Teacher’s day is still a long way off. But as a new academic year is well nigh and my daughter gets ready to enter primary school, I think I will be failing in my duty if I do not acknowledge the debt that she owes her pre-primary teacher for the past two years.
Full many a gem of purest ray serene/ The dark unfathom’d caves of ocean bear/ Full many a flower is born to blush unseen/ And waste its sweetness on the desert air.
But my daughter was lucky. In an interesting arrangement in the pre-primary school where she stepped into the world of learning, the same teacher moved with the children from lower to upper kindergarten. In the formative years of one’s life, especially stepping into a new world far from the cocoon of home, it helps to have a teacher who can understand children, their limitations and potential and mould them. And two years with a good teacher is the foundation of a lifelong enthusiasm for learning.
It is not easy. I know it. I am a middle-level faculty in a medical college. The students who come to us have made it into the limited seats after passing tough entrances. Their basics have been laid. But when it comes to understanding important concepts in medicine, it takes a lot of effort in trying to make them understand the concepts and principles involved and also keep them abreast of changing trends. It is also not easy to teach the same topics to different batches without suffering from ennui.
That is why my admiration for my daughter’s pre-primary teacher goes up. The kids before them are clay. There’s no certificate to show how intelligent a particular child is or what he or she is capable of. Their approach to the children can light a lifelong love for learning in the children, who are blank slates for the teacher to write on. Even as they teach language, maths, moral science, manners and what not, they are the single window to the wide world for the tiny tots. And many of them succeed wonderfully. Teaching pedagogy has changed to some extent. Smart classes are becoming the norm. But the teacher, the interface between the child and the world, is key to unlocking the realm of learning.
Unfortunately like the foundation stone, they soon become invisible. As children move up in life, memory fades and the pre-primary teacher is just a face in the class photo. When I show my children my class photos of the late 70s and early 80s, I am just about able now to recollect my teachers’ names. As to how wonderfully they taught, my memory fails me. And as we enter professional life, we are more likely to remember those who have impacted us in our training. Those on whose shoulders we reached where we are now have gone beyond the horizon.
So also my daughter will soon forget how her teacher laid the foundation to what she will become. But if she reads this in the future, she will know where she started. And if she wants to pen an ode to her teacher then, this is that ode.