Teacher: An Agent of Transformation
Prof Rajan Kapoor
The other day, I took part in an online quiz. There were a few questions the answers of which were not known to me. I did not attempt those questions and submitted the test. As expected, I failed to qualify the test. After a few minutes, one of my colleagues, who appeared in the same test, shared the big news of his awarding with an E- Certificate and that too with the big word ‘Distinction’ printed on it. On query, he revealed that he scouted the answers from the net! His frank revelation set me thinking. It was ironical that a teacher whose job is to put his students on the path of honesty had himself taken recourse to dubious means to clear the exam!
The immoral act of my friend reminded me of a throwback event that made me develop a strong aversion to copying. It happened so that when I sought admission in an undergraduate course in a premier college at the city of Amritsar, I was forbidden by my father to indulge in unfair means in the exams. He extracted a promise from me that I should never succumb to the evil of copying. I made the promise and honoured the same till the fifth semester of my course.
It was in the sixth semester that I made an abortive attempt to indulge in the malpractice of copying. It was the exam of Sanskrit grammar. I was not fully prepared to take the challenge.
I did not know how to write an essay on the great writer ‘KaliDas ‘ and that question carried fifteen marks. My classmate, who was sitting in front of me, had the slip that catered to the particular answer.
I reluctantly took the slip from him. But when I copied the first word from the slip, the words of my father forbidding me to use dubious means ‘silently pierced’ my ears. Finally, I chewed the slip and left the page blank.
Now, after so many years, I again did not summon up the courage to Google answers of the quiz in which I appeared the other day. I became the bigger beneficiary of the promise that my father sought from me as my daughter emulated my example when she recently appeared in her online exam.
I owe my good habit of not falling prey to the evil of copying to my father who devoted his life to teach good values to his students. Now, this good habit has automatically been passed on to my daughter. True, good teachers do not change a student. They rather transform generations!
(The writer is a teacher and he teaches at KRM DAV COLLEGE NAKODAR, Jalandhar, Punjab)
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