BATOM for Sep 2009 is/are...

DO NOT SCROLL DOWN AND ENJOY THE POST. LET THE SUSPENSE BUILD.

So, finally we come to an end of a great event which saw the participation of 28 Indian bloggers from home and away who came together to give their brilliant insights into Teachers : Aaj Kal.

Lets start with welcoming our new members:

• Pankaja
  
• Paritosh
• Madhu
• SiMbA tAgO
• Devashish
• Pins N Ashes
• Dishit (Please provide us your Bloglink to be blogrolled)
• Nish (Please provide us your Bloglink to be blogrolled)

The fact that added even more weight to the event was that we had teachers like Dr. Ranee K. Banerjee, my Dad, Pankaja and Aneet participating with us.

Everyone enriched this event with their unique takes on the subject.

Ranee[1], [2], [3] entered with multiple submissions which covered the students perspective, teacher's perspective and finally a brilliant touching and eloquent short story bringing out changes in the demands of the profession.

If just that short story was not enough, Nasrajan too brought out the difference between Teachers : Aaj Kal, succinctly, aptly and eloquently by the medium of a short story.

Refreshing us with another form of literature, Richa at her poetic best, takes a middle path to explain that the difference between Teachers : Aaj Kal or rather Education : Aaj Kal lies in our subjective perceptions and not objective realities.

Shruti in her highly comprehensive post has touched many relevant issues through variety of mediums like anecdotes, 55 Fiction and factual and analytical information, all in a single post.

Avada Kedavra dealt with the various aspects about the changing trends and new developments in the profession independently and posted an amusing and apt sketch to depict information overload these days.

Prof. V.K. Grover, publishing a guest post on my blog, also did a brilliant analysis touching various aspects of the topic and gave some unknown facts in the reference to the University education.

Dhiman started with two relevant quotes bringing out the difference in general perception succinctly and concludes that its our luck that which teacher (good or bad) we happen to meet in our lifetimes irrespective of the generations.

Two quotes from Indian Pundit,'Techers then used to command respect.. Today they have to demand it' and 'Teachers are nothing but reflection of society itself' sum up his post nicely.

Sojo had a different but brilliant perspective equating teaching to just any other profession that exists and hence de-emphasises its so-called noble character to make it more professional in this competitive world.

On somewhat similar lines, Vishnu favours the commercialisation of the profession and feels that better education is directly proportional to the money you are ready to shell out.

Aneet with his witty inputs in an otherwise serious analysis has done full justice to the topic. Well, in short you can say he has done a serious witty analysis. (Hey Aneet, even I can write oxymorons:)

Ajinkya presented a humorous but apt analogy between the changing trends in Bollywood and teaching as a profession.

Sid taking side of present schooling system, further added to the humour quotient with a nice flashback mechanism to show the difference between his and his niece's teachers and schools.

Pramathesh shared some nice anecdotes about his teachers at different stages of his education and even his mother's teachers for that matter to show the change.

Rajalakshmi too shared some general anecdotes including story behind the origin of the day and nice references to our cherished Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam.

Aativas, taking a different stand talks of various people from a tribal woman to an honest policeman you meet in 'day-to-day life' (another interpretation of Aaj Kal) who teach you something good.

Mytuppence, coming from corporate background, modified the scope of the title to call the Managers as the Teachers Now while those from the college/school days as Teachers Then, sharing interesting anecdotes about some of them.

Bharathi interpreted the topic in Present and Future sense giving some apt suggestions for reforms in education leaning towards morality and change in the cultural parameters to decide wisdom, i.e. practical rather than theoretical knowledge.

Pra's was a brilliant Mahabharat's Samay Chakra meets H.G. Wells Time Machine post. She amazed us with an extensive historical analysis of the development of this profession.

Lakshmi, eloquently touched various aspects like historical development of the profession, some known people from this background, suggestions for reforms and his own teachers from the past.

Shilpa, as always has something new to offer. So here she does an exhaustive search for relevant quotes and makes dichotomic pairs out of them to create a full-length post.

What better way to deal the topic than sit down for a test. Govind treated the topic in an innovative Q/A form raising some highly relevant issues like disobedience faced by teachers of today.

Even Saimanohar talks of a situation where there is increasing pressures on teachers due to rebellious students but at the same time, according to him more friendly relationship is being fostered between them.

For Pankaja too 'Respect' is the keyword as she aptly concludes that maybe a little bit of respect from both the sides will help in bringing back the Teachers then.

Shankar in an exhaustive post straight from his heart concluded with apt words that Experience is the best teacher.

In a short and crispy post, Azad shares his 'tryst' with education. For him the problem does not lie in the teachers but the whole education system.

Pawan showed the change with an interesting introduction refering to the changing role models of the students, as the generations progress.

In a transitory stage between the student-she-was and the teacher-she-will-be, Guria is clear about one thing that its way past the time to bring back the true spirit and glory of the teachers. (You’ll definitely make a great teacher).

On the whole, there is a sort of consensus that the ethics and standards of the teaching as a profession have degraded to some extent but then at the macro level they are just the reflection of the changing priorities of the society at large.

While most insist that there is a need to look at teaching as a noble profession, there are some who feel that it should be treated just like any other profession without adding the ‘service’ tag to it.

Nonetheless, everyone agrees that there is an urgent need to revitalise the profession through better training and better monetary incentives for the teachers.

Moreover, moving beyond this general interpretation, some Blog-a-Tonics have aptly increased the scope of teachers to include within their ambit the parents, other people we meet in everyday life, our own practical experiences and above all the Mother Nature.

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Now coming to the voting trends. Well, total 26 votes came in out of which one was from a non-participant. The voting was very close. Most of the participants managed a vote but two stood out and hence are sharing the award.

P.S. Richa's votes have been cancelled as she voted twice, once for Ajinkya and once for Nasrajan. Please read the rules carefully in the future.

Congratulations to Govind and Indian Pundit for winning the Blog-a-Tonic of the Month award for September, 2009 with 4 votes and 16 cheers each.
Please pass me your e-mail ids so that the badge award can be mailed to you.

All the voting comments are now visible. Click here to read them.
In case you find any discrepancy in the results, please bring it to my notice asap.


Here are two important questions for all the Blog-a-Tonics:

• Please tell next time, should we go for a single topic or a broader category under which the Blog-a-Tonics have the freedom to take up any issue (though the category won't be that broad that every topic has exclusive scope)
• In case of multiple entries in future, should we count the votes obtained by all the posts of the particular blog-a-tonic or look at the posts individually while deciding BATOM.

Please answer these questions in the comments section for sure.

Signing off with an elated heart,
Yours blog-a-tonically,
Vipul Grover