Teachers or Preachers?

Guruh Brahma Gurur Vishnu, Guruh Devo Maheshwarah,
Guruh Saakshad Parabrahma, Tasmai Shree Gurave Namaha.

One of the first shlokas I was taught when I was young. I think it was because it was so simple to remember as a kid. Later in life, I understood what it meant. A Guru is the teacher, the one who shows us how to live life, who sets us on the right path when we are young. In ancient India, it was a sacred occupation, and some of the great sages have also been the greatest teachers. Hence, they have been compared to Brahma, Vishnu and Mahesh in this shloka.

My first Gurus

In my first years in school, apart from my parents, I had the utmost respect for all my teachers. I used to look up to them as some of society's greatest protagonists, as people who would shape how I live and quench my thirst for knowledge. Unlike now, when I couldn't care less about learning about diverse subjects, as a kid I was into the quest of discovery, exploring the unknown, and basically learn something new everyday. None of this holds true now, and I wonder if it has something to do with the teachers I have gone through in my 20 years of education. This is not a blame game I'm gonna play to clear my conscience; just trying to analyse what role my teachers played in my life.

As a kid, it was natural to look up to elders, and not just literally cos I was so short. I also perceived them as all-knowing and interacting with them gave me great joy. I was the quintessential "teacher's pet" too in school, atleast till the 7th grade. I think teachers always fall for the guy who tops the class most often. How shallow! I repaid them by almost worshipping the best ones, and someday wanting to be like them. Oh, how smart they were when they taught me about far-off countries I've never seen, about legendary kings who ruled our lands centuries ago, about how to find the square root of 27843, about how to convert a sentence in active voice to one in a passive voice, about the fact that light splits up into a rainbow when it passes through water. I was overawed.

Teacher, or a talking text-book?

Now that I think about it, I realise all they did was present bookish facts, most of them. Very few would actually perform experiments, force us to think on our own and question, and inspire us to dig deeper. They kinda got away with half-baked knowledge cos us kids wouldn't question. It was something inherent in a lot of kids - we don't question the elders, it might be a show of disrespect. Now, if someone taught me all that over again, I'd ask them back - Why do I need to find the square root of a number ever - what good is that? Where would I need to change a sentence from active to passive voice - I have no clue even now. Why does white light become multi-coloured when it passes through water?

I am reminded of the tale of one of my friends, Harsha. The teachers laughed at him when he was asked to add two numbers, and he neatly arranged the digits of the two numbers, and added them from left-to-right, instead of right-to-left. Come to think of it, I never asked my teachers why I need to add them from right-to-left. I just did it. How can the teachers even have it in them to laugh at little Harsha? When all he had was an innocent young mind that didnt see the difference between adding in one direction as opposed to the other.

I got the answers to most of the questions I'd never raised on my own, later in life. Life has its own way of teaching you - when you observe what's happening around you more carefully. In my case, I usually just observed the encyclopaedia. But, it drove home the point that all my education was just glaze on top of a doughnut. I had to mostly bake the doughnut myself, and my parents had a great big hand in that. What did teachers really give me then? The degrees I hold?

My ideal guru

I now see teachers who simply pass some stupid tests and start teaching young and eager minds, who have no idea what they are being fed. From all my years in school and university, I know that clearing the hurdle of a test is not the hardest thing in the world to do. More so, it is not the best guide to judging a person's aptitude. Teachers should know they are some of the biggest servants to our society, the ones who shape a child's future. And take some responsibility in what they do and how they do it. They shouldn't just cram our heads with facts and figures - we have the newspapers for that. They should realise the enviable positions they are in and utilise it to motivate young minds, to make them arrive at the answers to their questions instead of giving half-baked replies to hush them up. A true guru doesn't bring the water to the horse, he points the horse in the right directions so it can find water itself. And a really good one will ensure the horse notices the abundance of flora and fauna and natural artefacts around the water source, so that next time the horse can find it on his own, without needing a guru.

In their defence, I am sure the teachers will point to lousy salaries they take back home, and lack of adequate support from the establishments, and sometimes from parents themselves. I can't argue with that. However, I have seen a handful of good examples of excellent teachers, who have worked their way around all of this. I can still remember some of the really good teachers I had as a kid. To me they did invoke the thirst to seek more, although I quenched it elsewhere. Until the point, I realised I could no longer look up to them, and had to seek asnwers on my own, always.

What is then, the difference between a teacher and a preacher? They remind me of the modern preachers who grow beards as a sign of their sainthood and dress in simple clothes as a mark of enlightenment, and captivate audiences with talks about religion and how to live life. They never give the rationale behind anything they say, and people don't question them either. It would be disrespect to a sagely human - after all he knows it all. It is our lack of knowledge and the readiness to grasp blindly what comes our way, that makes sucess stories out of unmotivating teachers and haughty preachers. Can something be done?