It all happened one fine day as I was teaching them about Victorian Britain. As a starter to the lesson, I showed them a video about a typical Victorian classroom and some punishments administered at that time. It showed them the strict Victorian teacher who never smiled and had a frozen expression of anger on her face. The teacher and the students sat in white walled class rooms and drilled their lessons. When a student could not read a word properly, she hit him with a cane and punished another by sending him to the corner and making him were a dunce's hat. She wrote on the black board and made the students copy it down. Finally as the bell rang, the students left the classroom in a line. The video ended with the question "How is school different today?" written across the screen. I froze it up and turned to my class for answers. Hands shot up and comparisons flowed in and one girl shrugged her shoulder and shouted out "Miss, the teachers now. they are more human."
Now let me tell you that I am in my late twenties and consider myself young and a strong element of the current generation. But the answers that poured in challenged by beliefs. The six graders who sat before me were amused by what they saw and I listened as they took turns pouring their observations in
Miss, We have dont have that thingy to write on. We use white boards and projectors.(reference to the replacement of black boards by white boards.
Miss, arent they even allowed to say anything?(The lecture method shock the students as they cannot think of a class that is not interactive)
Miss, look at those walls- so bare and boring.(bare walls without coloured charts and brightly coloured cut outs make them depressed)
Miss the teachers are so cruel, how can they hit those children?(corporal punishment - something that we all fled from is alien to these kids now)
And as I went through the inventions and told them that gramaphone was invented during this period. the children looked at me with amusement asking me what that was. And then tom and jerry and google saved me from further explanations.
These things are still afresh in my mind. But these are all'old and out' for them which makes me realize that I am antique as well.
Teaching has such an ironic character. It constantly makes me feel older as I compare my knowledge and myself with the students and makes me sadly aware of the generation gap that are never felt in some other professions that even thirty somethings think that they are the latest version of human kind. But somehow it also keeps us, teachers, feeling younger as the constant association with the future generation keeps diffusing their energy, enthusiasm, innocence and hope into us. All it takes is to be receptive - and open mind to receive and an open heart to give! <3
