SPEECH AT AAICHE SEMINAR (INTERCOLLEGIATE AT CHAITHANYA, 22/03/1999)

When I was given this opportunity to speak today I found it both tempting and treacherous. To talk at a teachers’ seminar about excellence in teaching is a grand affair. It makes an impression that you must be an excellent teacher. That was the tempting part. The treacherous part was that when you speak there is the chance for that mistake to be quickly exposed. Anyway I took the challenge and here I am.

With the UGC pay revision around the corner, and the corresponding demands made upon the teachers, life has all of a sudden become hard and hectic in our colleges. At least that is how I feel. In the thirty years of my teaching career, I haven’t worked and worried as much as I did this year. Committees, seminars, workshops and NAAC reports have put so much upon our shoulders that nowadays we don’t know what is happening to each other. We have become strangers in our own departments. We very badly miss the occasional treats, the chats and the laughs.

They say today’s stress becomes tomorrow’s good old days. Let us accept all this with the hope that it is all to work out a better system of education for our youngsters as they enter the third millennium. There is a lot of talk about equipping ourselves with the most modern in arts, sciences and humanities. New subjects and courses have entered the curriculum and we are bound to be experts in computers and the internet and whatnot. The youngsters of today are exposed to much more scientific and technological knowledge than we were, and we have to be very alert and up to date if we want to deal with them as competent teachers – which means, if you want to be an excellent teacher in the next millennium you have to be constantly learning and improving yourself.

Everybody is talking about academic excellence. Yes. It is imperative, but we must look at the matter from the other end also. As we help the next generation across the threshold to the next century there are quite a few things that tend to be overlooked. In an effort to expand the brains of our students to thrive in a rapidly progressive world, the rich legacy of moral values and spiritual strength go very low in the list of priorities.

It is amazing what frightful forces men have brought under their control. But sadly we see that they cannot always control their own hearts. They can speed with the sun, but they cannot speed mercy or justice or peace – for they are not in them. They can ban the midnight and turn it into day, but they cannot ban the malignancy of their minds. They can illuminate the heavens, but not their spirits. They can divide and fuse the atom, but they cannot fuse God to their souls. We are shocked everyday by headlines reporting soaring crime rate, riots, sexual orgies, divorce and juvenile delinquency. Sometimes it looks like the very structure of our civilization is crumbling.

Only through proper education could we save the next generation from utter ruin. But in modern terms ‘higher education’ is defined as deeper, narrower and more specialized. It is becoming uncomfortably obvious that what ought to be higher about higher education is education for breadth. This is what we should aspire for as teachers.

It is high time we acknowledged the double mission of education. On the one hand it should develop new knowledge, transmit new knowledge to the young and sharpen the intellectual tools of the student. On the other hand it must try to help the students to develop the attitude and pattern of conduct which will enable them to live affirmatively and productively in the world. Education is only half way if you expand only the brain of the student. It becomes complete when the student learns to develop a desire for goodness, an eagerness for knowledge, a capacity for friendship and above all a concern for others. Unfortunately this side is often neglected. If one as much as mentions the concept of character formation or value education in the professional meetings of higher education the response is usually one of derision and amazement.

In this direction even the most modern and all-round computer could not do what a good teacher can. The computer has been accepted by many as the very competent and most efficient teacher that has all the information ready for you at the touch of a finger. Of course computers are amazing, but they can never come close to being as effective as human beings. A computer is not creative on its own because it is programmed to behave in a predictable way. Creativity comes from looking for the unexpected and stepping outside your own experience. Computers cannot do this because their intelligence is artificial. But a good teacher can work wonders here.

It is our responsibility not to let science and technology freeze the coming generation into an emotional ice-age. Let us become teachers in every sense of the word. A good teacher must be learned and eloquent. He should master his subject. A genuine love for the students is also necessary. Without that love there cannot be any real teaching. Genuine concern, steady character, patience, endurance and punctuality are the essential qualities of a good teacher.

But these days our main concern is the text book, the syllabus and nothing more. We are more hurried than our students. We have no extra time or patience for them. The art of perseverance is rapidly becoming extinct. We depend on everything instant. We have become slaves of clocks and calendars. The tragedy is that our students are also infected by the same mechanical attitude. The result is we miss many of the simple heartening pleasures of teaching. The recognition and respect outside the classroom or campus, or look of sudden understanding inside the classroom were enough to fill our whole day with satisfaction. But these days our students are not able to give us this satisfaction-because very often we are not able to give to them.

What has gone wrong, and where? Let us try to evaluate. But remember evaluations are made not to prove but to improve. Every time I try to assess myself as a teacher, I compare myself with the most wonderful teachers I had in school and college. It is not the actual teaching of a lesson or a subject that I recall - but their optimism, their initiative and their devotion. The key to their dynamism, I now understand, is the quality of faith, plus imagination plus enthusiasm. One session with them and you could leave like recharged storage batteries.

I wonder if I could ever become that. What they had was commitment…and there is lot of difference between interest and commitment. When you are interested in doing something you do it only when circumstances permit. But when you are committed to something you accept no excuses, only results. Let us become committed to our profession. Accept service as its own reward. We know that the light of one lonely candle can work more than you expect, in pitch darkness. We can be lights in a darkened world.

When you try your best and your best is not good enough, leave it in the hands of God. He will take up the rest. Thank you.