DU 47 (Education and Knowledge 14)

Ravneet Kaur There is no blaming the students in the post but blaming their socialization -- the parents and the teachers. The generational gap is an abstract idea. I, approaching 60, never felt any such gap with my students. No one is criminalizing students. Our students are neither duffers and nor criminals just that the institutional paradigm does not allow channelization of youthful energy that is, generally, vented out wastefully. Change is the law of nature and as teachers our task is to just guide them in their search for purpose and  the "truth".  We the parents and the teachers do just the opposite by abrogating their right to think. Instead of making them into thinking-questioning human beings, we seek to make them into sheep and the parrots. CBSE is the biggest culprit. Students with 97% in English commit 6 mistakes in 5 sentences. As teachers we just have to provide them exposures and provoke, encourage and promote unceasing application of mind that is the sole attribute distinguishing humans from the animal kingdom. Our students are not duffers, they are intelligent people at least as much as we were as students, though historically every next generation is always smarter. We do the opposite. We all must have encountered some teachers in our student life, who would have said, "don't apply your own mind" as most of us don't do it ourselves and virtually join back the animal kingdom. The educational institutions otherwise too, do not seek to impart knowledge, they seek to equip students with information and skills necessary to maintain the status-quo, for knowledge one has to make independent attempts. Unfortunately, we, the teachers, (at least majority) do not realize the importance of being teacher  and just do a lucrative job with the help of some Godfather owning a demarcated territory of jobs, after being rejected by UPSC and other PSCs. As long as fiefdom of jobs and the process of job fixing in teaching continues, restoration of glory to academics is improbable. Adhocism is one way of job-fixing making the interviews for the appointments, a farce. Let us try to realize the importance of being teacher and we shall be able to do miracles. AAMIN