Who are the teachers?
You can find so many people who hate a certain subject just because they hate the teacher who took that subject. This is where the internet is helping us a lot. We are getting access to top quality learning materials — written materials, images, animated tutorials, lectures and so on. In fact, school and college education are merely becoming a formality to obtain marks and grades. New generations might have an educational system far different from the one we had. Transition in any system is quite natural.
Somasundaram was our Tamil ‘sir’ in my high schooldays. He was very tall and always wore traditional white & white veshti shirt. His face reminded me of Kamarajar. He was one of my favourite teachers. I started liking Thirukkural because of him. And the reason? Strangely, I don’t find anything. Though he took classes for us three consecutive years and we had Kural in every year, he never mandated that everyone should have a liking for Thirukkural. If you look deeply, we get lots of things getting inculcated in us without our realisation. Like the characteristics we inherit from our parents that we realise when we become a parent, like nation’s culture is imbued in oneself without any conscious efforts. This could be one of those.
The human connection is so important. While we invent so many things and advance in science, we are trying to ensure that we are not breaking these connections, perhaps we can never break it. The teaching materials can be transformed, but the nature of the great teachers remains the same. Great teachers teach the subject, and they somehow make us love the subject by amalgamating the subject and something beyond the subject — a connection. I think it is true in any place where you find people to inspire you. It can be your parent, your friend, your manager or even some stranger. They are the real teachers.
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