A MISTAKEN-IDENTITY CALLED TEACHER BY JOHN MOHD. People consider me as a teacher, yes, a teacher whose job is to teach the innocent children, facilitate their learning, change their attitudes, get best out of their capabilities by making things clear, simple and easy to digest for them. No doubt, all this can be achieved only after presenting myself a role model or an icon of inspiration before my little innocent students and putting my utmost efforts, which would cost all my professionalism including my knowledge, skills, techniques and more importantly my commitment, consistency and steadfastness towards doing justice with my job, for which I have been actually appointed. Although a unilateral agreement, my job title as per the appointment orders vividly read and suggested that I am going to be a FUTURE TEACHER- an ambassador of affection, knowledge, wisdom and understanding etc And, from the little understanding from my past experience, while myself being a student of primary, upper primary and secondary schools, the job for a designated teacher would exclusively mean to deal with the students, to make them learn and learn from them too. In nutshell, a job which is children oriented. To my knowledge and belief,even If all the available encyclopaedia of the world and all the relevant English dictionaries including the Oxfords and the Websters, being authorities in the field, are put together to spell out the meaning of the word TEACHER as noun and adjective, they too would not read its meaning as the other way round and would unequivocally reverberate with the same explanation and same nature of the job as understood by the general wit. Without going too far technical about it, even a lay mans wisdom would also suggest the same crux of being a teacher as to invest maximum time and energy by him ( teacher) for building or alleviating the intellectual capabilities of the children. My job title as TEACHER is what I have consciously chosen for myself as my destiny and the nomenclature as TEACHER is what people look at me through and expect from me through the same prism. Realistically speaking, neither the people are wrong in their expectations nor do I have any regrets for opting for such a job title as, this is the profession which I have heard people often speaking about, as being a PROPHETIC PROFESSION. This is the job which used to inherit all respects and reverences in the societies and this is the job which perhaps nobody has any doubt in believing that it leads people from darkness towards illumination.. BUT alas!! all my understanding came out to be a farce and a disillusionment, in fact, had a little shelf life beyond that of a water bubble which bursts to the surprise of being nothing except a round thin flamboyant deceptive membrane of water. My role as teacher has always been miles away from the role, I had actually aspired for, being a teacher and the role which really had inspired me at some point of time, while looking at few of my beloved teachers performing it quite nicely and satisfactorily. For people outside the system, as mentioned earlier, I am exclusively a teacher but, hardly do they know that I am myself a big irony, a big tragedy rather a mistaken identity. They hardly know that I am more a clerk, a person more often deputed for census and surveys. They hardly know that I am a person who cant take the class of my inquisitive students as I am not supposed to be absent in the frequent election related trainings. I am sure my critiques hardly know that I am a person who has to prepare his school for the forthcoming elections, ensuring a ramp, ensuring enough furnishing for the arriving polling party and other facilities, if my school happens to be a designated polling station. Obviously, after the frequent training courses, as my critiques are unaware of, I cant take the classes of my beloved students yet as I have to be either a polling officer first or polling officer second on the scheduled polling day. The story doesnt end here, my misnomered job as a TEACHER in a GOVT school makes me a person whose early morning hours, in fact precious -morning hours in the school are often wasted out in arranging the various items for preparing the mid day meals, with roaming around shops and vendors to ensure and abide by the meal menu chart issued by the department, nevertheless framed unrealistically and not in commensurate with market. My woes as a mere symbolic teacher see no ends but my limited expression is my impediment. My dealing with the Sarpanch ( village local body head) is quite nasty and always disturbing as his every word speaks his filthy political propensities and expose his malicious intent. His eyeing on the funds granted to the schools makes the school environment full of suspicion and mistrust. While dealing with such people, I forget for the whole day, that I am someone called teacher whose exclusive job was to deal with innocence of children but innocence and politics of sarpanchs and like people are always antagonistic to each other. Right from the outset, I am a victim of identity crisis as my daily job in my school does no way satisfy my inner being, does no way seem to quench my thrust and does no way seem to lend me that dignity and self respect as I had expected after choosing to be a TEACHER as most of the works i am made to perform in the school have nothing to do with my Job NOMENCLATURE . In fact, I always feel that both of us are not made for each other. I have no hesitation to admit openly that I have got duped and deceived by this JOB TITLE called A TEACHER. Given the actually nature of my job and the misleading title it holds, I have been made to believe that i am working in a state of MISTAKEN IDENTITY with my job title merely a MISNOMER. What all I can do is to hope that my aspiring little students will forgive me for all the injustice meted out to them in the name of free and quality education which perhaps is something like a distant dream given the diversification and dilution of my Primary role as a teacher which in fact is beyond my control as being a mere NAME-SAKE TEACHER..
Posted on: Wed, 23 Apr 2014 08:53:53 +0000
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