On their day, students give teachers low marks

MRIDULA CHUNDURI / TNN / Sep 5, 2006, 03:07 IST

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According to P L N Prasad, a junior college lecturer, a teacher-student relationship does not exist any longer.

On their day, students give teachers low marks

Hyderabad: Question: What is the role of a teacher in your life?
Answer: She takes a class for 45 minutes every day. She prepares the question paper, corrects answer sheets and gives us ranks.
No mention that she imparts knowledge; she helps build confidence in students and moulds their character. But most of the respondents who were posed this question by TOI answered as above.
That the teacher is described as "she" is, of course, not surprising. Most of them - at the school level - are women.

"Just as it is given that September 5 is Teacher's Day, teachers are taken for granted. Their presence in a student's life is undeniable. But they are no longer motivators or idols for students. They are merely seen as people who are employed by schools and colleges to do a job," says K Jayanthi, a high school teacher.
"Students no longer believe that they can learn anything substantial from teachers," says P Madhavi, winner of state best teacher award in 2001.

"Students these days don't really need teachers as they have all the books and guides that will see them through the examinations. Very few think a teacher can deliver beyond the text book.
Even in job interviews, people seek communication skills and language skills more than clarity in concepts. So, teachers are also not keen on wasting their energies," she laments.
According to P L N Prasad, a junior college lecturer, a teacher-student relationship does not exist any longer.
"It is limited to under an hour of classroom study, where the teacher will drone on about a subject and the student will take notes. The student wants to only know what to learn by heart so as to get a distinction and all the teacher wants is cent per cent success in his or her class," he says.
Agrees former principal of Hyderabad Public School, Ramanthapur, R K Maine. "Teachers' competencies are taken for granted. Parents only want their children to score high marks.
There is no room left for the teacher to impart some outside knowledge or try and work on developing the personality of the child. Teachers are forced to stick to the curriculum and finish it on time," he says.
While agreeing with all this, students also say that it is because teachers don't show enough enthusiasm to 'impart knowledge' that their role is restricted to a recorder reading out what the text book says.
"Very few teachers are interactive in class trying to give outside examples and making us work towards a solution. Most others just recite the text book and tell us what to expect for examinations," says V Siddharth, an engineering student.
"Who can blame us for not looking at them with reverence," he asks. Other students also agree teachers are not always given the respect they deserve.
"In school we were expected to respect teachers, even if it is out of fear. In college, we have enough freedom to do what we want and no body asks us why. So, we really don't care what the teachers have to say about our lives," says S Anushree, an architecture student from the city.
And so, sadly enough, the role of teachers is restricted to unleashing the syllabus on the students and evaluating the same when it is vomitted out in the answer sheet.

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