I have a story today, one that has been building over a long time, like snow building on a pine tree, waiting for the final disruptive tremor that will bring it all cascading down. This is also an education piece, one that feels redundant even as I begin to write it, – feels fruitless, because I already know that it will make no difference in the end. But, like many other writers who write because of their own compulsion, I’ll keep typing.
I work a part-time-ish job at a coaching centre in Pune, working as an English instructor. I had joined it several months back, just before the pandemic took the world properly in its grip. The coaching centre was a business venture by one of my colleagues from then, a math instructor who worked at the same school that I did. I needed to make some extra money, he needed a good person to take English classes, and so we talked it over and reached an agreement.
Then the pandemic bloomed over the world, and everything changed.
One year later, I am no longer in Pune. I quit the job at the school and relocated back to my hometown, which was a merry story in its own right. It was rather risky to give up a job in the middle of the COVID economic crisis, but enduring the malpractices of the corporate education cartel was proving to be a little too much for me. But although I gave up the main gig, I could not cut away the whole thing. I needed a trickle of cash flowing in, and so I held on to the coaching centre job.
It wasn’t difficult. All the classes were still online, so it didn’t matter whether you were in the same city as the coaching centre. As long as the pandemic was here, I could keep working. And that’s what has been going on till now, no problem. The conflict of this story is elsewhere.
Like any ambitious businessman, the owner of this coaching centre – the math teacher – is a dreamer. His sweet dreams are made of increased student numbers, prominent media attention, prestigious position in parent-student circles, and ultimately – money, much, much more money. And to make his dreams come true, he adopted the well-tested means that are used by all private schools all over the country: expensive, energetic advertising. Of course I had problems with that.
No, I am not against the general idea of advertising – this is a man who writes on his blog and sends the link to people to read – but I cannot bear it when the substance of the commodity is sacrificed in favour of the packaging. In other words, I don’t mind a businessman, but I cannot stand a huckster. And today’s world – on seemingly every front – is a world drowning in huckster culture.
This is how things came to a head.
A couple of weeks back, I suggested a debate between two different batches of students who took classes at ‘the Academy.’ I made the suggestion to the owner, and he said that he liked the idea, and that it should definitely be organized. The date and the time would have to be fixed. He has a ‘coordinator’ for these things, a person whose job is to make announcements to the customers (i.e. the students and the parents) and occasionally to the people who work at the coaching centre as teachers. The coordinator would talk to the students and their parents, get a date and time agreed upon, and finalize the event. I told him that I will let him know about the topic, the rules, and the general terms of the debate within a couple of days, following which he could have the event organized.He agreed. I prepared the stuff, and sent it to him within the hour.
A debate is a complicated thing, especially in the context of today’s pedagogic culture. As it exists in the mind of school administrators and most school teachers, a debate is essentially a public-speaking activity, where smart kids rattle off statistics and arguments to prove the opponent wrong, and in the end, the one who out-spoke everyone else wins the big prize. In this form of debate, which is extremely popular at schools with youngsters and grown-ups alike, practically no importance is attached to teamwork, research, subjective analysis, nuanced delivery, and a good exchange of thoughts. It is simply a smart gimmick, a stage act for children raised to be self-centered. Children who have assiduously been taught rambunctious public speaking, but who have had little or no training in reflective, private thinking.
It is for this reason that I took care to mention in the rules (that I sent to the owner person) that the students will have at least seven days to research their material for the debate. I outlined the roles that the coordinator and the owner would need to play, the people the debate would need (participants, judges and the audience) and the general timeline the debate would follow.
I found out very soon that neither the owner nor the coordinator even read the rules. I knew this by the messages I received from them over the next few days. “Great..please share details with students cand parents Thank you” – came a reply. When I asked ‘Do we have three judges?’, the reply was ‘Ok’. Apparently the coordinator was unfamiliar with the nature of Yes/No questions. In the following days, I received no update regarding any arrangements being made, any judges being appointed, or anything else being done by either the owner or the coordinator. There was a vague message posted on the students’ groups that mentioned a ‘tentative date’ of 4th June. There were no further intimations of any kind that came to me.
I knew what was up. The debate was my idea, so the management expected me to deal with the management of the debate – fixing the time, finding judges, following up with all the parties – the whole thing. I also knew that I wasn’t going to do any of it. I had done my part by delineating the rules of the debate and describing in full detail the entire event plan. Now it was the job of the manager to get it arranged. As the English instructor, I would work with the students and help them prepare, but that was it.
Of course I knew that the management wouldn’t do its job. They would leave it alone, expect the working employee to do all the work, and in the end – claim credit and publicity if the event became a success. It’s the classic model of dual governance, one that’s familiar to any student worth their salt. That’s why I called these people hucksters.
Today is 4th June. I knew that the ‘tentative date’ was today, and the time was 7 p.m. in the evening. I had been in touch with the students, and yesterday I spoke to all of them regarding their game-plan for ‘the debate tomorrow.’ As far as the actual debating was concerned, everything was set.
In the afternoon, the owner called me up. “Uhh sir the debate is today na?” he asked. I said yes. There was a huge noise of exasperation from the other end. Then he said, “Sir but group mein announcement invitation kuch nahi dala hai na.” I said, “I don’t know sir, the last thing I saw is that a ‘tentative date’ was posted. I know on my end that the students are ready. I don’t know anything more.” Another ‘pch’ of exasperation. Then, silence. I held for a minute, and when it was clear that no one would be speaking any more, I disconnected the call. Five minutes later, the coordinator called me up. “Sir, is this a good time to talk to you?” Wow, that was new – where did she take her communications training, at a telemarketing office? I said “Yes,” just because I was interested to see how she plays it. “Sir, there have been no announcements…..” she went on with the expected tripe. Then she said, “So the debate will have to be cancelled, because nobody knows that it is going to happen.” I said, “Ma’am, then you will need to tell the students that the debate is not happening, because I spoke to all of them yesterday and they are all expecting it to happen this evening.” “But sir there had to be an announcement so everyone at the Academy could know. …. If you can put the announcement, and design an invitation and share it on the group and tell everyone, then we can have the debate on Tuesday.” See how charming it is? I said, “Ma’am, I don’t think I can do that.” Then she said okay and ended the call. A few minutes later, there was a message on the students’ groups – “Dear All The Debate Competition has been called off due to technical issue.”
And that was the end of it. I came here, typing up the story before it dissolves into nonchalance and idleness. They, in all probability, spent several minutes discussing my lack of initiative and thinking of a way to make me regret this. The question I am left with is this: do I wait for them to drop me, or do I drop them and end the whole business right now? I am certain that the nice owner wants nothing better than to swindle me out of my fees at the end of this month before he drops me – trust me, I have seen enough of these ‘entrepreneurs’ acting in the same patterns – but I think I will risk it and not quit by myself just yet. I have worms to buy for my plants.
Health and education are two sectors where amoral businessmen successfully make their fortunes. One reason for this is that you never run out of customers in these two sectors. There’ll always be diseases, and there’ll always be parents with children. In today’s day, moreover, more and more parents are clueless about how to raise their kids, so they tend to depend heavily on schools and coaching centres. A very dependable opening for making money, y’know?
I can somewhat understand which coaching center is probably being referred to here.
I have quite weirdly an experience quite antithetical to this one. It’s not an exact opposite and there is no management thing mentioned here; I have a feeling that the management we used to have, had they been involved, would have botched it up, which is why the teachers in question probably did not involve them. We would have SST classes for NTSE. the thing was that a lot of us were from CBSE schools and the NTSE syllabus would get over quite quickly. So we would spend the remaining time in fun activities like gk quizzes and debates.
All this would take place in the classes. Sometimes chapters would be there like democracy. the theory would be over in a lecture or two, and we would spend the remaining time learning more in detail about the topic
We had two teachers. One was from somewhat a rich background. The other was a student from a non-privileged making ends meet by taking coaching classes. The former was a Congress supporter, the latter a BJP Bhakt.
Both were, quite simply, excellent teachers who not only knew quite a bit about their subject matter but also knew how to handle a class, keep them interested, engage them in discussion in a better way. The latter was especially good at this: he was, in a way, quite easy to talk to, and he would listen very well.
During debates, they used to be impromptu, but the teachers would chime in, correcting or adding on to our points sometimes or listening to us with an amused smile and remarking at the end.
Both were also quite excellent humans, at least from the little I gleaned via my interactions with them. The first one was the one who advised me to keep company even with people who I knew to disagree with me about certain topics: she said that one’s mind grew more and more open and educated in such a manner, and I value this advice as probably one of the things that changed the track of my thinking and put me on a different orbit. Heck, it is probably the reason why I formed one of the best friendships I have formed till date, with a person I initially believed I would never get along with, nonetheless, and we have been in touch even during lockdown. Something tells me it is for life, though I can only wait and hope to see how it turns out.
Anyways, the other teacher, the BJP Bhakt, was quite possibly the rarest type of teacher, or one of the rarest. I have heard about such teachers and read about them but I never dreamed that I would meet one of them, and never in a coaching class. He was first and foremost a student himself, and carried himself quite humbly, trying to learn as much from us as we did from him. And I mean this literally: he was not much older than my elder sister at the time, who is 4 years my senior, and he was studying Biotechnology in a college in Pune.
He came from an environment where there was a lot of industrial pollution, he came from a poor family, and he was actually pursuing Bio to help in the Environmental field as well as find himself a decent-paying job.
More than that, though he was accessible. After every class he would tell us to call him on his number or come talk to him if we were facing any personal issues, feeling that the pressure of studies got to us, needed a shoulder, etc. And the amazing thing was that he did go through with the promise. He got every child except the most introverted ones in the class to open up to him, and without forcing them to. I say except the introverted ones, but it is quite possible that they approached him separately-and besides, from what I saw, they were pretty happy in his classes. He helped out a couple of my friends who were in a rough spot emotionally; although I missed much of the classes that year, my friend tells me that the whole year, he was a rock for them. It’s quite rare that the teacher cares about the mental health of a child, and he would encourage us to take professional help if we could. For those who could not afford, he tried his best to be supportive and listen instead, and keep encouraging them to keep going on.
I mean it probably seems like a fantasy but I really can’t believe I happened across such a teacher; it must be a very rare thing, at least in this climate of commercialization.
And the amazing thing was that though he would talk about politics occasionally very little of it had to do with religion, almost none. He would talk about more practical matters. he was also not a blind follower; at the beginning he had claimed to be a proud follower of his party, but throughout he would sometimes drop comments which revealed that he was dissatisfied with the way they were running things. He was, so to say, quite plastic in his views without being a pushover. What the earlier teacher had taught me via words, he taught via his actions and his conduct.
Anyways: I realize this is probably different from the main issue of you article; but the only comment I had was something you would have already known, and besides it would be a negative comment on the nature of coaching classes and schools today. I felt I could share some of my more positive experiences in this field, so that,- well, to say that there is still hope. It is quite a rare thing and one I never expected to happen to me, but it goes to show that Grace comes sometimes from the unlikeliest of sources. Lotuses bloom in muddy waters too, and I hope for all our sakes that children find such human beings to look up to, emulate and learn from.
One of those friends was suffering from depression and taking medical aid; I was not very close to her, because of the different schools and me not attending many classes that year, but from the little talk I had with her, I gleaned that he had helped her cope as well in some part.
This is a very rare story. And the rare teacher you speak about, I would add another exponent on that adjective, because such people are almost impossible to find among radical groups like Bhakts. In fact, I wouldn’t call him a Bhakt at all. A BJP supporter, yes. But I don’t see how a person can be a Bhakt and so open to learning at the same time.
Wrong choice of words, then. I meant to say that he was a supporter, but he was open to change his mind if presented with enough evidence. that was true for any field he held opinions in, actually, and when he didn’t have much information, he would refrain from comment, saying that he knew little about so and so field.
I mean, when he first came into class he called himself a “huge” Modi Bhakt when asked about the government, but he refrained from commenting on the political situation then, as he said he was biased. Later on there would be snippets of conversation where he would criticize the BJP too, and even Modi, so I guess it wasn’t a strict label and he stopped thinking of himself that way. I think, as far as I remember, that might have been a phase where he was growing disillusioned with politics in general, for he made several scathing comments about many of them, without really saying anything which could tie him down to one party.