Role of a teacher

G. Gautama

In many many societies, the school teacher occupies a respected place and is seen as having an important role in the growth of children. The teacher today teaches subjects and is also expected to impart values for good living, perhaps even model them for young people. The teacher is part of society, and beliefs related to teaching and learning operate to shape and support the perceived role of the teacher. In a tightly controlled monarchy or a totalitarian state the teacher is expected to fully endorse and support the values of the state. What is his/her role in a democratic society?

For instance, competition and the sense of success that results – the ambition to prove oneself in the eyes of others – are hotly debated, yet considered necessary in most schools. So central is this to the schooling that one cannot conceive of education without competition. Should the teacher communicate these values to children? Or should the teacher ask, “What is achievement? Is it necessarily the result of competition?” Is success not born of helping the young person find out what he/she deeply thinks and feels? What would it mean to support the individual child in dreams that have not yet grown strong enough?

There are many areas of a teacher’s role that do not have easy answers, but expectations. Can a teacher hold hurt or retaliate?

We are all sensitive to criticism and ridicule. Can a teacher be touchy about what students say about him/her? Today you learn that you have been criticized behind your back and ridiculed cleverly by one of your students. And you need to meet this student the next day. What do you bring to the person and the group that is watching? Does one ignore the contempt? Or does one try to confront the student to prove how wrong he/she is? Can one meet the student without the shadow of hurt, holding no anger or ill feeling? It is clear that the teacher cannot indulge in violence or react rudely. How does one come upon right action in situations like these? How does the teacher persist with a difficult question, which applies not only in relation to students, but colleagues, family and others?

Another area – where does competence or viability lie, in a teacher’s own life?

What does the teacher bring to the student? Is it an affirmation of the individual’s being, or a demand for proof of viability in others’ eyes? The teacher’s viability is often linked to student performance. Will a teacher be disappointed if the student is “not working enough” and does not do as well as expected? Is the teacher’s role to ensure that students do well in the eyes of the management, the Board? Or is it alright that each student, without feeling invalidated, goes as far as is possible, remaining whole as a human being? How is the teacher to find out what is “enough”?

The teacher resides in a difficult learning zone, where the main concern is an affirmation of the being of the young. Is the teacher willing to surrender – surrender all expectations of reward for effort? When a student fares badly in a board exam, will he see disdain in the teacher’s eyes or will he still experience value for his personhood?

What is a teacher’s relationship to knowledge?

Knowledge is also seen as access to power, and most education leans heavily on knowledge transaction. How should a teacher look at information and knowledge? Is the main role of the teacher to broadcast knowledge to students, or to build competency? In an era when most information is available to the student directly, how does the teacher build competency and skill with facts? Are these skills in any way linked to values, to perspectives? Is the teacher committed to support each student in investigating these values and perspectives, irrespective of what he can or cannot do, building on whatever the individual knows and from wherever he/she stands? Where and how does the teacher draw the line between pushing for movement and validating a diversity of intelligence?

Does the teacher only endorse values society holds?

Should the teacher only engage with uncontroversial subjects? What should a teacher do when war is on, far or near, and the media is full of it? Or when there is story of discrimination or brutality that trickles in from the neighbourhood, near geographically or from the global village? Should the teacher blandly say, “Sometimes terrible things happen to people. We need to be careful and not be caught in the crossfire of events.” Or should the teacher point to the subtle and obvious aggression and violence in the hearts of all men, something that seems to erupt when people are swayed by feelings of “us and them”? Krishnamurti pointed out, “You are the world and the world is you.” Should the teacher risk saying, “Regardless of cause and seeming justification, all killing is wrong! What is highlighted is not always right! Life means plurality and therefore, listen carefully without violence.”

Life’s problems often do not yield easy understanding. The student needs to learn the art of considering many perspectives, yet not be afraid to take a considered stand. Is the teacher to subtly burden the student with expectations – from school, from family, from society – that one should earn name and fame? Should a teacher, a caring human being, know the art of holding multiple answers, multiple histories, multiple explanations?

Setting the student free… is that a central concern?

In the digital era we have many sources for learning, some needing meaningful facilitation. Should the student be dependent on the teacher for learning? Or should the student be independent of the teacher, yet open to learning? Dependence and obedience make for order and respect. Should the teacher demand obedience for the sake of order, since learning cannot happen without order? Or should the teacher’s role and relationship be such that it sets the individual student free, free of the teacher and of inner compulsion? In what ways does such a relationship support the central ideas of mainstream education today? Holding the humanity of ancient questions vulnerably, can the teacher be equal with his/her students, while inviting careful examination of the visible and the invisible, the fact and the principle and the fundamentals in and beyond right and wrong?

Will teachers be seen only when their students are recognized and endorsed by society? Or will they blend like the trees in the morning mist, barely visible, occasionally felt when one takes a walk? A human being first and last…is the teacher one who has taken a stand – to speak the truth, to learn from life and relationship and to choicelessly hold affirmations for the next generation…?

G. Gautama was principal of The School KFI for over 18 years. During this time several structural and pedagogic initiatives were implemented. He steered the launching of the new residential KFI school, Pathashaala (near Thirukalukundram) where he has been serving as Director-Secretary since 2012. He can be reached at gautama2006@gmail.com.