By Ellerine Diengdoh
To teach, or not to teach: that is the question.
Should I just put up with crumbling classrooms, almost bursting,
Or find a saner job that actually pays a pension,
And leave the children to their TikTok dancing.
Teacher’s Day is approaching – that one day of the year we’re reminded that teachers exist. For the other 364 days, they are a bit like the appendix…you know you’ve got one, but you’re not entirely sure what it does, and you only really notice it when it’s about to burst.
To prepare for this column, I’ve been reading newspapers. According to them, teachers in Meghalaya are often seen on the streets, which is strange. I thought teachers were meant to be in schools, teaching children about things like triangles and not eating chalk. At first, I assumed this ” street walking” was part of the NEP curriculum, an extended field trip about the history of pavements and the science of traffic. I got it all wrong, because apparently, they’re “protesting”. They stand there, holding up big bits of cardboard with words on them. This is, I suppose, a kind of spelling bee, where they are trying to teach the government how to spell difficult words. Words like ‘Salary’, ‘Dignity’, and the very long, complicated sentence ‘Please, For The Love Of God, Give Us What We Deserve’.
The main point of this outdoor lesson appears to be about not getting paid, which is a bit odd. I thought a job was a thing where you do work, and in return, you get money to buy things….like food and a roof. But for many teachers in Meghalaya, it seems to be more of a hobby. You do the work, and in return, you get an ‘assurance’. An assurance is like a promise, you can’t eat a promise, can you, nor can you use one to pay the rent.
This whole situation becomes curiouser, when you read strange words used to describe it in the papers, words like ‘ad-hoc’ and ‘arrears’. ‘Ad-hoc’ sounds like a special kind of fish, doesn’t it….like A Haddock. Perhaps it’s because these teachers spend their days patiently schooling, hoping someone will finally toss them a peanut. Then there’s ‘arrears’, which sounds like a serious medical condition. “Doctor, I’ve got a terrible case of the arrears,” and the doctor would look at you sadly and say, “Ah yes, a chronic occupational affliction. There’s no known cure. I’m prescribing the standard treatment…one verbal assurance, to be taken on an empty stomach, followed by an indefinite period of waiting.”
So the problem isn’t the government, it’s the sky. Meghalaya is called the ‘Abode of Clouds’, so that’s obviously where they’ve got the idea from! Clouds rain for free, don’t they? You never see a cloud asking for payment. So now teachers have to be clouds, but for knowledge, raining it on kids, but for no money……and when they all get together and form a big, dark, angry-looking mass in the middle of town, the government just sort of squints at them and hopes they’ll drift off somewhere else. Which to be fair, is what I do when a cloud looks like it’s going to be a bother. I just go in and wait for it to stop.
The storm however is getting more intense, because it is not just the school teachers, the college ones, the ones with deeper frown lines, darker circles under the eye and bigger books are also having a go. They have to carry their woes to a big, serious building called a ‘court’. They go there to fight for things like their ‘allowances’, which had to be ‘reinstated’. An ‘allowance’ is what I used to get for tidying my room, which makes me wonder: were the professors not keeping the staff-room tidy enough? And ‘reinstated’ simply means ‘put back’, like putting a jam jar back in the cupboard. You then wonder, why did the government take their jam jar of money out of the cupboard in the first place?
Then just when you think it can’t get any more bonkers, it does. Apparently, the government, has decided that schools and colleges, which are already a bit like a leaky bucket in a very, very dry desert, have too many ‘sanctioned posts’, and they’re not just, like, ‘re-evaluating’ them…..oh no….they’re ‘doing away with them.’ Their reasoning (and this is where it gets really clever) is that if a boat is sinking, the best way to stop it sinking, is to remove the person who’s actually trying to remove the water…..because, obviously, it’s the sailor’s fault the boat has a hole, not, you know, the hole itself. I’m just waiting for them to suggest that the best way to solve traffic jams is to remove all the cars. Or, perhaps, all the roads. That would be, you know, quite something!
To understand the reality, I spoke to those on the front lines.
(Interview with an actual School Teacher)
Me: So, you’re not paid. Are you eating your textbooks?
Teacher: (Sighs)That’s a common misconception. The paper is terribly dry and low in nutrients. We tried. The binding glue, however, has a surprising amount of protein. We’re experimenting. You adapt.
Me: But what about daily expenses? Food, rent?
Teacher: My knowledge of physics comes in handy for fixing neighbours’ appliances. The chemistry teacher makes excellent soap and hand sanitizer. The English teacher hosts weddings and the History teacher gives guided ‘Honeymoon Murder’ tours around Sohra. We’ve diversified.
Me: So your part-time jobs are more reliable than your main profession?
Teacher: (Nods slowly, as if the motion requires immense effort) The appliances are simple machines. They either work or they don’t. You can diagnose the problem. It’s predictable.
Me: And the education system?
Teacher: (Stares into the distance, as if trying to recall a dream) The education system is not a simple machine…..and frankly, I’m not sure anyone remembers where we plugged it in.
(Interview with a Government Official in a Shiny Suit)
Me: The teachers are outside. Looking a bit… damp. Why are they there?
Official: (Beams) Community outreach! We’re thrilled. They’re testing our city’s public spaces. I must say, their cardboard signs are a fantastic, eco-friendly and so clever.
Me: They say they need the money to live.
Official: The funds are in the pipeline. There are procedures. Forms to be signed, channels to be cleared. The pipeline is long. Sometimes things get stuck in the pipeline. We are looking for a plunger.
Me: And the plan to remove ‘sanctioned posts’? How does that help?
Official: It’s a strategic realignment of resources. We are trimming the fat.
Me: But aren’t the teachers the ‘meat’, not the ‘fat’?
Official: (Holds up a finger, as if silencing a foolish child) That’s a culinary distinction. From a budgetary perspective, a post is a recurring expenditure. By removing the expenditure, we solve the problem of not being able to meet the expenditure. The logic is sound. We are making the system more sustainable.
Me: Sustainable for whom?
Official: (Leans forward, his voice dropping to a reverent whisper) For the system.
So, after all that, what’s the career advice for those who still want to become teachers. Simple enough. Spend your youth, your eyesight and your dad’s money on a lot of expensive paper called ‘degrees’. In return, you get a job where you might get paid as much as your housemaid (if you are lucky). And that thesis you spent five years on, that’s not for knowledge…..that’s for burning to keep warm in the room under the school stairs you’ll have to live in. Like the wizard boy with the glasses.
So, you look at a teacher now and what do you see…you see a warning. A warning of what happens when you spend years standing up to build a future for other people’s children, while you have to stand in a puddle to beg for your own. And you also see something else, something far bleaker, written not on a protest sign, but on the wall. An inscription that reads:
“The hand that cradles the chalk, is destined forever to kneel before the hand that holds the whip”.