Have you met Aamir Khan or Shahrukh Khan in real life?

Ok, That was just a cheap ploy to make you read my post !! This post is not about the film stars !! It is about teachers !!

Remember Kabir Khan (Shahrukh), the spirited sports coach in ‘Chak De India’ or Ram Shankar Nikumbh (Aamir) - the sympathetic Art teacher in ‘Taare Zameen Par’! Did you sigh, like I did, and wished you had an equally passionate teacher when you were at school?

I wonder whether such teachers exist only in the reel-life. During my school days and college days, I did not find a single teacher of fine-arts or sports, who were passionate about what they taught or even bothered to ‘teach’ anything ! For some sad reason, most people who take up ‘Physical Education’ or Fine Arts as their vocation, take it up only because they do not get admission in any other course of their choice.

The sports teachers I encountered in school and college were uniformly very harsh and violent with students. I was fairly popular in school in academics and other co-curricular activities, but when it came to sports, I was more comfortable cheering those who play from outside the field, than actually participating in the sport. I was sure I would fail and I hated to fail. The PT teachers in school did not help much !

Our Sports periods usually went like this. The master would make us run around the huge field and would then hand over a volley-ball to the girls and a foot-ball to the boys. We were then let free to play. I dont remember a single class where anyone actually bothered to teach us a new sport or the rules of the sport. The sports teacher at school, was a particularly mean man, who terrified all the students and many teachers too. He would term all girls as idiots and would get physical with students at the slightest excuse.

I still remember an episode when he beat up my younger brother, then 8 years old, black and blue, because the teacher’s son got hurt when he was playing with my brother. The man did not bother to ask for details but got really violent and hit the poor kid and my brother came to me crying. He was apparently kicked by the man and had the shoe-mark on his forehead. My sister was in the same school and all of us went home crying.

We were from an ordinary middle-class family. My parents were gentle, law-abiding people, who rarely raised their hands on us. This incident came as a shock to them and they immediately complained to the principal of the school. Unfortunately, our school was a government school and suffered from the same issues that any government organization suffered from. The principal asked my parents to take it easy. He said he had received many complaints in the past about the teacher, but there was nothing he could do, since the man was popular in the ‘Union’ and if we pressed the issue any harder, he would simply say that we had used the name of his caste (We had no idea what it was!) and would send US to jail !! All the teachers were in tears when they described what happened to my parents and admitted that none of them could stop this man when he was beating up the little boy.

Very few incidents have shaken me so much! This happened many years ago, but I still cannot sleep some nights thinking of this man, probably because we were impotent and had to suffer injustice meekly at that time. I have suffered a lot of humiliation from him in front of the whole school, and till this date, I do not know what I did to cause so much hatred towards me, a kid who was a couple of years older than his own son.

The sports teachers I met before him and after him, were not as beastly as this man, or maybe I did not have them as teachers for as long a period as this man. Yet, those that I still remember were still violent men. The boys in the class were the worst sufferers. They would get beaten up for the smallest of reasons ! These people were partly responsible for my complete lack of interest in any outdoor sports !

Our art teacher was no less. His anger was not directed against any single student, but was towards mankind !! When he was in a mood, he would sketch something on the black board and would ask us to copy it down. We were to then submit our drawing notebooks and he would correct the sketches. No instructions on brush/pen strokes, colour combinations and mixing, nothing at all about techniques. When he was not in a mood, he would ask us to read whatever we wanted, while he worked on some work from outside the school that fetched more money ! The only condition was that we had to be completely silent. One murmur from anyone and he would start hitting that person.

Our music teacher was a little better. She would teach us some new songs every class, but never bothered to teach us any voice-culture techniques or ways to improve our singing abilities. But she was better than the other teachers. At least she would not hit us at the slightest provocation.

Our crafts teacher, would teach some stitches and ask us to stitch them on a piece of white cloth. I hated the class even more because the boys in our class had a class on electronics instead of this stupid class. I would usually give my cloth to one of my friends and ask them to do mine too :). This teacher too, would rarely smile.

These days, I hear about stray incidents about harsh teachers, which, compared to what we went through in school, seem almost gentle! But the awareness of the parents has increased and the teachers cannot vent out their frustrations on their poor students any more, or at least that is how it appears to be. Again, this is probably true in private educational institutions, where the parents consider themselves as consumers and demand better treatment because of what they pay the school. I am not sure if things are better than before, in the public schools in India.

Why is it that the number of passionate teachers in non-academic areas is much lower than those in the academic subjects? Is it because of the dearth of opportunities for such fields in the outside world?

What causes so much anger in such people? How can they vent out their frustrations on poor helpless children? Are these children responsible for their careers (or lack of it)? Shouldn’t teachers inspire the students to take up the teaching as their vocation? Are there Kabir Khans and Nikumbhs out in the real world? Have you met one?