On Teaching…
I was gifted a guitar for my 9th birthday. My teacher was a Bengali gentleman called Mr. Batabyal. The guy would give me a lesson with notes and ask me to practise it and come back after one week. If I was able to play what he gave me, he would give me the next lesson. My Mom, who gifted me the guitar, also joined me for lessons.
Both of us would practise and show up. For a few weeks we progressed together. Then one day, I was unable to play the tune he had given me with fluency. Mom was able to ace the lesson.
Mr. Batabyal made no attempt to help me master the lesson. He proceeded to teach Mom the next lesson. And abruptly said the following words to me, “Not you. You first learn the earlier lesson.”
The 9-year-old me was crestfallen with what he did and what he said. And that was the last day that I touched my guitar.
Teachers who do not realise the effect their actions and words can have on students, should not be teachers. It’s been almost 40 years but I still remember the way he said “not you” and the way I felt.
Incidentally, Mr. Batabyal was also a performing magician. It’s possible, yet again, that here was a performer who had to become a teacher perforce.
But there was this blind harmonium teacher at the same school…
He taught a bunch of us. Students would meet him at the gate, hold his hands and help him cross the sports field to the other end where the music room was situated. One day, another boy and I were helping him across the field and we absent-mindedly crossed under a pull-up bar. We suddenly heard a CLANG! We looked up and saw that our taller-than-us music teacher’s forehead had collided with the metal bar. We apologised profusely. He brushed it off kindly and continued to the music room. Not one cross word. No Durvasa-style curses, no Viswamitra-style shraaps.
He wouldn’t just give us notes to practise on our own. He would sit with us, show us, and if we went wrong, show us again. He would help us get it. Under his tutelage I learnt all the sargams, a few ragas and a few songs. I played the national anthem for the school assembly.
It is a certain kind of teacher that brings about learning in a student.
Why am I writing about this today? It was Teachers’ Day last week and a video did the rounds where a musician, Ustaad Zakir Hussain, essentially absolved teachers of the responsibility to teach.
Zakir Hussain and his teacher’s context is different. In the gharana or the guru-shishya tradition, the teacher gets to pick and choose their students.
In other teaching contexts – school, college or in workshops for professionals – educators don’t get to choose their students. They get all kinds of students.
There are students like the mythical Eklavya who persist, despite a teacher’s backstabbing ways. There are students who come from backgrounds where their parents had no education. There are students with learning disabilities, who can be completely destroyed in the hands of the wrong teacher – remember Ishaan from Taare Zameen Par? In the gharana / gurukul tradition, it might have been acceptable to turn away (disadvantaged) students. In the modern education system, it is not.
Our world is diverse, and different kinds of students exist. And that is precisely why teachers must develop the ability to serve the needs of all kinds of students.
Teaching is a very specialised job. It requires a wide range of skills that go way beyond mere subject matter knowledge. What makes inclusive teaching possible is an appreciation of diverse learning styles, endless patience and flexibility, dollops of emotional intelligence, the ability to communicate lucidly, a desire to teach, an essential love for humanity and most importantly the ability to enjoy the company of others.
It isn’t necessary that career musicians with the title Ustaad in their name will have all these abilities. I think it is about time we contemplated the phrase, “Those who can do, can’t teach”.
#teachers #teaching #teachersday
