Reorienting Teacher's Role in light of NEP 2020

We are all concerned about the general fall in academic standards, and standards of discipline amongst the students. We have to search our hearts and minds seriously to find, what we can do to improve these standards and make our schools worthy instruments for bringing about social and educational renaissance. My purpose is not to discuss the causes and remedies of this situation in any detail but to allude to only two or three aspects which strike me as specially significant.

If we are anxious to raise the standards of scholarship in the students, we must raise them in the teachers first. A teacher who is not interested in reading or the adventure of ideas, who does not love books, whose knowledge of his own special field of study is static and unstimulating-such a teacher can never kindle intellectual enthusiasm in his classes.

He may enable his pupils to pass their examinations, without improving their minds or broadening their interest. In fact, how can he do so when his own mind remains fallow and his interests shrunk? I would, therefore, attach special emphasis to the organization of a good library in every school so that both teachers and children may make the intelligent reading of good books an integral part of their life. Intelligent reading implies the training of all children in the 'art of study which is much more than mere mechanical reading and assimilation of a story or information; it is the active response of the mind to the knowledge imparted so that it becomes integrated into growing personality.

Secondly, we must insist on high standards of efficiency in all that the children do-whether it is practical work or intellectual work or artistic work. If I had to choose between covering a great deal of ground somewhat haphazardly and superficially and reducing the quantity of work but doing it thoroughly, I shall have no hesitation in making my choice. It is a wrong view of education which equates it with a certain quantum of knowledge.

What educates the mind and personality is not the amount of information acquired but the liveliness of mental curiosity, the active role of the mind in assimilating knowledge and transforming it into the currency of understanding or appreciation and the opening up of new doors and windows that come in its train. Often do we come across students whose knowledge is meagre, whose curiosity is dead and whose interests are limited. The reason is that their methods of teaching and learning have been defective. Knowledge has not been motivated by any life situation, the mind has not played an active part in its acquisition and the opening up of new interests has been hindered by the pressure of unimaginative examinations.

If education is intelligently organized, there should be some freedom for students to follow their developing interests right through and to gain real mastery in certain branches of study, instead of concentrating on fulfilling certain minimum examination requirements. They should have the opportunity to struggle with challenging assignments and projects, for it is simply not true to say that all children are mentally lazy and ease loving, and shirk work. Let the child once appreciate the meaning and significance of what he is doing-in other words let him develop interest in it and you will be amazed to find what an amount of hard and honest work he can put into it.

There is one essential condition for excellence in work as well as for the proper training of character: creation of the right kind of relationship between the worker and his work. Translated into educational terms, it means that knowledge, in fact the whole of the curriculum of learning, skills and activities should be presented to the child in such a way that he may feel genuinely interested in them and realize vividly that whatever he is acquiring contributes to the expansion, the deepening and the enrichment of his personality.

It may be that the hard realities and limitations of adult life will, to some extent, obscure this educative nature of the work that the adult is doing and its routine and drudgery may creep over and partially cover, its creative and constructive aspect. But, in the school, there is no justification whatever for presenting subjects and studies in that manner. A good teacher should enable his pupil to realize that history, geography, science or literature that he is learning, is opening out new doors and windows into the world that surrounds him.

And not only into the world outside but also into the world within him, quickening his appreciation, his sympathies, his social and practical understanding. I am not suggesting that he must find all school work interesting in the sense of being light or diverting. I am asking that it should be interesting in deeper sense that it should appear significant and worthwhile and even the drudgery should be made meaningful by being linked up with some creative and stimulating activity.

Have we not seen, over and over again, that students learn their subjects as we call it, without realizing what they stand for, or why they are expected to waste good time on them or what earthly good they are going to be to them! If any normal, intelligent adult cannot put the best of himself into his work under these conditions, is it any wonder that the child reacts sharply against such an educational regimen and that his flagging attention has to be whipped up through such adventitious aids as rewards, punishments and other similar devices?

If we are anxious to raise the standards of our schools, we have to re-examine all our methodology and our curricula in the light of this supreme psychological consideration. I have not the least doubt that if this can be assured, we can improve standards of efficiency radically   and can successfully insist that whatever work is done by students should be performed with all the care and thought of which they are capable.

I have seen that students, who are often reluctant to take even moderate pains over their lessons or home-work, are capable of putting in prodigious amounts of effort in projects of their choice - it may be the keeping of cricket scores or collecting stamps or reading books on some of topic of special interest. Let us, therefore, make the best of the resources that knowledge of child and adolescent psychology have placed at our disposal and press them into the service of our educational aims, instead of being content with the dead-as-door-nail methods that we have been practising.

I might add a few words about this recurrent problem of discipline which is rightly exercising teacher's minds. It is obvious that - if we are unable to produce a generation of young men and women who have disciplined characters, national life cannot be organized on healthy lines and energies will be wasted in friction   and unwholesome activities. In many aspects of our life we have seen such unhealthy manifestations.

But I do not regard the problem of discipline as something distinct from the problem of good teaching. We are not, as it were trying to provide good education plus something called training of character. If some of the conditions that I have stipulated and others that are well known to you are satisfied, we shall be able to build discipline into education and consequently into the character of the young generation.

These would include teaching that is vivid and interesting, a pleasant and stimulating school environment, a pattern of school government which draws students into active and responsible partnership and a courageous refusal to adopt the cheap devices of corporal punishment which poison, even today, teacher-pupil relationships in many schools. It is only a total approach to this problem which utilizes every aspect of school work, curricula or otherwise, that can cultivate the necessary ideals  and habits of discipline.

But, above all, it is the question of the personal relationship between the teacher and the pupil; and the pupil-the magic of his personality, his integrity, his decency and his love and sincerity which can overcome all kinds of technical and professional handicaps. A teacher who has a genuine love for his children can deal with many problems which even intelligence and psychological insight may not be able to solve; for love can unlock many doors to which Reason may not be able to find the key. A true teacher must discover the divine spark, howsoever feeble and deeply embedded in the ashes, which is to be found in almost every child, and cherish it with tender care.

To help the child, who is physically or mentally or emotionally halt or lame blind over the stile, to develop his powers of self-expression to give him an insight into the realm of values, to make him conscious of the nature of his relationship to the community-these are thrilling objectives which can challenge all our goodness and courage, and the extent of our success will eventually depend on how much of these qualities we are able to cultivate in our own personality.

You can only pour out from a vessel what you have put into it and a teacher, who is full of resentment or frustration or is lacking in idealism or sympathy or spirit of service or is dead to the appeal of knowledge and beauty, cannot possibly educate sane, healthy, creative and well balanced children, able and willing to participate effectively in the building of good life. This is at once a challenge to society and to the teacher. Society must provide for teachers’ suitable conditions of work which will protect them from developing ugly complexes and a sense of maladjustment; the teachers should, on their part, make themselves worthy of their mission not only intellectually but also personally.

Without this cooperation, we cannot build a bridge between education, as it is and as it might be, and without such a bridge we cannot step into the new and more gracious world that we are all anxious to bring into being. There are many kinds of architects who must take part in its construction but none who have a more decisive part to play than the millions of teachers in this and other countries. May it be given to them to make some significant contribution to this great ideal!

(Note: Dedicated to the sweet memory of Late Prof Neelofar Khan former Director Distance Education University of Kashmir.)

Dr Showkat Rashid Wani, Senior Coordinator, Centre for Distance and Online Education, University of Kashmir