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For the love of teaching
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Teacher Veni Sukumar is angered by a quote on one of the most revered professions and rushes to defend it
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Yesterday I came across a quote purportedly said by an eminent personality. It said “People who can – achieve, but people who can’t – teach”. Being a teacher and loving my profession, I took it as a personal insult and so here I am venting my ire.
Isn’t the quote very presumptuous? Agreed that knowledge can be gained through books, but who will decipher it to us? Let’s start with who is a teacher. The dictionary says it’s one who imparts information and skills to people on a subject. Isn’t that a very insipid and watered down version of actuality? Apart from teaching a subject, a teacher also grooms students to face real life situations. If we have a lot of achievers today, it’s because they were groomed properly by their teachers.
So many successful people have been teachers in their lives.
Einstein, Gregor Mendel, and closer home Dr. Radhakrishnan, Sir C.V. Raman, Dr. Vikram Sarabhai, were not only teachers par excellence, but also achievers extraordinaire. So how can I ever agree to that comment?
I take the liberty to change the quote as “Those who can – achieve and those who love – teach”.
Teaching is one field where the criterion is not the degrees you garner, but love for the subject, for the profession and for the children, which matter a lot.
The best part of this profession is that one doesn’t age mentally because one is always among children.
The subject and topic may be the same but the response is always varied. Hence there is no diminishing utility or ennui as in other professions. I end this tirade with another quote of my own — “Those who can – achieve, those who are blessed – teach!”
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