To seek clarity for myself on this profound question, I did a small exercise during my travel to 17 Indian cities in the past 2 months as a part of the Horlicks Wizkids event. I made it a point to speak to every principal I met when I visited their school and asked them a question – “How many good teachers do you have in your school?” I got varied responses from each of them again. In fact in one school a principal believed that he did not have a single good teacher apart from himself! As I probed further I discovered that some of the responses grew to be real, not like the idealistic one I thought that I would get. My conclusion thereby from all the tete-a-tete had with Principals was that - A good teacher is one who is meticulous, dedicated and completes academic portions on time- ensures that the children get good marks- punctual, regular and is willing to take up responsibilities beyond teaching.

Thereafter I went a step further and tried looking at a teacher’s job closely and found it very boring. Here is one real example to clarify my point. A teacher in Kolkata who teaches physics to about 300 high school students told me that her school has weekly tests, monthly tests, two terminal exams and the final exam. Considering that she evaluates 30 test and exam papers every year spending 10 minutes per paper; she spends approximately 1500 hours each year on evaluation which approximates to two months of her life every year!

This random speculation got me posing the same question to my friend and mentor Dilip Patel. He had his own way of giving me the answers and came up with an ancient Indian understanding that describes the various levels of teachers, which I have enumerated below:

Adhyapak – the one who gives information
Upadhyay – the one who uses information and converts it to knowledge
Acharya – the one who teaches skills
Pandit – the one who gives insight, a deeper meaning understanding
Drishta – the one who has foresight and enables us to see things from a future perspective
Guru – the one who gives wisdom

Well it may sound idealistic on my part but I guess if we have to elevate the level of our teachers we need to elevate the levels of our expectations from them. I am referring to the few dedicated souls who teach in your school, give them a bigger role to play in the lives of children rather than just decimate information to get grades. The issues which children face in today’s world are very difficult, information is not enough to handle them. What is required is wisdom, and what your school requires are Gurus and not Adhyapaks.