We celebrate Teacher’s Day in September, but across the world, teachers are honoured and allowed to have a fun day at different times of the year. We know it’s no mean feat being a teacher, and not being to escape the endless cycle of notes, lectures and tests. Here are a few interesting traditions and events to delight teachers — maybe they will inspire you with a game plan for Teacher’s Day this time!

I bow before thee…

Teachers are highly respected in Thailand and students convey their gratitude to their teachers in special ways. Celebrated as Wai Kru Day, this is the time when students humbly offer bundles of Bermuda grass, eggplant flowers and popped rice to teachers along with chants. It is an honour to be a teacher in Thailand given the level of respect and devotion bestowed upon them. Best of all, in some schools, students dress in traditional costumes when they offer their respects, making it unforgettable for teachers.

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“I should make class fun by having a discussion with students, as they are already tired from their consecutive science classes,” thought Tr Aarti, the English teacher of Class 12.

‘What do you want to become in life?’ was the topic. The students replied enthusiastically that they wanted to become doctors, engineers, IAS officers, businessmen, lawyers, scientists, etc.

Then Tr Aarti wrote on the blackboard, ‘Does anyone want to become a teacher?’

No hand rose and there was pin drop silence in the class. Tr Aarti then wrote out a third point, ‘Why don’t you want to become a teacher?’

The students replied saying that teaching was a low-paying job and the status of a teacher in society had declined as compared to the olden days.

“Who wants to become a teacher for a day on Teachers’ Day?” asked Tr Aarti.

Suddenly, all hands rose high in the air.

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Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam credited his Science teacher, Shri Siva Subramaniam Iyer who recognised Kalam’s intelligence and encouraged him. The well-known billionaire, Bill Gates, ranks among the most famous dropouts of Harvard’s who founded the Microsoft Corporation. He always acknowledged his Maths and Drama teachers who so encouraged and motivated him in school that he went on to become the sixth richest person in the world and pledged to give away 95% of his wealth to charity. These are but a few examples of teachers who, backed by a keen vision, helped their students become valuable gems of society.

Teachers who are visionaries see their profession as a mission. In fact, teaching is both a call and a choice in life and so should not be looked upon as a job to merely earn a salary. Teachers in turn educate their students not only for earning a livelihood or for gaining wealth and comfort but largely to help them live a meaningful life, i.e., to be persons of value and vision. Teachers stimulate their pupils to be creative and innovative in life. Albert Einstein once said, “It’s the supreme art of a teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.” Teachers use their expertise and skills to the maximum for the benefit of their students.

Our country is blessed with many great visionary teachers who have made innumerable sacrifices for the sake of their students. All the effort and hard work teachers invest in bringing out the best in their students are rarely acknowledged or appreciated. They can hardly be paid back in mere words or random acts of gratitude. Their greatest reward is the joy and pride of seeing their students become persons of character and nobility.

Every year we observe Teachers’ Day on 5th September. On this auspicious day, the editor and the staff at The Teenager Today reverentially salute all the teachers across the country! And as a mark of appreciation and admiration for them, we dedicate the September 2022 issue to all teachers past and present! May their immense sacrifices and selfless devotion to ‘teaching’ per se ensure the blossoming of the potential in each child for the betterment of society and country! Happy Teachers’ Day!

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Name the five wealthiest people in the world.
Name four people who have won the Nobel Prize.
Name the last three Oscar Best Actor award winners.

Did you know the answers to any of these questions? The point is no one remembers the headlines of yesterday. These achievers and their achievements are forgotten.

Here’s another quiz. See how you do on this one:

List a few teachers who aided you on your journey in school.
Name five people who have taught you something worthwhile.
Think of the people who have made you feel appreciated and special.
Think of five people you enjoy spending time with.

Was this quiz easier? The people who make the most difference in your life are not the ones with the most credentials, most money or most awards. They are simply the ones who care the most. After parents, for most of us, teachers are those lovely people who have influenced us the most.

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Khupi forms a part of the village Bhumiyadhar in Nainital. The place has a very special meaning in my life as it was last year that I had a fall from my scooter in this village and had suffered an elbow fracture that changed many things in my life. It is a sad short story but today the same Khupi is a matter of extreme joy for me. It all started when the Government Intermediate College of Bhumiyadhar called two teachers of Government Primary School, Khupi, to honour them in an unofficial function.

GIC Bhumiyadhar is in itself a small college with around 150 students, but the reason for honouring the two Khupi teachers was that the college found that among the students who took admission in the sixth standard from nearby Government Primary Schools, the Khupi students were a cut above the rest. It definitely aroused my interest to visit this special school and see things for myself. The visit turned out to be an eye-opener as to what miracles two dedicated teachers can produce.

Government Primary School, Khupi, can put many private or public schools to shame. Mrs Meena Bora, the Head Teacher, is a double post-graduate with specialisations in Political Science and Economics with a certificate in Licentiating Teacher (LT), while the Assistant Teacher, Mrs Rashmi Rawat, is a science graduate with a Master’s degree in Economics and holds a Basic Teaching Certificate. Mrs Bora joined the school in 2006 and took over as the Head Teacher in 2010 and in the same year was joined by her present companion in education. With just ten students (4 boys and 6 girls) in the five classes from the first to the fifth standards, it may be difficult to find a smaller school but the school’s final product has to be seen to be believed.

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Covid-19 or otherwise, whether schools remain closed yet for another year or remain open, all of us, especially the young students who have experienced the loving care and affection of their teachers for years together will always specially think of them on Teachers’ Day, celebrated annually on September 5, set aside to express our gratitude for making them what we are today to a very great extent. The day provides all of us, whether we are students or parents or have even become teachers today, a unique opportunity to appreciate them and tell them that they are precious to us, and that we shall never forget them in our lives.

Our country has always held teachers in very high esteem; the Mahabharata has many classic examples of this. Acharya (the royal teacher) was always considered an integral part of the royal household. His advice was always sought before the king took any important decision, and his word often prevailed over others. No one ordinarily questioned his moral authority.

Rabindranath Tagore was affectionately called Gurudev by his disciples, and sure Tagore liked it. Even today, in many circles he is referred to as Gurudev, and not so much as a writer, which he was by any standard.

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Let me ask you a very easy question — what is the one wish that is uppermost in the minds of all the students in the world? The answer is simple: they all so earnestly dream of achieving a high percentage of marks and excellent grades in the examinations.

But sometimes, things do not happen the way we desire and this turns out to be the reason for disappointment for many. So, here comes another question of serious self-introspection: does only high echelons of marks and grades make a sure-shot formula of professional and personal successes in life? Do good marks alone make or mar one’s life?

World history is replete with great personalities who rose to the pinnacle of success without having any outstanding academic excellence and even formal education. They were self-made people who brought about incredible changes in the lives of the common people. They braved challenges, fought hardships and struggled against a host of adversities with indomitable courage and resolute determination.

These great personalities are like milestones that will keep on motivating future generations to realize their cherished dreams despite challenges and critical circumstances they will face.

Mark Twain

America’s most famous writer and humorist, Mark Twain, is immensely popular for his beautiful classic novels. He started his life’s journey with the ordinary job of a printer. He had only minimum formal education in his early life. He used to spend his entire evening reading books in a library after the day’s work. He had a very short stint in the Confederate Army after which he travelled across the country. During this period, he started writing what proved to be the beginning of the historical odyssey of an internationally famous writer. His life is an epitome of the plain truth that formal education and high percentage of marks are not all that is required for a promising career.

Steve Jobs

Do you know that he did not even complete college education? But he was blessed with a superb and exceptionally sharp technical mind. He had only six months of college education but this did not prove to be a stumbling block in the introduction of sophisticated devices like the iPod, iPhone and iPad. It was the result of his unfathomable will-power to rise to the apex of success in spite of insurmountable problems.

Henry Ford

He was not only a noted U.S. industrialist and entrepreneur of his time but also an extraordinary visionary who single-handedly created the automobile industry of the United States. He too did not have a high formal education. He left home at the age of seventeen and worked as an apprentice in Detroit. Very few people then might have imagined that Henry Ford’s job of an apprentice carried the seed of the dawn of an industrialist and entrepreneur of global fame and fortune. Lack of formal education never came in his way to the journey of making Detroit (USA), the Motor City.

Winston Churchill

He is considered as one of the greatest political figures of the twentieth century in the United Kingdom. He is also called the “quote machine”. He was born in an affluent family where he was provided with all the facilities for a formal education. But he was very poor in studies, and had no interest in formal education. He used to be punished for his dismal record in school. He suffered in the military services, too, due to a poor academic performance.

Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam

Known as the Missile Man, the former President of India, Dr Kalam spent his childhood in abject poverty. He used to sell newspapers in his hometown, Rameshwaram, to supplement the expenses of his education. Specialized in aeronautical engineering, he wanted to be a fighter pilot which was his ‘dearest dream’. But he could not realize it as he came in at the ninth position in the qualifying test while only eight slots were available in the Indian Air Force.

Abraham Lincoln

The 16th President of the United States is the most unique example of a person who bravely suffered an array of predicaments and tragedies in his life before getting elected to the helm of affairs of the most developed nation of the world. His life is the story of a self-made and self-educated person.
An anecdote goes that he got a job at a junk shop where a lawyer sold a few old books of law. He went through those books and as a result he turned out to be one of the reputed lawyers of his time. He rose to become the U.S. President and the credit for this achievement goes to his forbearance and self-taught lessons he learnt from his life beset with difficulties and misfortunes. Marks and percentages never prevented him from reaching the highest office of his country.

Albert Einstein

The great scientist, Nobel Laureate and internationally-known physicist, Albert Einstein, was truly a genius with more than 300 scientific papers attributed to his name. He propounded the ‘Theory of Relativity’ which made him one of the legendary figures in the realm of Physics. Can you believe that a man of such spectacular achievements was a school dropout? Yes, he was! He wanted to go for a university education but failed in the entrance examination. Finally, he joined college and got a degree but the fact that the greatest intellectual super-mind of the 20th century was a high school dropout is too hard to digest.

Thomas Alva Edison

The great U.S. inventor and thinker of the 20th century, has to his credit many inventions that earned him unprecedented popularity. Yet he had only three months’ formal schooling. He was sent back home by his class teacher with a written note saying that he was not fit for formal education. But his brave mother took a vow to teach him at home, and she patiently taught Edison, who also had a hearing problem, everything that he needed to know at that age. The rest is history. Edison rose to become the greatest scientist of his time. His quotation about a series of failures in life has become the source of inspiration for millions of people who fail in their endeavours despite their best efforts: “I have not failed. I have just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”

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In the past, India’s education system took her way ahead of other nations in art, science and literature. But of late, we have lost the edge by our reluctance to adopt new and improved methods of imparting education. Today, new demands at the workplace require persons with multi-faceted abilities to handle knotty situations efficiently. But unfortunately our present education systems do not prepare people to meet these emerging requirements. If at all we excel in some fields, it is because we still have teachers who are visionaries, who think out of the box. Such an approach has always been fruit-bearing because when knowledge is gained in a comprehensive manner it produces optimum results. We have the best example of this in late Dr A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, for whom the source of inspiration was none other than his own teachers in his early school days.

In the book Reignited: Scientific Pathways To A Brighter Future, co-authored by Dr Kalam and Srijan Pal Singh, Dr Kalam reveals the most important event of his life. He says, “My science teacher Sivasubramania Iyer was discussing in our class ‘how birds fly’. He did so with the help of a bird’s sketch with a tail, wings and head and explained how a bird flew. The same day he took us to the Rameswaram seashore where we saw dozens of seabirds flying. My teacher said, ‘Look how the birds are flapping their wings, now see how they change direction using their wings and tail. What is the locomotive force behind this flight — it is the life energy of the bird’.”

Dr Kalam tells us that that one single lecture transformed his life and led him to make a profession out of his passion: rocket engineering and space flight. The rest is history!

Now that was the kind of impact a teacher could make in the life of a student.

The progress of any nation depends on the system of education adopted by it to guide the future generation. India, even though it has one of the largest chains of educational institutes in the world, yet has failed to modernize the education system. Though we have the technology and the know-how which can help us take learning to the farthest and remotest parts of country through e-learning and m-learning, we prefer to sit idly on an unexplored gold mine, simply because we refuse to leave our comfort zones.

Thanks to the hard work of our dedicated, visionary and noble teachers who continue to make a difference in the lives of young minds, India has produced some innovative minds and nurtured exceptional talents who have excelled in different fields of science and technology. THE TEENAGER TODAY salutes all those noble souls who play a great role in forming, nurturing, challenging and inspiring young minds and hearts. HAPPY TEACHER’S DAY!

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