Mrs Brown

Mrs. Brown was our middle school Math teacher. A martinet. She never smiled. Her salt and pepper strands were knitted in a tight knot at the back of her head. She had a few synthetic sarees which she regularly repeated. Her grey eagle eyes spotted the disruptors in class at lightning speed. And she was given to “ensuring dire consequences” if anyone failed to give the correct answer to convoluting algebraic equations. In short, she was a terror.

She had a wide range of “antidotes” for the inattentive deviators in class which varied on a day to day basis. Someday it was squatting before the class, some day it would just be standing at one’s seat for the entire period and some day it would be accompanied with holding of the ears by the hand. On certain hard days it would be an echoing slap. The head bashing came as a  kind of an extreme measure – an under-the-belt punch which landed unexpectedly on a miniscule few. What triggered it I have not been able to fathom but it was done with great expertise as none of the ‘victims’ ended up with a bruised or blackened forehead or a constant ringing in the ears. There were mild swellings with a conspicuous redness which evaporated after a while. But the thud of the collision  reverberated as much as in the student’s consciousness as within the four walls of the classroom. I guess it was to just jolt the repeated offenders out of their unabated stupor.

In her class every student thus sat ram rod straight and still unflinchingly focussed on the blackboard whether they comprehended the subject or not. However, her corporeal punishments were never a cause of parental uproar because teachers in those days were considered GODS. They were NATION BUILDERS and  tomorrow’s CITIZEN GROOMERS.

Those who got routinely “chastised” by her in class let it pass with a mischievous chuckle after the bell rang. Her “physical abuses”, in modern parlance, never stayed. Rather there was a pool of sympathetic rationalization of her “roguish” behaviour amongst pupils.

“She is a widow.”

“She was ill treated in life.”

“Her son does not stay with her.”

“She had a short, unhappy marriage.”

And such other imaginary backstories persisted and transmitted down from seniors to juniors. She was undoubtedly a very fine teacher (in so far as the art of transmission of knowledge was concerned) looked upon by us with dread mixed with respect.

I remember a rare occasion when she praised me in class for securing 60% in her subject – a quantum leap for an average middle bencher.

I wonder whether we were tougher material who survived the likes of her unscathed than the ones who have to now undergo therapies and counselling at the drop of a hat. The very recent and disturbing trend of suicides by children in Delhi and Jaipur on account of harrassment by educators who treat them as pawns in the rat race to secure a “position” for the school leading to vehement protests by parents and students alike is a case requiring serious investigation, penal action and corrective direction for the future.

The news reports state that the Delhi boy’s suicide was preceded/abetted by days of humiliation, threats of public shaming and even issuance of a Transfer Certificate. The Principal and the concerned teachers have been suspended from the school for their outrageous behaviour towards the hapless child.

But of course, a comparison between our educational upbringing and contemporary  style of schooling is not relevant because the word competition had not then made an insidious inroad into career modelling. I don’t remember my parents pressuring me to become an “A-lister” in school. Neither do I recall being mocked or bullied by the monitor and wiz kids of the class for being poor in any of the subjects. The term “achiever” had not entered our dictionary. Nor was I castigated ever at home for not scoring a certain percentage in Mathematics. And that made me quite cosy with my arithmophobia pre and post Mrs. Brown.

This is a quick and in-the-face uptake on the burning issue of students taking their lives which is plaguing the society at present and not an elaborate anatomical analysis of its causation.

Though the educationists, consultant psychologists and child behaviourists have started an incessant rant on how the “psychological narrative” of the children is being overlooked by the “education enforcers”, yet what is more significant is to understand that every child as an individual has a specific, ingrained potential which is required to be identified and nurtured instead of following a uniform pattern of herding the flock in a convenient in-vogue mould.

In case of such spate of incidents with macabre fallouts it’s the perspective and vision of the educational institution which largely comes under question than the aptitudes of the students. It is pertinent to mention that many school/college drop-outs are better placed career wise than the potentially remarkable ones. Those in between and also nowhere in the row of wizards and whacko talents usually find an anchor down the line because kids in general today are more informed, innovative and enjoy greater exposure than we did at our time.

So, in place of carving clones out of human clay it’s better to let them grow on their own. At best the schools can be instrumental in providing appropriate and encouraging platforms for locating and honing individual skills and not become concentration camps of spartan training in a bid to outrun each other.