I spent four years trying to understand the significance of treating students as lambs and teachers as shepherds. Well, corrupted shepherds of course. And what I understood is that there's nothing to understand. Authorities may continue to speculate modern classrooms as ancient ashrams but that doesn't change the fact that teachers today are no Valmikis or Vyass and no student is an Eklavya or an Aruni. There are exceptions of course and in such cases, the speculative student-teacher relationship need not be enforced; it builds up by itself.
It just feels wrong when a teacher repeats what the books say but behaves as if it's their own hard work of million years, by yelling and mocking students. Whatever happened to, "learning is a two way concept" and "teaching is learning twice".
A teacher's entry in a classroom has become synonymous for dozing time for me. He/she is like an agent armed with notes, mostly digital these days, an authority and the most powerful weapon, the attendance register. No matter how hard you're hit by the sleep bullet, you have to cut off your eye lids or risk being killed by shortage of attendance, a student's Kryptonite. Wouldn't it be a lot better if teachers and students were more like friends? Because c'mon, we all have that one teacher who we all know, including himself/herself, needs more tutorship than his/her students. And the true, learned teachers might become the best friends we ever had with their moral support and guidance.
If colleges really want to create intelligent and independent professionals, how about some independence from the learning stage. Sure we'll screw up but it's the screwing up today that helps you make up a "screwed-up"less future.
