Today our country celebrates Teachers’ Day which commemorates the birthday of great scholar, philosopher and former President of India Dr S Radhakrishnan. When few friends and students of Dr S Radhakrishnan requested him to allow them to celebrate his birthday, he preferred the day to be observed as Teachers Day and thus every teacher of our country gets the privilege of being honoured on 5th September since 1962. India has held teachers in high esteem from the ancient times and we could understand the importance of teachers from an Indian proverb that describes the hierarchy of respect to be accorded to different personalities in one’s life; Mother, Father, Teacher & God.Teachers are the builders of nation and are entrusted with the task of shaping the future of our country. Every school is a miniature society comprising of pupils from different sections of the community. Today’s children will rule tomorrow’s world and the prosperity of our nation would ultimately depend on the quality of education being imparted to them in the schools. Today, our country is emerging as a major stakeholder in the world affairs and talents of Indian professionals are globally recognized in every field of development. This would not have been made possible without the support of dedicated teachers. Dr A P J Abdul Kalam who had won the hearts of millions of peoples always held his teachers in high esteem and this is more than enough to tell our young children that whoever respects their teachers would definitely excel in whatever field of study they undertake and will always be a treasure to the society. Let me also remind my teacher friends an important factor here; teachers who were revered most had always taught their children with love and dedication to their profession.
Now a question may be raised; are teachers responsible for today’s chaos existing in our society? Even though teachers alone are not responsible for the anarchies, they are also accountable to some extend because they are the one who connect children and their education. Let me state an important drawback of our present education system here. We are caught between the fine heritage of our Indian education system and the deliberately imposed Western education system. The conflicts are made more complicated by the commercialization of education in the private sector and the deep rooted corruption afflicting the Govt. sector. Adding fuel to fire is the implementation of major educational policies without taking the ground realities and feasibility constraints in to consideration. Finally the poor teachers are at the receiving end. I hope we could gradually come out of the shortcomings through our dedication and love for the children.
On this Teachers Day, I salute all the teachers who contribute their best to the children in spite of the hardships they face and pray to the almighty to bless them with the strength and wisdom to serve the needy children more efficiently in the coming days.
