Teaching and being a teacher

Teaching is perhaps one of noblest tasks that human beings perform. Teachers are the architects of a nation. Teachers teach and prepare the best human capital for our society. In this regard, schools, colleges, and universities are the workshops where they produce human capital. But when teachers fail in this purpose not only students who study under them suffer but also the whole generation suffer. So, what matters for teaching? What factors should drive a person to be a teacher? First of all, whether one becomes a teacher or not one needs economic security, one needs financial support to live in a society. In every task that human beings perform financial motive is omnipresent. Second, even if the financial motive is omnipresent, it may not be the prime factor that drives one to choose a particular profession. For example, why does a person want to be a doctor? There may be  many factors associated with their aim. Several prime factors are: Higher income prospect, servicing the poor and disadvantaged people, discovering a new cancer medicine so that they can cure cancer disease and so on. Now if  they choose to be  doctors with the aim to serve the poor and disadvantaged people, they will be able to survive themselves by doing so; they will have economic security. The fact is that even if  they do not take financial motive as the prime factor for choosing medical profession, their financial motive will be fulfilled. If so, then why should monetary motive drive a person to be a doctor?
The same crisis lies in choosing teaching as a profession. But not all tasks are profession. In fact, profession should never come first. What comes first is passion, not profession and profession is a corollary to passion. In our society there are some tasks that belong mostly to the domain of passion, not profession and teaching is one of them. One person should never choose this profession out of monetary motive. Teaching is a passion, not a profession. And as we have said above, profession follows passion, teaching is a profession too. But that doesn't mean that profession comes first. It is always passion that should tend one person to choose teaching as a career.
Had we chosen teaching as a passion not as a profession, our nation would have prospered much. The sorry state is that today motive of being a teacher is something else: the outright financial motive. People, in most cases, want to be teachers because it is hassle free jobs, quite relaxing, and a good money making machine. If we use a simple benchmark to separate bad teachers from good teachers, we can use the term passion and we will easily find out what makes bad teachers. Bad teachers are those who never entered the profession with passion, rather they entered it with an otherwise hidden motive: if you become the teacher of some university, you will be a powerful person; if you become the teacher of some university, you will be able to earn a lot of money doing consultancy and other works; and if you become the teacher of some university you will have higher social status and respect. It really surprises us how a person can be teacher with such motive.
As a consequence we are observing the effect. Today hardly any teacher studies well. Once they get the position, they start hankering after politics. Some days ago one teacher from Dhaka University explained the miserable state of the university. He told that almost all teachers are spoiled by teacher's politics; they are more concerned about election than about studies and quality of lecture they provide in the class. The irony is when one person becomes a teacher without any passion for teaching, that person contributes to destroying the generation. For the miserable state of Dhaka University none is responsible but it is teachers who are less concerned about teaching but more about political power.
Probably, we have forgotten that teaching is not like a commercial product which can be sold in the free market according to demand and supply. Teaching is a passion. The person who wants to be a teacher should become teacher with passion, not with otherwise hidden motives. If they fail in this perspective, they should refrain themselves from becoming  teachers. The reason is that if they falter, not only they spoil themselves but paralyses our generation.
Email: [email protected]