Teachers : Aaj Kal

This post has been published by me on the occasion of the Teachers' Day as a part of the Blog-a-Ton 2; the second edition of the online marathon of Bloggers; where we decide and we write. To be part of the next edition, visit and start following Blog-a-Ton.

Teachers are like bollywood movies. Its tough to find a perfect blend; as in bollywood movies, we need a miracle to have a good plot, good direction, good drama and good acting. What does one need in a teacher? Yes! you are right - we need a perfect bollywood movie in a teacher - good direction, acting, plot and a bit of drama to make it interesting.
Today teaching has become a mere means of earning rather than the urge and craving to teach. The long bell-bottoms(which were also called elephantas) replacing the tender sharp and narrow ones, big framed retro glass structures replacing slim plastic frameless glasses on the eyes,- these are not the only things that have changed from 70's teachers to todays' ones.
Teaching I feel is in the sideburns, with them disappearing so did the quality of teaching from 70s to the 90s. But its not that there are no good teachers today, the thing is we have lost good students too. Students choose to learn things themselves these days rather than climibing the college stairs for lectures. This is a vicious circle - lack of student interest leads to degrade in quality profs and lack of quality profs leading to a degeneration in the student interest.
Its funny that everyone hates teachers in their childhood but dont realize how they mold them into the person they are today. Ironically these are the worlds that can be derived from the letters of "teacher"
ache
heat
react
hate
retch
tear

But more importantly there is this vital other set too :)

reteach
reach
act
and the most imp one! -- heart

A good teacher is like a drop of mercury falling on the floor, no mathematical model or statistician can simulate how many and what forms the droplet will take once they land on the floor. Same is for the teacher whose pupils spread through out the world in different forms and take the learnings with them. Somewhere inside these students have a part of the teacher in them be it the teachers of 'kaal'(yesterday) or 'aaj ke'(todays) teachers.


(Image courtesy http://thm-a03.yimg.com/image/f49ff9af1ee1c9ee)

The fellow Blog-a-Tonics who took part in this Blog-a-Ton are Vipul, Rajalakshmi, Dhiman, Ranee[1], [2], [3] , Avada, Indian Pundit, Sojo, Aneet, Pramathesh, Aativas, Sid, Pra, Lakshmi, Govind, Shilpa, Bharathi, Shankar, Mytuppence, Azad, Pawan, Pankaja, Saimanohar, Guria, Shruti, Vishnu and Nasrajan. Click on their respective names to read their posts on Teachers : Aaj Kal. To be part of the next edition, visit and start following Blog-a-Ton.