Without teachers, what are we?

Shiv Sethi

They say if you educate a man, you educate an individual, but when you educate a woman, you educate the whole family, and thereby society at large. I am thus privileged enough as I am fulfilling a greater social responsibility by teaching in a women’s college. Everyday offers a host of learning opportunities and I keep evolving in various aspects; blossoming like a flower. I also assume the role of a passionate gardener under whose meticulous tutelage and care saplings mature into fully-grown trees, packed with the richest bounty of fruit. 

Fifteen years ago, I was confronted with multiple choices regarding my career. Mine was the same dilemma of the interlocutor in Robert Frost’s The Road Not Taken. Like all worldly wise and pragmatic parents, my parents too wanted me to opt for a profession in a sector which would have possibly rendered me ‘socially recognisable’ and financially affluent. But putting up a stern resistance to their suggestions, I chose to be a teacher; well aware of the fact that the job of a teacher would not bring me much material prosperity, and that I would have to make both ends meet with my modest salary. But I did not have an iota of doubt in donning the robes of a teacher. 

Having attained a degree of MPhil in English, the door of the teaching world opened for me. I was absorbed in the department of functional English. Today, I am a man of meagre means, but my intellectual treasure has enriched me in a manner that compensates for the financial component. Marlowe’s Doctor Faustus rightly compares pelf with external trash. Unlike a business tycoon, I cannot afford the richest luxuries of life. My salary does not last long enough even for a month, and I have to grapple with constant monetary constraints. But the satisfaction that I derive after the conclusion of every lecture is inexplicable and incomparable. The breezy smiles of students I behold in my class lend me a sense of gratification beyond any human measure or riches. 

But today when in interactive sessions I politely ask my students about their idea of becoming teachers, they reject the option outright. Man has perhaps become madly materialistic in this global world of cut-throat competition. Though I am proud to be a teacher, I worry about the fate of a society where teaching is no more held in high esteem as a profession. Perhaps the government’s apathy towards the teaching community is a major cause for this downfall. Will there ever be a reversal?