Krishnamurti’s invitation to teachers, “to be responsible for the whole” opened the doors to a thriving atmosphere of questions, arguments, debates and dialogues. It is easier for a teacher to feel ownership of teaching a subject in a class, than for all that the school stands for. Wishing that school be free of competition and comparison is one thing. Taking charge of this deeply is quite another matter. Sustaining ownership of the measurables is easier than sustaining ownership of intention. Good institutions work for shared ownership of intentions by many.
Without individual questioning, there would be no movement in institutions. For it is individuals who have questions. Institutions live the answers that individuals find or a group of people sustain. Organizations deteriorate and lose vibrancy unless individuals exhibit ownership. Moreover, if a particular approach does not find wider purchase it will not move ahead. It will dissolve like one more nucleus in a metal bath.
On teacher-student relationship
The article on ‘teacher-student relationship’ in the Journal of Krishnamurti Schools, Volume 26, invites readers to consider important questions on the role of a teacher, especially vis a vis the relationship with students and the teacher’s passion. It also asks whether a teacher who is passionate about some particular concern can have a warm and caring relationship, without creating a sense of dependency? Many teachers may have encountered such questions or thought of them. In this article, I explore a few of these questions.
How should a teacher who feels passionately for something communicate this to his or her students?
One may need to question if passion is necessarily passion for something or a feeling that percolates all that one does. Or is it like, as Krishnamurti would say, the “feeling of cooperation”, “not cooperation around an idea”. A teacher, particularly one who has sustained a particular activity or a vocation in her life, would speak with passion and enthusiasm to students. Of course, nothing wrong with it. However, one may ask if one’s passion is something that one must communicate to students or is one’s concern to help the student discover the courage to live passionately? The two are quite different. My particular interest, about which I am enthusiastic, can easily become a compulsion for students. Care needs to be taken how one’s passion flows in emotionally strong areas such as human rights, environment, or poverty. The concerned teacher would create spaces for enquiry and exploration of the questions related to such issues. However, it is possible that unwittingly or by design, one may demand, invite, almost compel the listener, the student, to ‘join in’ as it is the ‘right action’ for a sensitive individual. The teacher needs to see that the windows of exploration stay open as the young find their own responses to equity, climate change and so on. It would help if the teacher were to explicitly and implicitly invite students to form their own views and, given them ‘permission’ not be part of his/her journey.
What are the contexts in which teachers may communicate their deep interests to students in a school?
One may ask, is the communication between a student and a teacher to become one-on-one, or can what the teacher says be available to the gaze of a larger set of students? If a teacher repeatedly engages with the same person or same small group, this reinforces, not only the individual or the group, but also their connection with the teacher. Agreement and acceptance become more prominent than questioning, arguing and disagreement or bringing different perspectives.
School assemblies, discussions in small and large groups, provide spaces for sharing and presenting one’s deeper interests. It is important for a teacher to learn to speak in a language and manner that does not confine the conversation to just topics of interest to the teacher. This may then touch many others, opening different possibilities for different individuals. The teacher may thus avoid the pitfalls of becoming an ‘influencer’ of students, creating ‘followers’, which should be a red flag for any teacher.
In schools and colleges students do tend to hover around teachers whom they find interesting, or someone whom they unconsciously wish to emulate. This has always been so. K has pointed to ‘setting man unconditionally free’! While a teacher may not fully grasp what this means, it is obvious that the teacher’s role is clearly not to constrain the options before students.
One might say that if a student is interested in something that I am interested in, it is a good fit. I am lucky and so is the student! This may be any sphere of activity—art, music, painting, writing, environment, physical activity. On the face of it there is no problem with this. However, if the student’s interest is my justification for repeated engagement with an individual or a small group, there could be some questions I would need to ask. The teacher would need to examine if the teacher’s need is separate from the student’s need. If that is not so, it would be wiser to step back before the situation leads to habit, dependence and dysfunctionality in the relationship. The teacher would need to see oneself as one ‘point of contact’, one person in the ‘village growing a child’. I would, as a teacher, need to guard against identification that leads to repeated ‘gratification’ of seeking out and engaging one or a small group of students.
What are some dangers for an institution if a teacher who feels passionately about something, engages with students largely through his/her central concern?
It is important that a teacher does not hold a student too close, and not fill the unfolding space of a young person with the teacher’s choices and definitiveness. Repeated engagement between teacher and student, particularly when exclusive, can prevent observation and learning. It is necessary for students to experience a distance from where they can look independently and also be able to question the teacher and his or her choices. In this open communication, in front of people who may be critical, the teacher too retains his or her freedom, while ensuring that students do not get caught in the aura of the teacher.
There are obvious difficulties if students become intellectually, emotionally, or psychologically dependent on a teacher. Students’ motivations are not clear even to themselves when approaching an adult repeatedly. While the young may be excused for not being clear, is it not the teacher’s responsibility to watch out and not influence them with what might be one’s certainties and compulsions? A passionate individual will, thus, have to guard against this with far greater alertness than someone who may not have deep interests. To use an environmental metaphor, if there is a ‘monoculture’ around a teacher, he/she may need to learn what it means to be ‘soil for supporting a hundred species’.
Lastly, issues of child safety and possible abuse are real for schools. This could be physical, emotional, mental, or even sexual. Institutions face questions when a student experiences discomfort not only when a student in the school, but shares this discomfort in later years as well. Complaints when students are in school are relatively easier to handle than those that are made years later. ‘Could we have done something more to forestall this?’, is a painful question for schools, if a former student were to raise it. No redressal is possible! Thus, schools need to be watchful of excessive student dependence on a teacher, for whatever reason, whether it be emotional comfort, interest in a subject, other interests, or liking the style of a teacher. It can spin out of control and, if that happens, this may lead to adverse publicity and loss of reputation for the school.
Schumacher, in his book titled Good Work, speaks of two kinds of leadership. One is like a Christmas tree with a star on the top and a lot of nuts below. The other model is the balloon seller who holds strings in his hand and all balloons of different colours fly to a much greater height. In looking at one’s own relationship with students, it may be easy to convince oneself that one is being the ‘balloon seller’. Closer watching, and time, and caring colleagues, will show if all the balloons are blue or green or if we have many colours of balloons flying, each in its own way.
The phrase ‘teacher-student relationship’ itself suffers from an implied continuity and has a fixed quality about it. In the relationship between teacher and student, there can be no greater error than binding the student to the teachers’ conclusions. On the other hand, relatedness has a quality of the here and now, without a sense of the future. Relatedness sets the student’s spirit free, enabling her to question, even put aside the teachers’ ideas in the light of her own understanding, and yet remain related. That is the challenge that Krishnamurti has left behind. We can learn a great deal from this statement of his, when he said of his teachings, “These are the teachings. Tear them to bits!”
The author has been a teacher and Principal at The School KFI in Chennai for 18 years and now works at Pathashaala having anchored its development from 2001 at many levels, identifying the land, construction and evolving the pedagogic and sanitation approaches. He may be contacted at gautama2006@gmail.com