We all sat listening to the deliberations of a seminar-cum-workshop, we teachers. The resource person was talking on Quality Control Management in schools. He discussed point-wise on goodness, confidence building through encouragement, the importance of reading and aggressive innovation etc. According to him, goodness comprises three things:
1.Purity of mind, heart and spirit
2.Being value based
3.Remaining healthy and fit
Besides this, his eight fold path resembling The Buddha’s, included exalted ideas like giving the children a dream, making each child believe that he or she was outstanding, promoting holistic development, reading a lot of books, assessing ourselves etc which are definitely practical and fairly rational instruments of holistic teaching and quality improvement. At the end of the talk a questionnaire was asked to be filled which most of the teachers would find themselves insufficient to complete because they were mostly queries on subjective self-assessment and a partially evolved consciousness would shrink away from such questions. A few questions were asked which were not of very serious nature, yet thought provoking. But some fundamental questions bothered my mind.
In the beginning of his talk the speaker went back to the past and narrated the experiences of his school days; how once he left his box of marbles behind at the bus stop and when he realized it after the bus has covered a certain distance, he didn’t think twice before getting down and walking back to his bus stop, picking up the marbles and walking all the distance to school again. Going back home and seeking the help of the parents to be taken to school never occurred to him. He had reached school on the third period that day, but that was the most natural thing for him to do. He regretted that today’s children are growing up in a way that is quite discouraging. They shy away from physical labour, and are being made useless by relentless pampering of the parents.
Value-based and quality teaching is highly desirable and our children should be given a dream. But the question is how to make these children dream? Teachers are supposed to be good mentors, the light bearers. But the forces working in the educational sector are so contradictory that sometimes they struggle to see a ray of light. It is a period of transition which has no end. But we will have to continue with the striving, efforts and initiatives. The ultimate truth is that experience is the best teacher. Our children may waver, stumble, falter and fall, but they will also learn to get up and move forward. That is how the entire human history has been formed.
There are times when life seems so eventless that we find ourselves looking into the distance and into the bleakness of life and thinking ‘What’s ahead?’ We don’t always get an answer. Instead, a big void, a path that seems pretty lonely stares us in the face. We feel there is nothing going to happen to our lives ever. Absolutely nothing interesting! But we also often see that from that monotony and lonely existence something sublime is born. We may not explain it in terms of worldly gains. But it builds us and makes us what we become hereafter.
Today’s world is found running after the gross. It has no time to sit and reflect on things that can change his life on a smaller level and the world as a greater level. How many are there who feel happy when there is a sudden shower, or how many get elated to catch the mist on their skin? How many feel good when sounds of nature such as the voice of a bird fall on their ear?
Today’s word has most of its people who instinctively live for themselves. There is no harm in it too. But we don’t see die hard romantics any more who impulsively do acts of courage, chivalry, kindness or goodness. How many like to read nowadays? How many forget themselves when they look at the sky when nature is at one of its different moods? Do we get time to look around us even? Most of the time we are busy with our own problems and the rest of it is spent before a television, a computer or in shopping malls. We have forgotten that this earth is a unique gift from creator and each and every element in it is a wonder in itself. We have taken things for granted and we are not going to be forgiven for it. That’s another thing. We are killing the romantics in ourselves. J. Krisnamurthy had once told in one of his discourses that one cannot enjoy a full moon night unless the mind is free from worries. Life has become complicated. Human race is losing its innocence. Science is providing us comfort and turning us into emotionless, mechanical beings. Unless we simplify it, unless we make a really serious effort to bring back romanticism into our lives, nobody knows where this upward cum downward journey will take us.
A thirteen year old girl who had gone to collect water from a well as she does everyday was forcibly dragged away one day by a man who was in the prowl for easy victims. Naturally, she was physically weak and too naive to counter such a sudden attack on her person. She was kept in confinement by the man for many days and was continuously raped and tortured.
Finally when the man didn’t need her anymore, he discarded her like a piece of unwanted clothing. But that was not the end of her misery.Worse things were
waiting for her at home.Her parents, including her mother, refused to keep the
girl with them telling that they couldn’t keep a spoilt girl at home as it is a dishonour to the family.
The police become the temporary custodians of the girl and the child welfare department was contacted. Finally the girl was handed over to an NGO and was made to stay in its home for the destitute.
If we come to think of the incident from different perspectives, so many things come to view
-That the awareness level among rural Indians, and the level of education, is very low. That is why, instead of understanding the trauma and the suffering of the physically abused girl, they dismissed her as a spoiled girl who was not fit to be their daughter anymore. It’s abysmal to see that people in rural areas still represent the feudal class with its own jungle rules sans any humane considerations. The social myopia is so blinding that it completely subjugates natural emotions like parental love. May be in an uneducated and underprivileged rural society, that has not benefited from freedom, democracy or education - the wrong kind of social pressure is still prevalent.
-That the life of an unsuspecting girl, who had a secure existence in her environment hitherto, can be blighted without any fault of hers. She has no hope for even a ordinary normal life. Her chances of getting married also are lean because of the desertion by her family and the social stigma attached to a victim of sexual abuse. Belonging to the lowest rung of the financial ladder, earlier she was deprived of education and a normal childhood. Now she has very little hope for an average life with scope for any kind of growth. May be she will face worse situations and would be further victimized as she has no real protector in the society she lives in and the legal system which is supposed to provide safety and justice often turns impotent in such cases.
