Expectation Or The Lack Of It

Some days I wonder what it is that inspired me to teach.

I love the job. I love going in and thinking that today will be different from yesterday. And I learn something new with every class I take.

I don't know it all. It would be boring to know it all. I apologize when I am wrong and I try as hard as I can to come back with the right answers. And even on the bad days, I know I made a good decision.

But the only thing that truly disappoints me is how we have robbed entire generations of the need to appreciate an education as opposed to a syllabus. I love all my classes equally. I share a rapport with all three batches because I am not much older than they are. But the need to pass an exam, to be given a set of notes, the need to appease an archaic and draconian system is all that some students want.

I don't blame them. At all. We have conditioned our students to believe that SSC, HSC and University examinations shape lives. We teach them irrelevant textbook style information, never once wondering what their opinions are on life and the blindsiding questions in it. We worry that they will not ace exams, and don't seem to think it necessary to have them initiate or take part in any kind of discourse. That we are allowing more apathy to set in is our fault, and ours only.

We have many crosses to bear as individuals. But as a society, the biggest, and the heaviest one is our utter disregard for knowledge as a realistic learning tool. We think we are teaching them what they need to know. And yet after thirteen years of education, we have students who have studied History but have no knowledge of the Holocaust. We have students who have been taught rigorous Mathematics for ten years and can only do minimal calculations (me included). And we have students who have no idea what eve-teasing means, or what capital punishment is.

Somebody explain to me how we can be mentoring human beings to be ignorant about genocide and sexual harassment (and this is the tip of the iceberg).

I am appalled sometimes that we allow this. As a society, we send our kids to school, then to class, then to college and tuition, and onward to other such brain-drain factories.

I've been a student before, and I've had both good, efficient and awful, inefficient teachers like everybody else. But if I was back there again, I would ask more of my teachers. I would expect them to open up different worlds to me. I would ask them to listen to my opinion and debate with me. I would have demanded to learn what I needed to know on the job, like the fact that integrity and dignity and attention-to-detail are so much more than just words on paper. And I would expect them to ask the kind of questions that got me thinking. I would expect more inspiration.

I get asked a lot if I didn't expect notes as a student. I get asked if I didn't feel panic before exams. Yes, I felt panic. And yes, I worried that our teachers didn't teach us enough. But I still believe that making my own notes, drawing my own references, answering my own questions is what helped me remember and understand the subject. We weren't spoon-fed and we managed fine. In the end, even those of us who didn't do well in the papers have found their calling, and are excelling at what they do. Unfortunately, you only learn this in hindsight. And giving 20-year-olds advice doesn't help much.

So no, I don't blame my students when they ask me for notes to pass an exam. I do, however, have a massive bone to pick with the education system.