Nothing goes without any result. At last, the teachers’ agitation could draw the attention of the Prime Minister. She has already formed a committee constituted by Education Minister, State Minister for Education, Education Secretary and the Political Secretary to the Prime Minister. She has asked the committee to find out the long-standing grievances of the non-government teachers and redress those reasonably. The police handed agitating teachers very roughly on July 15which is a very sad and bad example indeed.
Teachers hold the guardian potion of the society who had to undergo police atrocities and ham-handling treatment. Since then, they had taken a very stern stance to press home their demands. They also threatened to sacrifice their lives between July 22 and 27 unless the government gives due importance to their demands. Actually, teaching has witnessed a negligible outlook from the state in the real sense of the term and it is the teachers who earned some of the present situations of education in the country through agitation.
Teaching has emerged as a time tested profession with some distinctive phenomenon making it different from other professions in nature, quality and way of serving though it does not appear significantly in this age of the computer. Even then, this profession exists maintaining its own characteristics. History dates back with the proof that a group of homo sapiens endowed with heavenly qualities started imparting knowledge to their fellow human beings with some noble objectives. This group of people have been labelled as teachers in the society who pioneered human civilization to enlighten this dark universe. Of course, their method and style of teaching were not well organized and well-shaped. But today teaching has achieved institutional shape experiencing many changes and ups and downs over the ages.
The whole world now experiences fast-growing materialistic developments, which offer a lot of physical facilities to make our lives easy, and comfortable but the spiritual crisis takes place in human hearts, which can hardly be discerned by our physical eyes. This inward eye of human beings acquires the quality to see this, which are blossomed and enlightened by teachers. The virtue and unseen power of these eyes enable a man to differentiate between right and wrong, between divine and divinity. The existing rising values of the present world put negligible efforts to blossom this inward eye of human beings and so the educated people don’t bother about committing crimes, cheating fellow human beiges depriving the due shares of people and creating chaos at every stratum of society.
In this critical juncture of the society and world, it is greatly felt that the teachers should play their original role. Establishing morality in the learners by exercising divine qualities are the prime functions of teachers. Books are the storehouse of knowledge contributed by the great men of the world whom the world has produced over the ages. As a teacher retains the ocean of knowledge and to gain it continuous process is a must. Unless a teacher’s exercises to increase the granary of knowledge, he can hardy diffuse the light of it among his students. Students will be inspired when they discover that their teachers really deal with the ways of gaining knowledge and conduct research in this line. Fawning and greasing must not be the ways of going forward by the teachers like other professionals.
It is a matter of sorrow that this tendency has developed in the society to go upwards by some teachers sacrificing their noble ways and objectives. Following the fair means or foul must be foreign to the ideal teachers. In spite of various limitations, the people belonging to the profession of teaching must develop some virtues to uphold the prestige of this valuable profession. The present deterioration of society can be improved at the cost of the sacrifices of the teachers. The knowledgeable circle of the society must realise this fact and come forward to prevent the further deterioration of the society. Ample avenues should be made available and opened for conducting research by the teachers so that they way of teaching can see new and interesting methods where both the learners and teachers feel the unlimited thirst for learning more and more rather than a perfunctory way of gaining and imparting knowledge.
Teachers original role should come to the focus keeping away the newly developed values the whole society experiences creating concerns among the social scientists and refined thinkers. The decline of morality in the educated circle indicates the decline of a nation. The present civilization witnesses a moral and spiritual famine and as a member of this global village, Bangladesh is no exception in this regard. The Internet culture has further implicated many evil cultures detrimental to mental and moral progress and a teachers’ role also widens, as they cannot afford to limit him to subject-oriented teaching only. He needs to cover a wide perspective of knowledge, which calls for a wide range of studies by the teachers. Keeping him confined to the subject only will not give him perfection.
In the present perspective of global change, a teacher’s role and contribution tend to be different retaining the abstract qualities in him and inculcate these among the learners to present a better and peaceful world as producing honest, polite, selfless, peaceful and patriotic citizens. Teachers’ agitation is valid and reasonable. It is also mentionable that the quality of teaching in the country seems downward despite so many ways and devices have improved. But we hardly see any agitation or even resentment of teachers to develop the quality of education. We would appreciate it if we see such kind of agitation among the teaching community.
About the Author
Masum Billah works as a President of the English Teachers' Association of Bangladesh (ETAB), Dhaka, Bangladesh. He previously worked as an Education Specialist at BRAC, an international NGO in Bangladesh.