Teaching, the most hazardous job!

Turbulent Students’ movement is nothing new in our state. Now students go in for agitation at the drop of a hat. Issues are not wanting too. Any minor issue is enough to make it blow out proportions.Gheraoing authorities for hours together to coerce them to concede to their demand has now been a commonplace incident. Sometimes teachers are gheraoed enbloc too. For this turbulent behaviour of student authorities can’t impose discipline in the campus or in any institutions which might ultimately benefit the students. Sometimes things have gone to such a pass students consider the teachers and authorities as their class enemies. Now each and every issue big or small is some way or other politicalised, thanks to the instructions from party offices

The management is also not Caesar’s wife. They’re on the contrary more politicalised than students. They seldom come to consensus of opinion on a certain issue and this division among them stand in good stead for students. It’s seen in most agitations in academic institutes students make the last laugh and management has to concede a lot. Take the cases of ragging in engineering colleges. Management routinely declare every year with much ado that raggers would be prosecuted, but ragging is going on almost unabated and instances of meting out punishment to raggers is few and far between, except in extreme cases. In short, the students hold sway in most of the academic institutions and any resistance from the management against their wrong doings meets with greater resistance from students so that management have to retreat ultimately.

General lawlessness ,violence ,impatience and intolerance that now prevail in all spheres of our society have their impact on students’ movement. So we often see educational institutions assume the look of battle fields during students’ union elections. But what happened at Herambachandra college, Kolkata in the name students’ movement is really horrifying. A student sprinkled petrol on the principal of the college to burn him alive. The student poured petrol on his body too for self immolation. Luckily police interfered in time and a macabre incident could be averted. The issue was admission to college. However, the Christian teacher in Kerala was not that lucky as the principal of Herabachandra college. His palm was chopped off for setting a question that allegedly hurt the religious sentiment of a particular community. If such is the trend of students’ movement the days are not far off when teaching would prove to be the most hazardous job one has ever faced.