Sir,
The Teachers’ Day was celebrated on September 5 which coincides with the birthday of Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan who was a philosopher, a statesman and an academician.The day is celebrated all over India including Jammu and Kashmir State.
The occasion is used by the politicians, the social leaders, the academicians to assert themselves by praising the contributions of teachers from remote antiquity in nation building especially in matters of character building and education. Examples pour forth galore in dignity and respect of a teacher.
However, real issue for a teacher and system of education in general is loss of credibility. The teacher has lost his dignity because students won’t care for the learning. General student mindset is such that they don’t come to school for gaining some knowledge but to be engaged someway. The examination system is so dismal that students have no pressure at all about learning. The theory behind it is that pressure of examination should be least on the student. Well, let it not be pressure, let it be passion but how that passion may be inculcated among students needs to be looked into. For my part, I believe that pressure of some sort is also necessary for keeping the student focused.
To make students more focused the society must provide the impetus which can be in the form of good job, respectability, status and security of comfortable life. But situation in J&K is opposite. Thousands of educated youth are jobless. Respectability comes not from learning but by gaining power or by becoming a puppet (chamcha) of a politician. Joining politics is cheapest and easiest way of gaining respect especially when you are after cheap pseudo-respect.
Concerning the plight of a teacher vis-à-vis authorities I would just say that equation has gone from bad to worse. Authorities are unable to devise ways to get the most from the teacher. Filtering out people who are not worth to be teachers but are so called teachers by compulsion has not been devised. Respectability of teacher is declining not because teaching profession has lost respect but because good teacher-student experience is going down and power hunger is on rise. Very important issues of teachers such as transparent transfer policy, the mechanism for quality control for education and an effective achievement award delivery system in the form of regular promotion have not been addressed at all.
Yours etc….
Shakeel Ahmad Rather
on e-mail
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