Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
No takers?
|
More and more people would rather `do' than `teach'.
|
Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach.
George Bernard Shaw
QUITE A wicked way of looking at teachers, but never more true than now. Teachers are a diminishing race. Nobody wants to teach. Everybody wants to do — corporate, software, medical transcription, medicine, engineering, hotel management... The list of career options is endless. And when all doors shut, teaching is explored.
Teaching, like homemaking, has reached the bottom of the choice list. Two indispensable vocations that affect the future in a big way, teaching and homemaking, are hugely underrated. They're both gruelling, thankless jobs. They are both paid for in smiles and milestones. Both can get painfully lonely. Both have a lot to do with women and a lack of choice. Both teachers and mothers strive to give Mrs. Patience a complex, while watching their own words and manners first (that's probably the toughest).
Getting the leftovers can't be good for any vocation. Not surprisingly, teachers past Dronacharya haven't been the same. Neither have mothers, past Yashodha. Stress and conflict rule the roost. And for all that, they're actually difficult jobs!
Anybody who has taught would agree that the first day feels like a courtroom trial. Slowly, there is a thawing. But from feeling "God! I'm a teacher!" first time teachers are forced to look back at their teachers and think, "Teachers! You're God!" Well, that's what they've been saying about teachers for the past couple of thousand years, anyway! Ditto for mothers. "How did you manage?" is the question that comes to mind.
While inspiring us to live, read, write, grow, our best teachers may have had bad days or stomach cramps. They probably also stuffed their mouths, swore, took shortcuts, and lost their cool. They also cooked, mothered, commuted, and landed (sari-wrapped!) in class, ready to manage another world.
It's time we saluted our teachers (and mothers) for their balanced act on the criss-crossing tight-ropes; for bringing method, while living madness; and for holding up the hot, burning torch, so we can all see better...
CHARUMATHI SUPRAJA
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
|
