Tulsi Prajna 1993 01

SR No.: 524573
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Parmeshwar Solanki
Publisher: Jain Vishva Bharati
Publication Year: 1993
Total Pages: 156
Language: Hindi
Classification: Magazine, India_Tulsi Prajna, & India
File Size: 9 MB

Page 97

. 91
Heightening Teachers' Awareness about their Profession profession? Most female teachers, on the other hand, do not seem to suffer from such guilt-complex; the few who do not suffer as much from it as male teachers.
Normally when I encounter such listless teachers who are oblivious to the significance of the teaching profession and the service it renders to the society as well as its individual members, I recommend them Gilbert Highet's (1976) “The Immortal Profession” which is sub-titled “The joys of teaching and learning". Yuri Azarov's (1988) “Teaching: Calling and Skills” is another favourite of mine. Amrik Singh's (1991) On Being a Teacher, though it deals with college and university level teaching, can be called the Indian contribution to the treasuretrove. I recollect with pleasure“Good Morning, Miss Dove!" a book I read twentyfive years ago; I must confess that when I finish its last page and laid it down, I was a transformed person. Its effect has been lasting on me.
There are many other books and articles in which teaching has been eulogised in the highest terms. On the other hand, teaching has been ridiculed a great deal by many. In every society there are jokes, sometimes quite bawdy, about teachers. Recently an English monthly magazine with the largest circulation in the world carried this quip: "There are three sexes : male, female and teachers”!
Notwithstanding such levity, even if occasional, it must be remembered the great teachers have been great men of history. Of course, I do not mean by 'teacher here a person who has undergone formal training and who has been examined and certified to be competent to teach. Here I refer to that calling of the spirit for which certain temperament is ideally suited and the persons who respond to this calling of the spirit denying to themselves most of the material considerations. Bude was one such teacher, Gandhi too was a teacher and, of course, Adi Shankracharya was a teacher par excellence. These certainly were no small men preoccupied with small things in their lives. In the West Socrates. Aristotle and Plato set standards that have inspited generations of men and women from civilizations other than the one to which they belonged.
I do not even for a moment think that all teachers can attain the same heights that were scaled by these great teachers of the past, recent or remote. The teachers of today should dispassionately analyse the nature of their calling and the role that it plays in contemporary society. I would like to open my argument with a quotation from Amy Lowell on the nature of teaching
“Teaching is like droppingideas into the letter box of the human sub-conscious. You know when they are posted but you never know when they will be received or in what form”.
Lowell uses a very apt metaphor to describe the essence of the teaching process. Teaching is an intensely human business. If we were to think of the
January-March 1993