Changing role of a teacher in modern times

BY HURAIN KHAN

What is a teacher? I will tell you. It isn’t someone who teaches something but someone who inspires the student to give of her best in order to discover what she already knows. (Paulo Coelho).

   

A teacher is considered to be a second parent to a child. A teacher is the one who makes a child come out of the world of illusion and encounter reality with prudence. A teacher plays a significant role in preparing a child to move from the stage of innocence to the stage of experience. However, with the evolving time when everything is changing so fast, a teacher cannot be adamant but perhaps has have to be subject to change.

In earlier times, the teacher-student relationship was based upon a sort of fear because taming for that matter was an important aspect of teaching. Undoubtedly, a teacher did the same level of hard-work and was dedicated towards his students but the matter of the fact being that students were not able to share that friendly relationship with them.

It was considered a prominent aspect of teaching to be strict with students and students were also made to adjust with the similar environment because they thought of these things as axiomatic. With the advent of modernity, role of a teacher and modes of teaching however changed. A teacher in present times has to befriend a student in order to make him comprehend things.

It is because modernity didn’t come in isolation but brought with it a lot of positive as well negative things. Students in earlier times were happier than the students in present times as students or children in present time get exposed to things way before they are meant to be.

We observe children suffering from depression etc. and also children nowadays have become way too sensitive; so, the role of teacher has become difficult because he has to deal with and at the same time tackle such situations. He has to befriend a child, has to make sure that the child does not develop any inferiority complex, has to treat his student with love and care.

Pandemic didn’t do any less loss to the education system. It was although the biggest challenge for the teachers to maintain stability. There was an abrupt shift from in-person teaching to virtual ones.

The gadgets which were considered to be a mere distraction for students became the only source of virtual teaching and thus it exposed students to technology of which they had not much awareness prior to the pandemic.

Students got indulged in various sorts of distractions for which they were too young like various social media platforms, games and much more; thus, they lost their concentration power and were easily preoccupied by various mundane activities.

After the span of almost three years, normalcy returned as the process of teaching again shifted to the in-person mode but for teachers it was not a cake walk. They had to strive hard in making children come out of all the distractions as well as traumas as many of them lost their loved ones.

Moreover, teachers had to adjust them with offline/classroom teaching and at the very same time had to make them understand the meaning of examination which they had long forgotten in the span of three years.

In modern times, where children seem to give importance to all other things except for education obviously because of the distractions and at the same time get easily involved in certain unethical activities, the role of teacher in making them fathom the importance of education becomes momentous.

A teacher has to teach them in the first place that education is the only source of light through which they can have a better understanding of the world around them as without gaining knowledge they will not be able to understand life itself as education gives our life meaning.

Paulo Coelho in his novel The Alchemist says that there are two important occasions in a human life, the first is when a person is born and second when he discovers why? And according to my perception, one can discover one’s purpose in life only when he gains an education in its true sense because knowledge only opens the doors of success and when one is filled with enthusiastic endeavour surely, he achieves his goal and eventually it gives meaning to his life.

Thus, I would like to conclude with Francis Bacon, a great essayist in the history of literature who said that, “Knowledge is Power”. As, in order to express oneself to the world one ought to be knowledgeable and when one becomes capable to do so, his knowledge becomes his power and when one owes this power, he has a world to win.

Thus, in these times, there is a considerable amount of necessity to teach our kids things like these so they are able to fathom the importance of the same as a child is like a glass in making, the shape which we will give it, it will acquire the same: then no one could ever stop them from achieving anything in their lives.

Hurain Khan is presently working as a teacher at G.D. Goenka Public School.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are the personal opinions of the author.

The facts, analysis, assumptions and perspective appearing in the article do not reflect the views of GK.

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