WITH EYES WIDE OPEN
D. N. Bezboruah
The Indian tradition has leaned towards a veritable worship of teachers. The teacher is regarded as Brahma, Vishnu or Maheswara (Shiva). The teacher or guru is deemed to be above any kind of fallibility. When we were young, we were brought up on the tradition that a teacher could do no wrong. It was deemed sacrilegeous to complain about a teacher, even if he made you stand on a bench and struck you repeatedly on your shins with his springy, well-oiled cane. Fortutely for me, such experiences were limited to our geography teacher. The others did not carry canes. In any case, it was regarded as a teacher’s privilege to beat his students for even the most trivial of lapses. Any complaint to the parents about your teacher brought the standard response that he was above any question, and that if any of his students had got a beating it is because the beating was well deserved. And most of the teachers in those days fully deserved the respect and the faith reposed in them because they were indeed very dedicated and learned persons. The interest of the students was foremost in their minds, and many teachers got legitimate credit for turning veritable idiots into capable men. And even though the teacher-student ratio was rather unfavourable, most teachers somehow maged to find the time to pay individual attention to all their students.
In the 1940s and 1950s, there were very few private schools in Assam. In any case, in all district headquarters, the preferred school for boys was the local government high school. [We did not have higher secondary schools or so-called multipurpose schools in those days.] The government high schools had the best of teachers. Almost everyone of my generation who has done reasobly well in life without subverting any of the worthwhile human values, is a product of a government high school. Our reverence for our esteemed teachers remains intact even though almost all of them have passed away.
Things have changed a lot during the intervening decades. Today, the headmaster of a high school or the principal of a higher secondary school earns about 200 times what their counterparts did in the 1940s and 1950s. And yet, it is difficult to assert that they are even equal to what their predecessors were about 70 years ago. It is possible that today’s science teachers know a great deal more than their predecessors because they have to, because of the most fantastic inventions that science has placed at the disposal of mankind. Likewise, mathematics teachers are also obliged to learn a great deal more today than what their predecessors had to do about 70 years ago. However, one is not convinced that today’s language teacher is as competent as someone who was teaching in the 1940s and 1950s. I have made a fairly decent living with the help of the English language both as a teacher and as a newspaper editor. Much of the English that I learnt for the needs of speech and quotidian communication were not learnt in college or university. Most of it is what I learned at school. In fact, the English I learned at school ebled me to read and understand several good novels even before I got to college. The English teaching at the Jorhat Government High School must have been quite good. I say this because some of my classmates at school who got into administration or technology are also capable of using their English very effectively. In fact, I have serious doubts as to whether English is taught quite as efficiently today in the so-called English- medium schools. And it is not just English that I have in mind when I talk about language teaching. I have serious doubts as to whether Assamese is taught as efficiently today as it used to be in my school days. I am quite alarmed at some of the mistakes that I notice in the use of Assamese in almost all the local television channels.
Much of the preceding has to do with some of the discoveries recently made by the Education Minister of Assam about what goes on in our government schools now. One of the most shocking discoveries made by the Education Minister is the number of students and the number of teachers in most of our government schools. There was the unique example of 10 teachers in a government school that sent up eight students for the school leaving examition. Unfortutely, all the eight students failed in the examition. Here is a case of a student-teacher ratio that is certainly unparalleled anywhere in the world. There were more teachers than students. And yet all the students who took the school fil examition failed. What strikes me as rather unusual and as a travesty of honest practices is that the headmasters of such schools did not deem it necessary to inform educatiol authorities that there was a bizarre and unprecedented situation of a sudden and startling decline in the student strength of their institutions that had led to the most ludicrous teacher-student ratio that one could think of. Was it not mandatory for the headmasters or principals of such schools to alert the authorities of an alarming reduction in number of students in their schools? Besides, how could all students appearing for the school leaving examition fail in a situation where there was more than one teacher for every student? Unfortutely, the headmasters or principals of such schools have no way of pretending that they were not aware of their responsibility in having to inform the government of the rather untural decline in student strength in their institutions. And we are talking of headmasters/principals who draw salaries of over Rs 40,000 per month. Were they all thinking only of their jobs and salaries? What happened to the most elementary levels of honesty in their dealings with the society to which they belong? And this brings us to the important question of what such headmasters, principals or teachers are capable of teaching their students in terms of any of the cherished human values. Is it enough for a teacher to teach nothing more than the subject allotted to him or her? If so, from whom are children expected to learn the human values that are supposed to distinguish the educated from those who have not had the good fortune to go to school and college? Perhaps the most remarkable thing about India is that quite often it is the unlettered, illiterate person who proves to have more of the cherished human values than most educated people. We are talking about values like honesty, integrity, reliability, patriotism, respect for the rights of others, compassion and so on. Why is it that people who have attended college and university are a little more ready to make compromises with the most cherished human values?
It is not for nothing that Himanta Biswa Sarma, Education Minister of Assam declared recently that he was with the 55 lakh students of Assam rather than with the 33,000 teachers of the State, some of whom had proved to be totally unworthy of being called teachers. For instance, there had been over 1,000 teachers who had used unfair means in one of the diploma examitions. Was it not very just that such teachers should have been debarred from having anything to do with teaching? Is there any society in the world that would be willing to have teachers who cheat at examitions or use fake certificates of degrees to get appointed as teachers? Should not the authorities take the responsibility of keeping such undesirable elements away from our schools? There is absolutely nothing wrong if strong language is used in dealing with people who seek to become teachers but have no right to have anything to do with the shaping of the minds and attitudes of our children. In fact, strong language is appropriate in dealing with people who seek to become teachers by deluding both the appointing authorities and the very society in which they propose to function. What is more, there should be pel action against candidates who have no qualms about cheating at examitions held for recruiting teachers. Considering the duty of any government to uphold and protect the interests of society and of students, there should be strong support for the Education Minister’s efforts to keep out undesirable elements from becoming teachers and pretending to shape the futures of our children. Gandhiji used the term satyagraha extensively in his time. He used it to convey different meanings in different situations. However, one basic meaning of the word remains. It is eagerness for truth. Some of the other meanings are derived from the basic meaning. In deciding who shall have the role of teaching our children, the eagerness for truth in keeping out undesirable elements must always prevail.