Links in a Chain

Mrs. Chandran (nee Balan), our English language teacher in the high school I was a student of, had quite an attractive personality and was role model to many of us, her students. She took the initiative to organize us and publish the first hand-made school magazine and got me to illustrate all the articles and literary contributions. I was an average student with not much inclination towards Science and Arithmetic, but I was proficient in Hindi and enjoyed the English language. Mrs. Chandran was a divorcee. Her employment as a teacher was helping her support herself and care of her two children studying in the school she was teaching in. Unfortunately, I began experiencing unpleasantness, when Ms. Chandran started pointing me out in the class for my inability to express myself properly in English and my test scores nose-dived from modest 60% to 45% I was intrigued at this sudden discovery of my lack of knowledge of English language and it shook me up too. I was not a very self-confident student and was quite introvert too. Such a sudden change in her behaviour made me lose all my confidence in expressing myself in English. One day, she blatantly told me and my classmate, Debosree Das, to take tuition from her after school hours. Then, taking tuition was not in trend and those who opted for tuition were looked down upon. I spoke to my parents and they decided it was not feasible for me to attend tuition after school, while my friend Debosree started attending tuitions after school hours. I worked hard to improve myself and still continued to earn low marks in English. Time passed and I prepared myself for ICSE exams and earned a modest score of 62%

My question is: How relevant are private tuitions? What is a school's responsibility in helping a student effectively learn a subject being taught in school?

In the early nineties, our family moved to Orissa to set up an industrial unit, but the things did not work out in our favour leading the family to face financial hardship. In order to help the family to tarry over the difficult times, many of my Uncle's friends started sending their children to me after school to help them with their studies and now, I was giving private tuitions. When I tried to explain the lessons to the children and explain various concepts and methods of language and science, the children insisted that I help them with their homework and help them prepare for class tests. In the name of preparing for class tests, I had to help them to memorise all the answers their teachers had given to them to the questions on each lesson, of course, for each and every subject! According to them, this would help them to score good marks in the examinations!

My question is: Do we study to learn and understand? Is Education in school to learn and acquire knowledge and prepare oneself for life or to score impressive marks?

While working for an organization managing its Livelihood Training Programme projects, one of my colleagues, had an uncanny way of avoiding any work-related responsibilities as he was confident that the project would fail. He would only observe us trying hard to work in organizing training programmes. I personally believe in doing my bit and execute my responsibility to the satisfaction that no stones remain unturned in completing the project.

A time came when Management tried to set a functional target for us to achieve without providing us with the required support and it was then that most of the members of the team cautiously worked on the new assignment except the gentleman, who then jumped into the arena, while we had made it quite clear to the management that both external and internal (organizational) environment was not ready to help us meet the objective. At that time, out of clear exasperation I had exclaimed at the gentleman "Can't you keep your backbone straight and your head high and clear? You are Father of grown-up kids and have seen life more than anyone of us?"

My question is: Are not the organizations and the society at large responsible or each and every individual, who is its integral unit or building block? To what extent can organization negate an individual's individuality and as a result alienate itself from those it is functioning for?

When I left the organization, one of its business partners' gave me employment. It is then I realised that the lady, who was the Director of the organization, was treating me exactly as my colleague in the previous organization and deliberately negated all the efforts made to achieve my functional objective as part of the organization. Respecting the social network and its functional objective, realising that I was employed to accept failure as part of the role reversal, without any further ado, I stopped from all my efforts in innovating and improving the operations of the organization to complete a farce called Performance Assessment when the building blocks of the organization were not in place.

My question is: Like the schools are the organizations too not responsible for its employees? IS not the failure of an employee the failure of an organization? Is not the strength and potential of an employee, is that of an organization too? Therefore, is not the overall development of an employee or its unit the responsibility of any organization?