The following was published in The Hindu on September 29th:
Coping mechanisms in
today's classrooms of the new generation
On voluntarily retiring from a commercial bank after 30-odd years
of service as an unsuccessful manager, I wanted to become a teacher. Didn’t
George Bernard Shaw say, “He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches”?
It did not take long for me to be convinced that I was a
successful teacher. Session after session, students thanked me profusely,
claiming that my lectures were proving to be an effective cure for their
insomnia, but without any side effects.
However, very soon the impact of a new teacher was wearing thin.
Participants started coming late to class. All my pleadings that punctuality
was essential for maintaining academic discipline and to ensure that they did
not miss any part of the lessons taught were in vain. Finally I made it a rule
that late-comers would occupy the front row. Late arrivals ceased forthwith!
Students avoided the front row, fearing that sleeping there would
be noticed easily. They are perhaps not aware that many teachers focus more on
the rear rows where mischief normally occurs. Whenever the front row was
vacant, my ego would receive a jolt. So, after the arrival of all students I
would quietly remove the chairs in the front row.
I found to my amusement that students’ knack of enjoying forty
winks during lectures has crossed an evolutionary threshold. They have now
developed the knack of sleeping with their eyes open. My doctor friends tell me
there is a medical term for this: ‘lagophthalmos’. Though doctors treat this as
an inability to close the eyelids completely while sleeping, present-day
students have made it an ability to sleep with eyes open!
The practice of lagophthalmos among the student community makes
the job of a teacher frustrating. It becomes difficult to know whether astudent is
actually sleeping or not because all have their eyelids open. Whenever I
suspected that a person was sleeping though the eyes were open, I would go near
the person and ask a question on what was being discussed. Students usually
outsmarted me because they were not only sleeping with their eyelids open, but
in addition were talking in sleep (a cultivated condition called ‘somniloquy’).
Though what the student was mumbling would have no relevance to the topic under
discussion, I would prefer to think the student was in fact attentive and would
walk away. This would keep my self-confidence as a teacher intact.
I was always interested in knowing how I was shining as a teacher
in comparison with others. To my utter shock, another teacher told me once that
when he checked up with a student in my class, he could not even remember what
was discussed in the class. From that dismaying day, I ensured that I always
wrote in block letters the subject of discussion on the white board. It is my
firm hope that seeing in bold letters the topic of discussion for 60-odd
minutes would make it impossible not to remember at least the topic. But to my
odd blend of eternal joy and consternation, the students make the impossible
happen.
It was not as though I wanted to become a teacher only after
quitting the bank. When I was the manager of a large branch, a General Manager
of the bank visited the branch for an on-the-spot assessment of my performance.
The branch was notorious for its non-performing assets and therefore my main
focus was on recovery. The General Manager made it clear to me that my
performance was far from satisfactory. Unrelated to this, I had earlier applied
for a faculty position in the Staff Training College of the bank. The interview
to select the faculty members was held the next day. The General Manager who
visited the branch the previous day was on the interview panel. I was hoping
that I would be selected because my branch performance was ‘unsatisfactory’.
But the wily General Manager initiated the interview asking me why I was
interested in teaching when my field performance was ‘excellent’. I was
tongue-tied and, needless to say, was not selected for that post.
srivarahan@yahoo.com
Printable version | Sep 30, 2015 5:02:13 PM |
http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/open-page/a-teachers-tricks-and-treats/article7699190.ece
© The Hindu
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