My Take | My two cents on teachers, anti-teachers and Teachers’ Day

I had the worst rating and rudest comments from undergraduates the year I first worked as a teaching assistant in the philosophy department of a graduate school.

I always knew things wouldn’t work out as I had zero interest in teaching but it was a condition for my student loan, which they called by a more respectable name – a fellowship.

I recognised all my students’ insecurities and confusions – the “lostness” – and their intelligence, and eagerness to learn and find answers. I had all those hang-ups not too long ago before them.

Real teachers use a young person’s psychological or spiritual instabilities as means to introduce learning, and to excite them about their respective academic subjects. The anti-teacher just finds those traits a turn-off and an irritation to run away from.

I actually don’t know for sure that I was the worst teaching assistant that year or ever in the history of the department because those ratings and comments were supposed to be confidential. But perhaps my case was so notorious they somehow leaked out. Some comments from my students were actually really funny – in retrospect. I can’t repeat them here as this is a family newspaper.

Professors could theoretically show your students’ ratings to you as a warning or encouragement, but mine didn’t. My professor, if I had to guess, just didn’t care, so long as someone did the tutoring and grading of assignments and exams for her, and everyone left her alone.

In retrospect, if I were a professor, that was how I would have turned out. That was our kinship whose recognition was long delayed. As I see it now, nearing 60, she was the example, the anti-teacher, who helped me realise I didn’t want to teach or be an academic. I love books, not people, especially students.