A memorable middle-school experience!

In keeping with the theme of this blog, I felt that I need not hesitate to bring in here and then look at a simple question that I found on ‘Yahoo Answers’, which got deleted before I could post my answer. The question was good, so I thought I might as well share it here on my blog, with just my answer. If the link to the question were available, we would have had the opportunity to look at other answers as well. We draw inspiration from our teachers, in an ideal situation. There was a time, when every elder around looked upon oneself as a responsible teacher to all the kids around, and the parents found it reassuring when they could allow children to move freely around the neighborhood, and we did not feel being ‘watched’ by our own parents needlessly. Now that source of inspiration has dwindled somehow, and even school teachers find it difficult to play this role of inspirers/motivators etc.
This was the question:
What was your memorable middle school experience?
An answer to a q. I asked inspired me to ask this.So, what memory, if any, was most memorable to you?


My answer:
(Fortunately, this incident, is real, and was ‘live’ and true for me and my class mates then… It ‘lives’ in me even now!)
One day, our teacher decided to give us a precious lesson (not in the syllabus!).
We had that class 'monitor' who minds the class during the brief intervals when one teacher is to take over from the previous teacher of previous class-period. This monitor notes down the names of those who 'talk' (make noise), and the next teacher gives a mild punishment to those few (stand up on the bench for 10 minutes, don't do it again, etc). The chit of these names was rarely blank! This monitor was usually a person who had physical looks so that he cannot be intimidated by others 'outside' the class for writing down the names.
On this day, the teacher asked the class, "who is the weakest fellow among you, who can be intimidated by all others very easily". We all knew who that timid small guy was. The teacher too now knew when we all glanced in that direction. Then the teacher asked, if this (Master X) is going to be 'appointed' as a monitor, is he going to be successful? "No....." was our chorus reply! None of us are ever going to be afraid of him. Instead, his chit (list of names of talkative offenders) would always be blank, and the class would be noisiest ever, during those brief intervals. Then the teacher asked us, if we are 'willing' to try to make sure that this fellow becomes successful! This time, we are to take it as a challenge that if he fails, it is in fact 'we' who failed. We were made to realize, that we were powerful enough to decide that even a weak person can win, if only we decide upon it. We became excited, and decided to try it for just ONE day. We succeeded. No body 'talked'. So, we played a game, deciding not to commit a 'foul'. We in fact extended this experiment for a week, and we realized that we had learnt the power of
1)commitment, 2)Unity 3)voluntarily giving up of our ‘limited rights’ in favor acquiring a much greater privilege 4)"true" sense of democracy 5)Team spirit….. And many other such valuable concepts! (It is not that all of us looked at it so positively. There were a few, who perhaps learnt the concept of “king-maker”, and they would have even used it to play ‘politics’, later in their lives! Incidents by themselves are not really infallible, when we look at it as a source of inspiration. It is our own preparedness to look at it thus. Again, it is attitude that matters!)

I am sure, if my classmates might happen to read this story, they may re-live that wonderful experience, and the precious lesson we learnt, and would pay our deep respects to that wonderful teacher in our hearts yet again today, as we read this and remember him!

(Incidentally, this guy, our ‘weak-yet-successful-monitor-for a week’, was a close friend of mine, and had deep emotional bonds of ‘true-friendship’. I learnt from him, how significant a small ‘token’ of gratitude can be, at that tender age! It is yet an-other different story. I don’t know if I would have courage to narrate it, not because it is a big secret, but it looks too sacred for me!)
psn(10th July, 2010)