To Sir With Love

by Saikat Rudra


The lessons were too hard. In computer jargon -''Access Denied.''

  ''You did not study, I think. Why?'' He asked softly.

  ''Yes, I did.''

  ''Then come to me after the classes are over.''

He had a serene look. He spoke gently and clearly, and his baritone voice was awe-inspiring. But for a child of twelve he was a distant man.

The teachers� room was upstairs. As soon as I was at the door he called me in and sat me beside.

   ''Feeling hungry?''

I nodded.

   ''Well, let's have some refreshment. Oh, before that inform your parents that you will be a little late today.''

He dialed the number and talked to my mother.

The refreshment was sumptuous. And then instead of giving and taking lessons we chatted away for more than an hour, and lo and behold, the hard lessons turned so soft that even after so many years I remember them vividly.

After two years Sunil Babu (Sunil Bhattacharya) left our school for a better job.

I remember Mr. Pravat Sarkar, Mr. Milan Bhattacharya and Mr. Sukumar Das who were more friends than teachers.

Why?

Besides giving lessons they taught me to see the world in a positive way, to have respect for human values, to love the society we live in, to build my self-esteem.

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''I BOW DOWN TO THE VENERABLE TEACHER WHO HAS EMANCIPATED ME FROM THE DARKNESS OF IGNORANCE, WHO HAS OPENED MY EYES TO KNOWLEDGE.''

One may bawl at me: ''Hey, these are old ideas. A teacher is a man who needs money to live. Like other professionals he too sells his knowledge and labour to earn his living.''

He is right if only the buyers and sellers can make the world livable.

Sunil Babu passed away a couple of years back. Pravat Babu and Milan Babu are away now. Yet they are with me forever as they were not sellers.

Website: http://ptolemy.sulekha.com

A tribute to the Teacher �ternelle

by Ipsita Shome

Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941)

150 years ago we saw light on earth. The light of literary revolution, social evolution and elemental perspective. The Nobel Prize is an understatement for his works- the knighthood thrown into anonymity with his own hands. It is surprising how little we know of the man extraordinaire. It is even more perturbing how a comparative less we utilise his theorems of life to make a statement in the same. Just a reminder � Rabindranath Tagore was a man of outstanding literary merit and social standing, even so, his endeavours in radicalising generations after generations with the subtlety of his pen and the evenness of his thinking, not only makes him an immortal icon but also the wishful teacher every nation, every institution yearns for.

Let�s not go into his galore of excellence in written and illustrative art. Much has been said about that already. What needs to be defined and redefined is his ability to be that ideal teacher that preserves the minor nuances of a generation that sets them apart, educate them in the distinctive correct and incorrect, and pave the way for creative insight without posing to be both the rock and the hard place.

�The true teacher defends his pupils against his own personal influence.  He inspires self-distrust.  He guides their eyes from himself to the spirit that quickens him.  He will have no disciple�, said Amos Bronson Alcott. And quite truly so. Ask any student Tagore had taught. They�ll refer to him as the father figure that they desired for, the educator that led to the contouring of this nation, the selfless sage who sheltered the homeless from the raging August storms in his own abode when Bolpur was devoid of concrete structures other than the Shantiniketan Bari. Godliness came much later, when his gold framed pictures made to the walls of the Writers� Building, police stations (even outside Calcutta) and other judicial houses.

Teaching is leaving a vestige of oneself in the development of another.  And surely the student is a bank where you can deposit your most precious treasures. His institution churned out titans like Gayatri Devi, Indira Gandhi, Satyajit Ray, Abdul Ghani Khan and Amartya Sen. They are products of the fact that they�ve been discovered and nurtured by teachers and by Tagore himself to outshine their contemporaries in their fields of expertise. The sage showed that the objective of teaching is to enable an individual to get along without his teacher in his years ahead. And for the wonder of God, how so! His 150 years of contribution to the society and more is not only symbolic of his undying code of principles, but also the finesse of a man India had the fortune to witness and own � an emblem of virtue, spirit, lull and good sense.

Author's personal blog: http://ipsita7shome.wordpress.com/

I-P-C: The Indian Penal Code of Modern India

by Rajabrata Banerjee


Social liability in India can be defined as an integral part of Indian Penal Code (IPC): Illiteracy, Poverty, and Corruption (I-P-C). Interestingly, although there is an explicit �punishment� for every criminal activity under the IPC: murder, rape or even common burglaries, there is no written cure for I-P-C. Is it something that is incurable? Then why have these factors received serious attention from development economists over the past several decades? Or is it something that we take as granted in India � one of the fastest growing countries in the world? The fact is, the more we take them as granted, the larger will be our inability to think scientifically about these issues.

The cure that I can think will simultaneously reduce I-P-C for any developing country is: �Education�. Education comes in three forms: subjective literacy, moral education and self-consciousness. The first step is subjective literacy � the knowledge that can help a country to achieve higher economic growth in the long run. Simple macroeconomics tells us that higher average years of schooling will increase the number of students pursuing tertiary education and this in turn will improve the number of skilled labors in the economy. The net effect is simple: higher skilled labors will generate greater pool of labor force in Research and Development (R&D) and in turn will produce higher rate of innovations and technological progress. The net result is higher economic growth.

The next form of education is moral � the power of knowledge that helps one distinguish between right and wrong, rational and irrational and to achieve �growth with development�. However, moral education becomes more effective only when one has some degree of subjective literacy. The lack of moral education creates superstitions, blind beliefs and other kinds of irrational behavior in our daily lives, which has both political and social ramifications. How can we achieve moral education? Indeed, here the learning in early childhood becomes important. The environment of one�s schooling, the role played by one�s family, and finally, the society we live in. This process is self-emerging. Once you find yourself in the middle of a society where everyone else is progressing, you will have an automatic incentive to catch-up. 

The final form of education is self-consciousness. In this form of education, one realizes that he or she has an identity in this world, and also that one can play an important role by contributing positively to the society. However small the role may be, it is still likely to be significant. It is hard to find a formal institution that provides the knowledge of self-consciousness. However, this is knowledge that heavily depends on the other two forms of education. The fulfillment of education lies in this form. 

Many of us complete the first form of education with flying colors, a few pass the second form to some extent, and only few lucky ones reach the third form of self-consciousness. It is in this stage when one shares one�s beliefs with others and finds a way to contribute to the society to make it a better place to live in: an economy achieving both growth and development. 

It is our responsibility to educate people in all three forms. Each of our examples will lead others to pay the virtue forward. Collectively, all our contributions will help India become developed, both economically and morally. These are the questions one must find answers to: is one contributing anything other than tax money to his or her nation? Is one�s identity worth remembering? It is only by answering these questions we can eliminate illiteracy, poverty and corruption (I-P-C). 

Author's website: http://unisa.academia.edu/RajabrataBanerjee/About