Teachers OR Cheaters

Couple of days ago, my daughter asked me a very interesting question "papa you never give me examples of your teachers, why?" I said hmmmm, give me couple days to answer that. When I started thinking about it (during toilet breaks), I realised that is so true. Apart from one man, I have never had a teacher (teacher means only in school or uni, mentors at work place not included.) worth mentioning. When I am at work or even doing day to day life things, it has never occurred to my mind that oh yea this guy had taught me this. I have dropped out of 2 schools in US, even there I didn't find anyone outstanding (may be cuz I dropped out :-)).

All my experience with teachers in India has been bad. In school they only had complaints about me(My mum had frequent visitor miles... :-) ), even when I was always in top 3 (until 9th grade I think). My faith in teachers was shattered when I came to know that they did not like kids who didn't contribute to so called building fund. One man who taught me math(for free, he happened to be math teacher for my mum too) in 10th grade, stands out. I realized, it was not a job for him. He loved teaching. When you do it as a job is when you fuck up. In India most of these teachers have private tuition's, which I am sure makes them disinterested in teaching properly in their day jobs. I have had teachers ask me to come to their tuition's when I asked question in the school (of-course in the staff room). Some of the teachers when I was in engineering, were terrible (doesn't help a student who has lost interest in education around 9th grade). Some of them were my seniors who graduated previous year. I don't think that young grads are incapable of teaching well(they were doing it while they were preparing for GRE, GATE whatever), but I believe teaching is an art. It is very similar to acting, If you don't have that talent it will take years to get better. Take people like Ajay Devgan, Karishma Kapoor etc (heaps of names from bollywood come to my mind). When they started acting they were pathetic, as they did more movies they got better. If it takes couple years (for some one with passion to teach) to be a better teacher, they would have had bad influence already. Students might start hating those subjects, hate school itself.

I don't think teachers play a big role after say 10th grade in personality development (after 15, if personality is not developed, then its a bigger issue). In primary and high school, teachers play a huge role. Teachers should not be hired if they don't have passion for teaching. How do you find out if they have passion? (same situation as finding good programmers). Well let them teach teachers before they go in front of kids. Have some training, make them sit in a good teachers class. Teach them ETHICS (very important, if madarsas can teach terrorism so effectively, I am sure there should be a way to teach ethics). Pay them well, ban private tuition's. Kids spend more time in school than at home (10 hours sleep, 8 hours in school, left is 6 hours... go figure...). We don't want pedophiles or fuckin morons who love child pornography. We don't want teachers asking kids to come for private tuitions. I know its easier said than done implementing some of these measures. One thing I know for sure is, teachers should not feel they have power, if they do they will be bad. We want teachers who teach not think they control kids destiny. There is a saying in kannada (I had told this to one of my lecturers in engineering, when he was bragging about marking my paper badly), here it goes "haalu anna haak bahudu, hane baraha bariyakke aagalla". Translation, You can provide food to some one, you can't change their destiny. All of us need to do KARMA... Lets do it well and sleep well at night (without guilt)

Jai sri krishna :-)