A friend of mine who has been a successful public sector CEO in transport and who is a top education administrator in private sector responded to my earlier blog. I reproduce some excerpts from that response followed by my responses to his observations. First some of his observations (only excerpts):
Teacher population ratio instead of teacher student ratio. I do not have data on peoples and pupils across various countries.
Girls qualified waiting to be married off, spend their time in educational institutions without any commitment or interest. Males pass their time in schools and colleges till they clear competitive examinations or some IT tests. Only those who do not succeed in these endeavour of finding a suitable match or job, continue to vegetate in the corridors of education business. These commercialise by offering tuition or indulge in unethical practices.
without being thorough in a subject, one starts teaching that subject. It is true in 10th ,12th and in Arts and Science and Engineering.There is no competency mapping of teachers. All these will change in course. The demand for teachers is so high now, the boom is simply absorbing all the dust.
Now my response:
Yes, you are right that the index of teachers to students rather than population may show India's status slightly better. However, the number of teachers per million population is a logically acceptable index reflecting the educational status of the society. If a large percentage of population including the adults in continuing education are being catered through availability of teachers, then that society is definitely better given that we are becoming more and more citizens of knowledge-influenced societies. In societies such as ours where a significant proportion of the population who ought to be in an educational system but are unfortunately are not, the teacher student ratio is in fact not that effective an index, you would agree.
Shyam Sundar's arguments are in support of better compensation for teachers so that better people are attracted to the profession. Unfortunately, as you have pointed out the fact that the teaching profession is not too unattractive has resulted in the positions being auctioned by the managements and even teacher recruitment boards of the governments. Hence, better pay alone is not a panacea for improving teacher quality. Though teachers are expected to 'stand out' as roll models, the fact is that they are just typical members of the society and all the warts of the society are seen in the society of teachers too.
I do not follow the second part of your observation below:
"good and committed academics command both respect and recognition. Most often their pockets are heavy."
Rest of your arguments are in fact supportive of the argument that was advanced in the note (see my earlier blog) in which Sundar's observation has been quoted. http://tinyurl.com/4k5zmro
That argument is that it is too expensive to have adequate number of quality teachers and hence ICT has to be used to let mass of students access education at an affordable cost. That is why I raised the question: More teachers or more technology?
Teacher population ratio instead of teacher student ratio. I do not have data on peoples and pupils across various countries.
Girls qualified waiting to be married off, spend their time in educational institutions without any commitment or interest. Males pass their time in schools and colleges till they clear competitive examinations or some IT tests. Only those who do not succeed in these endeavour of finding a suitable match or job, continue to vegetate in the corridors of education business. These commercialise by offering tuition or indulge in unethical practices.
without being thorough in a subject, one starts teaching that subject. It is true in 10th ,12th and in Arts and Science and Engineering.There is no competency mapping of teachers. All these will change in course. The demand for teachers is so high now, the boom is simply absorbing all the dust.
Now my response:
Yes, you are right that the index of teachers to students rather than population may show India's status slightly better. However, the number of teachers per million population is a logically acceptable index reflecting the educational status of the society. If a large percentage of population including the adults in continuing education are being catered through availability of teachers, then that society is definitely better given that we are becoming more and more citizens of knowledge-influenced societies. In societies such as ours where a significant proportion of the population who ought to be in an educational system but are unfortunately are not, the teacher student ratio is in fact not that effective an index, you would agree.
Shyam Sundar's arguments are in support of better compensation for teachers so that better people are attracted to the profession. Unfortunately, as you have pointed out the fact that the teaching profession is not too unattractive has resulted in the positions being auctioned by the managements and even teacher recruitment boards of the governments. Hence, better pay alone is not a panacea for improving teacher quality. Though teachers are expected to 'stand out' as roll models, the fact is that they are just typical members of the society and all the warts of the society are seen in the society of teachers too.
I do not follow the second part of your observation below:
"good and committed academics command both respect and recognition. Most often their pockets are heavy."
Rest of your arguments are in fact supportive of the argument that was advanced in the note (see my earlier blog) in which Sundar's observation has been quoted. http://tinyurl.com/4k5zmro
That argument is that it is too expensive to have adequate number of quality teachers and hence ICT has to be used to let mass of students access education at an affordable cost. That is why I raised the question: More teachers or more technology?
1 comments:
More teachers or more technology. My answer would be more teachers.
Assumingly we are taking about the primary education here. Teachers physically in front of the kids can have more attention rather than a virtual teacher. A teacher needs to understand the audience first and then deliver the lessons according to the receptive capacity. More importantly we are not only taking about educating the kids about Newton’s laws and Periodic tables, but also about creating moral values and about developing the confidence. A PowerPoint slide or speaker screaming out the lessons can not impart education, but only information. A teacher in front of the kids can pass out information and also let the kids make sense out of it. That builds confidence that builds knowledge and eventually builds a base of wisdom.
Teacher is a revered individual. Given a choice as a kid if I were asked to choose between a class of teacher and a class of multimedia presentation, I might choose the latter because of curiosity and entertainment value, but after a couple of sessions, I would slowly move in to a class taught by the teacher. There needs to be a proper gel between both teacher and technology. That said, we should not undermine the effectiveness of technology. While a teacher can facilitate learning by way of speech and listening, technology can use vision as well, which gives a deeper understanding of the subject in question.
Teachers or Technology can’t be compartmentalized, because in this era teacher without technology is outdated and technology without teacher is misutlized. A comfortable proportion should be ideal.
Why are there no teachers is a topic for separate blog post altogether, but one thing is for sure, there are a lot of individuals who like to become teachers and who has a natural flair of becoming teachers. Task is to identify them and given them the responsibility.
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