Commercialisation of education
These are strange times for teachers. Many teachers are now more nervous about walking into parent-teacher meetings than students and their parents. Teachers have to face embarrassment in front of students when parents hold them responsible for all mistakes and failures of their children. When teachers are treated discourteously, students also stop respecting them. There was a time, not too long ago, when teachers were beyond reproach. As polymaths, philosophers and religious scholars, they inspired awe in children and adults. Indeed, teachers were revered, which is an intense form of respect.
How did teachers fall from the heights of reverence that they had enjoyed for centuries? More importantly, should we revive the tradition of revering teachers? The answer to the first question partly lies in the fact that if you sell yourself like a commercial product, you will be treated like a commercial product. But before delving further into this fact and uncovering other factors that answer the question, let me shed some light on the history of teaching to explain how teachers became so revered.
In ancient India, gurus were more than just teachers to their students. They were also counselors and imparters of knowledge to whom even grown men went for advice. A narrative from the mythological epic poem Mahabharata exemplifies the absolute obedience and extent of power that teachers had at their disposal. During the Vedic period, gurus did not charge a fixed tuition fee from students but accepted voluntary gifts after their education had been completed. Students could give monetary gifts or accomplish a task for the guru as a token of respect and gratitude. This tradition of repayment was known as gurudakshina. However, sometimes the teacher demanded something specific from a student.
In Mahabharata, a guru named Dronacharya was approached by a student of archery. But Dronacharya refused to teach him, because he did not belong to the Kshatriya caste, which constituted the military elite. The rejected student went to a forest, made a statue of Dronacharya for inspiration and taught himself archery. When news of his exceptional skills as an archer reached the guru, he went to him to find out who had taught him the art of archery. He told Dronacharya about the statue and greeted him as his guru. Dronacharya found this disturbing and as his gurudakshina he asked for his right thumb. With a smile on his face, he cut off his thumb and handed it to Dronacharya even though he knew that doing so would cripple his archery skills. He obeyed his teacher even when he knew that the demand was unfair.
Gurus often built boarding schools known as gurukuls around temples and lived there with their families. Students moved in with them and helped them with everyday chores such as keeping the gurukul clean and collecting firewood. This guru-shishya relationship was based on an extreme form of obedience.
In the following time periods, especially during the late Middle Ages, rulers established many educational institutions that focused on religious knowledge as well as other fields such as science, law, philosophy, grammar, mathematics and humanities. Since most of the teachers at these institutions were religious scholars, students revered them so much that they never dared to question the knowledge imparted by them.
Even after modern schools emerged during the colonial era, the absolute obedience that existed in the guru-shishya relationship survived among artisans who had adopted a similar master-apprentice relationship to transfer knowledge to the next generations.
Thus the tradition of treating teachers with utmost reverence evolved and survived many centuries. However, modernisation has taken its toll on this tradition and the reverence for teachers is plummeting. With the advent of modern educational programmes, the prevalence of traditional master-apprentice system has waned significantly. Another big factor is the growing number of teachers and schools in urban areas. It has enabled students to easily move between schools and change their teachers. To test this argument, simply look at teachers in one room schools in villages. They enjoy almost the same levels of reverence that teachers in cities had a few generations ago.
Perhaps the biggest reason for this change was commercialisation of education. Schools and teachers are constantly competing with each other and sell their services like corporations. Since schools are increasing their tuition fees at an alarming rate, parents of students feel entitled to treat teachers like commercial products and do not feel hesitation in being discourteous to them.
Presently, two extremes exist in Pakistan. There are those who staunchly believe in revering teachers, no matter how incompetent they are. We also have people who think most teachers are incompetent, don’t believe in the system, and leap at every opportunity to attack teachers. We need to bring more of these people into the third group that knows how to strike a balance between these two extremes.
A remarkable dichotomy also existed in the ancient world. On one hand, Greek teachers were encouraging students to question everything, including their own teachings. On the other hand, gurus who liked to bask in their own smugness were making absurd demands such as asking students to cut off their thumbs.
The big question is whether there are any merits to reviving the tradition of revering teachers. Children should be taught to respect all human beings equally, irrespective of their class, colour, caste, religion or profession. Many experts are of the opinion that teachers should be portrayed as authority figures in classrooms but at the same time students should be encouraged to discuss everything without hesitation. Respect for teachers can go hand in hand with the habit of asking constructive questions in the classroom. Even excessive reverence in itself is not a problem as long as it does not get in the way of teaching and students are comfortable enough with their teachers to speak freely. Teachers should not be placed at such a high pedestal that students find it difficult to reach them. We must discard useless traditions and facilitate the evolution of our education system.