It’s a familiar sight in English medium public schools to see the parents running from here to there and from this teacher to that teacher, with complaints about the marks of there ward whenever they are shown the test or the examination papers.Sometimes they complain that the teacher would have been more lenient, sometimes they grieve that the questions were hard. At times they even complain about the question pattern being wrong or the marking patter being erratic. Nowadays we almost don’t see a parent grieving about his or her child not putting in more efforts or not being very studious though there are exceptions.The teachers are invariably at the receiving end for one fault of theirs or another.
Earlier, the teachers had great expectations from students and the students and the parents together tried their level best to live up to those expectations. Imperfections were accepted with self remorse and more efforts were put in, to fill in the gaps. Nowadays, neither the children nor the parents bother too much about how much knowledge is being assimilated. All that they worry about is marks. Marks obtained by unfair means are also accepted without scruples. If we analyze the reason behind it, it’s a very simple psychological truth underlying such fanaticism regarding marks. The world loves achievers and the losers are not forgiven. Nobody notices a non-achiever. Parents love to tell to the world that their children are achievers. It is sad to see that old idealism are losing their value. Maxims like a tree loaded with fruit always bending downward which meant that a knowledgeable person is always humble, unassuming and quiet about his achievement does not hold value in the modern world. Here one has to be successful by any means and people don’t take notice of you unless you blow your own trumpet or shout from the roof top. Even the card of smallest value has to be flaunted ostentatiously.
Goodness and idealism are passe. Tact and saleability are the law of life today and children are the worst victims of high expectations.
Children are like wet clay. The responsibility of carving out an angel or a devil rests primarily on the parents and then, the teachers. If good values are put into them and they are taught to differentiate between good and bad and the transient and the permanent, they would learn to exercise their judgment and assess a situation according to its true merit and not merely for selfish interests. If they are taught things which will last them a life time, they would grow into good and responsible human beings and sincere members of the society. That can only happen, if the elders themselves are evolved human beings. All of us know that life has been turned into a fast-paced rat race and all are struggling to carve out their own place. The means we assume to reach our ends are important. If the means are wrong, the success achieved may be very short-lived, but if we keep our means clean, we may not have to regret later.
The truly educated parents should keep in mind that success may not be an all-time companion, but knowledge is. It never shuns us. Hence, instead of running after marks or regarding them as the hallmarks of success, efforts should be made to raise successful and good human beings who can grant us relief from the spiral of unethical expectations and help us to have faith in our basic goodness.
When the first batch of earthen lamps and candles
Got into their places on walls, terraces
And window panes,
Aunty came with her
Eight-month old grandson clinging to her body,
her white hair unkempt and flying.
The little boy looked around with his round black eyes,
His familiarity with stranger speaking of
His acceptance of a truth,
That mom was not going to be around very soon,
May be for two, three years,
She had a job,
and no time to look after a baby.
Candles or lamps could not remove
The darkness that overhung so many trees
And hills,
But they brought light anyway,
They lit up the hearts of the people
Who remained cooped up
In their matchbox houses after dark
And often forgot the world of the living,
Voices and laughter emerged from the caves
For chosen moments
And accepted life,
The candles and earthen lamps burned,
Shone in the darkness like little beacons,
And died away,
Their death was not lamented,
Nor any effort was made for resurrection,
Coops were reoccupied.
The ritual had been done.
The day’s promise was kept.
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.
Times have changed. Times are changing, yet some us still continue to live in the old times as far as values are concerned. So, when you hear that parents are the CUSTOMERS and the schools are the service providers and they must ensure customer satisfaction, it is difficult to digest, leave alone assimilating it.
Coming to customer satisfaction, it can have connotations. If it means providing good teaching, ensuring just and fair behaviour to children, and facilitating an atmosphere that leaves no room for complaints, then it is contributory to the process of producing good citizens. But there is a chance that in the effort to satisfy the parent-customers, principles and values will be thrown to the wind and mindless compromises will be made in the form of individual favours and unfairness undermining the age-old principles of teaching and learning and we will be raising small monsters instead of responsible citizens with human values. Children are far more communicative with parents today and they come to know of everything happening around them. The fear is that they will start taking deviation as something normal and will grow up to propagate such irresponsible behaviour.
When expansion and growth become the prime motive and there is cut throat competition in the educational sphere, compromises are often made. In today’s world, survival has become the prime issue and even learned and intelligent people close their eyes to the violation of a moral code which is instrumental in contributing to a corrupt society. Something good cannot be born of a compromise.
It’s a changing world and we cannot expect our children to be pupils of ancient times who worshiped their teachers and sacrificed important things for the sake of principles. The equation between a teacher and a student is also undergoing transformation. A teacher is no more an awe-inspiring Godhead for the students. The reason is pretty simple to understand. Earlier, the teacher not only imparted knowledge, he or she also moulded the character of the children. The parents thought it improper to interfere in the functioning of a teacher and put their trust in him or her. In today’s world they are merely service providers. The parents, most of them, understand knowledge in numbers and percentage. Their attitude often affects the student-teacher –parent relationship in a negative way and it affects the equation between the administration and the staff of an educational institution too. A teacher is torn between raising the level of understanding and application in the students and sometimes has to evaluate them according to the expectation of the parents. As punishment is banned there is little fear in the mind of the children and it often leads to in-disciplinary attitude and improper behaviour.
The question is, instead of being drawn into the sea of commercialism, can’t educational institutions create their own standard by motivating and forcing the parents to understand the real meaning of teaching and learning? Instead of giving in, cannot they stand for something? Do we real want turn this world into such a place where we will be uncomfortable to live in, because our instinctive nature is divine. If the demands of the external world weigh heavy, cannot we keep our steadfastness in keeping it a bit sensitive, a bit moral and a bit conscientious?
