August 3, 2013, 8:03 pm


Kalayani Dissanayake, a teacher of Sinhala at Royal College, Colombo staged a rooftop protest last week against the transfer of three teachers including herself. She climbed down in the evening.Pic by Sujatha Jayaratne

It was deplorable and disgusting reading of a teacher getting on the roof of a two storeyed building at Royal College Colombo (no less!) and executing a sit down protest. Worse seeing her picture. There she sat with her feet dangling and boys of the college struggling to bring a mattress to place below the spot she was in to break her fall if she dozed and lost her balance or got sunstruck and giddy and came down like H Dumpty. Like we say of the infamous son who got beaten recently, serves her right if she fell. She had no business pulling this act of an elevated sit down strike on College premises during school time.

Protests are becoming all too frequent. Full sympathy is earned by farmers protesting lack of water for their cultivation due to an illegal diversion of water or blocking of a canal or through neglect and the relevant government department paying no attention to oral and written complaints. Sympathy is earned by mothers and others who protest disappearance of loved ones. Justification is also adduced to those demanding fresh drinking water, polluted by a factory dumping its waste to the source of their water, as is claimed. But nurses striking get no sympathy from us; doctors neither. This lady teacher earns our censure and derision. If she had a complaint she could have discussed it with higher authorities or even gone to the police. But to make a spectacle of herself to the entire college of several thousand boys and hundreds of teachers is simply not done. What sort of an example was she setting her students, already difficult to manage and easily made unruly? The reason for her protest was that she had been transferred to a school in Nugegoda after eight years of teaching at Royal. That was plenty time to get all her sons to Royal College if she had them. A couple of others too had been served with transfer papers but they did not, through sense of what should not be done, join her on the roof.

The Minister of Education who also has not earned our approbation, rather our censure at all the messes made over exam papers and other matters, has rightly declared the protesting teacher will be dealt with. She should be. Wonder whether she has a VVIP to protect her and shield her from due punishment. She is guilty of setting a very bad example, breaking pedagogic ethics, whether written or accepted by custom and practice. She has also brought shame on the teaching profession in the eyes of students and the public. Some rebellious kids may laud her, but censure and due punishment are what she deserves.

Recollection

Nan was a teacher once. She and her generation were ever conscious of the fact that children they taught judged them; and also adopted them as examples if not role models. Thus their behavior when students were around was both dignified and never tainted with the slightest compromise to decent behavior. This was due to the fact they took to teaching as a vocation and also had basic principles of decency ingrained in them in their homes and schools attended. Also very importantly, principals were strict and set the example and the precedent was followed. Nan taught under Mrs Soma Kumari Samarasinghe at Hillwood College and later under Miss Annabel Jayasuriya at Bishop’s College, both soft spoken but strict disciplinarians with faculty and the student body. Nan went to Hillwood with her hair in a pony tail with ribbons matching her saris. She was allowed this for two days. Then the summons to the Principal’s office and the admonition: "Miss P……, you will earn your students respect if you wear your hair gathered up." No protest put forward the said students already seemed to love and even respect her. The next day it was hair pinned up with ever a fear it would come tumbling down, until very soon the art of tying a tight kondé was learned. Thank you Mrs Sam! With no preaching or pontification about dress code et al you taught a generation of teachers to be always well groomed, meaning decently clad, attractively too since kids love to observe what their teachers wear, at least in the good old days. Remembered is an incident of waiting outside Ms Jayasuriya’s office to be summoned in, shiveringly nervous. Nan asked for a day’s leave to go to Kandy for a nephew’s engagement. Granted since leave was never taken by a teacher then unless direly ill, not even when a child fell ill since there were faithful servants. Two months later a repeat performance of shivering with trepidation and asking for leave, and being granted it for the nephew’s wedding. A couple of days later, leave requested to go to Kandy for the home coming. "Is this never going to end?" But leave was granted.

Teachers of a generation earlier than Nan’s were even more dedicated. They knew each child by name, family background and nature; had time to speak to parents any day anytime and not only on parent’s days; and cared for the welfare of those in their classes both as regards studies, character development and behavior. They kept sharp eyes focused to catch any misdemeanours like getting silly over boys, and nipped such in the bud.



Teachers to be ashamed of

Of course not all teachers were ideal nor truly dedicated even then. Around 35 years ago, a teacher in the Royal Primary School would post the monitor and another boy as lookouts while she tucked into breakfast of string hoppers, hodi and sambol in the classroom after the school day began. Couldn’t she at least make do with sandwiches, eliminating making a spectacle of herself and the necessity of having to rinse her fingers? At Bishop’s College, giving of gifts to teachers was forbidden, only flowers allowed. A teacher in the primary school would announce almost daily for around two weeks that her birthday would soon be. That day she had plenty to carry home! In Nan’s schooldays Sinhala was a period disliked and unfortunately the teacher who taught it was not the best. She had set marks for submitted essays which came back with no red corrections at all except the mark on ten. Nan’s mark was 2 ½. Taking a bet, Nan inserted the teacher’s first name in her essay one week with a rude remark. She was asked to come to the teacher’s desk to receive her exercise book. Almost fainting with fear she advanced to be told she had written a better essay and got the grand mark of 3 ½! Teaching in a Maha Vidyalaya, Nan caught the infection of not writing notes of lessons nor conscientiously preparing her lessons. The principal’s wife taught Grade 6. She would get the children off on reciting ‘Row row row your boat’ which emerged as ‘Raw raw raw your bort’ for the entire period, standing, while the teacher had a sit-down jaw jaw in the staff room. A frequent topic of conversation as the year ended was: "I have 10 days leave left. Must take it soon."

In spite of isolated cases of negligence or taking the task of teaching and guiding children in personality development as trivial, most teachers were truly dedicated.

What teaching is

Two definitions are apt here to remind us of what education is and teachers should be.

"Pedagogy is the art and science of education, specifically instructional theory. An instructor develops conceptual knowledge and manages the content of learning activities in pedagogical settings. Modern pedagogy has been strongly influenced by the cognitivism of Piaget -1926, ’36/75; the social integrationist theories of Bruner – 1960, 66. 71, 86, and the social and cultural theories of Vygotsky - 1962. These theorists have laid the foundation for pedagogy where sequential development of individual mental processes such as recognize, recall, analyze, reflect, create, understand and evaluate are scaffolded. The learner requires assistance to integrate prior knowledge with new knowledge. Children must also develop metacognition, or the ability to learn how to learn."

"A school teacher is a person who provides education for pupils (children) and students (adults). A teacher‘s role may vary among cultures. Teachers may provide instruction in literacy and numeracy, craftsmanship or vocational training, the arts, religion, civics, community values or life skills."

It is pertinent to ask the question of how teachers of today, unless truly dedicated to their teaching as a calling, can imbue children both by example and precept with community values, life skills and help them to develop totally in personality so they turn out to be worthwhile, honest and decent human beings.

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