Do teachers hold an esteemed position in the society?

In the history of mankind, education has been regarded as the force that

illuminates the dark horizons of human limitation. It is the culmination of man’s

curiosity. Yet, for all its capacity to brighten human existence, education dawns upon

man not in the moments of his solitude. It needs a facilitator, someone who is capable

of processing it and helping it survive the curse of human mortality. There is but one

reason as to why education and knowledge escape the stifling curse of mortality: the

blessing of the teacher on his pupil, the resolve in the ‘guru’ that he will leave behind

on our perishable planet all that his life could help him attain. The guru, thereby,

blesses his knowledge and makes it survive the curse of decay.

Since time immemorial, the essential equation of teacher and student has

been unaltered. It has undergone many a change in appearance and will undergo many

more as it responds to its many contexts, but it will essentially represent a discourse

that leads to the empowerment of human beings, the transmission of existing

knowledge to the learner so that they could further transmit, evolve and develop it. As

a profession in the modern world, teaching assumes a role traditionally sanctioned and

suitably modern. It seeks to address the many contexts wherein it operates while

dynamically operating on its essential, traditional philosophy. A teacher in the modern

world, therefore, faces the challenge of being aware of his traditional role and

attributes and delivering his knowledge content contextually to the learner. He/she is

alive to the fact that it is his/her role to humanly pass on knowledge to the receiver

and in that process shape the receiver’s thought processes. While it may be argued

that there are facts of knowledge that are constant and the teacher can do little to
create the perception in the receiver about them, it must be borne in mind that human

nature absorbs facts and data not in a vacuum but in context. It is the teacher who is

the architect of the context and the creator of perception based learning. In a society

where knowledge power nexus exists, as Michel Foucault has famously observed, the

teacher not only represents the Godhead but becomes one.

In our times teachers have thus come to acquire a position far more sensitive

and a role far more defining than they had in the past. In a knowledge based society,

teachers work as liberators of their students. They both empower them with skills to

excel in life and tell them how to grow society further. It is these roles and challenges

that have carved a niche for teaching as a profession and conferred upon professional

teachers respect and recognition. The guiding motive of a teacher today is the growing

awareness in them that they are the venerated movers and shakers of their times; they

encourage thought processes in their students; they sow the seeds for a better future.