Teachers targeted

For all the ridicule formal schooling has faced over centuries at the hands of liberals and romantic poets - two big names in that line being William Blake and Lord Byron - the mirth and glow that lit up that catch-all phrase in a school boy’s tale has only dimmed every passing day.

. Even until recently, there were moments when teachers would fill thick autograph books of their students with nuggets of wisdom on that momentous day – Last Day of School - tears and hope rolling.

But the more recent February 9, 2012 shock and horror tale that stalked the corridors of a historic 173-year-old missionaries-run school in Chennai, when a 39-year-old woman teacher, Uma Maheshwari, was gruesomely stabbed to death by one of her students in broad daylight, is a grim reminder how it just takes a pen-knife to kill our age-old ‘Guru-Sishya parampara’.

When the news broke out that day, it was something unheard of in the annals of Tamil Nadu’s pedagogic history, which as part of the erstwhile Madras Presidency that virtually mapped entire South India, took an early lead in modern Education, thanks to dedicated Christian missionaries and also governmental efforts.

Uma was basically a Science teacher, but also taught languages like Hindi. On that fateful morning, she was in Standard-X classroom waiting for the boys to arrive. But all that greeted a dutiful teacher that day was this ninth class boy-turned maverick (Police withheld his name as he is a minor), who suddenly walked in and whipped out a pen-knife.

The rattled teacher scampered for her life, screaming. But the boy accosted her and in a rage executed his intent, repeatedly stabbing her on her neck and other places in lightning nano-seconds. A profusely bleeding Uma fell unconscious and subsequent efforts to save her life miserably failed.

The boy, though, had ‘passed’ the devilish skill test he had set for himself that day until Police lodged him in a Juvenile Home that evening. For hundreds of Uma Maheshwari’s students, her teacher-colleagues, parents and relatives, that earnest, smiling face was gone forever.

As a numbed School Principal groped for words, and shattered students and teachers wailed loudly, even the jurisdictional senior Police officer, Assistant Commissioner M Murali, sighed it was, perhaps, the “first such case in known memory of the Chennai City Police’s history”.

Prime motive

By all accounts, Uma had made a negative comment in the boy’s ‘Progress Report’ which he feared will doom his school career. Police still suspect that to be the prime motive for the boy’s horrendous retaliation, a scary example of how hate can impulsively drive impressionable minds. In Uma’s tragic death, a Rubicon in teacher-students relations was crossed.

If ever it spells a new trend, then everyone is responsible for it, strongly feels S S Nathan, Senior Principal and CEO of the reputed Bala Vidya Mandir group of schools in Chennai. Its roots go back to a group of visionary lady-educationists of Mylapore who practised the pedagogic philosophy that “children blossom in an environment free of unhealthy fear.”

Uma’s tragedy is the outcome of a vicious cycle that grips a rapidly changing urban society, explained Nathan to Deccan Herald.

New-age families

“In the good-old joint families, parenting was much easier; but in nuclear families, mothers are now more exposed to other ideas of parenting, while children are a witness to everything at home including nasty quarrels that unconsciously builds up a defense mechanism to return hurt,” says Nathan.

Thus, when a teacher takes a ‘corrective action’ in school in the child’s interest, the kids are unable to discriminate and think it is intended to “hurt” them, Nathan, with decades of experience teaching children and recipient of the CBSE ‘Best Teacher Award’ in 2006, reasoned.

And when mothers fuel their kids’ instinct saying, “Yes, the teacher has hurt you,” the child takes that to be an endorsement and the hate for the teacher becomes stronger, with the boy or girl unable to distinguish between a teacher’s corrective action for their own good and intent to hurt.” Nathan said, putting the issue in a broader socio-psychological perspective.

In Uma’s case it took an extremely bizarre turn, though the boy-assailant later confided his killer-act was influenced by a movie.

Potentially, the latest Haryana incident in which a teacher, Rakesh (37), was run over by two students for being stopped from copying in an exam, is an extension of the Uma Maheswari episode, feels a senior teacher.

Even after a ‘Plus Two’ pass, youths find it relatively easier now to get jobs at ‘call centres’ and so marks or school performance do not matter much, he pointed out. As violent acts get reinforced through the mass media, children also get ‘influenced’ and take revenge even against their own teacher when the latter is erroneously perceived as a ‘wrong doer’, he analysed.

Though such student-teacher hate syndrome, albeit in a hit-and-run juvenile mode is not prevalent in the colleges, Dr Col G Thiruvasagam, Madras University Vice-Chancellor, concurs with that assessment.

Censoring content

While teachers must be ‘role models’ and impart more of the ‘human touch’ than just textual correctness in a technologically explosive world today, Thiruvasagam felt there was also a ‘cultural lack’ when movies and even ad-films for instance, portrayed teenagers openly flexing muscles, ‘falling in love’ with their teachers and even lampooning them.

“The Censor Board must see that such things are to be avoided,” says Thiruvasagam, rooting for a more compassionate teacher-students relationship to avert such aberrations in the educational system. Parents should also not put “pressure” on both their wards and teachers to “perform” at any cost, he added. Creative thinking and healing seems a sane way out of this socio-psychological mess that Uma’s killing has shown up to society.

Teachers going an extra mile to correct the deviant behaviour of their wards are becoming the target of violent reprisals. Two young teachers - one in Chennai and another in Sonepat, Haryana - have paid with their lives for trying to correct the students under their care. Though not a widespread phenomenon yet, it is still a very disturbing trend as the perpetrators of crime are no older than in their early or mid-teens. What ails our once celebrated teacher-student equation. A report...

Teachers targeted

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