Teacher Sashidharan will always remain a student

WAYANAD - This Teacher’s Day, 54-year-old teacher T. Sashidharan’s aim is to remain a student for the rest of his life and he just needs four more post-graduate degrees to make it to his 30th.

“People might feel that I am not in the proper frame of mind. I do not deny it because writing examinations has become my favourite pastime. It has been my hobby since I finished Class X,” Sasidharan told IANS.

Sashidharan is presently a teacher at the District Institute of Education and Training (DIET) in Wayanad, an organisation which trains school teachers.

He boasts of 26 post-graduate degrees in history, sociology, psychology, philosophy, Gandhian thought and population studies, among others, besides two M.Phils and two M.Eds. These degrees have been acquired from various universities, including five from Annamalai, four each from Alagappa and Madurai Kamaraj, three from IGNOU, Mysore and Madras and two from Calicut and Pondicherry.

“I have also completed my LLB course. I am currently pursuing PhD in two subjects besides doing courses in criminology, public administration and social welfare administration,” Sashidharan added.

His passion for teaching can be gauged from the fact that after serving as the principal at DIET, he went back to the post of a teacher because he didn’t enjoy the administrative responsibilities that came with the job.

“My passion is teaching and to collect as many degrees as possible. In the past three decades, not a single year has passed without me turning up at an examination hall. And I will see that this trend continues in future,” said Sashidharan, adding that he will retire as a teacher March 31, 2011 and will use the gratuity he gets to pay off his debts.

“In recent times, fees for the courses have been hiked. As a result, I have to pay a good sum of money to my debtors. I will be free once I clear my debts and then I will fully concentrate on my studies,” he added.

This passion for studies runs in Sashidharan’s family. His elder brother has eight post-graduate degrees while his younger brother, a librarian at a government college, boasts of 13 post-graduate degrees.

For Sashidharan, his various degrees and diplomas are like his children as he and his wife are a childless couple.

Besides all these degrees, he has pursued a dozen certificate courses too, including one on document writing.

“That is because my father, who is no more, was a document writer,” signed off Sashidharan.

(Sanu George can be contacted at sanu.g@ians.in)