APPRECIATION OF TEACHERS – BY PRINS JAMES ALAGARATNAM

Source: sri lankan anchorman

Importance of teachers in our life: Teachers play an important role in our life to acquire knowledge, competence in a trade, virtue and to be successful in career and business. A good teacher helps us to become a good human being in society and a good citizen of the country. Teachers know that students are the future of any nation, and the development of any nation is in their hands. What we become in life, depends on teachers.

They are our role models, inspire us to reach our potential, leading by their example. They impart the data and information in the brain of students to analyze. Analyzing the situation that is possible is the most important thing that we learn from them. 

Two former Presidents intellects of India are quoted;  

“Teachers should be the best minds in the country” – Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan 

“If people remember me as a good teacher, that will be the biggest honor for me” – A.P.G.Abdul Kalam

The appreciation of teachers is very important because they are the most important people in the country. What we see today in business, politics, and society, all the rewards and affected by teachers. They empower us to new heights, maximise our capacity, and guide us to be able to learn from our mistakes. 

Schools and students celebrate the teacher’s day occasion and appreciate the efforts and sacrifices of the teachers. The real gift for their effort is when students become good human beings, and achieve success. Good teachers are always in the hearts of their students. Students look up to them for advice and guidance. Students are not only interested in academic lessons but are interested to follow their life lessons. That’s why it is important for teachers to inspire students to follow good habits.

Education is important in everyone’s life and plays various roles in different stages of life. They open our minds to learn from nature, plants, other living beings, reading, the internet, society. All these are teachers if we see these things from the eyes of the learner.                        Life is a teacher. Time is a Teacher.   

Who are these teachers, we encounter through life? From time immemorial there have been records of sages, philosophers, who have addressed people to guide their ways.   

Religious founders and heads, have been referred to as teachers. Through the ages, man has leaned on teachers, to live life correctly, and get a value, of their time on earth. In recent years, Thomas Merton, Fulton J Sheen, Teilhard De Chardin, among the modern theologians and in ancient times Socrates, Plato, Ptolemy.  

It is heartening to reminisce our teachers of past, the pranks we played on them, the nick names we assigned, but through it all the value of the lessons we learnt from them. Many a teacher is now retired, and the only gratification they look forward to is a call, a note or visit from their former students, “just remembering them”, and making them aware that they have contributed in in their own way to society.

The study of teaching; Pedagogy, envelopes Crafts, Vocations, Art, Religion, Community roles and life skills.

TO HER MULTITUDE OF STUDENTS, SHE WAS MISS MUTTIAH

GRACE CASINNADER – LAID TO REST ON THE 21ST DECEMBER 2020, IN TORONTO

Hailing from a hamlet in Jaffna, she broke moulds of the 40’s to go down to the city to pursue a career in teaching. When young women were kept at home and groomed for marriage, she moved Colombo, to be with her only surviving sister, our mother.

She followed a teacher training course, thereafter teaching at Visakha and Girtons girls schools and St. Thomas’s prep in Colombo for over 10 years. She did have an impact on her students from all three institutions that she taught. A teacher whose students around the globe, kept in touch, and she, following their successes in adulthood.   

We had the benefit of her coaching and mentoring, in our home, encouraging all to be academics, taking pride and an interest in the education and later the careers of all of us six siblings, her daughter and the many nieces and nephews, in her growing family.                          God Grant “Aunta” eternal rest.

REMEMBERING TWO NAMES OF THE 60’S COLOMBO SHOWBIZ SCENE

CHRISTOPHER GREET  

Popular Radio Stage film personality passed away in December 2020. A colorful personality, one of the finest comperes or emcees of Ceylon. Witty, effervescent, a great human being. After a long career at Radio Ceylon, Chris continued in advertising, stage and even screen. Famously playing a bit part in David Lean’s Academy award winning “The Bridge on the River Kwai”.

Of the Payntor family, he annually organized the traditional Payntor home fund raising on radio and stage. After returning to the U.K. Chris continued in his passion for drama and television. His last years were spent in a care home in U.K., visited by family and friends who grew up in his company, or performed with him. Chris was welcome in any company at any time. He had that constant humorous side to him that would ignite any room. 

LUCIEN MERVYN PERERA 

Lead guitarist, founder member of super group- The Jetliners.

Very few realize the impact Lucien had on the beat scene of 60’s Colombo. It was after the Jetliners popularity and their weekly “Sundown” dances at “The Coconut Grove”, Galle Face Hotel, that many more groups came to the fore. The 60’s and 70’s enjoyed a culture of beat music and dancing in many night spots of Colombo.

The Jetliners, with the addition of Mignonne Rutnam, and Ishan Bahars vocals, under the management of Tony Fernando would go on to become famous in many parts of Asia and with an emigrating population in other parts of the world as well. My last memory of Lucien was when we met many years after his retirement from the Jets, under a middle eastern evening sky and reminisced the old Colombo scene. Ishan and Lucien kept in contact until his passing in January 2021.

To those family and friends, we lost in 2020, Chris and Lucien, Au Revoir