ज्ञानशक्तिसमारूढः तत्त्वमालाविभूषितः ।
भुक्तिमुक्तिप्रदाता च तस्मै श्रीगुरवे नमः ॥
भुक्तिमुक्तिप्रदाता च तस्मै श्रीगुरवे नमः ॥
“Salutation to that
noble Guru, who is established in the power of knowledge, adorned with the
garland of various principles and is the bestower of prosperity and liberation.”
Many
a times I reminisce my childhood days with my sister and laugh over the funny
and innocent moments that we shared together. The other day as we talked about
the games that we played as children, my sister recollected my most favourite
activity, or rather my ritual as a child-
my daily ritual of playing ‘Teacher Teacher’ every morning before
leaving for school in the afternoon. Some of my soft toys used to be my
‘students’ who regularly attended my classes and dared not ask me any doubts! A
blackboard and boxes of chalks used to be my treasured possessions to help me
‘facilitate’ this childhood passion. This constructive hobby of teaching helped
me revise my lessons and helped me hone my communication skills. My parents are
particularly proud of my teaching habit, even today. They think it was one of
the useful ways to learn and remember things. Though a number of years have
passed since I bade Ciao to my favourite hobby and I chose a different career
other than teaching, deep down in my heart it still remains one of my most
admired and honourable professions.
A
couple of days back, one of the guest speakers whom I listened to said, “I
learnt most of the financial concepts on Google and never relied only on my
faculty.” Though most of us today turn to Google to solve our gravest of the
grave queries and get instant answers, I reflected if really internet is
capable of replacing a human teacher. When I asked this question to myself, I got
both Yes and No as answers, given the transition in education that I have
witnessed so far. During my previous semester, I studied the Education Sector
of India. While reading through various statistics, I came across the fact that
Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and Multimedia are going to be
the growth drivers in the Education Sector, though presently their contribution
to the Education sector is merely 0.6%. If such technology is adopted in
schools, it would, to some extent reduce the efforts required to teach the
students. Blackboards and chalks would soon be replaced with white boards,
projectors and computers. I wonder how learning can be fun by just looking at
the technology aided slides and pictures. Learning would become monotonous and
dull. I still remember my school days when my teachers took great pains to make
us understand concepts using globes, scientific models and the extensive
writing on blackboards! We were far from technology and thus enjoyed the
personal touch and attention of our beloved teachers.
As
I am fond of languages, I believe that a teacher plays an important role in
developing to speak and write a language. It is similar to mothers teaching
their children to speak their respective mother tongues well. I recently had a
difference of opinion over this with my beloved sister. As she is learning
French, she often uses various translation websites to frame sentences and
learn new words. Having proudly formed a number of sentences using the
translation websites, she said, “Nowadays internet has made learning foreign
languages so easy. One can easily master any language without a teacher!” I
shared with her my experience of writing letters in German in my initial
learning years, using translation websites. The outcome of such drudgery used
to be horrendous and grammatically nightmarish. Only when I used to get a
number of red correction marks from my teacher on those letters of mine, did I
realize how indispensable my teachers were! All the languages that I learnt so
far, learning them was fun only because of the way my teachers taught them.
That is why I believe that languages can be learnt better only if they have a
human touch to correct them when erred and thus helps us to learn the language in a fun way. And for persons like me who finds subjects
like Mathematics scary, learning it on computers or through internet, can make numbers appear
scarier than ever!
As
Teachers’ Day soon approaches I feel indebted to all my teachers, right from
Kindergarten till my MBA, who gave a soothing touch to difficult subjects as
well as made interesting subjects even more interesting with their passion and
experience of years of teaching. These sagacious minds are like sculptors who
contributed greatly in molding my mindset.
No
doubt, that online lectures and videos play a crucial role in educating a mass
number of people and contributes towards enrichment given the paucity of time
people face, to attend a class; I believe that a classroom experience is like no
other. That is because, online learning makes the process of learning one way
or rather myopic, while a teacher in a classroom can make you think and help
you to brainstorm the ideas, thus bringing out creativity in each student.
Ideas evolve and revolution of thoughts happen only when discussed with wise
minds like teachers. I fear we might soon miss out on all this if teaching
becomes a passé as the technology improves and more and more students turn to
the internet for gaining information and thus overlooking knowledge in the process.
In India, though teaching is perceived as a low
paying job and hence there is not much rush by youngsters towards the
profession, I believe that teaching is the noblest of all professions as it
empowers a person to enlighten millions of minds in the career span. What can
be a better service to society than this? If a teacher can kindle even one mind
with his or her candle of knowledge, the light is then spread to thousands and
millions of other minds!
As
the fear of technology taking over teachers and books concerns me, I remember
the story ‘The Fun They Had’ by Isaac Asimov wherein the children in the year
2157 are in an era of mechanical teachers to submit their homework and learn
lessons and are completely oblivious to the concept of human teachers and
books. The children in the story envied the fun which their forefathers had in
schools. I think we are slowly and steadily moving towards that era which Isaac
Asimov contemplated in his story. A time may soon come when the upcoming generations would too long for actually going to schools and may miss out the
fun with their friends while learning! Therefore by preserving the culture of
teaching which we inherited from our mythologies centuries ago, we will not
only be preventing unemployment for many but also we will be attempting to keep
human touch alive and not transforming the process of learning and teaching
from human to robotic.
