Dear Little Chintamani

“Happy New Year-2025!” I am glad to discover that you are heading towards the realm of transformation. It is great and appreciating. But do you ever reverberate how you were in the past? Your index finger frequently used to point towards the students. 

You were arrogant and you used to command the student as if an antagonist, a villainous character in a film shouts at his counterparts. You used to elaborate the behaviour of the students predicting their future in a negative way. Entire students had to listen at you, they should have sat in their place like a statue, a lifeless and passive body facing at the speaker in the class. “How do you lead your life?” was your only statement you used to speak at the student. You preferred students reading aloud. ‘Learn by heart’ was your catch word. You must not have forgotten, once your little student attempted to commit a suicide and you were in his class that day. You must not have forgotten how nervous you were that day. 
You did not know whom you were teaching.

 Only what you did is completed the text book and prepared the students for their exam. Each student was frightened with you. Little students could not tell you anything, but they used to pass your class memorizing and preparing to answer you. Your singing and dancing, your short stories and narrative were worthless as every student used to turn their ear towards you but their heart used to shiver due to your ferocious eyes at them. You know, you were only the one who smiled in class, students did not because they used to doubt if there was a satire hidden in your smile. This way you passed your days dear!

Being a social studies teacher, you used to teach your students that Nepal is never colonized but, do you remember how angry you used to be when you found students speaking in Nepali language? You used to charge fine to those who spoke non-English languages. Cultural responsiveness and plurilinguistic environment were not exercised even when you were a head teacher in one of the schools. Did you ever think that you were already been colonized? What sorts of students do you think you produced due to your ‘one-size-fits-all’ philosophy? But I believe, you did what you have learnt, what your teachers had done when you were a student. I suppose your way of dealing with the students was just a cultural reproduction. 

Now! Its great that I have experienced a paradigm shift in you. Your invaluable responses and differentiated instruction to your students are worth mentioning. Your endeavor towards transformation through reformation bestows catharsis in teachers like you. The way you have crossed through the bleak cosmos of cognitive dissonance is like a dawn after a long dark night. Now you are at the new dawn envisioning yourself as a change agent in the field of education.

 Your intrinsic belief in ‘unlearning’ is the best way to learning and I want to congratulate you as you struggled to dismantle your status quo and become a learner making every people your more knowledgeable other (MKOs) learning from each thing and everybody.

Your Elder Chintamani
Next version of yourself

(Currently Chinta Mani Basnet is pursuing MPhil in Kathmandu University and he is also the principal of Aspire College, Biratnagar, one of the partnership colleges of KU.)