Today, 5th October, is World Teachers Day
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When a Judge of Allahabad High Court I gave a judgment on 6.3.1997, Ramji Tiwari vs District Inspector of Schools, in which I mentioned in detail about the importance of teachers for a young person’s intellectual development.
https://indiankanoon.org/doc/1817906
However, the truth is that most teachers in India have only worthless bookish knowledge
The great Chinese scholar and philosopher Confucius described a genuine teacher in his book ‘Analects’.
He defined a true or genuine teacher as someone who constantly reviews old knowledge to discover new truths. He said
” A genuine teacher never stops learning. He keeps cherishing his old knowledge, but is continually acquiring new knowledge, so as to be a teacher of others ”.
Confucius viewed teaching as an interactive process of awakening a student’s own critical thinking and desire for self-improvement rather than forcefully cramming his mind with facts alone. Despite being a master, Confucius always described himself as a seeker who was willing to learn from anyone—whether rich or poor, ruler or peasant.
I may also mention about Prof. Richard Feynman (1918-1988) who was a brilliant American theoretical physicist, who made important contributions in quantum mechanics, superfluidity, etc. He assisted in the development of the atomic bomb in the Manhattan Project during World War 2. He introduced the concept of nanotechnology. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1965 (jointly with Dr. Schwinger and Dr. Tomonaga) for his contribution to the development of quantum electrodynamics.
Prof. Feynman had taught at Cornell University, Caltech, etc. He also spent an academic year teaching in Brazil. At the end of the year he was invited to give a talk about his experiences of teaching in Brazil. At the talk there would be not only students, but also Professors and government officials.
He said he would give the talk only on condition that he would be allowed to say whatever he wanted. To this the organizers agreed.
In the talk Prof. Feynman said: “The main purpose of my talk is to demonstrate to you that no science is being taught in Brazil.”
The audience was shocked. This was crazy. After all there were numerous science classes and courses, and thousands of science books everywhere in Brazil.
Prof. Feynman explained that Brazilian students merely memorized from science books, without experimentation. People passed examinations, and taught others to pass examinations, but nobody knew anything. Experimentation is absolutely essential in science, but that was largely missing in science classes in Brazil.
The situation in India, too, is somewhat similar to that in Brazil.
What are the kinds of teachers we have in India today ?
At the recent AI Impact Summit 2026 in Delhi, Galgotias University (a private university in Greater Noida) displayed a robodog, claiming that it was created by the university, though it was later revealed to have been made by a Chinese company, Unitree.
This fiasco went viral on the social media.
If this incident had been a one-off faux pas, one could have overlooked it. But in fact, it discloses a deeper, fundamental malaise in India’s entire education system.
One of the main purposes of India’s educational institutions, particularly our universities, engineering colleges, etc should be to find out how India can solve its massive and widespread problems of poverty, unemployment, child malnutrition (every second child in India is malnourished, according to the Global Hunger Index), and the almost total lack of proper healthcare and good education for the masses, etc.
Solving these problems requires creative and critical thinking, which our higher educational institutions should be fostering. But the teachers in these institutions do not do that. They only pass on their bookish, superficial knowledge to their students and regard their work merely as a job to feed themselves and their families, while drawing hefty salaries and perks that come from taxpayers’ hard-earned income. What have they given in return to the people? Almost nothing. And their students are only interested in getting cushy jobs after graduating, e.g., in the IAS, PCS, a multinational corporation, etc, or going and settling abroad.
Teachers and intellectuals are the eyes of society, and without them, society is blind.
But in India, our teachers and so-called ‘intellectuals,’ who are mostly products of our higher educational institutions, are really pseudo-intellectuals, having only shallow bookish language that they acquired in their universities and colleges, and are arrogant, pompous, and snooty braggarts displaying their superficial ‘knowledge’ (their ‘research’ mostly being plagiarism, like the robodog shown by Galgotias at the AI Impact Summit), strutting around like peacocks showing their feathers to a gullible public. They are themselves blind, so how can the blind lead the blind?
I submit that unless we change the backward mindsets of most of our people (full of casteism and communalism), we can never solve our huge socio-economic problems. And to do that, we must have genuine teachers and intellectuals in India who can give correct guidance to the people and show them the way forward, not the supercilious, pretentious, highfalutin, and snooty lot we have at present.
So I regret I cannot celebrate Teachers Day
