Teaching as a profession

Place:Sringeri Shankar Mutt, Bangalore
Time:Summer holidays,every year.
Occasion:Summer Camp for school kids aged between 11 and 17
What I did there: Taught Vedic maths to school kids.
Satisfaction level:***** on a 5 * rating system.

Place:Home sweet home.
Time:Almost every day of the year,2002
What I did:Coached a class X student for the board exams.
Satisfaction level:**** and a half * on a 5 * rating system.

Other memorable teaching (this time, read 'victimizing' ) attempts:Whacking the hell out of my younger brother,while 'helping' him with his acads :)

Teaching is indeed such a satisfactory profession.I have had my share of horrible vampire-like teachers too : the ill-tempered Mukta maam for example...She used to break a dozen glass bangles every week during the process of her daily ritual of slapping me for being a naughty kid in class.Despite these unfortunate encounters, I've always had a major soft corner for teaching as a profession.The idea of being in charge of moulding an individual,equipping an individual with necessary knowledge and skills, and more than anything else, inspiring an individual to make the most of his abilities appeals a lot to me.

Teaching is also an immensely challenging job in its own right.While hunting for a 'challenging' job, most people do brush teaching aside.I beg to differ.Transferring print to young minds is a mundane way of going about it.Whether teaching is challenging or not depends on what the teacher wants to impart, how effectively the teacher imparts it and how well the teacher can get the student to remain attentive,to relate to,to absorb and to apply what has been taught.This reminds me of how my dad used to make it a point to teach us botany only in the garden.His help with my history lessons were so effective that I could paint and visualize the two world wars and the struggle for Indian independence when he spoke of them.He would refuse to help us mug geography merely from the textbook,if we went to him without an Atlas in hand.But the very best part of his teaching was when it came to science.Making countless small paper boats for us on rainy days, setting them afloat,sitting by the window sill watching their motion with the water current and explaining the fundas of buoyancy was some patience personified!He even helped us make models of steam boats,setup small experiments with potatoes,water tumblers and paper pieces,get us intrigued with an observed phenomenon, and set us on the path of figuring out why things work they way they do.

I can think of two major reasons,besides a plethora of smaller ones,as to why people shy away from such a respected profession.....and the sad part is that the two are inter-linked.Reason 1: It doesn't pay well unless you're a big-time PG/research teacher.Reason 2:The social stigma or dignity of labour factor in the Indian society.In fact,the two are inter-linked because Indian mentality ensures that the rich dad is the most respected man in the society.The least we can do about it is to change our attitude towards dignity of labour,stop glorifying software coolies,give teachers their due credit and look beyond following the herd for a change.