Teacher's day....

This post is really in response to Shivam's cynical post on the hyposcrisy of teachers.

As such, I do not dispute SHivam's statements of facts. I did read about that incident about the girls being punished so some time ago and I would not have responded in such a "anti" manner if his post had been posted at some other time.

Yes, there are all varieties of teachers. Some good, some bad. We do not remember the most of them because they just came and went without even perturbing us even a little bit.

I do not remember a lot of them myself. In the ones I do remember, I do not respect a lot of them and I have mixed feelings for some. And the number of teachers I would say whom I really, really respect can be counted on one hand.

I do not respect the teacher who chastised me for winking at a girl in class 3. She made me feel guilty for no reason whatsoever. I was like what, eight? Sex did not even come into the picture then and she scolded me in front of the entire class without explaining to me why she considered it to be wrong. But otherwise, she was a teacher whom we all liked as she was nice and everything.

I do not respect the teacher who "taught" me physics in school. I used to show fallacies in his teaching in the class and he never understood that he was wrong! I did not respect him because he really did not have the knowledge to teach high school physics.

I do not respect the teacher who hit me on my knuckles because I did not know the table of 18. Why did he hit me? I never understood because I never considered knowing the tables by heart as an important thing.

I do remember the teacher in my otherwise mediocre school who tried to instill critical thinking but so obviously frustrated by the students' disinterest. I remember how she would show her frustration by scolding the kids really badly. Maybe she wasnt the best teacher around but she tried... And I wanted to be in her classes because of her efforts, albeit limited, to take teaching beyond the textbooks.

And there were those tons of teachers who considered teaching a chore and would just dictate things to us to vomit in the examinations. I remember hating to remember every word of the "essays" that we were supposed to write as answers to questions in the examinations and where we were scored according to how much we could remember.

I remember being so frustrated with the exams that I wrote the most inane and shortest answers to questions like "use this in a sentence".

The teacher I remember the most is the one who taught me that my thoughts and actions should never be subservient to others and who gave me the confidence to write what I thought and what I felt, even though it would be contrary to the opinions of the world around me.

I remember all these teachers on the 5th of september. The rest are the forgettable ones. I never do remember the rest who have had no bearings on my life and I dont care whether they existed in this universe or not.

It is not just a day where we remember just the ones we respect. It is a day where we remember all those other teachers too to realise and be grateful to those whom we do respect because we realise how rare they are and how precious they are to us. Teaching is most often a thankless job. On this day, we tell those few teachers we admire that we admire them and that in itself is the thanks that we can give them. Maybe they wont get frustrated and would continue inspiring and shaping the future minds of tomorrow.

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