Alienating teachers is pushing India down the drain
The work teachers do is of supreme, long-term significance for a society. Traditionally we have held such work to be invaluable. Teachers used to command huge respect.
Many were inspiring role models for the youth and left enduring beneficial impacts on them. Every society that values its development and enrichment would value teachers and the services they render.
I remember senior colleagues in the profession taking pride in not taking even permissible leave from work, year after year.
They had time tables, but time tables did not have them. Never cribbed about having to do a little more work.
Manifestly happy at, and about, work, they revelled in giving; and grew in scholarship and stature, in the process of giving their best.
How this has changed! In such a short span of time, and to such an extent. Today teachers in higher education are as alienated at work as industrial workers are. And teachers' associations behave no better than trade unions, utterly unmindful of the discredit this inflicts on teaching as a profession.
The signs of this alienation can be simply listed. Teacher-truancy at work is at an all-time high. Most teachers, in varying degrees, resent the work they do. They work grudgingly. Their try to get away with doing the minimum.
When was it that you saw, the last time, a teacher who looked or sounded happy about work? A large proportion of teachers in higher education are stagnating. The cesspool of stagnation breeds mosquitoes of institutional politics. The excitement then shifts to fighting for rights.
Quite certainly, there are no teacher associations in this country that motivate their members to improve the image of the profession through their professional excellence and personal stature.
Teachers don't attend professional enhancement programmes; they have to be coerced to do so. This could sound cynical. But, there are times when stating the truth may sound like venting cynicism or inventing a charge sheet.
The unpleasant reality needs to be addressed, precisely because we value and respect teachers. Teachers are currently not helping their cause and, what is worse; teachers' associations are fouling the profession under the pretext of championing the interests of teachers.
Consider this. Increasing employee turnover characterises a large number of professions today. If an employee stays on in the same placement for 20 years, he is assumed to be mediocre.
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| Teachers don't attend professional enhancement programmes; they have to be coerced to do so. |
In contrast, teachers stay put. This is not exactly due to commitment to teaching. It is because spending 20 years in teaching consigns them to mediocrity. They become, barring rare exceptions, incompetent to make the grade elsewhere.
We can afford to be a little more specific. Good computer science teachers are a rarity in higher education. The good ones are absorbed by industry. Higher education gets whatever is left.
This is not a matter only of lower emoluments. This trend may not change even we increase the salary of computer teachers several fold, so long as the public image of teaching as a profession persists.
The alienation of teachers from work is a humungous national disaster. It needs to be addressed upfront, and not denied or swept under the carpet.
The hallmarks of alienation at work are boredom and depression. When teachers complain that 14-16 hours of work per week is a crushing burden, what they, in effect, admit is that they are plagued by boredom at work.
Their weariness does not result from the quantity, but the poor quality of the work they do. Typically, teachers remain blind to this glaring truth. True, teachers feel overburdened. But truly what burdens them is the underutilisation of their personal scope. Human beings crave intensity.
It is either met directly through soulful work or adversarial posturing, or indirectly through sports, crime and entertainment industry and so on where intensity is experienced vicariously. Even simple tasks in an ambience of alienation activate resentment.
Imagine, for example, having to explain for an hour a simple formula or event that can be done in five minutes. It is sure to make anyone weary.
Or, consider learning for a whole year the lessons you studied in class one, years ago. You could die of boredom or slide into depression. The truth is that teachers are doing work, well below their potential. The system is custom-designed to promote and reward mediocrity and laziness. A lazy worker is an alienated person. He is too lazy to find out why he is alienated.
It is in the interest of teachers to face this truth. No teacher should want to live as a parasite on society. Parasites are not entitled to dignity or respect.
They merit contempt, not because they suck sap or blood, but because they cannot see beyond their noses. This pathetic self-boundedness is, in turn, a self-degrading byproduct of underdevelopment which domiciles human bonsais in the sphere of higher education.
Teachers must emerge from their existential hiding. And reclaim their temporarily misplaced role as the conscience-keepers of the nation and the builders of lives.
A nation is built by its teachers. They should clamour, not for meagre, but for meaningful work. And realise at the same time, which such meaningfulness depends primarily on their stature and sense of vocation.
Teachers must become, once again, the light of a nation. Anything less is a slur on the scope and stature of their noble profession.