TEACHERS

Everyone will agree that teachers have a role to play in our life. Some value it positively and others negatively. Those who have had great teachers will appreciate teachers and those who have ‘bad’ teachers will hate them if not curse them.

A good teacher is great not because he is an intellectual but because he is able to relate with the students well in such a way that he could motivate them to think on their own and to understand life in a better perspective. But our educational system does not demand teachers who can play the kind of role that they can play in the aspect of motivation.

All that our system demands is that one can be a good teacher when he has the ability to transfer from the ‘printed format to the unprinted format’, that can be stored in the mind! In this way the teachers have no the active role of a teacher. However we still are able to find good teachers in this format too. The students who have the ability to draw the impressions of the mind to the practical problems do appreciate such teachers. Say those who are good computer engineers will definitely appreciate the teacher’s contribution and his communicative skills because of which the student had an interest for the subject.

Some do not have good teachers not because they are bad as such as but lacking the skill, i.e. the ability to communicate well either from the printed one or from their memory. It is because of this some students hate a subject not because the subject is less interesting but because the teachers are less interesting.

I am talking of good teachers in two senses: one who can communicate well the subject matter and one who can relate well with the students who can inspire them in the minimum way, at least. Even if the communication skill is lacking in a teacher, he could very well be called a good teacher because of the second. Because one likes the teacher, one may also develop a liking for the subject.

Well. I want to speak about a good teacher in another sense, not restricted to the realm of the school education. Hr is one who can help the students to become teachers of their own life. A teacher here is called good not because he makes his students well informed and thus able to communicate back to others what he has learned, but because he makes the students to think, ask questions, and to make him a teacher of his own. The teacher makes the students to live on his own independent of the teacher – not in the sense of searching for a job and live on his own but one can know the meaning of being human in the world and to set the framework of his life. In this way even a teacher of history can make the students to ponder from the events of history to think of the contemporary situations. But I do not know whether the educational system will allow such teachers to flourish at all.

I have had good teachers in all sense: A teacher who is good communicator but not kind; a teacher who is gentle and a good communicator; a teacher who is gentle but not a ‘motivational teacher’’; a teacher who is gentle, intellectual, communicator as well as motivational. 

I want to write about everyone – but not now. For now, Thank you my teachers …

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What to say of millions of our children 

who have no opportunity 

to meet a teacher yet?