Friday 4 April, 2008

Tuesdays with Morrie

I recently read this book called, 'Tuesdays with Morrie'. If you were a person, who loves the primary school you attended once, remembers how you loved a particular teacher's class, feel that you owe your special interest about anything in life to your teacher and above all think that what you are now is because of your teacher... then you have got to read this one. I leave reading the book to you because I would like you to feel it with every special moments you had with your teacher. The book surely kindled a lot of thought process in me, basically about two things. One is about my school and the other is about our education system. In a small town like mine, my school is the best. A convent run by nuns, its British structures and colonial window panes remain as vivid as ever in my mind. A good school and a good teacher are like investing in real estate - to express it in the materialistic manner in which everything about life has become to be valued nowadays - one realises its growing value as one grows.I remember the teacher who took me along with her son to the child specialist even as my parents were trying out all doctors in the town for the isnophilia that I was suffering from very severely . It worked for me. When I grew up , I asked the teacher why she took all the pains of taking me to the doctor.She said, "Your suffering was no different from my son's and I had an instinct that you were not shown to the correct doctor".Now tell me, in the modern day education factories , is there any thing called 'teacher - student' relation? I happened to tell one of my colleagues that all my favourite teachers from Primary to SSC had come to my marriage. Her immediate reaction was, " What 's wrong with you?". Indeed, a reaction of a student from a commercial education factory.I only had to retaliate with," Some thing was seriously wrong with your teachers", for I'm a student from a 'school'. A humane teacher makes human beings.Today, when I happen to interrupt people in conversation, inside me my teacher's voice says, 'bad manners' and I say 'excuse me' (for the bad manners of interrupting you, but I had to do this). Do our education system today allow for such value based dialogues between the teacher and the students? Are our teachers teach by practicing? I love all subjects because the teachers who taught me were all lovable. Will the generations to come, love the subjects based on the teachers or based on money making capacity of the subject? This is a very personalised view of our education system of the day, born out of the concern,whether my children would enjoy their school as much as I did? It may differ from person to person. But , anyone who had a lovable teacher would generally agree with me.