Teaching as a career in India

Rajesh’s post on math teachers kicked me to writing this. Teaching or Educating, as it is now called, is listed in the Noble professions list. I am sure there would be a teacher in every one of our families, a thatha / athai /maama. All of such people of yesteryears I have met have been a very dedicated lot. Love their profession, contended, dream of producing better citizens. They expect in return, just to hear, their children [my mom used to call all her students as children] have done good, got better in life, of course along with their paltry pay, barely enough to support a family in a small town/village.

But today, who is taking up this profession?? Where is this in the Radar of a bright career aspirant?
Leaving apart the intellectuals in the premier institutes of the country, who constitute less than a 1000th of the whole community of teachers, I have to say from my experience that this profession has been the option of only the bottom X% of the class. Exceptions being folks with locational constraints or having a high degree of contentment, or either of the working spouses who wants to have a better work-life-balance. I am yet to see a person from the current generation who has taken to teaching in India, as a matter of choice.

Those who are a bit smart have exploited the money making opportunities available, starting from daily tuitions to entrance and special coaching. I know of a lecturer who was a project guide for a group of students, and ended up doing the whole project for the guys @ 5KRs. And wait, he evaluated his own project for nice internal grades! How pathetic!!

The system is now producing a generation of people trained in exploiting short cuts in the world. A generation of people just satisfied with the marks they get, [mostly by working 3 pervious yrs question papers, anybody can get 75% in any of the TN university exams, since the q-paper setter chooses from a combination of questions from 3 previous years papers, so that he doesn’t waste time, and he can go to take a tuition or entrance coaching class], following the policy 'just need good Ends, irrespective of how the Means are', which obviously fire back in long term and produce Ends just as good as the Means are.

There is a justification going on, that the teachers are also humans. They would also need money and more so, also have greed for money as everybody else does. Agreed, but at what cost?? Like Rajni says in Annamalai, Panam sampathikka aairam vazhi irukkumbodhu yenn ya indha punidhamana thozhilla asinga paduthareengha??.

On more thought, I could not, but massively appreciate the vision our forefathers had, when they put down the rule that, the learning/knowledge class has to beg even for their next meal, and not save anything for themselves.

Update: Random Access continues...