Role of Parents and Teachers
American Writer, Poet and Critic Mark Van Doren rightly penned that- The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery. What else can be a bigger duty of a teacher than to help a student to discover himself. Discovering one’s own potential is surely a tough task. The good news is that the child is full of amazing potentials. He is just like a raw diamond waiting for the necessary polishing.
Someone rightly said that parents are the first teachers and teachers are the second parents. The life of a child heavily depends upon these two. But, sadly, I can say that these two aren’t playing their roles as expected. Teachers behave like manufacturing company workers whose job is to tag labels on the products. What is most discouraging is the fact that teachers label students with negative words. So-and-so is an idiot as he doesn’t know maths, so-and-so is a duffer as he doesn’t understand science etc. etc. That time has certainly passed when a student’s failure was a teachers failure. I don’t see enough brave teachers who take the responsibility for a child’s failure. If the child does not understand something, then that is because he or she did not pay attention. “Oh! The Primary Teachers did not teach them anything” is another lame excuse. But, the teacher won’t doubt his own inability of making the topic understandable to that kid. I do not see teachers who care for the kids anymore. I find teachers who like bosses and not like leaders. I am not saying that good teachers are extinct now… No… I am not saying that. But really sensitive teachers are rarer than Francium. The teachers are the masters of their subjects, but, sadly, they fail to understand the minds of the pupils. The only concern is the coverage of the syllabus.
The first teachers of the child, the parents aren’t too far behind. Only more marks in the exams bring smiles in the faces of the parents. Is it a bad thing? Obviously, no. But parents today behave like the audience of an MMA bout. More the beating and blood , is more enjoyable. A doctor and an engineer – my child has to become one, out of these two. Every parent wants his or her child to become successful, and that surely is a great thing. But imposing their own dreams on the kids is nothing less than a crime. Let’s not kill the dreams of the kids. Their happiness, their dreams matter the most. Remember, it is their life.
Yes, it is true that we can just take the horse to the water; it depends upon the horse whether it will drink or not. Our duty is also to work as facilitators who lead kids to the water of learning and patiently wait for them to start drinking.
-Johnny Ahmed “क़ैस”
