I am sorry if you find this topic irrelevant, but since its on my mind..i am deciding to share it. I am calling for a specific action (please join in) if state of our teachers bothers you.
The thought is triggered by various discussions on facebook and whatsapp around sponsoring students, setting up a chair..or a fund..or doing a book…in memory of MPR.
A batchmate of mine (now settled in US) sounded worried about MPR shifting house and wanted to help in anyway possible. On another group people were discussing how we never thought of Ranjan as person, with family..we always had him as our teacher..we looked up to him and didnt ever bother that he may have some problem or he may go away…
Come to think of it how many of us bother about our teachers from school or college. even in a design school where the teacher student bond is unusually strong..we are always extracting from our teachers..we want gyan, we want direction..we want mentorship..we want their love and affection..then their friendship and guidance for life…
what do we give in return?
I think the story is same irrespective of which design school you pass from. Teachers give their lifetime of love and care to unlimited number of students…they dont even expect anything back. They are happy with our achievements and with our happiness.
What can we give back… time, care, love and obviously when we can.
We dont reach out and say i want to spend some time with you..help u in what you do ( we think they dont need or they wont expect).
We dont reachout saying…please take a break, take your family and go on vacation that i am arranging…
We dont get back and say…can i gift you a car or a house…( we think thats not acceptable)
We dont get back and say..can i share spend on you daughters wedding…can i pay your hospital bills…
We dont say let me care (we believe they care for us..they dont need it)
Now think of how /what we do with out Parents,
how we take care of them..how we understand that they graduate from taking your care, to someone you need to take care of.
If we were to spend just 5% of our attention, time and money for our teachers, the story would be different.
Also consider this, a teacher is teaching till the age of 65 or more (without break), and at the end of the career not many can even afford a house of their own. Yearly Salaries for many are less than the airfares of our annual vacations.
We wouldnt respect teachers if he had a side job to support his family..I believe teachers are not even allowed independent consulting. (and how much would that get them anyway).
This 5% time, care and money to teachers can be a way.
It could be a software managed voluntary service. Imagine if you paid 5% of your salary / turnover everyear to a fund. and deposited 5% of your time to the same service. You commit to doing this in your college but you start doing this only after 10 years of college. So its definitely not a burden on you.
The software gives out your fund to those teachers and staff that were there when you were in college/school. And you have a choice of including names of your external guides and mentors from different colleges as well.
The software also manages your 5% time to give back to school, adds it and carries it forward that you decide how you would spend in your present. lets assume that it is 8 hrs working for 20 days a month for 10 months in a year ( 1600 hours a year that we work)- we need to give back 80 hours a year. ie: 10 days in a year. Now devide this time between school and college.
You need to spend one week in your school and one week in your college every year. Not much to ask.
Now look at the money side: assuming that an average designer after 10 years earns.. Rs. 10 lacs a year (dont laugh..this is only for calculation purpose).. You need to give 50,000 rs every year. You could half of this to your college and half to school.
you could ofcourse donate more.
Consider this now:
If your college has 1000 students over ten years practice in market.
Your college gets: 5000 weeks worth of alumni to teach and assist projects every year.
Your college gets funds for your teachers 2.5 crores. So even if it is 50 people that you listed as your teachers..each gets 5 lacs a year!!
Now in this software you could gift/ exchange your time and money to someone else too, you could exchange the time with your batchmates.
I know like with everything else many would start finding problems here. I am sure there are better ways, this is one way i could think of.
I would like to work on this further, to work on this software / and system.
Make this available to all schools and colleges and to students who want to enrol.
Would love to know if someone would found this with me.
This would be our dedication to all the teachers we have taken for granted.
Get in touch with your feedback / approval / critiques / help
Sudhir@…
Hi ,First time in our country someone has thought about teachers and their welfare.I highly respect and appreciate this .Its just a suggestion every college n school should have active alumnii committee with like minded people and work towards the same.
i see it as a “pay-it-forward” kind of thing. Parents and teachers have given generously and selflessly; for me the best thing to give them in return is the sense of pride that we have taken forward their teaching and values in the service of others. We too need to be generous and selfless, not necessarily back to them, but towards other people whose life we touch through our work and life. I realise that everyone has different equations with their parents and teachers, as with their values at work. So this could probably be the right solution for those who feel the need to “pay-it-back”
I wish the colour scheme of this page was such that text was dark against a lighter background. Reverse text is so hard to read on screen, especially in longish articles like these. and our web-induced habit of speed reading makes it even harder to absorb stuff.