The Teachers’ Day
Learning from the lofty ideals of Radhakrishnan
I became a teacher by accident and found the teaching
profession so fascinating that I closed all other options. It is a very promising
and exciting and challenging profession. It affords an opportunity to be in the company
of young, teach them from heart and instill in them the right values. In the
class room, the teacher’s personality is dominant, with all his knowledge and learning,
experience and wisdom coming into play.
According to Bertrand Russell, ‘no man can be a good teacher
unless he has feelings of warm affection towards his pupils and a genuine desire
to impart to them what he himself believes to be of value.’ I virtually lived
up to this dictum throughout my teaching career, spanning over three decades, making
it a point to be affectionate towards students and speak out my mind without
any inhibition whatever, the lectures often turning into animated discussions and
debates. It was a sheer joy of learning
and teaching. The teacher who habitually does what is right rather than what is
expedient gains respect and admiration.
Bertrand Russell in his essay Functions of a Teachers
speaks about the role of a teacher in a modern world. The teaching
profession has a great and honorable tradition, right from the dawn of history.
In ancient times, a teacher was expected
to be a man of exceptional knowledge and wisdom, though there were instances of
teachers being punished for their views. Socrates was put to death and Plato was
thrown into prison, yet that didn’t stop the spreading their ideas. A feeling of intellectual independence is
essential for a teacher to explore his mind.
A teacher should differentiate
between right and wrong. If he is preferring his own country, religion and
culture without making difference between right and wrong then he is not a
teacher but a propagandist. He should teach his students what is right. There
is a widespread belief that nations are made strong by uniformity of opinion
and by the suppression of liberty. But the truth is, ’nations have been brought
to ruin much more often by insistence upon a narrow-minded doctrinal uniformity
than by free discussion and the toleration of divergent opinion.’
It is the duty of a teacher to rise
above party politics and primordial loyalties based on caste, religion and
province and instil into the young the habit of impartial inquiry, leading them
to judge issues on their merits. He should be willing to do justice to all
sides, with a dispassionate scientific investigation. Russell said: “teachers
are more than any other class the guardians of civilization. They should be
intimately aware of what civilization is, and desirous of imparting a civilized
attitude to their pupils.’
To Russell, no man can be ‘a god
teacher unless he made a firm resolve never in the course of his teaching to
conceal truth…In any case, to tell lies to the young, who have no means to
checking what they are told, is morally indefensible.’ Further, what a teacher
should endeavour to produce in his pupils if democracy is to survive, is the
kind of tolerance that springs from an endeavour to understand those who are
different from ourselves.’ And ‘the
teacher, like the artist, the philosopher, and the man of letters can only
perform his work adequately if he feels himself to be an individual directed by
an inner creative impulse not dominated and fettered by an outside authority.’
In the days, immediately after the
independence, the people who used to go abroad for higher studies would
invariably return to India to serve the motherland. Indians sought leadership
roles on as many UN bodies as possible. India in the Nehru years was internationalist,
not only taking in ideas from abroad, but spreading the Indian experience to others.
Hansa Mehta helped in drafting the UN Universal Declaration on Human Rights. Homi J. Bhabha had resided over the first UN
Conference on peaceful uses of atomic energy. By 1952, Indian experts occupied
84 out of 136 in the UN Technical Administration.
In contrast, today many Indians who go abroad for studies would not like to return to India, unable to adapt and connect to her tradition and culture. More students want to go abroad for higher studies, no matter the value of rupee is nose-dived to all time low - Rupees.80 per the US dollar. The US Embassy in Delhi has issued record breaking 82,000 student visas between January and August 2022, higher than any other country, the Indian students making 20% of all international students in the US. This is the highest number of student visas issued by the US embassy and consulates in India in any year. The UK also issued the highest number of student visas globally to Indian students. The democratic India has overtaken the totalitarian China as the largest nationality being issued student visas in the UK.
And the number of Indian citizens seeking to settle in foreign countries permanently is also growing rapidity. Over 9.24 Lakh Indians renounced their Indian citizenship between 2015 and 2021 in search of lucrative lifestyle in foreign soil, as per the reply given by the Home Ministry in Lok Sabha on July 19,2021..
In a polarised and communally charged
India of today, the role of a teacher has become more important. It is the duty
of a teacher to instill human values of justice, equality, tolerance, peace and
love in his students to contain hatred and violence and develop an inclusive
outlook. It is important to impart the ideals of our freedom movement and the
constitutional values of our Republic. Teachers must acquaint themselves with
the ideals enshrined in the Preamble to the Constitution of India, the
Fundamental Rights, the Directive Principles of State Policy and the
Fundamental Duties, among other constitutional provisions, and imbibe the ideals
and values set in there.
The Fundamental Duties, incorporated in the Article 51A, inter alia, include:
- To abide by the Constitution and respect its ideals and institutions;
- To cherish and follow the noble ideals which inspired our national struggle for freedom;
- To uphold and protect the sovereignty, unity and integrity of India;
- To promote harmony and the spirit of common brotherhood amongst all the people of India transcending religion, linguistic and regional or sectional diversities, to renounce practices derogatory to the dignity of women;
- To value and preserve the rich heritage of our composite culture;
- To develop the scientific temper, humanism and the spirit of inquiry and reform;
- To safeguard pubic property and to abjure violence.
On this Teachers’ Day, teachers must learn from the life and lofty ideals of Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, whose depth of knowledge, mastery over English, clarity of perception, enlightened approach and lucid way of teaching made him one of the greatest modern teachers. He was nominated 16 times for the Noble Prize in Literature and 11 times for the Noble Prize for Peace. He promoted the idea of global citizenship so that people cloud rise above their petty differences of caste, country, colour, contour, creed, culture and civilisation. And despite his exposure to western education and experience of teaching at the world’s greatest universities (without ever studying abroad), Radhakrishnan believed in the guru-shishya parampara- the interactive tradition of a teacher and disciples-which transforms the seekers of knowledge from within. To him, education is a process of humanism. He said: “education to be complete must be human. It must include not only training of intellect but refinement of the heart and discipline of the spirit. No education can be regarded as complete if it neglects heart and spirit.’ The way the people are reacting to petty things and becoming communal and parochial, it shows that the kind of education imparted and acquired is patently flawed.
Today, the role of a teacher is reduced to mechanically teaching from a given syllabi or text books and preparing students for examinations that give importance to scoring high marks by rote learning, that too by heavily relying on coaching classes, making teachers and schools and colleges almost redundant and irrelevant. It is a farcical system. The education system is totally commercialized, subserving the interests of the corporates, the rich and affluent. This degradation in the teaching profession must be arrested. One of the perils of our education system is the idea that one size fits all and that life is linear. The UGC in India is more interested in Higher Educational Institutions creating 25% super numerary seats for foreign students in UG and PG courses rather than raising the funding of these institutions substantially and improving their standard so as to make quality higher education equitable, accessible and affordable to all, particularly to the socially and educationally disadvantaged and the poor and marginalised, and to those from remote villages and far-flung tribal belts.
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