Of Perspective and Reality

Good, substantial, meaningful poems do have a way of jumping out of the page. This one caught my eyes as I was browsing a literature textbook to while the time away invigilating my students sitting for their mid-year exam: Very poignant I think – it’s a poem about a whole lot of things, but mostly, IMHO, it is about perspective and reality. Enjoy:

ETHICS
(Linda Pastan)

In ethics class so many years ago
our teacher asked this question every fall:
if there were a fire in a museum
which would you save, a Rembrandt painting
or an old woman who hadn’t many
years left anyhow? Restless on hard chairs
caring little for pictures or old age
we’d opt one year for life, the next for art
and always half-heartedly. Sometimes
the woman borrowed my grandmother’s face
leaving her usual kitchen to wander
some drafty, half-imagined museum.
One year, feeling clever, I replied
why not let the woman decide herself?
Linda, the teacher would report, eschews
the burdens of responsibility.
This fall in a real museum, I stand
before a real Rembrandt, old woman,
or nearly so, myself. The colors
within this frame are darker than autumn,
darker even than winter – the browns of earth,
though earth’s most radiant elements burn
through the canvas. I know now that woman
and painting and season are almost one
and all beyond saving by children.

A Teacher's New Paradigm

Happy Teachers' Day! I have been mulling about this for a while now. So most probably this is an idea that I picked up along the way, somewhere.

On this special occassion, I call upon all teachers to embark on a paradigm shift. Let us change the perspective, regardless of how quaint or noble it may sound, that we and the people at large hold about our profession.

We have all this while been deemed as a candle that sacrifices itself to enlighten others. Are we really that? Do we want to be so? What is noble about this profession is the enlightening part, not the commiting suicide part. Upholding this edict means that we join this profession with a death wish - let us slowly burn ourselves so that others may prosper. I think such un-Machivallian attitude has no place in the present education scenario.

Don't we teachers love ourselves? Has our profession demeaned us so much that we see ourselves, as other people do, as a mere block of wax with a lighted wick, a mere instrument for the benefit of others? How can we live with that? Have we not a life? Can we not 'die' in doing what we are to do? Can we not have a profession that allows us to bloom along with those whom we prosper? Can we, at least, not be deemed 'expendable'?

So I say,my fellow teachers and educators, swap the 'candle' with 'flourescence lamp'. Let us convert the outdated edict to one that is life preserving. One that allows us to remain who we are and still do the noble job of enlightening our pupils. One that gives us more dignity!

Enjoy this vid which I found on youtube. Teachers - there are more to you than meets the eye.
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Selamat Hari Guru!