There were particular arguments that existed among I and my childhood friends back then. Arguments I distanced myself from, when I began to know better. Arguments like ‘who is more important between boys and girls?’ ‘Teachers are better than any other profession’. These arguments, as thrilling as they were initially, soon became exhausting when you both run out of points, and no party seems to be winning.
I once passed by a group of kids, having one of these same arguments, and I smiled knowingly. With time, they would get to understand how the ecosystem works. I would gladly point out back then that girls were better because they were the ones that brought my opponent to life in the first place. And my opponent would go ‘but if not for males, the girls wouldn’t be pregnant in the first place’. A very unnecessary argument I say, because both genders need each other to thrive.
I don’t know how I still remember, but I remember a particular scene in primary school where we were having the argument of who’s better between teachers and doctors. I told my opponent that if not for the teacher, the doctor wouldn’t even exist in the first place. Of course she countered me with a valid point ‘But a doctor is always in the practice of saving lives. Most teachers deal with theoretical aspects’. Not backing down, I told her ‘The fact that they aren’t practicing daily doesn’t mean they can’t do what doctors do. Teachers are trained doctors. They can always decide to bring what they’ve been teaching for years to action’.
Now, I don’t really remember her response from this point onwards but one thing is certain in arguments like these - Denial. One party will always deny the fact that the other person’s point of view is true. Or in some cases, like the first instance I mentioned, both parties stay in denial.
Let me break it to you dear reader, I still stand with my childhood self. A teacher can stand in for a doctor but not every doctor could stand in for a teacher. Take for instance, a standard institution runs out of teachers and need one urgently. The first instinct wouldn’t be to replace them with doctors. Rather, they would begin to source for qualified teachers who are well versed in the field.
To be a teacher, you have to be knowledgeable in that field you’re teaching, and at the same time, be able to accommodate the different types of learners in your classroom. All doctors can boast of the first but I doubt many of them can boast of the other. Knowledge needs to be replicated in order for it to be useful. If we had to depend on doctors alone, discarding the need for teachers, who would pass on the knowledge when those generation of doctors are gone? Or you mean we’ll have to leave our health in the hands of lackey doctors, who were trained by the wrong people?
There isn’t much to argue about in topics like these except of course, you choose to be in denial of the evident. Teachers have and always will be more important than doctors in the medical field.
Image above was taken by me.