A unique teacher
Today on Teachers’ Day, it’s worth recalling what William Arthur Ward, the author of Fountains of Faith, said: “The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.” Can we recall any of our teachers fitting the bill set by Ward?
One name that flashes through one’s mind straightaway is that of Mother Teresa, whose 14th death anniversary falls on September 5. However, it is not a mere coincidence that her death anniversary falls on Teachers’ Day. Since Mother Teresa became famous for working for the “poorest of the poor”, few people may remember that before she embarked on that unprecedented vocation, which she described as a “call within a call”, she was a headmistress in the Bengali medium school run by Loreto in Kolkata. She was a trained teacher and so as she walked out of the convent with just `5 in her bag, she started teaching the slum children at Moti Jheel.
Mother Teresa never looked back and took the world by storm. Though she had no intention of “teaching” the rest of humanity what they should do, she inadvertently became a teacher, albeit of a different kind. In the words of Ward, Mother Teresa “demonstrated” through her actions and taught the world to love the least and the last, by literally bathing, bandaging and bonding with those rejected by their own families and often by the hospitals. Without teaching aids in classrooms, she did and continues to “inspire” millions to bring dignity to those dying on the streets. She did all her noble work with appealing humility saying: “We know only too well that what we are doing is nothing more than a drop in the ocean. But if the drop were not there, the ocean would be missing something.”
Referring to teachers late Pope Paul VI in his famous encyclical, Evangeli Nuntiandi, wrote, “Modern man listens more to witnesses than to teachers. But if he does listen to teachers, it is because they are witnesses.” Mother was a true witness to God’s love.
A teacher’s profession is rightly called the noblest profession, for it is in their hands to form a whole generation of youth to be virtuous human beings. Among the different lessons that our modern teachers can learn from Mother Teresa is to instil in their wards the value of love towards humanity. For, Mother Teresa used to say: “There is more hunger in the world for love and appreciation than for bread. We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved and uncared for is the greatest poverty. We must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty.”
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