When teachers are held hostage by the system

Have you ever been in the shoes of a teacher who cannot reprimand students, monitor their behaviour, fail no one, or even stop them from walking in and out of their class right when the teacher is trying to concentrate? If you have been a teacher ever, you might have experienced the helplessness involved in this situation.

Even guest lecturers are obliged to go through this, hoping that one of the two parties survives the ordeal. Mostly, it is they learning how not to rock the boat, keep it placid, without burning the bridges. Even a slight assertion of one’s position, let alone intellect, can be counterproductive.

The predicament of the current educational system is that teachers are sandwiched in not just two, but in four dimensions. The four dimensions of this vice are: 1) parents 2) promoters and management 3) society and social media, and 4) recruiters and economy.

Each of the stakeholders has urgent and often conflicting demands, and the hapless teacher cannot even ask for a raise. Parents expect the ward to carry forward their misplaced ambitions, oblivious to their capabilities or the economic realities. They expect the teachers to hone their offspring’s intelligence, creativity and character over the six hours, even though the child spends a far greater time at home. It is almost as if upbringing is outsourced.

For the school’s promoters and management, saying ‘no’ to a client doesn’t amount to good business sense. The leaders are convinced that a happy customer is one whose ward is exposed to the latest and greatest, without the slightest physical or intellectual difficulty. 

Since the hard infrastructure is the more visible dimension of growth, as opposed to the soft, the teachers are the last ones to be invested in. For counsellors, it isn’t easy to convince schools about teacher development programmes. 

There is a huge pressure on the schools to deliver a workforce and create jobs in future. The syllabus often appears outdated, the style seems trite, and the teacher appears incompetent at bridging the generational gap. The WhatsApp university fills the informational chasm with low-value din.

As parents and students catch up on various WhatsApp groups, social media channels and more, the whole idea of a child’s absorptive capacity is lost. Everyone is engaged in an arms race to be on the top. Bring in the vagaries of the economy that is obliged to adopt automation while safeguarding employment, the teacher is solving a problem created by others. They are expected to prepare a homo economicus who will survive for the next 40 years, all in a three-credit course with 75 per cent compulsory attendance.

A teacher who succumbs to these pressures in any way would risk being called out on the professional front. A teacher cannot do much when a student or parent is confident that ChatGPT knows it all and that they have to just ‘get through’ this ordeal. Corporal punishments are a bygone, outdated, inhumane practice, but even verbal reprimands are out of question today. A teacher is inches away from her video ‘leaked’ on social media, and her career is finished.

This is when a teacher feels helpless, held hostage by her very patrons, those whom she is supposed to serve, and those whose future she ought to shape. 

It’s time for us to gather the courage to prioritise education over economics, for the idea has always been to shape the character of the student. Parents must take charge of their wards, along with teachers and make it less fashionable to label schools as ‘creativity killers’. Promoters must take the lead and conduct classes, and the businesspeople must stop plucking the fruits and instead invest in the roots. As a teacher, I reckon that the tribe has been shortchanged, for they aren’t paid even remotely as close to what they are expected to pull. It starts with parents. Yes, you!

(The author teachers at a IIMB)