Teacher's Day

Every year, in memory of Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, the 5th day of September is celebrated as Teacher's day. This day usually turns out to be either very bland, or celebrated in a meaningless and pompous way, with gifts and cakes. I regret it when such a day, meant for inspiration and appreciation, is wasted on futile entertainment. As a small step in a new direction, I, on behalf of my classmates, wrote a letter to my teachers, to inspire them and make them inspire us. And we delivered the letter to them one day prior to Teachers' Day. The letter read as follows:




Dear Teacher,

You're an ocean of knowledge, we're empty barrels waiting to be filled. But, we do not seek filtered and purified water, devoid of all its qualities. We want the water with all the salts and impurities in it, whether by means of a pipe, a pail, or handfuls.

You have so much of knowledge, potential, stories, and energy to share, but why do you get entangled in the net of marks. We do not care about how many questions are asked in the exam or what they are. We do not want to know whether mugging up a concept is going to yield us 5 marks in the exam. We do not want to measure a concept merely by the marks it is worth in an exam. We want to understand the various facets of science and society alike; we want them to inspire us. More importantly, we want you to help us understand, and get inspired.

Coming to more real-world scenario, many of our seniors got and surely, many of us will get sky high percentage of marks in the board exams; its just been made so easy and  predictable. According to many, the real hurdles are competitive exams. These hurdles appear unbreachable because we don't understand the core concepts, because all we are ever taught in class is, "How to get good marks?", instead of the "Core Learning", and "Concepts of Science". Learning without purpose is not only useless, it is harmful. Its like knowing the rules and procedure, without knowledge of the vocabulary and aim. This is a precise definition of cancer - growing without purpose. But, we believe, this malignant cancer can be cured with small doses of inspiration and enlightenment.

We believe, you, as a teacher, have the greatest of powers and the heaviest of duties - you shape generations. This teachers' day, we want you to shine your lantern upon us, guide us, and share with us the most valuable lessons of your life. We want 'you' to teach us, inspire us, enlighten us.....


With Regards,
Your obedient students,
Section G - Class of 2016

Through this letter, I euphemistically told them that I am fed up of the marks-oriented teaching and desperately in need of change. The first signs of my letter's effects were seen when our chemistry teacher told us his story. He told us how, in the initial stages of his career, he too wanted to teach us in an idealistic manner, focusing on the concept rather than the marks. But, in the few years he has been teaching, he felt the pressures of completing the prescribed syllabus in the the limited time made available. Nevertheless, he has promised that he will make sure that our learning is more interactive and inspirational.

But, unfortunately, the euphony misled some of our teachers to believe that the letter was a thank you card. After 2-3 such reactions, where they were just happy that we appreciated their efforts and that we thanked them, I began to feel that either I had beaten too much around the bush or they had failed to take the criticism. Their reactions governed them rather than responses. The results of the exercise deviated sharply from the expected one, but I sure learned two things, that I should keep reasonable expectations from others and that most people react and seldom respond.