Unsuited to the classroom

Should teachers come to school in jeans? The short answer is: “No.”

Yet earlier this month, the Haryana government withdrew a perfectly legitimate order directing teachers not to wear jeans at work. Political correctness and media ridicule forced the administration to take back its notification. That was a big mistake. Instead of uplifting teaching as a profession, this further confirmed it slowly status; in fact, put a lid on it.

Even in the US, the Mecca of jeans, schools are not always happy when teachers walk in as if on a holiday, or a hike. There are several school boards, such as in New Jersey, Santa Ana, and Colorado, which have prohibited teachers from wearing jeans to class. There is good reasoning behind it; as most professionals go to office in formal work clothes, teachers should too. Otherwise it would be ridiculous.

Red and romantic radicals should also note that in all portraits/ busts of Vladimir Lenin, he is never shown without a suit and tie. Mao Zedong was inseparable from his trademark jacket and Fidel Castro wore his formal army gear to office. Exceptions, such as the casually attired Mark Zuckerberg or Steve Jobs can hardly bean excuse. They are elevated showmen, who must flash-dance to project their wares.

On the other hand, checkout photos of Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, whose science made Apple, Google, and others, rich. You will nearly always find him formally attired with a necktie. Rare also would be a photograph of an open collared Albert Einstein or Bert rand Russell. This is actually quite the rule; most Nobel laureates, including our Amartya Sen, are always properly dressed in public. It’s time then to bury the myth that an untidy look hides a brilliant mind.

When it’s all right for school teachers to be dishevelled in class, the message on the black board is clear. They don’t care and nobody cares for them. They can scream out their demands, but they are not going to happen. To correct this drag, the Third Republic in France, as early as in the 1880s, made sure that all teachers wore dark suits to work. They were respect fully called “les hussardsnoirs”, or“soldiers in black”, not guerrillas in jeans.

For the Third Republic leaders the logic was simple: If teachers looked respect able they would be respected. After all, these“soldiers in black ”, in their dark suits, had an enormous task at hand. Their goal was to ensure that French children were as well, if not better, educated than Prussian kids next door. Ernest Lavisse, scholar-administrator of the Third Republic, believed that Prussia was militarily stronger than France because of their superior school education.

On account of the prestige that “soldiers in black” received, French schools began to attract some of the best minds. It was not uncommon for bright, ambitious intellectuals to seek a job in a school, or lycee, after earning their doctorates. Names reel out: E mile Durkheim, Jean Jaures, Merleu-Ponty, Sartre, Claude Levi Strauss; they were all school teachers before they became world scholars.

It is this background that explains why professor sin College de France are certified French celebrities. Their inaugural lectures are pencil led on many a Parisian’ s calendar as a major “must-be-seen-there” event. On a more mundane level, French teachers, of all descriptions, are allowed gratis entry to museums. Why, some even get coupons that serve them free coffee and meals in select restaurants.

Indian school teachers will never get there because they are not expected to. In fact, their clothes give the impression that they are forever in and out of pajama parties. It is not as if western clothes are the only formal option; a clean dhoti, a starched sari can equally evoke popular respect. This is because careful attention to office apparel, Indian or western, displays a certain rig our of mind and dedication to duty.

Therefore, what one dons to work should never be too comfortable. It is interesting that formal clothes in western societies are bodily restrictive, though not quite thrombotic. But they pin chin all the wrong places, particularly when the wearer’ s posture slackens. It is as if these out fits are designed to force the person to stay awake and remain attentive.

In fact, after the Meiji Restoration, the emperor of Japan ordered that only western suits be allowed at work. But a carefully worn dhoti or sari, or the so-elegant sherwani, can be quite uncomfortable too, that is, if you want to keep them looking neat. However, for that to happen, the person must know the why and the when of formal clothing.

In Japan again, school teachers enjoy higher status than white collar employees in swishy private firms, and you will not find them wearing jeans. There are schools in that even insist on suits. Quite in keeping, Japanese teachers rank in prestige just after high court judges and corporate presidents and earn a starting salary higher than engineers.

In India, a government school teacher gets around ₹20,000 a month and most of those in private schools are paid even less. As their social status matches their salaries and the clothes they wear, they are often the butt of ridicule. This also explains the popular joke where a lazy child is admonished with the question: “Do you want to be a teacher when you grow up?”

Perhaps the question needs to be re framed :“Do you want to wear jeans to work when you grow up?”

Dipankar Gupta is an eminent sociologist and taught at JNU for nearly three decades. The views expressed are personal.

Source | Hindustan Times | 22 June 2016

Regards

Pralhad Jadhav

Senior Manager @ Library

Khaitan & Co

Blog | http://pralhad-fyilibrarian.blogspot.in/

Best Paper Award | Received the Best Paper Award at TIFR-BOSLA National Conference on Future Librarianship: Innovation for Excellence (NCFL 2016) on April 23, 2016.  The title of the paper is “Removing Barriers to Literacy: Marrakesh VIP Treaty”

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