Ink and Insight : 100 Weeks of Writing

                           Ink and Insight : 100 Weeks of Writing

It's the hundredth weekly post in my Sunday diary. For the last 100 weeks, it has been non-stop. During this time, I have experienced many ups and downs: sometimes, I was travelling; at other times, I was sick; occasionally, I faced intense work pressure, and there were moments when I was not in a good mood. However, the weekly Sunday diary has survived, transcending all the challenges an ordinary human could face. This accomplishment gives me a tremendous sense of achievement and satisfaction – the fact that I could write for 100 weeks without a break.

Why do I write? The simplest answer is that I write for myself. It encapsulates the important events of the week, records my observations about key developments related to education, brings clarity to my thinking, and registers my voice, providing a sense of agency, a right every teacher deserves. In the Sunday diary, I mostly focus on education. Through reading and observation, I discover the layers of the world around me. Through writing, I attempt to capture the nuances of these discoveries. For example, when archaeologists first discover some bricks or pieces of stone, they eventually unearth a house, a dynasty, and a complete infrastructure. Writing, along with reading, is like discovering a new city of knowledge. Writing works precisely like the polishing of artefacts – as it becomes clearer, it becomes more meaningful.

Another reason I write is that I am a teacher. If we do not write for ourselves, someone else will write for us, and representation by someone else who is not us is always problematic. Historically, men wrote about the world of women, projecting them as those who enjoy housekeeping, child-rearing, and so on. When women started writing for themselves, they dismantled the idealised world that men had created for them.

As long as someone else is writing for teachers or education, they will keep creating an idealised world that teachers have to dismantle. For instance, a teacher in the classroom knows that the idea of a teacher as a facilitator is not as sacrosanct as it seems; only those who are not in the classroom can idealise it. Those in the class know that it's a dynamic place, and teachers keep switching from one identity to another. Sometimes they are facilitators, sometimes they are instructors, sometimes they sit along with the students, sometimes they appear hard and tough, and sometimes they are malleable. Idealising one identity is problematic.

It's only those who are not teachers who idealise the idea of intrinsic motivation; teachers know it does not work. If it worked so well, why isn't it taught in the professions of law, medicine, engineering, journalism, and so on? Why do only teachers need intrinsic motivation? Well, it's only celebrated because teachers are not writing. If more teachers write, they will definitely agree that while intrinsic motivation is good, it's not our primary need.

I believe I have good enough reasons to keep writing, but will this be enough? More teachers have to write. The true picture of education can only be drawn when we have thousands of teachers writing across socio-cultural strata. As long as we are represented by others, particularly those who are not teachers, we will always have problematic ideas presented as breakthrough findings in education. At this junction, as I post the 200th entry on the blog, I would like to appeal to more teachers to start writing. It's time to represent yourself, and believe me, when you write, its authenticity is more powerful than any beautifully crafted post somebody else has written. Well, you also need to come out of the dilemma: if I write, who reads? My suggestion is… write for yourself.