A decade has gone by since I started teaching English to children. Whether those kids have become better people now and whether their positions in life have improved is something I cannot tell for sure. But I have definitely moved up the ladder, working at a university now.
I have deliberately mentioned my association with a university—a bombastic thing, at least for those kids. My upward mobility is significant no doubt, but the irony it embodies is paradoxical and embarrassing too. I have moved upwards, and forgotten the kids. The children I have introduced here with love are perhaps languishing in the corridor of a dream-seller, somewhere in Bagh Bazar or Putali Sadak—or any other dream-selling mall for that matter—simply because their English does not work. Subject-verb agreement is a bizarre thing, and prepositions are frustrating.
I am aware that among those who ‘incidentally’ became my students in the past, there are now some successful scholars proficient in English. I honestly confess the English they have acquired is not an outcome of my teaching. It is a fruit of their individual endeavours. I have no doubt about my failures because, looking back at my ‘teaching’ from the position I hold now and the experiences I have gathered so far, I have more embarrassment and guilt to collect rather than narcissistic claims that I taught them English.
This confession is informed by the fact that the methods we teachers employ are completely wrong, and deter children, rather than invite, from learning a language. The red ink many ‘teachers’ like me use with pride and dignity to foreground students’ errors makes all the difference!
I am not sure whether my voice is a representative one, which other teachers professing the same would add their tunes to. But I am speaking from the position of a ‘popular’ teacher who was often awarded and received warmly by school children. Only that I taught many things, but no English at all! Those awards mock and the subsequent popularity foists guilt. Those kids—whom I often meet here and there—still write incorrect sentences.
In those days, we would summarily declare a child failed because he or she didn’t study. This is the cheapest answer to all ‘problematic’ children in many schools across our country. We link their failures with their pranks, their negligence, their family environments, their delinquent behaviours, their indifference to studies, their affinities with decadent affairs, their age, their arrogance, and above all, their indiscipline. These things definitely distract, but there are other things too. We seldom acknowledge our share in the children’s ruin.
These ruins should force us to reflect. Contemplating on English once again, it has always been one of my strongest convictions that our focus is, and should rightly be, on correctly-written English. Once this is set, a learner will start experiencing comfort with this alien language, and reading habits will be enhanced. Vocabularies will pour in, and spoken language will take shape.
In my long teaching career, I took pride in making the largest number of red circles in a student’s copy. Those red circles—more than the child would expect or a fellow teacher would notice—all brought appreciation. It certified how acute a sense of grammatical accuracy I had, and how I ‘invented’ errors where others would have silently passed.
I am not acquitting those who make long good ticks without reading the text. They are equally damaging. But I have a lot more to say to red-circle lovers like me. A few days back, a relative of one of my students came to my residence. During our conversation, talks about a student propped up. “He doesn’t want to face you,” he said. The conversation revealed that he was deterred by the red circles I had made on his paper as a student.
This incident made me think hard about my past, much of which I have spent in classrooms. The reason why my students repeatedly make the same mistakes—despite those many red circles I deliberately make—started assuming a grave philosophical twist, and this invited me to scrutinise all those worthless years of teaching—never mind the awards and love that came along!
Red ink—now I have started to think—is not only repelling, but also psychologically wrong. The red circles are neither an evaluation, nor a reinforcement. They are a misuse of power and authority!
Red ink irritates. I have no doubt about this. And it pertains not only to English education, but education at large.
I as a student too felt this while at school, and I can see the same on the faces of my students. The fundamental error lies in the fact that we the teachers tend to be policemen, identifying weaknesses and errors, rather than filtering and treasuring strengths. Red is dominant over black or blue, and it foregrounds the error. Foregrounding errors, I believe, is not the goal of education. Education should foster skill and strength, and a pleasanter colour—perhaps green or pencil gray—would be better to highlight the strength in a student’s writing.
Man by nature is encouraged by commendation of strength. A child will surely learn if his strengths are foregrounded, and weaknesses shown silently and appropriately. A red circle over an erroneous word does nothing but publicise an error, taking it to the child’s parents and guardians, and multiplying reproach. This is not education. This is deterrence.
No more red ink please—this can be a revolution. I am aware that it will not be received favourably. Criticism will follow. I cannot be the first to start, for my living anchors at the mercy of my job-providers, and I am still not strong enough to take the risk. Conventions will not easily stoop, or opt to change. The tutorial ego we have treasured for so long does not easily bend. Red ink will continue to cater a sense of power and glory. Only that, it can never cater to education. Red ink without education has become an impossible juxtaposition! If only a debate would start today: Can we do away with this psychological allergen in our classrooms?
- Mahesh Paudyal Prarambha
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