Few and far between !!

Driving to office, I witnessed a big bunch of little kids waiting to cross the road. And there were two teachers containing them. Children were literally obeying every order of the teachers. It was such a pleasant sight that almost prompted me to wait and watch the children cross the road and see the little fun they have while walking. For the fear of cars behind me honking to deff-dom, I moved on. But the thought of TEACHER stuck on my mind for the next few mins. Blessed are those who had good or great teachers who are role-models.

I never had the fortune of having role-model teachers barring one at school. Imagine having a teacher who is just a class-controller delivering the curriculum indifferently and moving from one academic year to another. In contrast, if you have a teacher who teaches you values, tells you things outside the book, guides you to follow things like newspaper, books, politics, economics etc, it’s such a different feeling.

In school, my teachers were paid peanuts (my history teacher would call his salary as half-pension…L…) and their original certificates were in the custody of our autocratic school correspondent. In this misery there was still one teacher in higher secondary who was such a role-model for many of us. She would not beat us (12th standard boys are anyway too dangerous to use a cane on..hehe). Instead she wouldn’t talk to us if we did something inappropriate. This was almost sort of an emotional blackmail. She commanded respect even from some of the otherwise most ill-behaved students. Would love to see every school having such teachers who students can look up to.

At college, I had an incredible economics prof who would crack incredibly intelligent jokes in an unassuming manner without moving a muscle on his face. He was brilliant. In the city where I studied (a tier 2 city if I can use a jargon.:P), he was rarest of the rare. Though I never could move closely with him, he would always be in my memory and one I rate very high.

As my fellow IT/ITES friends would agree, our first salary would perhaps be more than our teacher’s salary ever (and in many of our case, our first salary would be more than our father’s last salary). I am saying this with utmost humility and not one bit proud of this. In fact, I have argued with my friend that we are over-paid. He would never agree and would compare with the salaries the companies would have paid in high-cost countries. This is true even with B school teachers. However, the profession itself is so esteemed to be measured only on money terms. But I strongly believe that such jobs should fetch good remuneration to motivate people. Many would be passionate to take up teaching but would be limited from doing so for financial constraints.

At the stroke of our Independence Day, I feel happy and proud that we have had two presidents who were great teachers