inam ul rehman
On teachers’ day (it is not a universal teacher’s day, different countries celebrate it on different dates) it is normal to see write-ups about teachers, without naming them, or if someone names them s/he makes sure that the teacher has retired. What is the fun of writing such banal stuff. By not naming our teachers (who are still teaching) who inspired us, or taught us in a diligent way we are giving free rein to bad teachers or those who slam down students making them fearful to question or argue anything.
Our writing should remind those bad teachers that you would not get away with your awful teaching. You will be called out. Our writing should also help good teachers to improve upon and pat them even if their contemporaries try to put them down.
But, how do you say a particular teacher impressed, or inspired you? Myriad reasons, but no particular answers. In our educational career, only a few teachers have some positive impact on us.
Political Scientist Prof G M Dar
In Amar Singh College, it was Prof GM Dar who taught us political science in the first year. His class always stood apart as he forced us to think on political questions critically, even critiquing Plato, Aristotle, and Socrates. He would often create a curiosity toward a particular topic and then leave it for us. Such was the curiosity developed by him that throughout the day we would discuss the topic among ourselves. Reyaz Wani (serving as Kashmir administrative officer) was studious than all of us and he would often try to find answers in reference books to get rid of this curiosity.
Whenever Prof Dar didn’t know anything, he would not shy in saying so, but the next day he would discuss the earlier question and then answer it what he found from books or from his seniors. Only a few teachers in Kashmir can do this.
His class was like a parliament where everyone was free to air his views, questions, and disagreements. When we were in his classroom, he endowed us with the gift of imagination. We would always see Prof Dar in one classroom or the other. Unfortunately, after passing our first year no class was assigned to him.
Years after finishing our college and university days our junior in Amar Singh College, Javid Ahmad Dar (presently assistant professor at political science at the University of Kashmir) told us that Prof Dar had written a book and mentioned Aijez Ashraf, Reyaz Wani, Javaid Iqbal, and me in “helping to clear many topics”.
Now which teacher in Kashmir can write such a thing about his students.
A teacher called Syeda Afshana
I don’t remember any extraordinary thing she did in our first class with her. But her teaching skills were different from the rest. In 2003, when I joined the University of Kashmir’s media education research centre (which was sarcastically called the mental eradication retardation centre) there were 5 teachers, all female except one.
Of them, Syeda Afshana was already writing a weekly column for the daily Greater Kashmir. It was a year when the USA invaded Iraq, and she was in the USA at that time. Her write-up regarding the American people protesting against it appeared as the anchor piece on the front page of the GK (if my memory serves me right).
I was eagerly waiting to take her class. While the rest of the teachers proved damp squib, her class was impressive. And it stayed throughout my two years of post-graduation. While I would skip classes of every other teacher, or if present made sure to take news magazines along to ward off yawning. Or if magazines were not available then we would do a national sport in our class i.e., pass on chits with classmates.
Her class was a class apart
As a thorough teacher, she would always come prepared, and give us assignments that we had to finish in the classroom. She honed our skills. Was there a dull moment in her 45-minute class? Even those students who would never utter a word in other teachers’ classroom would feel encouraged to chip in with their opinions. I don’t remember Afshana madam rebuking anyone.
To give you a glimpse of other teachers, one teacher was notorious for telling stories of her family, excessive pride in her caste, and a sort of a racist one can safely say. There is a famous joke, that I heard from my seniors, attributed to her, and which is being faithfully passed on to the next generation of media students. It is reported once this “casteist” teacher told students that one of her cousins successfully cracked the Kashmir administrative service exams, and now, she said with an imperious voice, his first posting is in Singapore! A KAS officer is posted not in Jammu and Kashmir but in Singapore. Imagine the ignorance mixed with a broth of arrogance to tell this story in front of her students.
The second universal joke shared by seniors about her: once she told in the classroom that their household was the first to have an English commode in the whole Valley!
Even now when I enquire students about her, they say the same thing. The said teacher talks about everything barring studies.
In fact, majority of our class refused to take her external exams because of her not teaching us anything. She threatened to fail us. Of the 23 students four yielded to her threats and the rest of the class said if you fail us you have to answer to your superiors why so many students failed. Afraid, she gave the rest of the students minimum pass marks without failing anyone. At that time, we could have made it a bigger issue by going to the deans, or vice chancellor, but we kept this thing within our department and never discussed it with anyone. A bad choice. Maybe if we had taken some action many generations of students would have been saved by her embarrassing teaching.
I am not demeaning her. My point, if she reads it ever, it is to tell her you have fooled enough students. And I am writing this to you while you are in service. Start teaching rather than killing students with your inane family details.
Then there are other teachers whom I call presenters. They come and present news like the presenter does on the Television. There is stagnancy in their teaching methods. They look tired, and this tiredness is reflected. They are average, and when you are surrounded by average people its difficult to lift your performance, as you have no one to push you out of your comfort zone. It is commendable then that Syeda Afshana still tries to improve her teaching skills, and the majority of the students will vouch she is the best when it comes to teaching, although they may not agree with her moral lecturing.
I had my run-ins with Afshana madam, but she was always graceful. For her I was enfant terrible! A couple of years later I started to work at the educational multimedia research centre and we both made sure that we don’t cross each other's path. Even if we rarely cross, we both keep our eyes straight without blinking as if we haven’t seen each other. It is strange particularly on my part because I would never skip even her informal tutorials.
When I read her Sunday column in GK, I think her writing has stagnated. By this time she should have been one of the great authors of Kashmir. But here I am not going to discuss her writing.
Today as her preteen child writes in newspapers it does not feel transmogrification rather a diligent mother and teacher’s hard work paying dividends.
Kashmir does not have great teachers.
It does not mean that Syeda Afshana is a great teacher. Come on, we don’t have great teachers in Kashmir. It is simply not possible to have great teachers in our society where teachers are afraid of self-evaluation, where teachers are afraid to seek student evaluation, where teachers don’t think in terms of leadership, where teachers don’t think to learn from students, where teachers think counter-argument is bad, where teachers don’t appreciate differences, where teachers simply don’t care to groom students in the role of leadership, where teachers don’t mentor anyone.
Here any teacher’s favourite student means he should be a monkey of his! Bad teachers receive gifts from their favourite students, these students nod on everything, do their menial work, and in return, the bad teachers reward them with higher grades at the expense of deserving ones. These monkeys then create another generation of monkeys, and then we keep cribbing why don’t we have efficient people here! Why do we have so much corruption here!
Great teachers are empathetic while simultaneously challenging students to see new horizons. They are aspirational, not insipid. They stand for a cause. They create leaders. Our society has a dearth of strong leaders because our teachers do not think in terms of creating leadership. If they see someone with leadership qualities, they are quick to mellow him down into ordinary Joe.
Pic Courtesy: Aljazeera
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