Evolution of the Teacher

If you have been misfortunate enough to proceed to university after 12 years of turmoil in school and college, I'm sure you have noticed how teachers in different levels of educational institutes have some fundamental differences. I shall attempt to identify and analyse these distinctive traits we find in teachers as we grow up.

Let us start off with school, a place where I met as many useless people as I learned many useless facts. Our teachers too, were heavily concerned with things that were in no way related to our education. See, that's the thing about school teachers, they act like your third parent.

We had an entire class called "values" where a particularly pompous, self-righteous woman used to come and talk about how Facebook and beauty parlours were ruining our generation. In 9th grade, there was a school-wide hunt for girls who have a Facebook account and/or a cellphone and/or a layered haircut and/or a boyfriend.

Of course there were some students who were stupid enough to get caught, which resulted in more lectures, more PTA meetings and an overall decline in our home and school life comfort. But I do believe these are the only teachers that ever genuinely care about the student, even if their ways of caring might sometimes turn out to be problematic.

They also put a lot of effort into school club activities, and are always around if you need help with competitions or organising events. However, there are always some teachers who despite their tendency of lecturing about ethics, choose to borderline extort the students into going for private tutoring outside school hours. I'd luckily been spared from this practice, but it is a harsh reality in many schools. 

This practice of providing "private tuition" in exchange for money and passing grades in class is even more predominant in college, a place where one is expected to thoroughly learn 12 subjects within 16 months and finally make the important life decision of what they want to have a career in.

But hey, at least the teachers don't lecture you about having a Facebook account. These teachers don't have the time to get to know the students, they often have to teach a chaotic class of 180 students and then teach another class outside college.

But that doesn't mean they're not approachable, I had teachers that I could seek out and talk about any issue regarding classwork or even my overall well-being.

They do encourage extracurricular activities but you will very rarely get the chance to miss classes for competitions or conferences. Also, these teachers always make a point to mention that if you don't study for 9 hours a day you will not be able to go to a public university and then your career will die. 

Once you do start classes at university, you will find that teachers do not care at all, about anything. They don't care about your grades, your understanding of the subject, or your ability to cope with the teaching style. All they care about is finishing the course on time and getting on with their lives.

I've had teachers to whom their course isn't even a priority, since they have businesses to look after and consultancies to do. Sometimes they seem to be very bitter about having to teach a class. Quite often the questions in the exams have no similarities with the content taught at class.

I do not know how their minds work, or if this is a common practice all over the world. I just wish I had the faintest idea of how I can impress these people and manage to get a good grade.  

This one time I'd asked my aunt, then an engineering student, what she would do if she had a time machine. Her answer was "I'd go back to the time when all my teachers were students to figure out what exactly turned them into the tortuous, heartless people they are now."

My 10 year-old self was very disappointed at her utterly boring answer, since I couldn't understand why someone would choose to do anything other than getting a pet dinosaur if they had a time machine. But now that I'm in my second year of university, and I've come across teachers of all kinds in every phase of their life cycle, I finally see why my aunt wanted some closure on why these people choose to act the way they do.

I guess I'll never know.