Teacher is the Worst Hurdle for Learning
- Madhukar Dama
- 2 days ago
- 10 min read
I have seen teachers in every form.
The schoolmaster with his cane.
The professor with his notes.
The guru with his chants.
The priest with his scriptures.
The motivational speaker with his shiny smile.
They all call themselves teachers.
But I have seen what they do.
And I say this with no hesitation: the teacher is the worst hurdle for learning.
---
School and College Teachers
I sat in classrooms where curiosity was punished.
Children came alive with questions, but the teacher wanted silence.
We were forced to memorize, to imitate, to compete, to respect authority.
The message was clear: don’t think, don’t question, just obey.
They didn’t awaken intelligence. They tamed it.
They didn’t help us learn. They trained us to become clerks, engineers, managers—workers for the system.
And yet, society glorifies them as “nation builders.”
I saw only obedient citizens being built, not free minds.
---
Religious and Spiritual Teachers
Then I looked at priests, monks, gurus, swamis.
They sit on high chairs, wearing robes, reciting scriptures.
They tell you what God wants, how heaven works, what you must believe.
They take your fear and sell you comfort in return.
The guru says, “Follow me and you will be free.”
But freedom that depends on another is no freedom at all.
The priest says, “Without me, you cannot reach God.”
But if God is real, why should anyone stand between me and life?
These teachers are worse than schoolteachers.
At least the schoolteacher only wants your obedience.
The priest wants your soul, your money, your surrender.
---
Political and Ideological Teachers
I have seen leaders and ideologues call themselves teachers of the people.
They shout about justice, equality, revolution.
But what they really want is followers, soldiers, voters.
They don’t teach you to think—they teach you to repeat slogans.
They don’t want freedom of mind—they want loyalty to their cause.
In the end, they are no different from priests.
One sells you heaven after death.
The other sells you heaven after the next election.
---
Modern Self-Help Teachers
And now there are new teachers—coaches, trainers, motivational speakers.
They package old ideas in new words and sell them for profit.
“Ten steps to success.”
“Five secrets of happiness.”
“Unlock your potential.”
All lies.
They don’t teach you to look within yourself.
They teach you to buy their next book, their next course, their next retreat.
They glorify learning, but what they really teach is dependence.
Without their guidance, you are made to feel worthless.
That is not learning—that is business.
---
The Great Myth of Teachers
Everywhere I turned, society repeated the same myth:
Teacher is greater than God.
Teacher shapes the future.
Without teachers there is no knowledge.
Respect teachers blindly.
But when I looked closely, I saw the truth.
Teachers glorify themselves because without reverence, their authority collapses.
They pretend to sacrifice, but they work for salary, status, and security.
They claim to shape the future, but all they do is chain the young to the past.
---
What Teachers Actually Do
They kill curiosity with answers.
They replace discovery with obedience.
They turn original minds into copies.
They make us dependent, never free.
They make sure the child never trusts their own intelligence.
Whether in classroom or temple, in parliament or on YouTube—the teacher always does the same thing: they stand between you and life.
---
Life is the Only Teacher
Everything real I have learned came from life itself.
Hunger taught me more than a professor ever could.
Heartbreak revealed more truth than a guru’s sermon.
Failure was a greater guide than any self-help course.
The tree, the river, the body, the silence—these are my true teachers.
No man or woman standing on a stage, no book written by authority, no chant from scripture ever gave me what life itself gave me.
---
Final Word
Teachers are not bridges—they are barriers.
They are not guides to freedom—they are guards of tradition.
They are not makers of knowledge—they are sellers of obedience.
The glorification of teachers is one of humanity’s greatest lies.
The truth is clear to me: the teacher, in every form—schoolteacher, priest, guru, politician, or coach—is the greatest hurdle for learning.
The Teachers Who Came With Burden and Left With Light
-- a dialogue with Madhukar
It was late afternoon. The sun was dipping low, casting long shadows over the dry fields near Yelmadagi. Birds circled above the tamarind tree. Smoke from the chullah curled into the sky.
Madhukar sat on the mud veranda, grinding leaves for kashaya. His homestead was quiet, except for the rustle of goats nearby.
That’s when three visitors arrived. They were uneasy, carrying the weight of their egos like schoolbags:
A schoolteacher, chalk dust still clinging to his fingers.
A college professor, spectacles dangling from his shirt pocket.
A spiritual teacher, clad in simple white, clutching a worn-out rosary.
They had read Madhukar’s words about teachers being the “worst hurdle for learning.” It unsettled them. They came not in anger, but in confusion, to defend their dignity.
---
Part One: The Schoolteacher Speaks
Schoolteacher:
“You say teachers are the worst hurdle for learning. But without me, how would children know how to read, write, or count? Am I not giving them knowledge?”
Madhukar (smiling):
“Have you seen a child before he enters school? He learns to walk, speak, play, observe the world—all without you. He learns his mother’s tongue by listening, not by being taught alphabets. He knows how to count mangoes when sharing with his sister, long before numbers on the blackboard. Children are born curious, ready to learn from life. What you do is interrupt this natural process.”
Schoolteacher (puzzled):
“Interrupt? But we discipline them. We prepare them for society.”
Madhukar:
“Yes, that is the problem. You do not prepare them for life. You prepare them for exams. A child who once asked, ‘Why is the sky blue?’ now learns to stay silent and memorize the definition of refraction. Obedience replaces curiosity. Discipline replaces wonder. Society needs clerks, workers, and voters—so you create them. But the child loses his own intelligence.”
Example:
“I once saw a boy here in Yelmadagi take apart a transistor radio. He didn’t know physics formulas, but he wanted to see how voices hide inside a box. A teacher would have stopped him, saying ‘Don’t break it, learn theory first.’ But that boy rebuilt it better. His learning was alive. Teachers make such curiosity into crime.”
The schoolteacher lowered his head. Chalk dust on his palms suddenly felt like chains.
---
Part Two: The College Professor Speaks
Professor:
“I see your point about schools. But what about higher education? We professors create scientists, doctors, engineers. Without us, there would be no progress.”
Madhukar (pouring kashaya into a cup):
“Do you really create them? Or do they struggle despite you? Tell me, how many of your students truly innovate? And how many simply repeat what is already known?”
Professor (defensive):
“But repetition is foundation. We preserve knowledge for the next generation.”
Madhukar:
“Knowledge can be stored in books, in computers, in libraries. That is memory, not intelligence. You turn living students into storage devices. They memorize theories and vomit them in exams. But ask them to face a new challenge in life, and they are helpless.”
Example:
“Here in our village, one farmer discovered how to divert rainwater from a hill into his fields using simple mud channels. He never went to college. Meanwhile, your engineering graduates can design bridges on paper but can’t fix a broken pump without manuals. Who is the real learner here? The farmer learns directly from life. Your student learns only through you—and becomes crippled without you.”
The professor sighed. His spectacles slid down his nose. He realized that most of his students passed exams, but very few passed life.
---
Part Three: The Spiritual Teacher Speaks
Spiritual Teacher:
“You speak harshly about schools and colleges. But surely you won’t say the same about me. I guide people to God, to peace. Without me, they will be lost.”
Madhukar (looking gently at him):
“Lost? Or free? Tell me honestly: when your students come to you, what do you give them? Prayers, mantras, promises of heaven. You tell them they are weak and sinful, but you can save them. Is this not dependency?”
Spiritual Teacher (uneasy):
“But faith needs guidance. The scriptures are difficult. Without interpretation, people cannot understand.”
Madhukar:
“Exactly. You stand as the middleman between man and life, between man and God. You keep them in confusion so they keep coming back to you. Truth is not hidden in books, it is written in every breath, in every tree, in every death. Do you think the river asks you how to flow? Do you think the cow asks you how to give milk? Life itself is enough. Your job is not to show truth, but to prevent people from discovering it themselves.”
Example:
“I once met a widow who had lost everything. She went to temples, gurus, priests. All gave her rituals and mantras. None gave her silence to face her grief. One day, she sat under a neem tree here, alone. She cried until her tears dried. In that moment, she was freer than any disciple in any ashram. Life taught her what no guru could. You claim to give light, but you block people from seeing that the light was never absent.”
The spiritual teacher’s beads slipped through his fingers. He felt naked without the protection of his role.
---
The Transformation
The three teachers sat quietly. The evening had fallen. The goats had returned. The fire in the chullah crackled softly.
Madhukar spoke again, gently this time:
“You came here carrying the weight of being ‘teachers.’ You thought you give knowledge, wisdom, faith. But in truth, you are hurdles. You block the natural movement of life, of curiosity, of discovery. That does not make you evil. It only makes you human, conditioned by society’s lie that teachers are sacred. Drop that lie. Be free of it. Then you will see—life itself is the only teacher.”
The schoolteacher, the professor, and the spiritual guide looked at each other. Their egos had cracked like clay pots. The burden of being “teachers” had slipped away.
They rose to leave. Their heads were lighter, their hearts warmer.
For the first time in years, they felt like students again—students of life.
Chalk Dust
They taught me first to raise my hand.
Not to speak, not to shout — just lift the palm,
like a white flag.
That was the first lesson: how to wait.
A boy kept a beetle in his pocket.
The teacher found it, said, “No animals.”
He threw the beetle in the bin.
Later the boy learned to bin his questions too.
We wore uniforms like promises:
blue shirts, neat collars, shoes shined for inspection.
We learned the alphabet by filling little boxes on paper,
then filled our heads with words we did not own.
A girl once asked about light; the teacher wrote a formula.
She kept looking at the window.
---
In college, chalk became microphones.
Lectures turned into sermons of theory.
A lad from the lane could fix the pump with bare hands
but failed his viva because he lacked the words.
So he went to work,
and the professor kept measuring truth in percentages.
A coconut seller outside balanced his cart
with a trick no engineer had studied.
The professor never saw it.
He was busy preparing PowerPoints on progress.
---
In seminar halls, men with microphones
clap, sell badges, sell breakfast secrets:
“Three steps, five rules.”
A woman bought a ticket, came back with a new mantra:
“Success starts at six.”
She set an alarm and burned the rice.
In temples, the guru answers folded like currency.
People bring flowers, coins, trembling questions.
He blesses them in neat portions.
An old man speaks his grief;
the guru gives him a line to repeat.
The line fits like a borrowed coat.
It does not warm him.
A politician teaches in the square:
flags, slogans, promises that dissolve in rain.
They teach loyalty like a new language.
Soon people speak only to prove they belong.
---
I saw a child learn geometry from falling mangoes:
branches bending, angles born of sunlight.
No teacher wrote it down.
No one collected fees.
A cobbler measured my sandal by eye.
He knew my walk from the leather’s crease.
He carried grammar in his hands,
not in a certificate.
At the station, a tea vendor timed trains better than speakers.
He read men’s faces like timetables.
No syllabus for that.
A woman read clouds because rain paid her wages.
A mechanic read metal like a book.
They had no degrees.
Their classrooms were hunger and survival.
---
They taught me shame for small hands.
They praised memory, punished mistakes.
The world is not tidy.
The world spoils the neat.
A boy painted a door purple because he liked the colour.
The school made him wash it back to white.
Years later he cut his hair short for an office.
He sold pieces of himself
in measured sizes.
---
The river does not go to school.
It forgets lesson plans and keeps moving.
When a bridge falls, the river shifts.
It does not need a certificate to flow.
The library of rules grows tall towers.
It feeds on fear of being wrong.
If you speak wrong, you are hushed.
If you wander wrong, you are fined.
So people learn to be careful
and die a little inside.
---
I met a teacher who left his job to learn grafting.
He returned with bark in his hands, rain in his eyes.
The village mocked him,
until the mangoes grew sweeter.
Then they learned too.
There is no one shape for a true teacher.
Sometimes it is a silence between cooks.
Sometimes it is a widow folding her grief into soil.
Sometimes it is a repairman
who does not charge the hungry.
---
Chalk dust rises when the classroom door opens,
a small cloud of old promises.
It settles on hair, lips, sleep.
If you let it sit, it enters the breath.
I kept my palm open.
I used mistakes as maps.
I broke things. I mended them at midnight.
I read the faces of animals.
I learned to be wrong and remain whole.
If someone calls himself a teacher,
watch his hands.
If he steadies the world, he might teach you.
If he hides it, he will sell you silence.
---
I keep a stone in my pocket.
It does not explain.
It endures.
That is teaching.
Go into the kitchen at midnight,
ask the cook how she knows spice.
Watch the street at dawn
where life moves without a script.
Sit with a beggar and count the days he forgave.
These are teachers.
---
The monstrous school will keep growing taller.
Men at the top will polish their shoes, polish their speeches.
They will sell a plan for living that fits in a small box.
You can buy it.
It will make you smooth.
It will not make you free.
So I keep the chalk in a drawer.
I let the dust fall on the floor.
It makes a map of my house.
I walk on it,
toward the pump, the market, the banyan,
toward noise that teaches without applause.
This is not a sermon.
It is a field report.
A record of what happens
when you trade the grade for the task,
the certificate for the thing.
If you ask me whether someone can teach, I’ll say yes.
If you ask who, I’ll give you names absent from diplomas.
If you ask how to learn, I’ll say:
make a mess.
Clean it.
Repeat.
---
Chalk dust floats wherever wrong lessons are taught.
Let it settle where life is louder than books.
Listen to small teachers:
the pump, the knife, the neighbor, the child who refuses to whisper.
Learn from them.
Learn hard.
Learn rude.
Learn real.
When the bell rings, I keep my hands where they are.
Not raised for permission.
Raised to touch.
To dig.
To lift.
To make.
