Look Left and Right but Think Straight
Even as I write this, negative politics is tearing our nation apart. The media incites and divides us more successfully than any foreign intrusion has ever done. In a society offering very few ideals and role models, the youth are easily enticed into uncouth decibels, emotional posturing and fist power, to the extent that they completely turn their backs on rational thought and civilised debate and discussion. Individual freedom and civic responsibility seem to have parted ways, irrevocably. When every moral value and social ethic is questioned, criticised, analysed and redefined – from selfish political motives – then, more than ever, it becomes the teacher’s duty to seek a rational path out of this stinking quagmire.
This is the most challenging time ever, to be alive on our planet, especially if you are a learner, and even more so, if you are a teacher. Charles Dickens, the Victorian English novelist, described the French Revolution in these opening words of the novel, The Tale of Two Cities: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness.” This could be an allusion to our present times, as well. Today, cosmic scientific breakthroughs, appalling crimes against humanity, sci-fi technological revolutions, epidemic viral scourges, super-human intelligence, and reprehensible primitive urges coexist in mind-bending disharmony in a flat-world global economy.
Such complexity cannot be resolved by simplistic compromise or indecision. The teacher is not expected to be the all-knowing dispenser of accurate answers to every problem, but also not a fence-sitter. It is wiser, in a world of seemingly irreconcilable opposites, to look Left and Right until the Teacher-Learner sees both positions clearly, from the vantage point of impartial and dispassionate observation. Left and Right, however, are symbolical of skewed alignments. Traditionally, the middle path is centred in truth, away from exaggerated extremes. But again, without Left and Right, there can be no Centre. The objective of all polemic is to arrive at a conclusion. The teacher and learner in today’s world will have to look left and right or in opposite directions in every case, be it friends-versus-parents, school-versus-home, work-versus-play, tradition-versus-modernity, acceptance-versus-intolerance and, finally, learner-versus- teacher or self-versus-other. So, look Left and Right but think straight.
When negotiating Life’s complex networks, the ability to look Left and Right and still think straight is the ultimate survival skill in this teeming busy world.
Dr. Sanjukta Sivakumar
Principal