Life Skills Education

Hierarchy of teaching professionalsDilip P Patel”Thank you, teacher, you changed my life.” How many of you would like to hear these words from your students some day in your lifetime? I posed this question to a hall full of teachers in Hyderabad. Almost every hand went up.”And what would prompt your student to give such credit to you?” I asked. There was a silence. Then a feeble, diffident voice sounded from a corner of the hall. “Maybe because I am a good teacher?”My mind went back to my school days in the early 1960s. The only teacher about whom I have vivid memories is Mrs. Srivastava, the class VII English teacher in Bhilai Vidyalaya, Sector II, Bhilai, Chatthisgarh. (I will be grateful if someone could help me get in touch with her. My e-mail is given at the end of this piece).Was she a good teacher? I‚m not sure. I remember being petrified for more than a month whenever it was my turn to read. I would stare into the textbook and cry. Those two minutes every day seemed like eternity. At that time I didn‚t know the ABC of English as I had just been uprooted from Gujarat where English was taught only from class VIII onwards. To my misfortune I had shifted to Bhilai where English was taught from class VI and thus, I was completely illiterate in the subject. But the humiliations I suffered in Mrs. Srivastava‚s class made me resolve that I would master this complex language. I am still at it, and perhaps will remain at it for the rest of my life. But that ordeal by fire impacted me deeply and for the better. Therefore looking back I can say: “Thank you Mrs. Srivastava, you changed my life.”Nevertheless even four decades later the ‚Ëœgood teacher‚ syndrome continues to play on my mind. Sharu Rangnekar, a master trainer and management guru draws deep upon his knowledge of Sanskrit literature to classify ‚Ëœtypes‚ of teachers. First, there‚s the teacher who requires a prefix like ‚ËœEnglish‚ teacher, or ‚Ëœphysics‚ teacher, marking him/ her a specialist in that subject, capable of transmitting knowledge of the subject to students.As Rangnekar explains, in Sanskrit a person who provides ‚Ëœinformation‚ is known as adhyapaka. However, the individual who transforms information into ‚Ëœknowledge‚ for his students is known as upadhyaya. The great majority of teachers remain adhyapakas and upadhyayas for life. Today, in the information age, I wonder if that‚s acceptable. I take delivery of two such ‚Ëœteachers‚ every morning in the form of my newspapers which cost me less than Rs.200 per month. Moreover in addition, I have another 70 upadhyayas available round the clock in the form of television channels for whose services I pay Rs.750 per month. I also have access to millions of web pages at the click of a mouse. Therefore in the new ICT (information communication technology) era it is imperative that teachers move up from upadhyayas to the higher levels.Sanskrit literature describes the next level…