Schools Stories - Essay Example

Though they were a minority, they used to spread stories that sounded convincing from circumstantial evidence to boys and girls of an impressionable age.

     One among the teacher’s adversaries, a boy in my class, claimed that he lived close to the teacher’s house, and he was living alone, separated from his wife and two kids. The boy said that the teacher had a drinking problem, and that was why he was allegedly cruel to those students who did not fare well in their studies. He accused those who liked the teacher as being ‘traitors’ who supported harassment by the teacher, of which he was a significant one. He tried to convince us that the measures the teacher took, to make sure that the general standards of the students improve, were extreme, and infringed on human rights. There were a few students who supported this view. However, I remained silent while some sort of propaganda was forming in the class, though I felt at times that I should speak out against it. But I was afraid of getting bullied by the adversaries of the teacher if I represented the ‘traitors’ in the class.

     One day the teacher was tested to the limit of his patience in class when some students misbehaved deliberately. The ambiance for studies was disturbed for a long time due to this. The teacher got visibly annoyed, and he ordered some of the students to get out of the class. They refused to do this. Their attitude towards him was so disrespectful to the teacher that most of us felt that we should stand by the latter. However, some invisible power stopped us from showing our solidarity to the teacher and letting the trouble makers feel they had no support from us. The teacher lost his temper for a moment, and he did spank the leader of the group on his upper arm. The student made a big fuss about this and claimed that he was slapped on his face by the teacher. Though a few of us tried in our weak ways to disprove this at the moment, the tough boys warned us that they will ‘finish’ us if we breathed a word about what happened. As soon as the class was over, they wrote a memorandum to the school principal claiming that the teacher harassed some of the students, and he exhibited his bad temper in most of his classes, which was not true. They made every student sign the memorandum, and I was not an exception. I failed to verbalize my stand on the issue to my peers, teachers, or family members.

     I feel that I betrayed my conscience when I signed the memorandum. I had never been able to forgive myself for this. I never managed to face the teacher again. He always had a hurt look face on his face when he addressed us for the rest of the year. I never knew what action was taken against him, but it seemed that he got to know that all of us from the class signed the memorandum against him. However, he never mistreated us, and that made me feel worse about the situation. He continued to be the good teacher he always had been and showed his grasp and expertise in the subject. When I analyze the situation, I feel that the group that pressurized me was led by very selfish motives and I gave in because I was afraid of being branded and bullied by them. In a way, I was being a conformist, as my weak will covered up my strong conviction that what they were doing was wrong. This incident had a devastating effect on my young mind, but I believe it led me to reflect a lot on the choices we make in life. For me, this was an incident that gave me the clear message that one will have to regret any decision taken out of group pressure against her/his will. And I try my best to remain truthful to myself in such situations now.