Teachers, Please Pay Heed

Dear Teacher

In a situation of proliferating beggars, students failing to find admission or tuition or hostel  fee or scholarships,  de-motivated student army due to gloomy job prospects, vacant seats  in universities and virtually no impact of education on moral and spiritual lives of students and huge percentage of dropouts, what is a teacher expected to do?

A teacher is one of the most privileged persons who is paid for what all humans naturally desire to do – know – as Aristotle remarked in the beginning of On Metaphysics. To be a teacher and truly love one’s work is to be in paradise here and now. One loves and lives to wonder, to be creative, to innovate, to lead, to contemplate, to debate, to read, to go for adventure and as a professor one does, can do all these. Teachers build nations and gives direction of lives of communities.  Every noble and great achievement can be credited into their account as somewhere they have been instrumental in facilitating/inspiring. So can every ignoble thing we find around us traced to bad education.  You are better paid and respected. As such I hope you can be /are involved in such initiatives that further education of the needy, financial literacy and empowerment of teaching and student community and access to skills and jobs. As such you shall do everything possible to make it convenient to note certain responsibilities/expectations from you so that we your spiritual-financial index is worthy of a teacher:

• As inheritors of prophetic mission of education you teach for the love of teaching and not for pay alone.
• Read a book on weekly if not on daily basis. One can finish two small audio-books daily while travelling/walking/ if one cares to make best use of time.
• Adopt a child or at last his/her education. Every professor can adopt a family and every year new one after previous one gets transformed into self dependent.
• Every student of yours gets conscious about certain things thanks to you. A soul or a life has been put at your disposal and you can transform it for good.
• Lead by example and not precept, given higher education is in crisis. Many seats are vacant for want of students. And a few students only love their studies or have reasons to make academics life long pursuit. The centre of crisis is in student motivation to learn and transmit his learning to others keeping professional ethics in consideration. Divorce between values and secular pursuit of education has resulted in making a career and minting money regardless of means employed. Alienation from work is also seen in majority of professionals and even teachers. Rising number of psychological disorders amongst new generation is also a problem to be reckoned with. Morally and spiritually newer generation is in a void and this is reflected in bahavioural problems. Deteriorating teacher-student relationship also shows how far we have gone from the ideal of Master-disciple relationship.
• Get conscious about financial literacy of your students, colleagues, and community. And as such you are part of some kitty pool of family/colleagues so that you aren’t burdened by interest payments and your savings for few months help your fellows.
• Keep your savings available for ethical financing institutions such as zero interest based Angel financing (option now available in Kashmir as KAN investment fund) credit cooperatives (such as CCL also available in Kashmir)
• Don’t keep money locked in gold which requires vigil and loses on many counts and isn’t the best use for resources. You can immediately avail interest free gold loan or sell gold not needed for routine use and invest the amount in such funds as KAN Investment fund that can give even return on investment.

• Work for any local social cause and are an activist for issues such as environmental, social and cultural. Retirement won’t affect you as you would find more time for what you already know or contribute to.
• Utilize your charities properly for the projects you wish to be funded. You are conscious dhan giver, or zakat calculator and your charity has impacted through at least creating/sustaining one job in a year. You are spending charities in productive models and not consumptive works as a mark of one’s financial literacy is choosing not to multiply donations or resources one has contributed or mobilized and giving them straightaway to recipients for consumption needs. You give daily sadaqah as enjoined by the Prophet either by subscribing to any app that allows you auto-debit of some amount (say only one rupee) on daily basis or you make some amount available as soft loan to someone or some institution such as CCL or local baitul mal  which is counted as sadaqah till returned.
• While donating to trusts or NGOs taking care to recommend beneficiaries or asking for tracking impact of your donations.
• Teaching to share, share and share against hoarding and saving would release at least a few thousand crores from 1 lac seventy thousand crores in fixed deposits in J&K or one lac twenty thousand crores hoarded in the form of gold. Teaching to pay God’s hoarding tax (zakat) if one is bent on saving and locking God’s wealth. Ideally teachers should have no property or at least no saving accounts or lockers. To truly know is to share our very being, not to speak of resources. How many teachers you know purchased land and that is lying idle. This means destroying community resources. How or what can they teach?
• How many teachers have only requisite clothes or rooms or washrooms or bank balance? How many are still ignorant (though a teacher is one who “trades” knowledge) about interest free credit cooperatives such as Crescent Cooperative Limited (ccljk.org) and those who know are yet to register? How many teacher pre-book their grocery or mutton requirements to earn discount and help local shopkeeper? Teaching to spend what we have and not what we will have or not to borrow/ spend future income today would liberate students from the burden of bad debt.
• It is bad education in community that explains why anyone is suffering on account of bad debt, lack of resources for education, treatment or shelter or job. If Mohalla Committees aren’t able to collect ushr/zakat/fitrana/sadaqah for meeting at least microfinance needs of people in locality, and teachers are Imams or in executive bodies, what is education or teacher for? Do teachers calculate zakat the way they meticulously calculate tax? If not, what can we expect from students or community they are in charge of.
• Note that investing in local industries with yourself as silent or active partner gives better returns to oneself and community than investing in fixed deposits, gold, land, or locking money in big houses.
• You don’t keep money idle in account (even if it is few hundred or thousand rupees for even few days) but keep available for soft loan to your kith and ken at least if not to your local community.
• Your fifty k or its multiples will help over fifty persons in a year help fight financial problems and some get jobs through entrepreneurship or productive units.

Who is a good Teacher?

Who cooperate with fellow teachers or guide extended families to be knitted in self help groups, cooperatives or family kitties and whose students learn to share and cooperate as evidenced in their or their student’s:

• membership of credit cooperatives making easy soft loan available.
• pre-booking food requirements with local farmers or through farmer producer organizations.
• contributing to money kitties that help all group members in extended family or friends (if five friend or relatives pool monthly amount and keep it circulating amongst group members, with security and further support from Crescent Cooperative Limited Anantnag or ZIST there would be no debt or need to pay interest after a year or two for everyone in the group -- every school or office or family can have it and if there is a teacher in this group there is no reason why it can’t be done today by filling kitty form of CCL.
• never going as guest to the bride’s house for mahraz saal.
• never keeping money (even hundreds or thousands only for a few days that all teachers can spare at least for a week after salary is credited) idle but available for local investment or at least for interest free soft loan,
• saying no to gold or any burdensome practice that makes marriage expensive
• never taking on credit anything from small shopkeepers.
• never asking for credit from friends and relatives but from organizations that do it without much hassle or interest, pay voluntary and obligatory charities and track their impact.
• never evading taxes, write will/ get will written by parents for any part of one third of property for community centric causes.
• doing daily charity in the form of auto-debit of Rs 1 or keeping some amount that one can spare, with someone or better some institution for use.
• getting liberation from bank loan and credit card within a year and from next year helps create/sustain a job of someone through professionally investing his savings. Anyone who takes more than a year to clear debt upto ten lac is a failure from moral-spiritual point of view. It means he is unable to connect friends and extended family members in kitties or get trust of credit cooperative.

Isn’t it problematic to see teachers changing cars, buying big houses, spending lavishly in marriages, taking long term loans to buy land that in turn is often kept un-used or inadequately used and its charities missed. They don’t compete in simple living (the Prophet S.A.W. Said that one bed is for parents, second for children, third for guest and fourth for the Devil). Teachers must reject those models that destroy environment, promote fake economy, discredit work or self employment drive. T

A teacher whose earnings aren’t professionally spent and is unavailable for community or student empowerment doesn’t deserve to be a teacher. He can’t lead by example. He should resign.