Teacher's Day

Today is supposed to be Teacher’s Day. I thought I’d write something about teachers. As I started writing, I really couldn’t figure out which teacher to write about. The confusion was not because of the abundance of them, it was because of the mere absence of good teachers in my life. I thought it’d be a bad idea to say anything bad about teachers as I come from a family which supplied three generations of teachers to the society and the fourth generation would probably start with me… My father just retired as Principal of a college after teaching for 30 glorious years. My mother is still fascinated in telling me about her students and I have no doubt about the profession I am gonna end up…

School and college had given me some nice teachers. The two schools I studied before joining SBEMHS were really good as the teachers there knew their job well. SBEMHS was supposed to be the best school in the area but the teachers were mostly a far from being professional group of gossip mongers with their own internal politics and stuff. The class rooms had much more of a discipline that the staff rooms and very few of the teachers were actually capable of teaching their subjects. Most of them believed in either talking about themselves or rolling from wall to wall yelling out stuff they believed we could grasp! My higher secondary school was a better place as there was some space to voice your opinions. The teachers were better qualified and were good in whatever they did as the screening process was conducted through a government conducted examination. I can’t think of a bad one among them as all of them were really nice and gave importance to the students.

St. Berchman’s College was a different matter. The English department was a brilliant combination of great teachers with experience and young teachers filled with ideas. Prof. C.C. Thomas (known as Shakespeare C.C as he was well-versed in teaching Shakespeare) headed the department which had A.J. Thomas, V.C. Georgekutty, Siby Cherian etc being part of the old brigade of teachers whereas Sabu Joseph, Benny Mathew, Gigy Jospeh, P.J. Thomas etc formed a band of young teachers who were friendly yet passionate about teaching.

University was a different place altogether. A brilliant place for academic excellence racing to be India’s no.1 University… beautiful campus and brilliant teachers. This is where I saw politics getting mixed into academics. This is some place where the teachers can fuck you for not being on their side of political correctness and all you can do is pray to god. Teachers belonging to religious minorities, ethnic minorities and upper class elite who gas the students with their beliefs every day and you are supposed to grasp different pathetic ideologies on a daily basis. There are teachers known for sheer knowledge in the subject yet fail to ‘teach’ you anything other than show off their arrogance and style. Yet, if you look closer, it is not so hard to find a few teachers who stay away from the whole cacophony and believe in passing on knowledge. If you do that… if you find the right person who can guide you on that… you’ve succeeded. As long as you don’t find that right person, you’re all set for the dumbest mistake you’ve done in your life. I have quite a few friends from the Teacher’s community here, including my supervisor for the ongoing research who have been supportive of me on whatever I do.

Great!

They really want me to believe in Teacher’s Day after all these things. Well, to tell ye the truth, I do believe in Teacher’s.  

 
If I have learned anything from all these years of experiences it is the knowledge of how not to be like those morons who thinks of themselves as Teachers… After all, I believe that’s what is going to make a difference.

I thank all those ice teachers who made me what I am today. Good or bad, all of them have given me something to learn for my life.

- Manu

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