Random Ramblings of a Reluctant Blogger

It is not that I am a bad teacher… Sorry, let me correct it. I am a bad teacher, and it is not that I haven’t tried. To clear the matters, I am talking only about the academic teaching.!

Surprisingly though, my very first job was that of a teacher! I had just finished college and was out looking for jobs when my neighbour put me up with a school. The new school, like me, was starting out. And as is with such schools, it was a small house converted into a school, one of the rooms being taken up by the principal’s office. The principal was quite impressed with me to offer the job in no time and I was put ‘Incharge’ of four classes. Truth to be told, all were primary classes from 1 to 4 and the total strength of all put together was 10 to 12 students. Teaching English, science and social, I did, in a vague way, manage, given that all the classes were housed in a single room! I might have thought of it as a career too had it not been for the fact that the principal added Maths to my ‘teach’ list. It is just simple math,” she said, “additions, subtractions and the like.” 

If ever there be a bugbear, for me it is Math. It is fine till it stays within the confines of additions and subtractions, but once Mr. X strides in, all hell breaks loose. I will gladly go through pages and pages of a whodunit, but ‘find X’ puts me in a spell that leaves me dizzy. Y are we supposed to find him, why would A try to reach B at point C with both rushing into each other at some specified speed? I have often used commonsense and deduced that particular point, taking into account the traffic, only to be told commonsense does not hold. And, perchance, if I do stumble upon the correct answer, I would be confounded with a “where are the steps.”? Steps? What, are we dancing now! (Incidentally I am a bad dancer as well). Given my struggle with the subject, I decided to put in my papers. I lasted a whole month and got a princely sum of Rs 150!

I would have continued blissfully unaware of my inability to teach had it not been for my son and his education. Given that his mother is a teacher, and a good one at that, she had most of the time taken care of it, except when it was examination time. That too because she would be in school and  he would be home between each exam. And I being on the graveyard shift my mornings and noons had to be spent preparing him.

My funda was clear, just brush up his memory bank enough for him to do a decent job. Consequently all his toys and gadgets played an intrinsic part in it, cajoling him to be the best among them. The modern day counselors and shrinks probably would find fault with it saying I was putting him through stress and competitiveness and that was negative, but it seemed to be working. Home after each exam, he had just one regular answer to “how did it go?” “OK”, he would say, a smile stretching from ear to ear, even as he deposited the bags on the nearest available space and his shoes and socks would take flight in no particular direction, depending on the power he had imparted to them.  

I am not the one for the postmortem of the paper for I believe it has been done and any answer, right or wrong now, would not alter what he had written. So there was no point in it. Fortunately my wife too was of the same opinion and we would move to the subject for the next day.

All was fine, or so I thought, when one day the bubble burst. In walked my son, with a smile as big as any, his mother in tow. Only that along with the smile he had a twinkle in his eyes, the sort that lights up when he is up to some mischief. I was apprehensive and my usual querry to my son was once again met with a “I did  ok.” My wife very quietly then walked up to me and before handing over his diary asked me “Which subject did you prepare him for? “Math,” I said even as my eyes traced her fingers on the diary pointing out to the date. “Today, he had his English exam,” She said, and gave me a  disdainful look. My son, all smiles, was  actually enjoying the faux pas. Oh Kids! He of course did extremely well in English as we later found out!.

And since that day I have stayed away from interfering with my son’s academic pursuits. And as later events show, a wise move at that too.