Pay peanuts, get monkeys

We are willing to pay more at restaurants, to watch films at cinema halls, for all kinds of brands, but we balk at any increase in school fees

I'd like to begin this piece with a simple phrase: if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys. Now, to come to the point, I don't understand why we parents don't want to pay higher amounts to teachers and why every time any school raises its fees, there is an overwhelming protest from parents. The moment a school sends out a circular announcing an increase in fees, people are up in arms. They form a group, meet the principal and circulate mails in protest.

We are willing to pay more to drivers, at restaurants, to watch films at cinema halls, for clothes, for all kinds of brands, but we balk at any increase in school fees. We simply don't want to pay our teachers better.

Why? I can understand if the school is siphoning off the money or is generally misusing the funds in some way, but if it is increasing the fees to pay the teachers better, I think we all need to applaud. In fact, we need to insist that teachers be better paid. Even today, teacher pay scales - even in the best private schools of Delhi and Mumbai - are shockingly low.

We claim that our children are the most important part of our lives (by and large, I think this is true for today's parents of a certain socio-economic level; gone are the days where parents were trying to make ends meet and better their lives). Our children spend a good part of their day with their teachers. We place all our trust in them and entrust them with the most important thing in our lives. Yet, there is this strange reluctance to pay them more.

I tried asking a few parents around me why this was so. I have no quarrels with someone objecting to an increase in fees when they are struggling to make ends meet. Higher fees may, in fact, force them to reconsider their options. This I can understand. But why is it that someone who will happily pay more for a handbag bought on impulse than her child's monthly school fees objects if the fees goes up marginally?

It is simply the nature of the beast. Education - for some odd reason - is something people consider a birthright, even if they are in elite private schools. Teachers have traditionally been poorly paid and everyone - including the teachers, in some cases - seems quite comfortable with that. Many feel that the teachers get long breaks (summer and winter holidays and so on), so it's like working part time and hence they should be paid as such.

This strikes me as utterly shortsighted for several reasons. Unless you pay them better, how can you expect them to be motivated or to take teaching as a serious career? This explains why we mostly see women teachers in schools. How many men can support a family on a teacher's salary?

Often in elite schools, you find untrained teachers - women who are supported by their husbands but who teach to keep busy for a few hours. In many cases, they don't take the job too seriously either, treating what they earn as pocket money of sorts.

I had a friend who taught for 14 years at one of the best known private schools of Delhi. After 14 years, she was earning Rs 28,000 (this was in 2004), most of which she paid, in turn, to her driver. She didn't need the money and she loved teaching. Eventually, however, practicalities of life got the better of her. She switched to a career that allowed her to be with children but paid her almost five times what she was drawing as a teacher. The students - and the school - lost a good teacher.

In my view, and ask any educator, teaching is a highly demanding job. You need to have discipline to reach school early in the morning and patience to then deal with a noisy, and often unruly, bunch. Children can sap your energy and test your patience. I'm sure anyone who has had them can testify to that. Imagine dealing with 30 of them on a daily basis instead of your usual one or two. It's not a joke.

So, the next time your child's school raises its fees, be grateful. And remember if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.

anjulibhargava@gmail.com