Saturday, September 05, 2015

Stop Judging Your Teachers

Vidit Bhargava
Today is Teachers Day. The Social Media is full of students thanking their Teachers. But are we giving Teachers the respect that we should? We aren't.

Most of the students are busy judging their teachers. They try to measure the capability of the teachers by the amount of knowledge she seems to have, whether or not she's just reading out her notes, whether she's just making you do the easy solved examples and ignoring the complex questions. Based on their analysis during the class, you'd often hear them announce a judgement: “Oh! She doesn't know anything.”, “"Must have got through by reservation”, “He's so stupid, just reads out of his notes, must hide them away someday to see what he does then”.

I find these remarks to be evil, full of vice and am tired of hearing these judgements, year after year. They begin in School of course. This is something you'd often hear amongst the extremely intelligent lot, and it's a SHAME. Not only are those students intelligent, they think they know it all, know it more than the teacher. Reality Check: If you knew more than the teacher and were far more skilled than her, you'd probably be considerate enough to not pass of such remarks in the first place.

One of the “Intelligent” students I had a conversation with on the matter, said this “I only have respect for the good teachers, the intelligent teachers. Not them (referring to the teachers that were teaching him at the time)!”. By intelligent, he meant the teachers who had knowledge that he didn't posses. Such shallow was his criteria to measure someone's intelligence. It is ironical, that it was a teacher that once told me that Intelligence is not a measurable quantity. Ah! But only if students listened.

But then, who doesn't dislike the teacher that makes you do your assignments, over and over again, or the teachers who are too strict with the students? Everyone does, at some point. But dislike is not the same as disrespect. I dislike a lot of teachers, but I've hardly ever been disrespectful to anyone of them, in their presence or absence.

Most of us are pleasant to our teachers in their presence. But all this judgmental disrespect happens in their absence. I wish that changes soon.