Guru Purnima How teaching and learning changed our world.

Guru Purnima

How teaching and learning changed our world.

By Fr Myron J. Pereira SJ
Mumbai:  One of the more beautiful traditions in India is reverence for the teacher, the guru. The day on which teachers are so honoured is the ‘full moon’ of mid-July, ashadh purnima. Honouring one’s teacher means accepting his guidance, not just in a given skill, but in life itself.

For teaching requires an ability to communicate not just content, but skill; not only meaning, but value. The first two are seen in the subject one teaches, the last two in the teacher himself.

That is why we say, good teachers motivate, great teachers inspire; and of the great teachers – Socrates, Jesus, or Gandhi – that their life is their message. To which we can also add, when the pupil is ready, the teacher will appear.

Reverence for the teacher therefore is found in all the Indic traditions: Hindu, Buddhist and Jain; and many are the legends of the great teachers, starting with the Buddha himself, and Veda Vyasa, author of the Mahabharata and the Puranas.

With such a long and noble tradition then, why then is the condition of education in India so utterly decrepit? Why are our students by and large so crippled, in spite of years of learning?

Many traditionalists claim that this is because we uncritically embraced western concepts and methods, and ceased to ‘drink from our own streams’. But this argument does not explain why so many of our great leaders of the last century not only embraced western education, but promoted it assiduously – Nehru, Tagore, Azad and Ambedkar, among others.

Among the many things they appreciated in a western education was its scientific, self-critical attitude, its practice of not sanctifying the past, but of holding it up to scrutiny.

For example: in revering the guru shishya (teacher-student) relationship we often fail to notice how static and uncritical it was. The guru’s word was final, his wish unquestionable. The story of Ekalavya is a grim reminder of this. Mortified that a mere adivasi boy could outshine his favourite pupil Prince Arjun in archery, guru Dronacharya demands of Ekalayva the sacrifice of his thumb !

Also, if the relationship between teacher and pupil was ‘inter-personal’, it was also imbued with a strong sense of hierarchy. Gurus would teach the scions of the aristocracy in their ashrams – but never adivasis and dalits, and certainly not women!

It is technology – science applied to daily living -- which has demanded that the teacher re-invent himself. Earlier, the printing press popularized the book, which led everyone to read by himself and for himself.

Now radio, TV and the internet open whole new worlds to learners far beyond the confines of the narrow classroom. And learning all by oneself and at one’s own pace – unlike the herd compulsions of a classroom – is usually a source of delight, which in itself is a great motivator.

As basic education and professional training keeps spreading, fewer and fewer people work with their hands, and more and more of them work with their minds. These are the new “knowledge workers” – not just intellectuals, and college professors, but – designers and planners, analysts and technocrats, psychologists, counselors and medical technicians, media workers and spiritual guides.

All these have an increasing role in modern society, and the use of information is their key. In this the “service industries’ are displacing manufacture, as earlier manufacture displaced agriculture.

Teachers, traditionally the most ancient kind of knowledge worker, are called to grasp technology and interpret its meaning in modern society. And its first lesson is the loss of status and caste. The new teaching conflicts sharply with old attitudes.

For the world is changing, and we with it.

Up to now, every existing society took two things for granted: one, that while individual workers die, organizations endure. Secondly, once you got a job, you stayed put until retirement. But this is no longer true: knowledge workers outlive their organizations, and such workers move everywhere. As their professional expertise grows, knowledge workers change jobs, and may even move to other countries. It’s a fluid marketplace.

And as knowledge-workers continually re-invent themselves, they change the way human beings see each other.

Father Myron J. Pereira SJ lives in Mumbai, where he is a writer. He can be reached at pereira.myron@yahoo.in, and at his website www.myronic.org.