Love in the Classroom

Long, long ago, when I was still at school, teachers didn’t just frown upon kids in the same school being boy/girlfriends, they actively tried to shoot it down. The intention was understandable – given how competitive the environment is, it’s best you focus on academics for now, and not get distracted by other things. There’s always time for all that after 12th…

 

In today’s world though, one never knows what will go viral on WhatsApp/ Twitter/ Facebook if teachers did something like that. Freedom of choice. It’s his/her life. Stick to your job, i.e., teaching. Stop being the moral police…

 

I realized that when my 11 yo daughter mentioned that a boy in her class dropped a folded piece of paper accidentally. The teacher picked it up, opened it, found it was a love letter to a girl in the class, and read it aloud (I guess the teacher was not one of those who believed in asking the dreaded, rhetorical question – “Do you have something you’d like to share with the class?”). And then she gave the letter to the girl in question with a hearty, “All the best!”.

 

A while later, my wife was telling my daughter that in our time, kids didn’t complain about their teachers to their parents since (1) parents were terrified that they’d be told that they were welcome to take their kid elsewhere, and (2) kids knew the parent would turn it into an interrogation, “And why did the teacher say/do that? What did you do?”. My wife went on to give an example of what one of her teachers used to threaten girls with, “If you don’t improve your writing soon, I’ll beat you and make you so ugly that jo bhi ladka tumhe dekhney aayega, woh tumse shaadi nahi karega (no boy who comes to see you will ever marry you).”

 

And then my wife added, “Of course, the teacher needed a different line for the boys since this line couldn’t be used on boys”. Without batting an eyelid, my daughter responded, “Unless he is gay.”

 

Aaj kal key bachey…

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