Spot the lecturer in this class

Keerat Kaur’s Facebook profile looks like any other 22-year old’s, till you notice that she’s a degree college lecturer. Kaur, who recently completed her mass communications’ course from Symbiosis, Pune, has been teaching at Wilson College’s Bachelor of Mass Media course for the past three months.

She’s just a year or two senior to her students and it’s fun to play ‘spot the professor’ in the classroom while she’s in huddled discussions with her students, often involving them in tasks which include interpreting a variety of paintings, music and short films.

It’s a similar sight sometimes at Juhu beach, where students of Rizvi College of Architecture gather with their lecturer, 29-year old Farzan Khatri. Just 7-8 years older than most of his students, Khatri recently spent an afternoon with them on the beach, helping them practise architecture of a different kind — building sand castles.

Meanwhile, at IIT-Powai’s Industrial Design Centre, Girish Dalvi, 28, teaches typography in Devanagiri script, specialising in the use of the script for the web. His passion: to get students thinking. “In India, for long, teachers were considered Gods, truly righteous, and information purveyors of the highest order. The result was that teachers started trying to form an army of their own clones, through their students. That guru-shishya parampara has come in for a change now,” he says, impassionately.

Meet India’s next breed of teaching talent, who, with the blessings of their grey-haired senior counterparts are bridging the generation gap with students. They’re more easily absorbed in courses that lend itself to creativity. Their big promise: youth, enthusiasm, approachability, and the ability to relate to their students better. The stereotypical image of a teacher as someone who was kind yet stern, a mother/ fatherly figure, is seeing a transition. Today, ‘friendly’ is the new cool.

“Earlier, people would be apprehensive about talking casually with their teachers, now they treat them as friends,” says Sushma Pandit, 34, a primary school teacher at Kapol Vidyanidhi
International School, Kandivli. Having been in the profession for the last ten years, Pandit feels the trend of young teachers is a good one. “Because of them, today, even senior teachers are keeping themselves updated with new ideas. They are open to change and are trying to get more involved,” she says.

It doesn’t mean that young enthusiasm is a substitute for experience. Mary Gonsalves, a counsellor at Maneckji Cooper High School, Juhu, who has been a teacher for the last 35 years, points out: “If you believe in the adage that experience is the best teacher, then these youngsters fall short,” she says, adding that a healthy mix of teachers from different age groups is the best and most needed combination of the hour.

“The younger teachers are more in touch with current trends and culture. At the same time, school children like the older teachers, as they are more understanding and patient.” Professor Sudhakar Solomon Raj of Wilson College, who was responsible for hiring Keerat Kaur, himself began teaching at the young age of 21. “What one looks for in a teacher is passion for the subject and great communication skills. So the inflow of young professors into the educational system is nothing new. It’s always been the case in schools and colleges — there will be some professors who are young and some who are very senior.”

Professor Joseph Campana, who teaches at Xaviers Institute of Communication and American School of Bombay, agrees, and is amused to know that his students think of him as someone who is young though he’s in his early 40s. He laughs, “I don’t think being effective as a teacher has anything to do with age. It is more a function of enthusiasm about your job.  There’s a general view that students like teachers who are more technology savvy; but in my experience, there are actually mixed reactions. I’m not on social networking sites like Facebook myself.”