Hey! Teachers, leave them kids alone!

I used to listen to this popular Pink Floyd number as a child and I think it had a cult following. It still does. My son now listens to Pink Floyd and tries to strum this number on his guitar.

This anthem is still relevant in the present times. I have been teaching homeopathy for over 25 years and I sometimes feel that this number is a current favorite with the kids because of the reality it portrays.

Teaching, like medicine, is supposed to be a noble profession. I am a doctor as well as a teacher but I can’t completely agree with that statement.

When I was in high school more than 30 years ago, I was in a different era. Personal or private coaching was unheard of at that time. Teachers are now more mercenaries than anything else. The greed to earn more money has driven them to do things that would leave even a shameless person red faced.

School teachers now openly solicit students for private coaching. They zero in on the unsuspecting pupils and talk about their poor performance and drop hints about how their academic graph would improve if the teacher specially coached them. Those who are being privately coached are favored in the class and are given special and easy assignments. Miraculously, these students also get special powers and are able to predict the questions that would be asked in the examinations! Obviously the grades improve. If the schoolteacher is not coaching you, then you are left to fend for yourself and also made to feel like a pariah. You would be ignored completely and even if you give the correct answer to the questions that are asked in class, you are a nobody.

Then there is another class of teachers that would not have the ingenuity to ask you to be coached by them. So they resort to passing sarcastic comments about the students in general. They would rant and rave about the fickle students of the school who trust outside teachers and flock to them for private coaching. They would use every possible trivial incident to insult the students and scare them into believing that they made a wrong choice of the private tutor. To make sure that the students cannot go for their coaching after school, they give a lot of assignments that have to be completed and brought back the next day.

I know of a teacher who told the class that she would not be able to teach them unless they requested the Principal of their school to increase her salary. The school is a private school that has recently increased the fees, ostensibly to pay the teachers a higher salary!

When my son was in Class XI, the teachers went a step further. They would rarely take their regular lectures and if you had a doubt that needed to be solved, they would say that this would be discussed in their private coaching class.

I have a patient who often comes home feeling insulted and humiliated because of the way the teachers treat not only her, but also her classmates. They all have to suppress their emotions because to react would mean educational suicide. She says that her teacher is only interested in teaching those students whom he is privately coaching. He uses flimsy excuses to cut the marks of the other students and even gives credit of the work done by others to his pupils. Fortunately we have a medicine in homeopathy called Staphysagria that we give her to calm her down and to get over this feeling of indignation and humiliation. It has always worked. At one time, my daughter’s friend developed a severe abdominal colic after her teacher ridiculed her. Once again homeopathy came to her rescue and a few doses of Colocynth took care of the colic and also helped her become less sensitive to the emotional assault.

A young girl was brought to us with severe depression. She did not want to go to school and had remained absent for over a week. She had no desire to talk to anyone and would shut herself up in her room. Her parents often found her weeping and when they would persistently quiz her problems she would say that she wanted to die and end her suffering. We talked to this young girl and traced this depression and suicidal thoughts to the humiliation that she had to go through everyday at school. Her teacher had apparently taken a dislike for her and would use a greater part of her teaching time in trying to insult her and erode her self-esteem. The homeopathic drug Aurum metallicum, helped this girl come out of her depression. The parents were also counseled and asked to take up this issue with the school.

In the kindergarten class and the lower grades teachers, are next to God. Even the parents are secondary to the teachers and whatever the teacher tells the child is the gospel truth. When the child reaches middle school, there is a sudden realization that the teacher is not an angel but a mere mortal. The parents once again rank higher in esteem. Finally in high school, the teacher turns into a devil and the child develops disgust for the petty, mean and egocentric teachers. This translates into a hatred for the school.

So, hey teachers, leave them kids alone.


Wouldn't you love to share your thoughts on this?