Teacher and Society
Written by: Mr. L.R. Gautam
Math and Physics Teacher at SMP-SMA St. Peter Jakarta
I would like to tell you few things which I see about teachers and the
society. Perhaps there will be no agreement between the way you think
and the way I think. Perhaps I may be opposing the positions taken in
the current code of education. I am neither an educationist nor a social
reformer. It is my good fortune that I can talk about some fundamental
aspects of education and society.
The very first thing I would like to say is that
the present relationship between the teacher
and the society has proved dangerous. The
teacher is a slave and the society is the master.
Society wants the teacher to inculcate the
old jealousies, old enmities and old thoughts
coming down from the past thousands of years
into the minds of young children.
This is a great disgrace for the teachers. The
disgrace is that the diseases from which the
past century suffered are passed on to the
current century, through the teacher by the
society. Our whole education is past-oriented.
All our doctrines, ideas and ideals are taken
from the past. The past is that which is dead
and gone.
To be a teacher is a great thing. You may be
teaching the children, as is taught all over the
world, that they should love others. But have
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you ever thought that the whole structure
of your education is built not on love but on
competition? You claim to teach love, but the
whole arrangement is to teach competition.
Where there is competition there can be no
love. Competition is a form of envy, a sort of
burning sensation, jealousy.
When one child comes first in a class, the
other child is told that he is lagging behind and
this fellow has come first. You are teaching him
to flatter, to compete and get ahead. You are
teaching ego, telling them that one who has
come first is higher, and one who is behind is
lower. One who comes first is being awarded
and others, who are behind, are insulted by the
system.
When you are insulting the one who is
behind are you not goading his ego to push him
to the forefront? When the one who has come