Opinion Ahead of Teachers’ Day, a note for Ms Tyagi

I was planning to give you a surprise on Teachers’ Day, but I got one myself. You dehumanised me by turning my friends against me. We are all your victims — those who hit me on your instructions and I, who was shamed by your actions and words.

Ms Tyagi, it is bad enough that you don’t help me to read or write. I cannot paint, dance, breathe, meditate or even relax when you are in class.

You have never helped me cope with anxiety or aggression. Because of you, I cannot express tenderness and trust. Why have you never spared any concern about the situation around me, that because of it, I don’t know who I am anymore? Or whether I even have a self to find anymore?

If you are running a school where the basic skills have nothing to do with my health, happiness, sanity or survival, whose interest is my education serving?

Harold S Kushner wrote in The Lord is my Shepherd: “Our first ancestors chose to be human rather than live forever. They chose a sense of morality, knowledge of good and evil, rather than immortality. They spurned the tree of life which would have given them eternal life, in favour of the tree of knowledge which gave them a conscience. As compensation, humans were given the freedom of choice and power to create new lives. We cheat death, not by living forever, but by bearing and educating children to keep our souls, our values and even our names alive.”

The National Education Policy 2020 continues to emphasise the importance of teacher empowerment and well-being. We go on endlessly about mindsets and skill sets when what we need to do the most is unpack a teacher’s “heartset”, because it is this that will affect the emotional compass of a child.

If the entire approach to life, nature, oneself and the other gets fragmented, then how do we integrate sensitivity towards gender, identity, religion, social justice, and peaceful linkages in school systems?

Teachers come from the same milieu that encompasses society. Today, more than ever, we need them to dare to challenge prevailing societal conditions. Majority versus minority, rich versus poor, abled versus disabled. The list is endless. The greatest teachers of all times — Jesus, Nanak, Buddha, Ramakrishna Paramahansa, Yogananda, Muhammad and Krishna (on the battlefield of Kurukshetra) had no tools to work with, no blackboards, no maps or charts. They used no subject outlines, kept no records, gave no grades. Their only text was universal and well-worn. Their students were the poor, lame, deaf, blind and outcast. Their methods were the same for all who came to hear and learn. They opened eyes with faith, ears with simple truth, hearts with love. They asked for no honours or awards.

And yet, these quiet teachers fed the needs, fulfilled the hopes and changed the lives of millions.

No guidebook can automatically sort out the dilemmas arising from caring for children in our complex society. Teachers need to reflect and analyse the impact of their preferences and decisions on the life of a child.

We need to ensure that teachers first get educated about the interdependence of life, of how to live together in a common understanding of being human, in the belief that every person is meant to live both for and thanks to the other.

The time has come for us to rethink what we mean when we say we belong to a particular religion, faith or tradition. Doesn’t it all ultimately boil down to a striving for truth, the pursuit of justice, and the recognition that some things are good and some are bad? All these values are supposed to be taught in schools and yet the perpetrator sometimes is the adult who transacts learning in the classroom. A heartset shines when children see their school as a safe space, a place of joy where their identity is recognised and where they are made visible not through violence and abuse, but through confidence and creativity. This helps them to move from self-centeredness to other-centeredness because that is what a heartset is about: Seeing yourself as an integral part of the other.

The thoughts and actions of a teacher affect young minds. A child can develop a tendency to believe that a teacher’s attitude towards him or her is the total of his or her identity. As a result, the child gets imprisoned for life. Teachers need a form of hygiene which brushes their brains every day, the way we clean our bodies. Doing so will promote the compassion circuits of their brains and help them to develop reflection and sensitivity towards their students, by delivering a more humane education.

Not only do we need such a practice, but our children yearn for it. It is up to us to make a world fit for children. As educators we should encourage our children to sing, dance, weep and sweat life, sleep, eat, paint, sculpt, hammer and read life; wash, iron, sow and pickle life; compute, touch, bend and fold life; learn and play, work and rest, fast and feast on life; argue and talk, whisper and shout, swim, cook and digest life; relax and recover life, breath and become life — but never mutilate or delete their life. For, our children are our offering and their life is a prayer.

In deep anguish, ahead of Teacher’s Day

The writer is Chairperson and Executive Director Education, Innovations and Training DLF Foundation Schools and Scholarship Programme