Teacher As Role Model

Teachers as Role Models

Author : Hareshwar P Singh

Ideally, teachers should be role models for their pupils. In reality, however, there are few teachers today who can legitimately claim to be a positive role model for their pupils. The majority of teachers in the contemporary world are only professionals who are paid in exchange for their instructional inputs. Given the fact that cultural and religious values vary from society to society it is difficult to imagine a person who can universally fit in to the frame of an ideal teacher and a perfect role model. For instance, in a country like India people usually expect school teachers—or the prime ministers and presidents—to be a teetotaler and a non-smoker in order to be considered as a role model. In the West where there are stark demarcations between your professional and personal life such parameters will be scorned and rejected outright.

Throughout the world teachers are expected to be their pupils’ role models. It is, however, important to ask whether it is possible for a teacher to be a perfect role model for their pupils in the contemporary world. In the ancient educational tradition of India students at a very young age went to live with a teacher in his home and returned from there when he was a grown-up man. On the contrary, the modern students in a day school spend only a certain number of hours with their teachers. In a residential school they share their routine with a diverse and sometimes heterogeneous band of teachers and caretakers. One has to come to terms with some hard facts about the profession of school teaching. It is rare to find people who have come to teaching not by chance but by choice. That is because of the irony that in financial terms teaching is the least rewarding profession throughout the world, even though society proclaims that it is teachers who build the next generation. In fact, there is an intrinsic irony in the very idea of teachers being their students’ role models. No parents motivate their children to become school teachers and you are unlikely to come across young learners who aspire to be teachers when they grow up. Thus it is worthwhile to ask: Can students consciously make someone their role models for whose profession they have little regard?

The modern pedagogical approach is that a good teacher is a facilitator of learning. He or she is just one of the resources for learning. Thus they no longer play the pivotal role they once used to do. There is nothing wrong with this approach, but then it has changed the whole dynamics of relationship between students and teachers. Hierarchical barriers between teachers and students are increasingly replaced by a new scholastic culture that tends to put both of them on equal terms as stakeholders in the process of education. Today a student’s role model is Barack Obama, Arvind Kejriwal, Bill Gates, Sachin Tendulkar, Tiger Woods, Will Smith, or Deepak Chopra. In fact a teacher deserves all the praise and respect if he is able to inspire any of his students to become like any one of the above celebs. Teachers worth their salt will not lament the fact that they are no longer the role models for their pupils. They will instead feel proud of producing motivated students who are aiming still higher in their lives.
Whether teachers relish it or resent it, they are keenly observed by their students both inside and outside class. Given their impressionable age these young boys and girls are susceptible to any negative traits in their educators. Thus even if a student is not trying to emulate a teacher, they cannot escape the influence that their mentor can exert on them. Thus, teachers must act responsibly and justly without any prejudices whatsoever—whether or not they are the epitome of all moral virtues and values.


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