This Teacher’s Day, SWATI PAl pays a tribute to her students and writes about how enaging with them everyday has eventually helped her to be a better person
As I write this piece, I feel the full weight of the last 22 years of my life as a teacher. It has not been an easy journey. People may wax eloquent about their fulfilling experiences. About how elevating it is to teach. I believe them. But for myself, I cannot say that it’s been an unmixed blessing.
I have to confess about the times that I have wanted to cry when I have been confronted by a lacklustre class of students with whom all attempts at an innovative pedagogy fail and fall on deaf ears. Sometimes I have wondered why on earth a student would want to study literature when she doesn’t even like to read! It has made me impatient and frustrated. When I have had to dissect a text to make it comprehensible to students, the pain at their inability to catch nuances and the fact that a loved text needs to be thus deconstructed, is really immeasurable. When I am confronted with 50 odd scripts, all written with the aid of the same (mostly pathetic) critical material, with no attempt made to at least superficially change the language, I get bitter. When students are insolent, indolent and undisciplined, when their apathy is only a small part of their overall callousness, I get enraged.
More lately, I find that it is not as much the students as it is the academic institution and systems at work that have killed a lot of my joy, as I dare say, it has killed the joy of others in my professional community. As for the increasing clerical work which teachers at undergrad colleges (in Delhi) have to take on, I get bitter, not because of the work per se but because all that work really leads no where: Things continue the way they always have been.
However, despite all the bitterness and the rage, the fact remains that I have not given up either on my students or on the system. And what’s my reasonIJ Well, I can name four.
To begin with, I have found that I learn so much not just because of what I teach but because of what I experience through my interactions with students: I have learned to respect my students. Some of them come from families where the father may be a DTC driver or the mother working as domestic help. These students have done tuitions, helped out at home, stood behind the counter of the shop their father may be running and what not. Reaching this far, ie, college, would have involved so much sacrifice on the part of the whole family and on the student who should have been enjoying her childhood like I did, that I am humbled. I realise today how privileged I have been in all aspects of my life but especially in terms of my education. I respect the fact that these students of mine are aware that only through education can there be true evolution; only through education can they progress from the clutches of their class and caste. I have had students who stood up and resisted the old fashioned mores of their families, who walked out of their homes and struggled hard to stand tall today and my head bows before their bravery. They are the ones who have taught me what courage is.
I have learned to love teaching. When I find students unable to catch nuances, or not responding to a text, or unable to write a structured answer, I have learned to understand that they are not to blame. Their grassroots learning of the language and literature is so different from mine, the teaching patterns that they have been a part of are so insufficient, that they cannot pass muster. I have also learned that they are not to blame for their attitude and behaviour; the environment in which they have grown is responsible. It is this understanding that has helped me to cultivate patience and develop new ways of bringing the text and its contexts closer to the students, such that their critical abilities are sharpened and yet the text does not lose its place in my heart. More significantly, all this has made me examine grassroots level education with the kind of critical perspective that perhaps those who frame educational policies desperately need to form.
This critical perspective has filtered in to other aspects of my academic life. I have learned to understand myself. I know that there are things which I feel passionately about and which I feel must be articulated. I have come to realise that if I want to be true to the principles of quality education, I cannot and must not blindly accept an institutionalised notion of what research and writing should be about; political correctness cannot be the yardstick for measuring a person’s academic worth. And this realisation has been liberating and empowering.
And finally, I have learned to value myself. I have learned to take pride in the fact that if I am seen as a working and not a shirking teacher, how invaluable must be my contribution, small or modest though it may seem. I have learned to feel compassion and pity for those who shirk; they can never know the sweet taste of a labour rewarded. They can never be enshrined in the memories of their students as a ‘good teacher’. They will never know what it is to be cherished by students, they will never hear the words that have kept me going on, ‘Ma’am, you changed my life’.
If truth be told, it is my students who have changed me. For the better.
The writer is Officiating Principal of Janki Devi Memorial College (Delhi University) where she teaches in the Department of English
