The demands of a regular school
day tends to lull them into thinking an efficient run through has been good
enough. But every teaching day gone by without having inspired a child or
forced them to think has been a monumental, criminal waste. It is one more day of abandonment; another 24
hours we have left them at the mercy of the Radio FM blaring its Fevicol song,
the late night serial eulogizing weeping women or a facebook update celebrating
risky behavior.
For all the bluster of India’s
economic forges, equality is struggling to happen here. There is a swelling
unease at the widening chasms: Indo-Pak, VIP-Aam Aadmi, Police-Citizen, Traditionalist-Progressive,
Dalit-Brahmin, Penthouse class-Basement underclass…all brewing under the dark
shadow of corruption, a hazed out bureaucracy and our dyslexic government. Watching
this national hutspot going bad is the mushrooming middle class, nursing its
heartburn and fighting down a reflux.
The regular textbook can hardly
justify and limit knowledge exchange taking place in the classroom under these
circumstances. Students need help, more than at any other time in Indian
history, to make sense of their environment. Indian ionosphere is sick with
toxin. There are dishonest advertisements, sexually charged songs,
irresponsible messages of pornography, pressures of competition and the constant
struggle for acceptance and a dignified existence.
Parents are just about able to
keep the physical nurture of their progeny going in a system that will not
guarantee them efficiency nor safety and certainly not any facility. That
leaves the teachers with class rooms that have become the new ground zero, the
only spaces with a semblance of sanctity, authority and naivety conducive to
instilling healthy beliefs. The software wiring of young minds has to happen in
schools while the students are young enough to harbour an inherent sense of
right and wrong, fair and unjust.
Teachers have to remind
themselves often of the huge investments they are making in their students.
Their children listen to them. Classes have to be told that the human reality
is changing and that we need new recipes for survival. They have to be spoken
to of the skewed gender ration that is threatening peace and democracy in the
nation. It must be explained how we are creating bare branches on family trees
by killing baby girls before they are born. What are the surplus men going to
do? They will live and roam in loose groups of unattached, unemployable cess
pools of anger, with a nil stake in societal order; all the time blaming
successful women for their own failures.
This generation must not grow up
thinking that girls are fairy tale characters, and boys prince charming on
horseback. Let them appreciate that the two genders are real people with real
problems. They will see that the roles that worked when we were a farming
community no longer apply in our modern, industrialized, information driven
democracy. Girls deserve permission to be as naughty as boys who in turn ought
to feel free to use their tear ducts! Boys should be able to study psychology
and girls should be able to join the National Defence Academy. Far more than
femininity or masculinity, it is humanity that our survival needs cultivating
today.
In time, the young will grow up
to realize the challenges ahead; the immutable but bitter truth that whenever a
power equation is threatened, balance has to be wrested; it has never been
given on a platter. For this, they have to develop an ease with discourse,
debate, dissent. The current rigid hierarchical structures employed in most
schools heap shame upon them. They need liberation to follow their hearts and
listen to their own voices so they can grow up with a strong sense of
self-esteem. It will be the modern young’s duty to contest and protest. Every word, every thought, every gesture
counts. Fundamental rights for all, irrespective of caste, colour, creed,
gender, status, religion is the goal we are staring at and these are not just
western values; they are universal, humane values.
The human race is in a process of
evolution, of evening out power. The rich have fortressed themselves, much like
the Ostrich. While the rest of us wait for speedy justice, accountable leaders
and a protective police force, we can embrace gender sensitization. We can
change our behavior, beginning with an empathy with our own and the other gender.
It is time to examine long held beliefs and question the realities everyone
thought they knew.
A very close, inter dependent and
transparent world is growing around us. No one can survive in this spacecraft like
claustrophobic closeness unless they are good human beings. Gender sensitization
is a step in that direction. There is a call for systemic changes. If we do not alter our ways, we are going to
leave behind a terrifying world for our children. We owe our young the space
and freedom to achieve their highest potential.
Teachers are not merely uniquely
placed or wholly equipped to prevent gender becoming their students’ destinies;
they in fact are the only ones in any position to do so.
Note: With cerebral inputs from Aqseer.
