The Fall of the Teacher

There was a time when to teach meant to lead. Teaching was how knowledge flowed across generations. The role was sacred because it came without a script. Teaching required authority, yes, but not the kind printed on a certificate. It came from mastery, and from clarity.

In ancient times, to be a teacher was to be a thinker. Socrates taught in the streets. Confucius wandered from kingdom to kingdom offering instruction to rulers. No one asked them for a license. They were teachers because they had something worth saying and someone willing to listen.

Across cultures, the role of the teacher was never identical, but always central. In Greece, teaching meant dialectic. In China, teaching meant cultivation. In India, the guru was a relationship. Teachers lived with students. Knowledge was not delivered but transferred.

But somewhere, something changed.

The Industrial Revolution did more than mechanize labor. It mechanized education. The factory model needed foremen in classrooms: people who could follow the syllabus, measure output, and push students through grade levels. It needed standardization. Suddenly, to teach, you didn’t need insight but certification.

In modern India, that shift hardened. Teachers became employees. Schools became compliance zones. The classroom became an extension of government logistics. Teachers were no longer intellectuals but also polling staff, census workers, COVID survey collectors. When a crisis hits, the state calls the teacher, not for ideas, but for labor.

Now we pretend that the right to teach is a matter of qualification. A B.Ed, an M.Ed, a UGC code. Never mind if you can explain the atom. Never mind if students ask you why the sky is blue and you can make them care. None of that counts without the paper.

So we get what we certify. We get teaching as a fallback job. An option taken when all others fail. We get teachers who punish curiosity because it breaks the schedule. We get tragedies.

The recent news where a BDS student of Sharda University committed suicide after repeated humiliation by teachers in the classroom, reflects not just a failure of empathy but of teaching architecture. We built a system where authority is assigned, not earned. Where the power to grade does not require the ability to guide.

And if you’re someone who wants to teach really teach, you find yourself locked out. You might have the voice, the clarity, the examples that make difficult ideas simple. But you are not qualified. You didn’t complete the process. You can’t be hired.

So you write instead. Or build. Or drift.

But you don’t forget the classroom. You remember it for what it could have been.