Dude, Where’s My Teacher?

Classes at M.K. Patel Madhyamik Shala (that’s ‘Madhi high school’ for the uninitiated) are split between two main blocks. To get from one building to the other, one must cross the school’s dusty dirt and gravel quad. During the Monsoon, one must actually ford the quad, since the courtyard becomes a miniature lake in a matter of minutes. The female teachers hitch up their sarees and take the plunge. The men roll up their trouser legs and “borrow” an umbrella from the nearest passing student.

The secondary classrooms are located in a different block than the school staff rooms. So, unless I have two periods in a row, I’m to cross the inky black Styx (or its dry riverbed) to get back to the break room. But it’s not uncommon for me to be gently taken by the arm and marched back towards the secondary block upon crossing. As we walk, my captor inquires in Hindi if I have a free period right now. ‘What, yaar, you’re free? Excellent. My students want you to teach my class! They are clamoring for Mr. John. They are asking me every day—why is Mr. John not teaching our class?’ He’s chattering so fast and his manner is so jaunty that it is impossible to fit in a word of protest. Plus, by now we’ve already reached the classroom door. He finally lets go. ‘There, you see, they want you here. Now you can teach them the English.’

The funny thing about the higher secondary teachers at Madhi high is that they don’t like to do the teaching thing. You might be crossing the quad on your way to print some documents in the computer lab, only to be towed away by Mr. Piyush, the maths and science instructor. Or you might be on break and off to get a quick chai. No need to go outside the school. There will be Mr. Ramesh, the social studies teacher, playing social butterfly and having tea with the school guard in the guardhouse. When his students stop by to ask him to come to class, he invites them to join his tea party instead. Or Mr. Patel, the English teacher, tells you his students want an ‘interview’. Mr. Patel hasn’t prepared any lesson, and he’s had the brainwave to use the only native speaker in the school as a prop in lieu of any actual teaching. ‘So, Mr. John, what exactly do you think of Indian marriage? Are you looking to marry a Gujarati larki? And, by the way, have you met my daughter?’

So it goes. Pop into the higher secondary staffroom at Madhi at any time, and find at least three teachers, each one buried in his (for this is a 100% male demographic) newspaper. Go on a day when the principal has left early, and you’ll be greeted by a phalanx of rustling crinkling newsprint. The male higher secondary teachers simply aren’t going to class. When they don’t feel like teaching, they bully subordinates into going for them. Or they might declare a ‘physical training day’ and let the students go out and play instead.

Teacher absenteeism is one of the largest obstacles to effective education facing India today. It’s not only Madhi or Gujarat. Nobel Laureate (and soon to be Humanities Medalist) Amartya Sen visited a number of elementary schools in his native West Bengal in 1999. Of those schools where a good number of the students were from Scheduled Caste (SC) or Scheduled Tribe (ST) backgrounds, 75 percent had significant problems with teacher absenteeism. At least the teachers actually show up at Madhi High.

Last January I was sitting at a rooftop café in Jaisalmer, talking to the chef over after-dinner chai. A small boy whom I took to be his son was flying a kite not ten yards away. But when asked he told me he was his younger brother. The government teachers never came to his village. They collected their salary, but stayed home in the city. Eventually, the children stopped coming to school entirely. The chef’s family had sent their youngest son to live with his brother in the city just so that he could get some semblance of education. I asked the chef what sort of eduction he himself had received. He confessed he was illiterate, unable even to read the signs written in devanagari script surrounding his shop.

In the U.S. teachers’ unions hamper administrators from rewarding good teaching and punishing the opposite. Indian teachers are not unionized, but the government protects them directly through an elaborate tenure system. Those applicants who pass the civil service exam in their field of study can apply for a position at a government school. And once the government assigns a post, it is generally guaranteed for life. In order to punish or dismiss a lax teacher, school administrators must appeal to the government first. The process is so bungled and confusing, so littered with bureaucratic red tape, that it is nigh impossible for a principal to exert any direct control over an errant teacher.

The problem is endemic to India, but has only become especially acute at M.K. Patel in the last year. It is not so entrenched (as in Rajasthan and Bihar) that it cannot be dealt an early death. And the school administration is well aware that there is a problem with teacher attendance. Last week, the principal called a special assembly. To the teachers, staff, and students present he gave a brief parable:

There once was a rocky seashore upon which thousands of fish would wash up at each high tide. One day, Gandhiji himself walked down to the beach. He noticed a small girl running up and down the strand tossing the flipping flopping fish back into the sea. Gandhiji asked the girl what she was doing, adding that it was impossible to deliver even a fraction of the fish back to the ocean before they perished in the sun. And those fish that she did toss back, did they not just end up flip flopping on the beach with the next tide? But the girl replied it was her duty to put the fish back in the water, even if the task seemed impossible, even if it was in fact impossible.

The principal’s point was that teachers should be more like that little girl. Let’s hope they take the lesson to heart. Perhaps then we can pluck that little girl off the seashore and put her back in school.