<B>By Santosh Mahadeo, [email protected] former director of Curriculum, Ministry of Education by Santosh Mahadeo, [email protected] former director of Curriculum, Ministry of Education</B>

This article is not about student unions because our youth have rarely rivaled their counterparts of the mid-sixties, who later congealed into the MMM that we know about today. In fact my interest lies in an insidious power game our adolescents play against their elders, making them accept their conditions. People of my generation have weathered difficult conditions to reach the level of comfort they know now. This has meant achievement through education, dedication at work which has swallowed up a lifetime. This generation of senior citizens are today worn out by quest for power and disease, hard earned wealth and alienation from equals, material affluence and selfishness.

Our children from all social classes have benefited from the process of our sweat but have lost the energy that drove us to higher and higher achievement. As a person who has been at the head of schools, I have found many adults either too repressive for fear of losing their children or too permissive because they have not had time to accompany their children in various stages of their growth.

In both cases, children have taken over the reins of power ultimately, and have, in this game for power, set the pace of their life. What adults could not do to recuperate their authority, modernity and sophistication in our society have contributed to make parents take the backseat.

● <B>Unholy alliance</B>

Today no government has succeeded in bringing back our students to schools during crucial periods in a student?s life called ?revision period?. Parents are easily hoodwinked by their children who paint a picture of lazy teachers, idle classes and wasteful attendance. Schools have tried several scenarios with a compressed timetable, half-day attendance, and the like to little or no avail.

This unholy alliance of parents and wards has dragged over years, so much so that many have drawn capital out of it. A few teachers have called their tuition-candidates early during school time while they themselves benefit from the many local leaves and sick leaves that have been granted to them for rest or recovery.

The disease goes deeper than the skin. We do not realize that our adults who seek the welfare of their children at all costs have yielded their independent discrimination to the winds because the word of the child, his tantrums, his lies and concoctions are easily placated by a surrender or prompt dismissal. Rarely do parents participate in their children?s choice of subjects, or choice of their tuition teacher. Children are driven by the crowd and tastes are dictated by convenience rather than rigour. The school has been invested with a responsibility it cannot fulfill. It cannot impart values because education itself has become a merchandise auctioned in the marketplace run by thriving speculators.

● <B>Barest minimum</B>

Student power has also reduced teaching to its barest minimum. Few students do their homework and the school is an impotent spectator of the growing degeneracy. Suren Bissondoyal rightly pointed out that we are no longer a learning nation and the reason is clear. For years education has been lived as certificate hunting. Students learn Euclid?s theorem without knowing who Euclid was, Pythagoras?s theorem without deigning to know the author. There may be a world economic crisis, which frightens our leaders. Our school youth are not aware of it and are not interested because they dictate imperceptibly what to teach and how to teach.

The teacher must dictate notes to be popular. So many prepare downloaded handovers to feed minds that are reluctant to think autonomously. If ever a few students go out of the syllabus, it is in a project for marks, not for knowledge. We are converting schooling into indoctrination centres. Teachers have become vendors of merchandise and the student who wants to bag the best of all persuades his parents to pay honoraria to three different teachers, because it is accepted that the school cannot provide all.

● <B>Teachers as pacesetters</B>

Teachers are expected to be pacesetters. It is unfortunate that new recruits do not start their career with an ideal profile that they can emulate. They may begin with the image of their own teacher whom they imitate when even that model may be wrong. Who will provide that model? The Pay Research Bureau or the scheme of Service? None can catch the soul for each paints a disaggregated picture of the whole in multiple parts.

The moral and spiritual role of the teacher is missed. A scheme of service cannot paint the integrity and the sense of leadership that should inspire the teacher. Can the PRB remunerate passion for the subject a teacher should have to teach? Is it the role of the university to mould the teacher? No. Its role is to provide an intellectual discipline, a loftiness of perspective. Every other alternative tends to one answer ? the employer.