72. An ode to those who stand and deliver

The pandemic may have transformed schools somewhat irretrievably but the classroom memories have remained permanently etched on my mind. I recall how my teachers dealt with non-compliance, making few like me realize that the horse was not the only animal valued for its ability to stand long hours. The best of the horses may be known to spend the better part of their life standing on their hooves but so were some of us, the lucky ones were punished to stand inside the classroom and the unlucky few had to do the honors standing outside the classroom. The fame in both cases was instant!

Decades later, to the sheer amusement of my family and friends, I toast those 'out-standing' credentials of mine as an essential gift of recognition from my teachers. Neither jaded nor unhappy, long bouts of serving the sentence outside the classroom helped me know what to think, and how to think. It helped me swallow the self-inflicted humiliation; made me learn to assess the virtues in defiance; and taught me the act of pursuing equanimity amidst adversity. Enlightenment of some kind would dawn on me during those moments of forced isolation, and it had stayed with me ever since.   

Much has changed since then, however. I have now learnt that present-day classrooms are no longer what they used to be, defying norms as an act of reasoning are seemingly long passé. The 'soldier mindset' of conforming to defined norms has demotivated most children from the act of reasoning. But I remain grateful to my teachers who inadvertently gave me the real challenge of evaluating their decisions in light of me holding onto an indefatigable position. How else would have I ever learned the standalone formula for estimating the potential value of my riskier predicaments? 

Unlike many of my compatriots I hold no qualms against the treatment meted out to me by my teachers. Instead, my gratitude is towards them for training us on a 'scout mindset' which helped to recognize when we were wrong, gave freedom to stick with our assumptions, and allowed to seek our blind spots for redemption. Shouldn’t teachers alone decide what’s best for their students? As I look back I realize that their decisions must have been well-intentioned and rational, but could have easily been mistaken simply because so much in our thinking can often go wrong.

What pains me though is the treatment being accorded to teachers by the school system today. Shockingly, their right-to-sit in the classrooms is not reserved anymore. Most schools do not keep chairs for teachers in the classrooms because it is believed that sitting ducks do not deliver quality lessons. As I remember my teachers for doing what they did in the guise of making us better students, my heart goes out to the present lot whose worth is as much and perhaps only as long as they can stand and deliver. School teaching has turned out to be a daily ordeal. 

The teachers go through trauma which is worse than what many like me had been through during school days, as theirs' lasts for no less than eight hours, five days a week. For going through such torturous engagement, what they gain in the process is either/or a combination of back pain, joint pains, swollen feet, and varicose veins. The tragedy is that neither them nor anyone is speaking for them. Isn't it time the regressive policy of forcing teachers to stand and deliver is done away with? 

First published in The Hindu, issue dated Sept 5, 2021.