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Kerala teacher’s heart-warming incident from school goes viral on Facebook.
Recently Saji Jacob a government school teacher from Kerala posted an incident that happened in school on his Facebook account. The post has ever since gone viral and has been shared more than 4000 times. Acclaimed Malayalam director Aashiq Abu has also shared the same.
Humans are the most gifted species on the planet due to their capacity to think, reason, rationalise, learn and communicate. These gifts have led to near total domination of mankind over other species. However, these very gifts are not at all useful in inter-human relationships. On the contrary, the scheming human mind has only devised ways and means to increase the distances between each other.
Education is the bridge that has the potential to bring humans closer in love and compassion. In fact, the purpose of education should be to make each human kind, cooperative, unbiased, sympathetic (if not empathetic) and to sharpen their intellect and skill to be used in a way that will be beneficial for the society. In short, to help make the world a better place.
Sadly, that is not the case now.
The sole aim of sending children to schools and consequently colleges is to ensure that they get a job to get financial security. The next step in the hierarchy of the Indian mind is to get these young adults 'settled' — yes, a marriage, own house, sufficient bank balance and a car — and after that the cycle repeats. Academic excellence is measured by the marks/grades they score.
The above list of accomplishments is drilled so many times in the minds of children that they don’t realise that education can also be about applying book concepts to real life, realising hidden social evils and fighting it, cooperating with each other to build a better space for everyone, being kind to and helping those who are in need, supporting those who deserve it and most importantly, living in the present without being anxious about the future doing whatever one could to make themselves and others happy.
Out of millions of teachers in India, there are a few who rise above the daily delivery of academic concepts and believe that children also need to learn to be good human beings. One such teacher is Saji Jacob, teaching at a government school in Kerala, the kind of teacher every student deserve, but doesn't get. He takes it upon himself to ensure that his students not only learn what's in the books, but also what's necessary to become a good human being. He encourages interaction among students regardless of their age, gender, sex, religion and instils in them the unbiased civic sense and humanity every individual should ideally have.
Recently Jacob posted an incident that happened in school on his Facebook account. The incident left him amused, happy and hopeful, all at the same time and compelled him to share it on the social media platform. Following is a close translation of the post he made in Malayalam.
"When I reached the class yesterday, I saw students, in different small groups, discussing something very seriously. Yashwant's entire body had rashes and boils, possibly due to some allergy.
A few students ran to get Tulsi leaves, some of them to get turmeric and returned in a matter of minutes. They asked Yashwant to eat some Tulsi leaves; some of them crushed the leaves and applied on his body.
Amid all this, Arya and Fida came to me running. "There is a better medicine at my house, we will bring that," they said. They had apparently used it when they got a similar allergy. I nodded, and they got it as soon as they could. It was calamine lotion.
They removed Yashwant's shirt themselves, applied the lotion on his body. Rashes and boils disappeared in an hour. I was silently observing all this, wondering isn’t all these what we should be expecting from children than academic excellence."
The post has ever since gone viral and has been shared nearly 4,000 times. Among those who shared the post is acclaimed Malayalam director Aashiq Abu. The comments below Jacob's post provide an insight into the mindset of people today and whether these students are truly the future of India. Many comments praise the students for being thoughtful and helpful, believing that these kids will turn into citizens who would help others rather than pulling out their phones to record others troubles.
However, like always, a fair share of critics have voiced their opinion saying this innocence and helping mentality will wear off by the time these children hit their teens.
A person even commented, "A Muslim 'woman' applying medicine on a Hindu 'man' and wondered how the girl is still alive. That's the sad part about the society, right? Such people exist.
One of the reasons that this post is being extensively shared is that maybe it gives people a ray of hope to cling on to that maybe this is the world to come tomorrow. A world powered by education where people help one another regardless or caste, gender and religion.