Aha! Teacher’s day! You might wonder why I am bringing up the topic here rather than my current affairs blog. It’s because teachers day brings back terrible memories. Memories of school days when I was an idiot caught up in a brutal system.
I was not a complete blockhead. I understood what the teachers taught, I listened in the class, but, sometimes I would retreat in my dream world. It happened mostly during history and geography lectures. As the teacher told the story, I would see in my minds eye what might have happened there on the battle field, how fascinating social life might have been in ancient and medieval India!
When geography teacher spoke about the beauty of this world, I would imagine myself standing on ghats of the Ganges, the Himalayas or the jungles on the banks of Amazon. It was so amazing! I would get lost imagining things and miss the rest of the lecture.
I feared the numbers. I still do.
I avoided science like a monk giving up material world. I was never mad behind Mendeleev like the rest of my friends. I stayed away from him and his table with the zeal of a vegetarian avoiding meat. I just could not remember it all!
Confusion in my brain was rampant as to which organ secretes which fluid. To this day i know only one of Newton’s laws. “Every action has an equal and opposite reaction so don’t trouble other people.” I remember it because my neighbor screamed it at me when I broke his window while playing.
My mom tried to walk me through math and science initially but even she could not comprehend the syllabus in standard 9 and 10. Then i tried tuitions. I am awesome at forgetting stuff. The tuition teacher would be irritated like hell. I would come home, hide my face behind the math text book and cry.
My mom noticed it sometimes.
She told me the story of ugly duckling. I would be all ears, urging her to tell the story over and over again and she would gladly do it. She would urge me to be patient. Subjects of my choice would be available in college.
I was good at learning English but my talking improved only in college and it became awesome when i went to the university. My mom taught me English. I liked to listen to the lecture at school too but the students would make hell of a noise and disrupted the class of the lenient teacher. All my English teachers were lenient. All of them complained about my terrible handwriting.
I even managed to write lengthy answers in English paper. But the, by the time i reached the essay part, it was time out. I lost lots of marks for spelling mistakes. Result: low score.
There was one guy who went totally bonkers trying to get me to listen- the music teacher. I actually wanted to learn computer but it was open only to students who had scored a certain amount of percentage (computer had tremendous clout in those days). I lacked it. The other choice was art. I sucked at it. And so it was. I ended up in a music class. I did not want to learn music. I sat in a corner and wrote poems. Everyone tried to get me to learn music. They just gave up on me in the end-even the headmaster.
I joined extra classes of computer at school. They started teaching from the history of computer and steps of computing and things like that. It was boring but at least I got to play with comps. My perception of computers changed one day when my uncle bought a new pc.
I was incidentally returning home from another boring comp class when he hailed me into his shop. “So you learn computers no?” he asked “show me what you got” no sooner had i started explaining him the history of computer, he shouted “don’t mind the crap they teach you son, I will show you the real thing.” He connected the internet and opened a chat room. “This is the real way to use a comp.” before the certified teachers at school got around to teaching it, I was sending regular e mails to my pen pals in the US.
I burnt my science and math textbooks to ashes after passing SSC. No doubt I scored low and was officially declared to be a second class student. My mom told me I really belonged to the first class. I am proud of the fact that the bosses in my office say the same thing.
I gave four interviews and almost got myself jobs when I did not want. No one examined my certificates. So I am beginning to doubt their value. I scored a distinction in French language and first class in creative writing in English at the university but did not collect the certificates.
The school gave me a low ranking by making me study subjects I did not want.
Despite the low scores, I am a confident and respected man
AND I HATE SCHOOL
Your hate appears misdirected. It is not school which is bad, but the system foisted on hapless students like you. What would have been most suitable for you would have been an open school system. Unfortunately, wisdom has dawned on the politicians and the administrators a wee too late in your case. Don't blame the poor teachers. They have a job to do and do it they will in the style and manner prescribed by the HRD Ministry and down the hierarchy.
ReplyDeleteSpare a thought for the teachers who probably would rather teach something more interesting. Do you know what it is to teach to an unresponsive and disinterested kids?