The rant

I felt disappointed and broken yesterday as I reviewed my “students’” answer sheets. I saw how the work of two months of evening tuition has done nothing at all for them. I saw that 13 years of education has done nothing. I saw that the consolation that I was offering myself that it is not too late and that things can be made better for at least these few kids was terribly shallow. I gave them a free hand, talked to them like we were of the same age, shared bits of gossip, giggled, made fun of and got teased a little in return. Just like classmates and friends. Then again I played caring elder sister and teacher. I gave them pep talks every now and then, encouraged them to do better, never criticized them for their mistakes, just pointed them out to them and told them how to better themselves. Always gently guiding them. Always asking them more than once if they had understood the evening’s lesson completely. Trying to see through their eyes, judge the expression in them to see if they really had got what I had been talking about. I took each subject, split it into the very basic elements and fed them with it. Afraid that they might become dependent and never think for them selves, I asked them questions relentlessly, coerced them to go a little further and see if they could find the solution in their minds. I used traditional methods of reading out from textbooks and explaining each word, going into the background of every tiny concept that was involved. Every evening, when they left, I felt tired; my throat ached from talking without a stop for more than 3 hours. But I was filled with a sense of achievement, exhilaration.

Yet it all came to an end last evening. It was not so much the feeling that I had failed to make model students out of them, turn them overnight into super-intelligent scholars. It was the thought of how I weak I am to make them unlearn the methods that they have been made to learn all these years. How they just do not get my concept of studying as opposed to rote-learning and memorizing things. They spend hours and hours of cramming; they spend hours writing everything that they have learnt. Yet in the exam hall they absolutely fail the purpose of writing a test. All that they have crammed doesn’t help them at all because though they crammed the answers, they didn’t know the questions… they had not spent enough time memorizing the questions to the answers that they had spent all night on. Their papers showed me, how I had failed as a teacher. I can tell you it is the worst failure I have had so far. In spite of the fact that I know I have done my job up to my satisfaction – considering that I am an obsessed-with-perfection person. Well so whom do I blame for this failure? Myself largely, for believing that 2 months can undo the wrongs that have been done to them for 13 years, the wrongs that have been done by their teachers who never tried to really teach them something, the wrongs that have been done to these teachers all those years when they had been students. Like some horror movie running in slow motion I see the sickening chain reaction that has brought the situation to this low.

I broke my resolve not to give them any negative vibes, criticize and speak harshly to them yesterday. I spoke through gritted teeth about how they were so much in deep trouble. With so many people up to compete with, how difficult it was going to be for them to get higher paying jobs. Stressed on how ignorant they were keeping themselves by just comparing them with their classmates, how they had made their lives shallow by letting it revolve around the marks in their examinations. How people in cities in this country and around the world keep trying to push themselves forward, pounce on every opportunity, how they are ruthless when it comes to competition, how left out and helpless they would feel when they got out of college and tried to get a job, how they would repent of the times when they sat watching their TV set playing some sickening, corrupting serial.

I spoke on and on for a pretty long time. While they sat frozen and wide-eyed at this sudden outburst from me, they probably did not relate to what I was telling them, they probably did not care for anything else except their marks, they probably never bothered about learning in its true sense. They probably will never think of the things that I told them, they probably will never come back to study here. They probably will start maintaining a distance. Or worse, maybe they will think that I was paying more attention to their marks rather than who they are and what kind of people they are, when they had thought that I was their only teacher who saw them that way. They probably will remain unaffected by the outburst. I know and God knows that the rant was against the entire system that had made them some machines that went about memorizing textbooks. I know and God knows that I have put my most sincere efforts into trying to make things better for them. I only pray that they realize what I have been trying to tell them. I pray that they find themselves and get the chance to grow into better beings and use their abilities better. For their sake, nothing else. I only pray that I can find the strength to continue trying to do this well, more for myself than for anyone else.