IL&FS Focus

Shades between the bogus and realKabir MustafiI often thinkI am lucky to be in a job that pleases me. But after 30 years in the teachers‚ profession I sometimes have to drag myself to work. As a school principal my average day is full of people, inspections and little hassles. The major compensation is the time I spend teaching.There‚s much to commend actual teaching. Many years ago a fellow-teacher and friend was preparing for his first Plus Two class. He had decided how he was going to introduce himself and what he was going to say about ground rules, teacher-pupil interaction, discipline etc. My wife (also a teacher) advised against elaborate planning and recommended allowing students to respond in their own time. It proved to be good advice for which she received profuse thanks. I think a good lesson to be learnt is that you cannot impose. Students have to let you enter.Getting them to let you enter has nothing to do with political correctness or being kind and loving. It has to do with trying to recognise each person in a class as a unique individual (whether mad, zany or incredibly bone headed), and for the class to believe that in spite of your idiosyncrasies, you mean well and that you actually know the subject you are teaching. The bottom line is that if they listen attentively, you are accepted.It takes hard work to get there. It‚s worse if working conditions are difficult and you have to deal with a megalomaniac promoter. The type who feels threatened if students speak to you outside the classroom, or if they utter a word of appreciation within his or her hearing. A situation like that can drive anyone to quit, not just the school but the profession itself, so completely can the cancer of pettiness fill our lives.But the ups and downs of the teaching profession notwithstanding, the worth of a day is best measured by the time spent with students, even if it comprises no more than a couple of hours. And that‚s why it‚s important for every teacher to know what she is doing and what she is about.Looking back, I have to say that in my book, only 10 percent of all teachers I have met, were unworthy of the profession. Most teachers I know have the ability to be intellectually dynamic, to continue to assimilate, challenge and be challenged, and revel in the 40 minutes of stimulation that a lesson can provide. The corollary of this is that if a teacher knows she is good in the classroom, she will also know that she is good outside it. Generally speaking teachers like water, find their own levels of happy involvement. And what about schools in which teachers teach? The most dedicated teachers can be stifled by bogus schools ‚ those that look good from far but are far from good, to paraphrase an old clichƒ©. A typical bogus programme is a school day that‚s really a class day: children come, attend class and leave. But a lot else has to happen within the five or six hours that make up a school day. And the test of a good school is that a lot else happens and is meaningful.Other examples of bogus schools are those which blame parents for not wanting activities; those that stage games meant only for a chosen few; teach music through an academy in arrangements between selected students and the academy with a cut to the school; offer career counselling twice a year through an institute to large crowds of students all at the same time; claim to teach drama in the guise of variety programmes; stage cultural shows in the guise of popular television song and dance routines with little children doing vampish steps; encourage hobbies at home, with displays by students of charts and collections put together by parents; encourage camping through an adventure company, in groups of fifties and hundreds; offer educational tours to Singapore and Dubai; teach through guide books, berate children in public assemblies while wooing their parents over tea; promise an open door policy without keeping doors open and providing accessibility but only by prior appointment, never mind if parents have to wait for a fortnight. They also promise wonderful results with 60 to a classroom and strictly no tuitions but tutorial shops contracted to IIT/JEE/PMT training and children encouraged to take tuitions in the holidays. And within bogus schools there‚s deeper skulduggery. Show one salary and pay another; fix grades for some and not for others; tell principals they have full freedom but demand to be consulted on everything; pass one set of rules for some and another for the rest; talk about international quality and cut down on staff in the name of economy. Then there are people getting on school boards and never wanting to leave. And once on school boards, manipulating and canvassing for power and greed.But as Dylan sang, the times they are a-changing and more power to the people through public accountability is the growing demand. In the past six months I have met more than a hundred young parents with children aged between three-six. They are mostly dual income nuclear families or multiple income joint families, very focused about what they want for their children and what they expect from the schools. And it‚s very simple: That the school should through caring, recognition and generosity, give the children an identity and the ability to carve a niche for themselves.Not air-conditioning, fancy food, or plasma screens and foreign holidays. Just good old-fashioned values, caring and genuineness, with clear and visible shades between the bogus and the real. (Kabir Mustafi is the principal designate of the Scottish High International School, Gurgaon)