All posts by kaflehem

WELCOME TO AUGUST 2010 ISSUE

Editorial

Dear readers,

We extend our warm greetings, and invite you to this new issue of Neltachoutari. We hope that the conversation will go on and even take newer heights.

We also invite our valued readers to send articles for the upcoming issues.

This issue contains:

1. SCHOOLS AND TEACHERS: MOTIVATE CHILDREN by KAMAL POUDEL

2. “TEACHER, HOW DO I IMPROVE MY VOCABULARY?” by LAXMAN GNAWALI

3. JUMPING THE LANGUAGES BARRIER: THE FIFTH SKILL by PHILIPPA BAKER

4. COLONIAL PARANOIA AND CULTURAL NARCISSISM AS A WRITING TROPE by KHAGENDRA ACHARYA

5. ACTIVE, PASSIVE AND PROFESSIONAL VOICES by SHYAM SHARMA

6. REMINISCING THE B. ED. FIASCO by HEM RAJ KAFLE

7. ENGLISH AND VOICE RECOGNITION ELEVATOR (A YOUTUBE VIDEO)

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FFRoYhTJQQ&hl=en_US&fs=1?rel=0&border=1]

Colonial paranoia and cultural narcissism as a writing trope

Scholarly Article

— Khagendra Acharya

Associated with the issue of ‘identity reconstruction’, ‘going back to root’ is one of the most common themes in postcolonial writings. Many writers from post-British Empire locations have produced works of great fame on the theme. The discourse on ‘identity’ in non-colonized locations like Nepal, however, is either overtly political, or kept aside under the aegis of ‘independent status of the nation’. Even the fiction writers, who are believed to present “three-dimensionality, which is linked with the multi-languaged consciousness” (Bakhtin 842), have pushed the potential of postcolonial experience to insignificance.

In this paper I argue that one of the dominant modes within going back to root – dialectics of colonial paranoia and cultural narcissism – deployed in many novels like R. K. Narayan’s The English Teacher, Mulk Raj Anand’s Untouchables, among others is an appropriate trope for Nepali writers, both to present social reality and to help marginalized groups reconstruct their identity. To demonstrate the potential, I shall first analyze the trope’s employment by R. K. Narayan in The English Teacher and then discuss identical utilization by Parashu Pradhan in The Telegram on the Table. Lastly, I shall explore some other circumstances that demand the appropriateness of the trope.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE COMPLETE ARTICLE

Reminiscing the B.Ed. fiasco 

Teacher's Experience/anecdotes

— Hem Raj Kafle

Long back high school teachers from my part of the country (eastern Nepal) used to travel up to Janakpur to take the one-year B.Ed. examinations.  On their return they used to narrate their fortnight-long absence  with such zeal as if the examinations alone had reinvigorated them into becoming better teachers.  We students only used to revel at those rather embellished stories of their ‘picnicking’ and ‘tourism.’

“Was it really worth more than a mere certificate – only the proof that you had one because you were asked to?” I sometimes asked my English teacher and some other recipients of this One-year degree when I was old enough to question the worth of this one time venture. The answer: just smile or a shrug.   But the question always troubled me, especially when people began to demand it from me since I decided to become a teacher. What was the meaning of the compulsion (or fashion?) of obtaining one more certificate? Would it prove anything but a license to claim that you could become a teacher irrespective of how many teacherly qualities were absent in you?

I came to Kirtipur after completing Bachelor of Arts at Urlabari, Morang. I looked for a teaching job before joining  TU central campus for my Masters studies. Boarding schools were the immediate destinations. I dropped applications at places. I took written ‘qualifying’ tests at some schools, and faced interviews at others. In all interviews, among many questions one confused me most: “(Why) haven’t you done B.Ed.?” This would come to me as if I had been useless without B.Ed. despite my satisfactory B.A. and four years’ teaching experience. But, I would end up saying, “Well, it’s too early for me to be a B. Ed. I’ve just completed B.A. There’s time.  But do you think it is mandatory to have a degree in education to become a good teacher?”

I decided to try One year B.Ed. only when I started my M. A. Thesis. It was simply for owning one extra degree never really caring whether it would help in the future.

During the entrance test I was amazed to see the likes of me. I had a consolation that mine was not an odd time. I decided to take the admission also. On the admission day, I had to meet a professor at the Central Department of English Education for some sort of recommendation/signature. When she saw my papers, she asked, “What do you do?”

“I am doing my M.A. Thesis,” I said.

“Why do you need be a B.Ed. now?” She questioned with a smile. I only smiled in response and left her office.

Yes, why would I need it? By now, I was all set to start teaching in a university/college and was planning teach courses in literature/literary studies. I had only joined a crowd never knowing their purpose of joining, nor mine.

In my interview at Kathmandu University in August 2000, a professor asked me what I was doing in addition to looking for a job. “I’m doing one year B.Ed.” I responded with little more zeal than I had because this was at least something to say in an interview. But this ‘something’ did not make any impression. One of the interviewers retorted, “Why are you trailing backwards? You must be thinking of higher studies now. You know KU even doesn’t employ an M.Ed. to teach English in the Intermediate level.”

But I registered for the final examinations, again after the crowd. I even sat to write one or two papers in the Kiritipur center. What appalled me then was the way my inmates took their exams. You could have a truck-load of guess-papers and guides only from that room. B.Ed., which was a license for being a better teacher, was a mockery in this center. I would not think it was any different elsewhere.

By now B. Ed. had lost the little value I had upheld earlier.

Meanwhile, I was invited to Mahendra Ratna Campus, Tahachal, to teach Teaching English Literature in B. Ed. final year. I was already qualified to teach a university course. Why keep carrying the school level hangover now? I decided to forget that I had once thought of owning a B.Ed. certificate.

I sometimes recall this fiasco, but without regret. How different would I have become if I had forced myself to pass the B.Ed. examinations?

Invitation beyond the Ritual

Nelta Networking

— Hem Raj Kafle

Nepali English teachers are a smug community: smug because the society has so far accorded us reverence, smug because the world is still crazy after English, and because we feel English is a difficult thing. The community is also strange because it looks like a community despite being founded upon such problematic binaries: education-humanities, guru-chela, old-new, mature-immature, central-peripheral, public-private, native-foreign, modern-traditional and the like. Fortunately, despite these potential causes of friction and subsequent discourses, we are not unbearably in controversies. We have rather been unbearably silent — if ‘dumb’ is an improper word for this platform. We have not developed a culture of raising productive quarrels.

Many of us overlook the problems underlying our smugness. Chances are that someone from a different field possessing our type of competence in English can say: “What’s there to teach in English that no one but English teachers can do?” It is not a foolish question. There are people who believe English is everyone’s cup of tea, limited to cramming a few rules of grammar, and being able to read and write in English fairly well. We would like to say: ‘No, English transcends these fundamentals.” We would also like to say: “The English teacher has challenges and therefore responsibilities.” But, how many of us have sufficiently spoken of these challenges and responsibilities? How many of us have invited the members of our community to speak? Most of us have not (or do not want to). First, we have not sufficiently realized the eclecticism of our field beyond formal classrooms. Second, overburdened by manifold personal choices and obligations, we avoid the urgency to update our profession. Third, we are too ‘established’ to see any need to compete in a changing world, to outgrow the halo our predecessors have created around us. Fourth, we are not moved by threats of redundancy because redundancy in our part of the world is not a practical condition so long as non-professional connections outscore professional competence.

But, we do not live a time when we could judge the worth of others in terms of how correct their English was. We live a time when the world instead judges us for our want of diversity, for the absence of readiness to participate beyond the ritual, the traditional, the comfortable, the riskless.

It pinches most of us to be reminded of our passivity, to be criticized for only growing our population, not professionalism. It also hurts us to be asked to think and act more democratically beyond the aforesaid binaries, to be at par with the needs of twenty first century scholarship which demands sharing beyond age, gender, locale, level of competence and any hierarchy hindering our mutual growth. Our intention in this issue of Nelta Choutari is to pinch the English teaching community out of slumber, so that we wake up to speak no matter how clear or vague we are. Please wake up to poke the Choutari team, at least, because we have begun to be a bit cheeky. The Choutari is the public sphere of Nepali English teachers, to reiterate the motto. Let us work to transcend the commonplace and help one another grow professionally.

We are celebrating the New Year 2067 with this tickle. Come join us in this mood. Come challenge our smug culture of sharing very little or nothing. In Choutari’s January 2010 issue we had stated our fresh agendas for networking with and helping a wider population.  We restate them as our commitments for the year 2067 and ahead.

This issue contains:

  1. USE OF TECHNOLOGY IN TEACHING: ISSUES AND PROBLEMS by Khagendra Acharya
  2. TOWARD DISCIPLINED MULTIDISCIPLINARITY: ENGLISH AS IT STANDS FOR ME by Nirmala Mani Adhikary
  3. ENGLISH AND SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH: SOME REFLECTIONS by Deepak Subedi
  4. TEACHER ANECDOTE  by Ekku Maya Pun

Use of Technology in Teaching: Issues and Problems

Critical Pedagogy

— Khagendra Acharya

There has been a very significant proliferation of literature regarding the use of technology in teaching (Dede, Allen, Muthukumar). Mostly, these writings unequivocally accept technology as the most essential part in teaching, if not a panacea for every problem that exists in teaching. In a sense, a tendency to emphasize on inevitable role of technology in pedagogy to the extent of obliterating human part of teacher by technology part has been very dominant. Even in the balanced arguments, only words of caution for appropriate use of technology seems to be meagerly appearing, “Inappropriately used in the classroom, technology can be used to perpetuate old models of teaching and learning. … Teachers can use multimedia technology to give more colorful, stimulating lectures” (New Horizons). It means there has hardly been any appropriate interest regarding issues and challenges that pertain in technology use in teaching. This paper, based on general model of Public Relations (PR) process developed by Center and Jackson argues that we need to take many issues in consideration so that the use of technology does not become problem.

General model of PR follows a series of logical steps to constitute a continuous four-step process: the first being fact-finding and data-gathering and the other in order are planning and programming, implementing appropriate strategy and evaluating (Center and Jackson 14). Fact-finding and data-gathering, when applied in class-room context, concerns the assessment of not only the instructor but also the students in terms of familiarity with the technology. The question that becomes pertinent in this regard is – are we techno-geeks or technophobes, digital native or digital migrant? The second question that is of equal importance concerns more pragmatic issue i.e. the students’ expectation and needs in the classroom regarding the nature of treatment to the subject. Based on my experience in Kathmandu University (which I am sure applies to many), I have found students having three types of expectations – those who desire entertaining treatment to the subject, those who anticipate only teaching and those who wish for the combination of the two i.e. edutainment. Investigation into these two questions provides an overview of the existing environment of the class.

The second stage – planning and programming – is based on the finding in the first stage. The type of class environment we own largely determines the goal which then dictates the objectives. Goal generally determines the contour whereas objective states the destination. At this stage, primarily we need to get answer to the questions like, i) should we use technology? ii)  If so, what is the nature and magnitude of the use? These questions necessarily lead to the third stage.

The third stage – implementing appropriate strategy – follows by design from the second stage. Because the third stage is the function of the second stage and tangible aspect, it should specify the type of game plan and the technology to be used in the class. The process can be illustrated using permutation and combination of the elements discussed in the first stage of PR. For instance, if the teacher is techno-geek and the students are digital natives which are generally characteristics of classes in developed world, any highly sophisticated technology can be unquestionably used. However, any of the remaining combinations demand for selection of appropriate technology. For example if the class comprises digital migrant teachers and students which is the nature of developing society, the use of technology demands for its limitations. In the latter case compared to the first one, the demand for discipline is higher and thus the need for teachers’ authority exercise is more. Consequently, the use of technology in these conditions demand for its controlled and very often minimal use. Nevertheless, the point to note is the necessary revision that this equation might undergo due to the students’ expectation and needs in the classroom regarding the nature of treatment to the subject.

The fourth stage – evaluation – concerns the magnitude of effectiveness of technology use.  We need to assess efficiency and impact of technology use. Unless these two aspects are studied, we cannot determine results and decide what, if anything, to do next or do differently.

The four-step process, which finally directs either to intensify or continue or deter or delay the use of technology, brings home an undeniable fact: use of technology is not a panacea; it is spatio-temporal process that is dialectically determined by various components of the class.

Works Cited

Allen, Ethan. Nanoscale Science and Technology. New Horizons for Learning. 29 April 2010                                                    < http://www.newhorizons.org/strategies/technology/allen.htm>.

Center, Allen H. and Patrick Jackson. Public Relations Practices: Managerial Case Studies and Problems. 6th Ed. India: Prentice-Hall, 2002.

Dede, Chris. Testimony to the US Congress, House of Representatives: Joint Hearing on Educational Technology in the 21st Century. New Horizons for Learning. 29 April 2010 <http://www.newhorizons.org/strategies/technology/dede1.htm>.

Kumar, Muthu. Learning with the Internet. New Horizons for Learning. 29 April 2010 <http://www.newhorizons.org/strategies/technology/muthukumar.htm>.

New Horizons. Technology in Education. 29 April 2010 <http://www.newhorizons.org/strategies/technology/front_tech.htm>.

[The argument in this article is based on my contribution as a panelist in an International Conference organized by H. M. Patel Institute, Gujarat,  in January 2010. I acknowledge Mr. Hem Raj Kafle and Mr. Tirtha Ghimire for their insights.]

Toward Disciplined Multidisciplinarity: English As It Stands for Me

Scholarly Article

– Nirmala Mani Adhikary

Physics, Mathematics, Statistics, Mass Communication, Journalism, English, Research Methodology, Hinduism, and Communication Theory — do they converge? If yes, for what? And, where does English stand in this course? This article deals with these issues with reference to academic practices in the field of communication studies, and also to my personal experiences of being exposed across the aforesaid disciplines.

There seems an agreement on considering communication such discipline of knowledge, or academic field of study, that incorporates insights from a number of disciplines. Communication theory has most typically drawn from the humanities and social sciences. The field has also been enriched with the communication researches carried out by non-communication scholars such as political scientists, psychologists, sociologists, social-psychologists and linguists among others. In other words, communication has been theorized from various approaches. The trend seems to be accelerating thereby drawing on even newer disciplines. For instance, there are scholars who have highlighted that the natural sciences, medicine, and engineering are full of considerations of time, space, signals, distance, contact, which are central concerns and topics of communication theory.

Thus the discipline of communication has been multidisciplinary and it continues to be so. But, neither this means that communication is a secondary perspective that can be explained only by other disciplines, nor the multidisciplinary origin of communication makes it episodic. Rather, it is claimed that communication is primary to all social processes and therefore the existence of a discipline to explain the society from the standpoint of communication is understandable. In reality, communication itself has already been established as a discipline of knowledge in its own right. Communication’s disciplinarity can be understood as ‘disciplined multidisciplinarity’ where insights from all other disciplines engrave into its mainstream disciplinary framework.

My academic endeavors also resemble to that of communication discipline. I started my higher study as a student of science thereby studying physics, mathematics, and statistics chiefly. I did M.A. in Mass Communication and Journalism, and M. Phil. in English. My Ph. D. research deals with Hinduism, particularly the Bhatta School of Mimamsa philosophy and communication theory. Different roots; yet, unifying applications within the domain of communication discipline.

The first question raised above (“Do they converge?”) meets an affirmative end. It has been so, as explained above, in general. And, I have experienced so, in particular. Without the study of as diverse subjects as physics, mathematics, statistics, mass communication, journalism, research methodology, and Hinduism, it would be very hard for me to understand the disciplined multidisciplinarity of communication. Before mentioning anything about the role of English in this course, let me first deal the second question.

The convergence of various disciplines in the mainstream disciplinary framework of communication makes and has been making the discipline more dynamic, more comprehensive and livelier. The claim of communication as the base of the society and the locus that holds the society together demands the discipline to be all-encompassing in both approaches and applications, which is certainly impossible without multidisciplinary insights. In other words, the implications of disciplined multidisciplinarity not only broaden the discipline of communication, but also strengthen communication’s claim as the ‘center’ (contrasted to the ‘periphery’) as compared to other disciplines. At least, the disciplined multidisciplinarity certainly contributes — more than the episodic multidisciplinarity and the unidisciplinarity — to the better understanding of communication in a broader setting of the society.

English, both as a language and a discipline, has the crucial role in the development of communication as disciplined multidisciplinary field. In fact, English is serving as the confluencing ground for the multidisciplinary enrichment of communication. Though various countries indigenously inherit the concept of communication and have been practicing it since time-immemorial; communication-as-modern-discipline-of-knowledge has originated and evolved in the West, particularly in the United States of America. It is no exaggeration to say that the modern discipline of communication evolved in English. Even, latter day endeavors of studying communication from non-Western perspectives also have to be, and have been, in English if they are to be communicated for larger audiences.

For me, the advancement in the study of communication has corresponded with my explorations in English. My quest of theorizing communication broadened with M. Phil. in English. Just as in the academic practices in the field communication studies, approaching communication as disciplined multidisciplinary subject, and also centering of this notion of communication for the study of various aspects of society, owes to English in my personal experiences too.

Bibliography:

Adhikary, N. M. (2008). Communication, media and journalism: An integrated study. Kathmandu: Prashanti Pustak Bhandar.

Adhikary, N. M. (2010). Explorations within: Theorizing Communication and Positing Media Ethics Paradigm from Hindu Perspective. A Paper Presented at the Media Research Conferencce 2010, March 25-26, Kathmandu.

Hechter, T. (2003). Center and periphery: Toward disciplined interdisciplinarity in communication study. American Communication Journal, 6(4). Retrieved from http://www.acjournal.org/holdings/vol6/iss4/articles/hechter/hechter.htm

English and Scientific Research: Some Reflections

Miscellaneous

— Deepak Subedi

When I was asked to contribute an article on the importance of English language for scientific research, I felt I got an opportunity to express my gratitude to the language which gave me an enormous access to good books written by scholars around the world. Without the knowledge of English, I would have to rely on books written only in our native language, which would have certainly narrowed my thinking. My simple understanding is that our ability to think is proportional to the number of good books we read. Also, it is generally accepted that knowledge is for the brain as is food for the body, and that a person with knowledge of different languages has greater vision and wider horizon.

I was motivated to learn English by my revered father since my childhood. Although my father himself never had formal education, he had gained some practice of spoken English during his service in Indian army. He had a strong desire to educate his children in English medium. I think this might have been due to the influence of British officers in India. He used to tell me fascinating stories about the additional benefits he used to receive in the army unlike his colleagues by virtue of his knowledge of English, although limited. Even with this limitation, he was supposed to be superior to others, and was assigned some official tasks during the war time which avoided the risk of being deployed to the front.

In spite of a moderate income,  my father always stressed on educating children in good schools. Although our family was based on a village, my father settled in the town only to provide us good education with additional tuition in English.  So far as I remember, he was the first person in our town to arrange tuition in English from the primary level. It was during this time that I met my most favorite teacher of English, Balkrishna Shrama, who inspired me to learn. He was a noble teacher with amazing skills of delivering spellbinding lectures. With his guidance, I experienced the joy of learning new words in English and writing them nicely in four-lined papers.  Since then, I started learning English spontaneously.

I realized the real importance of knowing English when I joined I. Sc. in Amrit Science Campus in 1989. All our subjects were taught in English. Had I been poor in English, I would have certainly been discouraged from studying science.  The knowledge of English helped me in learning the major subjects like Physics, Chemistry, Biology and Mathematics. I had a huge advantage over my classmates with a weaker background of English. Meanwhile, some of our teachers had just returned from US with terribly twisted tongue, and many of our friends who were from remote areas of Nepal got frustrated with the US-style pronunciation. Students who had their schooling in English medium had no difficulty in grasping the lectures in the major subjects.

Well, these were some of my recollections about my background in the English language. Let me discuss a little about the importance of the use of English in the field of science.

In 1931 Vladimir N. Ipatieff, a Russian-American chemist, had begun to take lessons in English at the age of sixty-four. He was already a well-known scientist but had to learn English in that age in order to continue his research in the USA. He probably was under the influence of the “publish or perish” dictum so common in the field of research. But his story simply highlights the necessity of knowing a language of wide international readership in order to popularize researches in science.

Michael Faraday said that any researcher has to follow three major steps: “work, analyze and publish.” All the three parts are equally important. However, the importance of the language appears in the third part — publishing. The real output of any scientific research is measured by its impact, hence the level of international journals is determined by their impact factor. How many people cited our papers is more important than how many papers we wrote. To make our papers accessible to a large number of readers, we have to publish our results in a language understood by a large population.  Thus one has to publish his/her findings in English.

Most of the world’s leading scientific journals are published in English. It has been reported that researchers from non-English speaking countries have to spend a significant portion of their time in getting their reports and research papers translated/written in English. This obviously steals their precious time from laboratory work. For example, in Japan English is becoming the language of basic science resulting in the gradual disappearance of  publications in Japanese. RIKEN, one of Japan’s most comprehensive groups of research facilities, has claimed that its scientists published about 2000 original reports in English in 2005, but only 174 in Japanese. One report shows that editing companies in Japan charge researchers $ 500 to $ 800 per manuscript. Language training can cost $2000 for a ten-week course. These costs are additional burdens and slow down scientific activities in laboratory.

In fact, this should not have been the period for spending so much time for writing the paper alone. Had their schooling been in English, as that of ours, the researchers could have devoted more time for their experiments than exercising for language. In this respect, we should feel fortunate; we learned basic sciences in English medium at school and the university. In several international conferences and seminars, I have observed the difficulty faced by scientists from the countries which are quite developed in science and technology but are non-native English users. In spite of their good research results, they are sometimes nervous during presentations due to the difficulty in expressing their ideas clearly in English.  On the other hand, researchers who studied their courses in English are more confident in presentations even if the merit of their research work is not of high standard.

Another case where proficiency in English plays a vital role is in the preparation of research grants proposals. Even a promising project proposal may be rejected because of the lack of logical reasoning. It may be argued why a researcher should worry about English when one can easily consult with professional editors to prepare a proposal. But the fact is that professional editors may not know the technical ideas of the project, and that sometimes this joint venture may lead to negative results. Considering the growing need of disseminating research results to a wider population, many Asian and European countries, which used to teach science courses in their own native languages, are gradually adopting English as the language of science.

Summing up, today no discipline can function in isolation. Since a large number of interdisciplinary subjects like environmental science, biotechnology, biomedical engineering, engineering physics etc. are emerging, people of different areas of expertise have to work together. Professionals from different disciplines find English quite comfortable to communicate among themselves. Also, professionals in the discipline of English language must also constantly update themselves because the world is changing rapidly due to the advancement in science and technology.  For the survival in this competitive and rapidly advancing world, everyone has to be able to grasp the new challenges and opportunities. Due to the latest advancement in information technology, specially with the introduction of internet services and cellular phones, the world has become like a village. Whoever gets the latest information at the earliest will come ahead and those who miss will certainly lag behind. In which language this communication is being made in a broad scale? Of course, English.

Teacher Anecdote: Ekku Maya Pun

Teacher's Experience/anecdotes

Teaching just fell into my lap and I took it up as a profession some eighteen years ago. Whether I had natural flair for it or not, whether I needed to take training for it or not, whether I could be a good or/and successful teacher never crossed my mind. So, a couple of weeks ago, when my colleague Hem Raj Kafle requested me to write something on teaching experience, my initial reaction (to be honest) was of total loss. My head crowded with questions like: What to write? Can I produce a piece worth reading? Do I have something inspirational or beneficial to share with a large audience?

As I started to grope for answers, I was bound to retrospect the years that had slipped without my realizing what they made me. I simply wanted to judge myself as a teacher. I had never done this before and it was a daunting task.  What I have realized after such retrospection is this: I have managed to come so far without even once thinking seriously of changing the profession; I don’t recall any noteworthy complaint from the students and my administrators about my teaching (If any which I am unaware of, then let me continue to be in bliss of ignorance!); so, I can regard myself as a fairly successful teacher.

I am not an exceptional teacher to stand out in the teaching community, exceptional in the sense that some students would pick me up as the type ‘who changed my life’. I go about my job quietly. I perform my responsibilities as sincerely as possible. I believe in simplicity, so I try to keep things plain and accessible. Common and basic values of punctuality, regularity, honesty figure in my conduct of class and treatment for students.

However, now at least two episodes keep flashing across my mind like films clips. The first concerns the beginning stage of my career. It was during the lunch-break in a conference. I was with some of my old classmates and professors. We were zealously narrating our experiences of being teachers, pointing out our students’ general apathy towards studies and their failure to meet our expectations. Hearing our ‘hue and cry,’ one of our gurus remarked, “Fresh out of the university, filled with all the isms of great philosophers and scholars, you young lot are too idealistic. Do not expect things to come perfect as in the books. There is a vast gap between the world of books, university classrooms and the real world outside.” I was a little taken aback to hear this. I thought: “Is it wrong to expect perfection, expect the students to do exactly what I want them to, and how I want them to? I know whatever I am imparting to them is right and useful to be competent and successful in life. I do so because I have only the best interest for them in my heart.”

The second episode relates a student. I came to know about this through a colleague during a gossip about our past students. At one point he casually told me that ‘this student’ had said I was little too unfair with him. He had said I used to pick on him even for a small mistake all the time; I had sent him out or humiliated him by making him stand in the class throughout the period, etc. etc. It made me uncomfortable. I kept quiet in acceptance of what the student had complained. I wished I had known this while I was still teaching him.

These episodes, I accept even now, led to the change in my approach and attitude towards teaching and dealing with students as my journey progressed. Growing up under the strong influence of a strict and disciplinarian soldier father, I sometimes tend to show streak of sternness and demand discipline from students. This is what I realize now, but take these qualities as the gifts from a parent. I may have demanded discipline and perfection in my pupils, but, I am sure, these qualities are prerequisites for addressing the demands of genuine learners.

Furthermore, these two episodes have made me realize these: first, to be idealist and to seek perfection is desirable but not practical. One has to firmly plant the feet in reality and accept it, desirable or not. If the effort you put in to make the reality desirable yields otherwise results, the effort is more meaningful. What we read and find in the books are the products of best minds. They are developed in supposition of ideal conditions where all the pieces fit with one another in harmony.

Second, as a teacher, your aim has to be to motivate students towards finding their own voice, their potentiality for creativity and self-exploration. By this, they will find what they are good at and will feel good about themselves. They will realize their worth, which will provide a solid foundation for their growth and success in life. To achieve this goal the teacher has to less emphasize on rules, discipline (mind you not to forget them altogether). And, sometimes you should reasonably bend the rules if it helps. You should allow them to feel free to be themselves to work constructively. They need to feel respected for their effort and contribution. Then the instructions, textual knowledge, and good results will follow suit.

I do not know how far I am successful in implementing what I have realized. We all know preaching is easy compared to practicing what one preaches. I love to remain ignorant about how much impact I have made in this profession. I just want to value being able to help young people grow,  and continue the profession with the best of my sensibility and diligence.