No more Teachers but Counselors Needed - M Joseph

 

    When my friend was a Professor, in a private Engineering College at Coimbatore, there was one student Mr. L, doing B.E., who had (I suppose) a love affair with a girl studying in the same college. Accidentally, He happened to see him with his girl friend in a very close proximity. He called him and inquired. Though, initially he refused to accept the affair, and finally pleaded sorry. He shouted at him as it was the time for his semester exams and asked him to bring his parents to meet him and stood by his decision to make him more concentrated towards studies, in spite of his requests for not informing the matter to his parents.

    Later in the evening, when he was driving my car from the hospital, He got a call, informing me that Mr. L, attempted to commit suicide and was rushed to the Hospital. He was heart broken. He rushed to the hospital and came to know that he was out of danger, by God’s grace. It took him around one month to return back to my normalcy after solving all the problems pertinent to this suicidal attempt.

    I under stood that Love is not Love alone - it is also a suicide and murder associated psychological issue - which the teachers have to handle it terribly careful. Suicides and suicidal attempts are on the rise, presently, in the society especially among the young people. The reasons are being one sided love, love failure, academic failures and pressures, failure in general, inferiority complex, family problems, and so on. One college student, at Pudukkottai, committed suicide for being dark skinned. What a terrible thing!

    Sometimes love failure or breakup as the youth call, lead to things like committing suicide, murder or acid attack, abuses in social media and the like. How the love, which was divine once, as they all say and presented so in cinemas, turns out to be the cause for all such wrong motives/doings. The psychology behind such things is very dangerous to the society and solving the problems arising out will be an uphill and painful task encountered by the parents and teachers. It is painful and shameful to say that caste/religion also plays vital role for the violent behavior among the youth in the campuses. The problems and context, this article addresses is no more exception to the students of schools too.

    There can be certainly some light thrown on the gloomy, closed environment, either by the parents, teachers, friends, or some professionally trained people and the potential victims ought to know these possibilities. They will approach these saviors, only if there is a free space, found among them, provided that they can be much trusted upon. Certainly there should be easily approachable, concerned teachers to redeem the children out of their crisis in the educational institutions.

    In my opinion, out of long years of teaching experience, there can be no more teachers but counselors needed for present day students, which means counseling has become the primary duty than knowledge sharing for the teachers. Teachers, hence, are to be trained professionally to handle such issues in the schools and colleges, to effectively develop our children. Also life appreciating awareness programs can be organized at all levels to make the students realize the worth of their lives and as human beings their role in this universe and their contribution to the eternity.