Why teachers snap

Salaam Mumbai...

No teacher has ever thrown a duster at me, but I remember being slapped by Mrs Fernandes, my Math teacher, in Class 4.
It was a life-defining moment to say the least; what hurt was not only the physical discomfort of the experience –the ringing slap , my stinging cheek and the way the blood rushed to my temples-but the sheer unexpectedness of it all.

At no time, while she had been interrogating me about the sloppiness of my multiplication skills, with her bespectacled face leering inches away from my own, had I expected her to slap me. What took my breath away was not only the humiliation, but also the swiftness of the act itself.

Why do teachers resort to acts of such violence? In my case of course the answer to the question was not hard to come by: faced with the prospect of a student like me, with the talent of an empty shoe box when it came to Maths, poor Mrs Fernandes could be empathised with –if not forgiven.

Day in and day out she slaved to make me understand the most basic rules of geometry and fractions and daily she faced her defeat, as I grasped not a whit of what she taught me, falling steadily behind the class. And after weeks and months of my overwhelming inadequacy, she must have snapped. Hitting me was the better option to pulling all her hair out (she hardly had any to start with, I remember).

Frustration, irritation, annoyance, dissatisfaction are what lead normal, otherwise sane and rational adults to vent their anger on people quarter their age and half their size.

The job of a teacher is unenviable to begin with. To face a class-full of brats, some naughty, some ignorant, some willfully disobedient cannot be a happy prospect to wake up to each morning.

Coupled with that there’s all of Mumbai’s other splendors: traffic jams, pollution, congested homes, and poor infrastructure-which must make a teacher’s job that much more stressful.  But that still does not make what happened to me four decades ago-or what happened to Aditeya Varma last Thursday forgivable.

Around eight years ago, when my son came home with the distinct trace of his class teacher’s hand on his still warm cheek, I remember calling up the principal of his snooty South Mumbai school, in wounded astonishment. “Our teachers don’t raise their hands on pupils” the principal had said to me, when I confronted her with the truth.

I stuck to my guns, and was rewarded by her contrite call the next morning: “I spoke to the teacher in question –and she says she did indeed slap him. Please come over. We would like to apologise to you.”

I decided to be graceful in my victory, pressing no further charges, when I faced the errant educator in the principal’s cabin that n day. But one thing eluded me: Why did you slap the child? I asked her.

“Something snapped,” she replied, quite honestly.” I just don’t know what came over me.”

s_malavika@dnaindia.net