. But does anyone give a thought about the teachers, who maybe in their own little way are instrumental in this ‘India shining glory’. Anything new that is observed in the west has to be quickly administered in India. Which could be the best place? Where could one get the quick publicity? It definitely is the school. Each day, there are new policies. The teachers have to race against time to learn, understand and implement these. By the time they have understood what has to be done, to their dismay, there are a bunch of new ones that they need to learn and implement and unlearn the old ones. All their efforts go down the drain in a fraction of a second.

In spite of all the chaos, there are a number of dedicated teachers who are in this ‘noble’ profession for their love of what they do, for they love being with children, for they love passing on all that they have and name all this as a ‘sense of satisfaction’.

But is a today’s teacher really satisfied? With the children not interested in what the teacher has to give, with the parents always ready with all five fingers pointing towards the teacher and waiting to catch her throat at any one given instance, with the media ready to blow the smallest incident out of proportion and the irony is that in their eyes the teacher is always to be blamed. And with the society in general who have a ‘do not care a damn’ attitude as long as it does not affect them.

Where are the days when a teacher was considered as a ‘guru’, a place next to God? What happened to the proverb, ‘mothers could not be everywhere, therefore God created teachers’? Why is there so much mistrust? Today’s teachers are not even asking to be treated as God or one next to God, but simply ‘humans’ with small needs, wants, respect, happiness and understanding.