She was most certainly NOT a kindly light!
You could call her a kind of crude torch, like those carried by cavemen, apt to singe anyone who came too close! One kept a healthy, terrified distance from her.
The old battleaxe was my Maths-cum-Class Teacher through the 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th standards. Year after year, I'd look forward to having a new teacher and, year after year, to my dismay, she would get "promoted" with me. I had my Pythagoras Theorem pat by the time I was 11 years old. Algebra offered another way of looking at the same puzzles. The Arithmetic assignment of 20 sums was like a Su-Do-Ku dessert after lunch.
Yet, who got the highest in Maths, pray? A large serious girl about 2 feet taller than I. I would get 98%, while she bagged the "centum", ostensibly because I did not draw two red lines at the top of each foolscap sheet. "Mrs. Ambujam A-Jam*", thought I, "this is unmitigated partiality!" I hated her! I H-A-T-E-D her! I absolutely D-E-T-E-S-T-E-D her! Caricatures appeared in my rough book of a monstrous lady with bullish nostrils, angry "V" eyebrows, mean little eyes, and lots of pockmarks. Mentally I'd chant
"Mrs A-Jam
Ate a pot of jam
And grew F-F-A-A-T-T!
Worse, she also took Moral Science for us. I – the shortest and youngest in class – was doomed to sit under those nostrils forever! Well, the Bishop sauntered into our Morals class one morning. The blessed text book spouted some nonsense about "protecting your sex". One girl asked, "Does it mean celibacy?" "No", said the Bishop. I could think laterally in English and Maths, but, otherwise, I was a late bloomer. "What's celibacy?" I piped up. - - - - - Stunned silence! "Stop acting as if you don't know!" growled A-Jam. "Don't act smart!" hissed my classmates. I sat down, perplexed, almost in tears.
Transfers came; systems of education changed drastically (SSLC to Senior Cambridge). Mercifully, in all the entrance test in all the schools, I cleared the Maths effortlessly. My mother thought that traces of my brothers' super intelligence had at last rubbed off on me. My new classmates ascribed my Maths ability to my humongous forehead! This raillery continued through College, where Statistics was my favourite subject.
Twenty years later, my child learnt Maths from four different teachers in as many years. Not one of them picked up where her predecessor left off. The lateral connections, insight learning did not take place. This same child had fought a desperate battle for life in her first three years. At that time, I remembered A-Jam's Moral Science inspirational story about her daughter surviving brain fever because of her own faith in God.
Now I wondered – Could it be because of A-Jam that Maths had always seemed so simple?
I heard of her a few years ago. Her daughter, then 25, had the mental age of a 5-year-old child. But her mother cared - - - - - long after her husband and son despaired.
The old pilgrim plods on over the thorny walks of life.
And I plod on in her wake!
[ I wrote this as Teacher's Day falls on September 5th, i.e., next week.
I have also been a teacher for almost 15 years, mostly in college.
And I can guarantee that teachers are a much-maligned, misunderstood lot!
*The name has been changed!]
You could call her a kind of crude torch, like those carried by cavemen, apt to singe anyone who came too close! One kept a healthy, terrified distance from her.
The old battleaxe was my Maths-cum-Class Teacher through the 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th standards. Year after year, I'd look forward to having a new teacher and, year after year, to my dismay, she would get "promoted" with me. I had my Pythagoras Theorem pat by the time I was 11 years old. Algebra offered another way of looking at the same puzzles. The Arithmetic assignment of 20 sums was like a Su-Do-Ku dessert after lunch.
Yet, who got the highest in Maths, pray? A large serious girl about 2 feet taller than I. I would get 98%, while she bagged the "centum", ostensibly because I did not draw two red lines at the top of each foolscap sheet. "Mrs. Ambujam A-Jam*", thought I, "this is unmitigated partiality!" I hated her! I H-A-T-E-D her! I absolutely D-E-T-E-S-T-E-D her! Caricatures appeared in my rough book of a monstrous lady with bullish nostrils, angry "V" eyebrows, mean little eyes, and lots of pockmarks. Mentally I'd chant
"Mrs A-Jam
Ate a pot of jam
And grew F-F-A-A-T-T!
Worse, she also took Moral Science for us. I – the shortest and youngest in class – was doomed to sit under those nostrils forever! Well, the Bishop sauntered into our Morals class one morning. The blessed text book spouted some nonsense about "protecting your sex". One girl asked, "Does it mean celibacy?" "No", said the Bishop. I could think laterally in English and Maths, but, otherwise, I was a late bloomer. "What's celibacy?" I piped up. - - - - - Stunned silence! "Stop acting as if you don't know!" growled A-Jam. "Don't act smart!" hissed my classmates. I sat down, perplexed, almost in tears.
Transfers came; systems of education changed drastically (SSLC to Senior Cambridge). Mercifully, in all the entrance test in all the schools, I cleared the Maths effortlessly. My mother thought that traces of my brothers' super intelligence had at last rubbed off on me. My new classmates ascribed my Maths ability to my humongous forehead! This raillery continued through College, where Statistics was my favourite subject.
Twenty years later, my child learnt Maths from four different teachers in as many years. Not one of them picked up where her predecessor left off. The lateral connections, insight learning did not take place. This same child had fought a desperate battle for life in her first three years. At that time, I remembered A-Jam's Moral Science inspirational story about her daughter surviving brain fever because of her own faith in God.
Now I wondered – Could it be because of A-Jam that Maths had always seemed so simple?
I heard of her a few years ago. Her daughter, then 25, had the mental age of a 5-year-old child. But her mother cared - - - - - long after her husband and son despaired.
The old pilgrim plods on over the thorny walks of life.
And I plod on in her wake!
[ I wrote this as Teacher's Day falls on September 5th, i.e., next week.
I have also been a teacher for almost 15 years, mostly in college.
And I can guarantee that teachers are a much-maligned, misunderstood lot!
*The name has been changed!]
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