A prayer on Teachers’ Day

Avijit Pathak

Sociologist

BEYOND algebra and English grammar, thermodynamics and medieval history, or computer engineering and financial management — is there something more in education a teacher ought to bother about? Possibly, this question will not be inappropriate, particularly when we are celebrating yet another Teachers’ Day. Or, is it that in these hard and pragmatic times, many of us as teachers are quite comfortable with the dominant common sense? Obtain a BEd/PhD degree; apply for a teaching post; and if you are lucky to get hired, see it as just another 9-to-5 job — structured, routinised and soulless. No wonder, as teachers, most of us are just completing the syllabus, conducting exams, hierarchising students, satisfying our bosses — Principals, Vice Chancellors and political masters, and then feeling ‘safe’ and ‘secure’. As many will argue, in the age of conformity and associated fear, it is not easy to redefine the meaning of education or to see the teacher playing a key role in transforming the classroom into a dialogic/emancipatory space.

If the dialogic classroom dies, democracy dies. Democracy is not merely the ritualisation of periodic elections.

Yet, as a teacher, I feel that even in these hard and intolerant times characterised by all sorts of physical and symbolic violence, we should not give up, and continue to assert that good teachers are not the ones who play it safe, just complete the syllabus or prepare students for tests and exams; instead, they are the catalysts; they seek to nurture the spirit of humanistic temper. It doesn’t matter whether one is teaching history or mathematics, poetry or physics; a good teacher redefines the meaning of being a lifelong student or a seeker in the quest for a just and humane world. In this context, on Teachers’ Day, I wish to reflect on what I regard as three core ideals of teaching.

First, what makes the classroom truly vibrant, dialogic and reflexive is the spirit of critical pedagogy. This is possible when the teacher acts as a catalyst and young learners are encouraged to see themselves as creative agents capable of questioning, interrogating and redefining the world. As a co-traveller, a teacher works with his/her students and collectively explores the world with new questions and new possibilities. Beyond rote learning, beyond the fear of the ‘all-knowing’ teacher, beyond the imposed passivity of students, beyond the anxiety of cracking all sorts of MCQ-centric standardised tests — the experience of teaching/learning becomes liberating. To take a simple illustration, it is only through this kind of critical pedagogy that young students can gain the intellectual and moral clarity to interrogate patriarchy, caste hierarchy, hollow rituals, superstitious practices and heightened socio-economic inequality. Likewise, it is this enchanting power of critical pedagogy that can encourage a young learner to rescue science from a purely instrumental/technocratic reasoning and transform it into a scientific and hence humanistic temper — a rational and creatively nuanced way of seeing, acting and relating to the world.

Second, a good teacher resists monologue, encourages plurality of perspectives and inspires his/her students to sharpen the power of empathy and cultivate the art of compassionate listening. If the dialogic classroom dies, democracy dies. Democracy is not merely the ritualisation of periodic elections. Instead, democracy is about conversations and dialogue; it is about the art of conflict resolution through reasoned debate and sensitivity to pluralism. As a teacher, I have no hesitation in saying that when we cultivate the art of listening, we transcend our boundaries erected by limiting identities like caste, ethnicity, nation and religion. We tend to become oceanic. Imagine a ‘Hindu’ student celebrating Jalaluddin Rumi’s poetic wisdom. Imagine a ‘Brahmin’ student eagerly waiting for his teacher to speak on Jyotirao Phule and Babasaheb Ambedkar. Or, imagine a ‘Muslim’ student and his ‘Christian’ teacher reflecting on Mahatma Gandhi’s interpretation of the Bhagavadgita. Even though in these toxic times, it is difficult to imagine these possibilities, we should not forget that a teacher who dares to encourage the spirit of dialogue and listening does a great job. S/he resists authoritarian impulses, reveals the limitations of exclusionary ideas and sows the seeds of democratic thinking.

And third, what is meaningful teaching/learning without the pedagogy of hope? It is not easy to be positively life-affirming in our times characterised by all sorts of disasters — the erosion of democracy; the hyper-real culture industry seducing a captive audience through the gospel of hedonistic consumerism; the propaganda machinery that transforms everything into its opposite; the climate emergency and associated pessimism centred on the growth of a ‘risk society’; and above all, the inflated egos of narcissistic nations and the continual possibility of war and devastation. Can we reimagine education and pedagogy to give us the moral/political/intellectual skills to overcome this darkness and strive for a spiritually elevated, ecologically sensitive and egalitarian/democratic peaceful world? Can teachers play a lead role in nurturing this sensitivity, this willingness, this hope?

Well, these ideals are exceedingly difficult to practise. However, only when we realise the worth of these ideals can we initiate a movement for saving education from a neoliberal assault as well as hyper-nationalist aggression. And hence, on Teachers’ Day, I have a prayer. I feel like urging the teaching community to unite and resist what is going on — the continual degradation of the vocation of teaching, the fear of creative freedom, the ugly politicisation of academic institutions through faulty recruitments, the skepticism towards new pedagogic experiments and innovations, and above all, the reduction of teachers to docile employees to be kept under perpetual surveillance.

After all, no authoritarian master can save us if teaching as an emancipatory act is allowed to wither away. 

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