Teachers' Day
My best teachers are actually my students. Decided to jot a few thoughts down on this day.
I am fortunate enough to conduct a few quiz workshops for children, and most of these double up as storytelling sessions. This is the tenth year I’ve been doing this for schools (though not with the same institution), and one thing I have consciously tried to emphasise since day one is how these workshops should be a two-way street. That way, I get a sneak peek into their world, their thought processes, and how they blossom over time.
My favourite students are the youngest ones, in classes 4 and 5 (and in some schools, class 3 as well). Their thoughts have an immaculate transparency. As a result, they don’t think twice before blurting out whatever they’re thinking at that moment. With age, the idea that people might judge them for their actions—no matter how positive and harmless—begins to creep into their subconscious, and that’s when the trouble begins. For girls, this pressure is even greater, and our societal gaze plays a big role in that.
As I type, a memorable passage by G.K. Chesterton comes to mind:
"The world will never starve for want of wonders, but for want of wonder. We should always endeavor to wonder at the permanent thing, not at the mere exception. We should be startled by the sun, and not by the eclipse. We should wonder less at the earthquake, and wonder more at the earth. What was wonderful about childhood is that anything in it was a wonder. It was not merely a world full of miracles; it was a miraculous world."
Of course, I’ve had my occasional moments of discomfort too. Very recently, a girl from class 3, always smiling, asked, "Sir, did you hear about the R.G. Kar incident?" My heart skipped a beat. Even after ten years of taking these classes, I still don’t have a ready answer for such questions. You can’t escape them, but at the same time, the response has to be nuanced enough for their level of understanding. I remember taking a guest class in a Kolkata school six years ago, where I was supposed to do a workshop on reading newspapers. The Kathua incident had just happened, and I had to skip that activity for the day. I couldn’t bear to look into the eyes of those eight-year-olds, exactly Asifa’s age.
The necessity for nuance brings me to yet another recent anecdote. A girl from class 5 asked about the Bangladesh incident. My first response is usually a very dry, neutral version of events, trying to gauge their point-of-view. She promptly said, “Do you know, Sir, my mother told me power corrupts people, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” I was stunned for a bit. I’m sure I hadn’t even heard those words until I was at least 15.
These workshops remind me that not everything is lost in the world. One day, a student forgot to bring his pencil, and at least five of his friends immediately took out one from their pencil box and offered it to him. I wish I had captured that moment as an instance of accidental renaissance and also as a keepsake for the same bunch so that they never forget this humane touch even when they grow up, no matter how much the world forces them to behave otherwise.
Happy Teachers’ Day to my students. In my case, despite what this day stands for and despite what this screenshot says (the era of WhatsApp, phew!), the wish is actually the other way around.
P.S.- This is also an opportune moment to thank both Aanton da and Samrat da (quizzers reading this have come across them as the founders of the Kolkata International Quiz Festival) who in 2014, trusted an eighteen-year-old suitable enough to take some quizzing activity classes. That experience is still memorable, for a rather unexpected reason. In the debut year, the school was unsure whether they would get enough students interested, especially with other attractive activities like guitar and cricket on offer. By the following year, the school ran out of space to accommodate the newly enrolled students, and we had to shut the workshop permanently.
