this blog is more like a diary entry… i felt restless the whole day.. am reading a book and one line in it caught my attention… half the day was spent thinking about that one line… “curiosity is the first step to insubordination” …
throughout the metro ride, i kept reading the book and thinking about that one line… the day was spent likewise… mind on something, doing something else…
now that i am writing this, it is difficult to put in words what i have been feeling since morning… anger, frustration, confusion… i wanted to scream.. didn’t know what or on whom…
if you’re wondering what is so special about that one statement to make such strong emotions rise… it is that i find it so close to our education system… schools… teaching… everyday thousands and thousands of teachers, across India, refuse to tolerate insubordination.. refuse to answer students’ queries… even refuse to allow students to ask… to explore… to be curious… everyday, students kill their curiosity, in order to accept subordination.. to live a life of subordination, never even daring to think of another way of life… deadened brains grow up to not learn but to accept, to not ask, but to do… reminds me of tennyson’s “the charge of the light brigage”…
theirs not to reason why
theirs not to make reply
theirs but to do or die
i wish teachers, including me, were more tolerant… of nothing else, but insubordination… why do students, children or adults, why do they have to listen to us? what is it that i know that they don’t or can’t? what is it that i have achieved that puts me on a pedestal.. am i able to tolerate insubordination in my class? am i the same as all other teachers i am so rudely bashing here?