Teachers ought to renew faith in the very meaning of the vocation of teaching | The Indian Express

Teachers ought to renew faith in the very meaning of the vocation of teaching | The Indian Express

Written by Avijit Pathak |Updated: September 5, 2019 10:43:05 am

Avijit Pathak teaches at JNU

Teachers ought to renew faith in the very meaning of the vocation of teaching

They are not loyal soldiers, nor cogs in a bureaucratic machine. They must be free to be wanderers. And poets and philosophers

Ours is a society that devalues the vocation of teaching. Illustration: CR SasiKumar

From Yajnavalkya conversing with Maitreyi in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad to Rabindranath Tagore seeking to make a difference in a “poet’s school”, from MK Gandhi evolving with the children in Tolstoy Farm in South Africa to Paulo Freire nurturing the vision of a “dialogic” teacher: The great ideals and practices have always given a meaning to the vocation of teaching. However, ideals fall apart in the difficult times we live in.