Teacher abuse

Instead of beefing about teachers' anaemic dedication to the profession of teaching, let's first see whether they are provided a friendly and encouraging atmosphere to enable them to render their duties in a constructive manner. Should not the policies meant to ensure the healthy learning of students be applied to provide a healthy teaching environment to teachers?

For instance, the Pygmalion effect says that high expectations attract higher performance. Teachers are advised to have positive expectations of students to turn them around. Contrarily, from education ministers to bureaucrats to principals, all deem teachers good-for-nothing. The point is that teachers must also be treated under the very Pygmalion effect.

The intimidating and incriminating officialese insinuates that teachers are procrastinators. The official letters and notifications bear threats of punitive actions: the lapsers will be held accountable; PEEDA will come into action; the pro forma must be submitted before leaving the school, and such like. Often, official notifications demanding prompt compliance are issued even after school time. Teachers are kept on a digital leash 24/7, denying them the fundamental human right to disconnect after office hours.

The educationists advise teachers that whenever they enter the classroom, first they must pay attention to and appreciate the students busy in their studies instead of disciplining the miscreants. They assert that in this way, the teacher's mood for the whole period remains student-friendly. Moreover, the negligent students will imitate the appreciated ones.

Should not the teachers themselves be monitored likewise? Whenever a minister or a bureaucrat visits schools, they are always on the hunt for the delinquent teachers to set a precedent and send an authoritative message across the board. Why do they not look away from the systemic loopholes and point out only positive things? The uncertainty and fear of surveillance turn a school into Jeremy Bentham's panopticon - an all-seeing prison to 'grind rogues honest'.

The language and attitude of visiting officials are always condescending and threatening, which is quite unbecoming of them. In a recent incident in a district of Punjab, an assistant commissioner visiting a school went to the extent of using obscene language (to quote his words, "I'll f*#k you!"). How, then, does the instruction given to teachers — that the use of harsh words for students amounts to emotional and psychological abuse — hold water? The harsh, unbecoming officialese and snobbish attitudes of the officials are, by ripple effect, transferred to students via teachers. Should the method of felling trees in the Solomon Islands, also narrated as a metaphor in the Aamir Khan starrer Taaray Zameen Par, not be applied to inspection officials? As per the legend, the constant cursing of a tree sucks all life out of it.

In another real event, a teacher used to teach zero period to a class where the teacher in-charge usually came late. The inspection official, noticing some lapses in class management, which fall under the duties of the teacher in charge, didn't take any action against him; rather, he mentioned the name of the teacher in the inquiry to be undertaken against the lapses. That's why teachers get panicked at the official visits. Teachers learn from such incidents never to come across the inspection officials. The officials always look for the scapegoats to achieve the "objectives" of their visits. Setting a precedent is also a requirement of the officials' show-off of their authority.

A teacher's sole duty is to answer official messages on WhatsApp and meet the deadlines; teaching is extracurricular. Every official correspondence is tagged 'urgent'; it seems schools are running on emergencies, not planning. We are complaining not about the strictness, but against the misplaced strictness; that the strictness is more punitive in nature than constructive. Respect, not fear, can work wonders.

John Stuart Mill writes in On Liberty: "A state which dwarfs its men, in order that they may be more docile instruments in its hands even for beneficial purposes — will find that with small men no great thing can really be accomplished."