Teachers as healers

Our students need conversations and a liberating education that sees life as a ‘text’. At this juncture, this is important, not bookish lectures

As teachers, what are we supposed to do when the pandemic has unsettled everything, the ‘taken-for-granted’ world has crumbled, and the prevalent bookish knowledge seems to have lost its meaning? Well, as it is said, we are ‘professionals’ and ‘paid employees’, and hence we must abide by what the competent authorities —school principals and vice chancellors — ask us to do. No wonder, we are ‘performing’ our assigned roles: conducting ‘online classes’, covering the official syllabus, asking our students to upload their assignments, and conducting weekly/monthly examinations. It seems that we are conveying a message: pandemic or no pandemic, things should go on as usual; we should remain unaffected and keep teaching/learning the same texts and the same syllabus.

And meanwhile, with the ever-expanding statistics of infections and death and associated psychic nausea and all-pervading economic and existential anxiety, the ‘normalcy’ that we pretend through our online classes reveals its hollowness. Yet, the Chapter 7 of the NCERT mathematics text has to be covered; the techno-savvy history professor must celebrate the Zoom class, and instruct her students to memorise the ten reasons for the downfall of the Mughal Empire; and a student located in a lower middle class family would miss this monologue because of poor internet connectivity.

However, our policymakers and academic bosses would assure the government that in this ‘digital’ era, our education is going on smoothly; and even a three-year-old child of a ‘play school’ in Bengaluru sits in front of the laptop, and consumes the instructions given by her fancy teacher regarding the three techniques of a perfect drawing.

Is it the time that some of us who have not yet missed the call of the vocation of teaching rise up, reveal the utter insensitivity involved in this process, and plead for yet another task we ought to engage with: the role of friends, communicators and healers? True, we are ‘professionals’; we draw our salaries; but then, as teachers we are not merely the mediators between the official curriculum and students; we are also pedagogues with deep sensitivity to the prevalent ontological and existential crisis: the shared tales of pain, anguish and suffering. And the practice of meaningful education must address these issues. The existing syllabus may not be the right thing to be ‘covered’ at this moment; possibly, the existence is longing for something else.

It is in this context that I wish to make two points. First, we have to see beyond the technical question. Education is not a software business; it is not a techno-managerial solution; it is not about the ‘miracle’ of Zoom. The real question is what you teach, and how you communicate at this moment when death is statistics —faceless and anonymous, surveillance is normalised in the age of ‘distancing’, fear is all-pervading, and societal cleavages are distinctively clear.

If as teachers we pretend that existentially and psychologically our students and their families are ‘normal’, and the same business can go on as usual, we are deceiving ourselves. The other day a student of mine informed me that her aunt was diagnosed with coronavirus. What do I do? Do I ask her to sit in front of the laptop, and force her to listen to my monologue on ‘snowball sampling’ or other techniques of social research that I am supposed to teach as a professor of sociology? Or do I engage with her deeply and meaningfully, and converse with her on pain and suffering, prayers and redemption, and patience and endurance?

Or imagine a Class 7 student in the suburb of Delhi who sees his anxiety-ridden father as he has lost his job, and experiences psychic and emotional turmoil in the family. Should the social science teacher fail him if he fails to upload the assignment on ‘fundamental rights’ and ‘directive principles’? Or should she send her a letter with the healing touch, and one day initiate a conversation with the entire class on the gap between the Constitutional ideals and the actual practice of oppression and exploitation: something which is so clear at this time when migrant workers are allowed to die in ‘Shramik Special’ trains, and the gated communities close their door for the entire brigade of ‘maids and servants’.

Our students need conversations, positive vibrations and liberating education that sees life as a ‘text’. At this juncture, this is important; and there would be no harm even if they miss a series of bookish lectures.

Second, we also need to reflect on the way the vocation of teaching has been systematically destroyed and killed. Well, Paulo Friere might urge a teacher to be ‘dialogic’; Martin Buber might celebrate the relationship between the teacher and the student as a ‘communion’; or Jiddu Krishnamurti might imagine a teacher as a catalyst helping the child for inner flowering.

However, our techno-managers and policymakers laugh at these ideals; they have already reduced us into cogs in a learning machine. We are robbed of our agency and reflexivity. We only ‘cover’ the syllabus, over which we have no control. Moreover, these days we are mere tabulators and data providers engaged in the act of documenting the attendance of students, the grades they get in all sorts of exams, and the ‘skills’ we teach.

Tired, alienated and dreamless — we are just docile performers. And software experts, politically appointed vice chancellors, unimaginative policymakers, corporate elites and even fancy NGOs can ‘experiment’ with us, instruct us what to teach and how to teach, and give us a couple of lessons to become ‘market-friendly’, ‘smart’ and ‘efficient’. These days, education is a good business.

Is it the reason that even in this stormy time of socio-existential crisis, we have failed to see beyond the official task of the hugely problematic ‘online teaching’ and ‘covering’ the syllabus?

(The writer is Professor of Sociology, JNU)