Teaching is a mission...

EACH AND every discussion on teachers invariably begins with a charged elaboration of the exalted position accorded to them by the Indian tradition for ages. Teachers were considered an embodiment of values, character, scholarship, leadership and as persons who practised what they preached. The place of the `acharya' and `guru' is often considered higher than that of parents. There is a basic strength in this approach. All great thinkers, philosophers, creative persons, rulers and people who have changed the direction of human development attribute their achievements to their teachers, irrespective of the system and the tradition of education, which may differ from place to place and country to country. Such discussions often end with the lament that the teachers of today are no more the teachers of the past.

The period 1857-1947 could be considered as having great significance in the history of the Indian nation. These were the years when every Indian, irrespective of caste, creed, region or any other conceivable diversity, came forward to identify with a common national goal. Such a goal could be identified only by nations with an entrenched inner strength of their own and with deep roots in their respective cultures and traditions. Each and every Indian decided to free India from the foreign yoke. I have often wondered about the possible means of communication, dissemination of information and messages during the long journey to freedom in the 19th Century and in the first half of the 20th Century. We still have the privilege of having among us veterans who have participated in the freedom struggle and acquired first hand experience of the manner in which things happened. It is indeed amazing to learn that they were teachers who played a silent but most critical part in spreading the message of the leaders of the freedom struggle to the masses. When the entire set-up of the governance was against them, they dared to spread Gandhian thoughts and ideas and decided to wear khadi. This was a unique response created by the teachers in an otherwise frightening situation. They, however, had the inner strength and courage of conviction and worked with a missionary zeal.

The onslaught of an alien education system on the established system of Indian education, teaching and learning resulted in a gradual isolation from the process of education, which was traditionally managed by the community and society. The consequences of the government taking over the system are being felt even at this stage by the education system of the country.

Communities are convinced that it is the sole responsibility of the government to educate their children and provide the necessary infrastructural support to the process. Further, those managing the system treat teaching as a job and no more as a mission. The causes for such a situation could be analysed in detail. It may, however, be worthwhile to deliberate upon some of the major criticism that is often heaped on the teachers at this stage.

The focus of teacher criticism among parents is on their non- availability in schools, lack of confidence and inadequate commitment to the profession. Parents are also critical of the increasing tendency on the part of teachers to encourage children to take private tuitions. There has been a gradual and visible loss in public perception of teachers' credibility due to this. This applies to teachers at each stage of education, including institutions of higher education which enjoy a national and international reputation. There are well-known practices such as appointment of proxy teachers by regular teachers in the places of their posting and making necessary `adjustments' with the higher functionaries of departments of education to ensure that this innovative system does not result in failure at any stage.

The nation must examine the professional aspects of schooling, as well as those concerning teachers and their education regularly. There are umpteen factors responsible for lack of professionalism in teachers. The process of recruitment and promotion often lacks transparency and rarely generates faith among young aspirants. Professionalism cannot be nurtured in those who `somehow' sneak into a profession. Only those who prepare hard and enter the job market through the transparent process of selection and recruitment will develop internal faith and confidence to prove worthy of the task assigned to them. Recruitment of teachers must be a process of total assessment of the individual in all aspects, including competence, commitment and willingness to work. Mere paper qualifications are not sufficient. Sometimes even these are not authentic. Change of qualifications with change of governments leaves much to be desired in terms of credibility as well as confidence.

It must be noted that whether one likes it or not, teachers create future societies. The fibre of young individuals who shall become the citizens of tomorrow directly depends on the level of preparedness of their teachers, particularly at the school stage of education. Logically, quality teachers can be produced only by teacher education institutions which follow the highest professional standards and work at an optimum level of efficiency. This aspect has remained neglected. In fact, the production of poor quality teachers by institutions with poor infrastructure and facilities, as well as inadequate staff needs serious analysis. Thousands of teachers have been trained using strategies that were professionally unsound, academically inadequate and devoid of value. Teachers and teacher educators of the country are familiar with the correspondence courses leading to B.Ed., degrees and the havoc they have created in respect of quality of teacher education.

In the days of serious conflict between maternalistic pursuits and spiritual quests, the shape of things to come in the future hardly appears encouraging. With liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation (LPG) these tensions are sure to become more explicit.

In the mad race to accumulate wealth, young persons see salvation in IT and ICT and achieve the objective by rushing abroad to get handsome jobs with multi-nationals. There is apparently nothing undesirable in such an approach but certain related issues need to be considered. What happens to the rest of the youth who hardly find avenues for utilisation of their competencies and capabilities which they may have acquired under difficult and adverse conditions? The basic question is, do we really provide them a chance to discover their own potential? If not, are we not unfair to the future of the country and also unconcerned with its present? Even those who are lucky to acquire high qualifications in Information Technology and succeed in getting a job abroad must be acquainted with the sublime features of Indian tradition in which the objective of life is to serve others, particularly the downtrodden and the deprived. While earning wealth is one of the natural requirements of living a decent life, it is certainly necessary to curb the single minded pursuit of wealth, at the cost of being sensitive to others. The common man, unfamiliar with the policy making process puts his entire faith in the schools and in the teachers. Inadequacies in the curriculum, pedagogy and the transaction process are considered the responsibility of the school alone. It is now well established that communities in India have the experience of highly `educated' young persons without having acquired any skills, or competencies for entrepreneurship - and self-employment. When they do not get jobs in the organised sector, they feel ignored, neglected and even cheated. Can the nation afford to waste its human resource in such a manner? The system of school education rarely gives experience of industry, agriculture and other economic activities to the majority of learners. In fact, alienation of community from the school has lowered the credibility of the process of learning and acquisition of skills. Community expertise is not utilised in imparting vocational skills to the learners. It has also been observed that teachers `reluctant to change are poorly led and managed, and are hardly trained'. Training is no longer a one-time activity. It has to be brought into the professional life of a teacher and at regular intervals by the system through recurrent orientation programmes and inservice education opportunities.

Inservice education programmes initiated in the 1960s aimed at untrained serving teachers and also for preparing teachers to teach such components of the curriculum which they may not have studied during their own schooling and training.

Correspondence courses for untrained serving teachers were launched by the National Council of Educational Research and Training in 1964. Subsequently, there has been a greater emphasis on inservice education of teachers, and different strategies and models have been attempted. A number of teachers were trained through the Progamme of Mass Orientation of School Teachers (PMOST), 1986 and the Special Orientation Programme for Teachers (SOPT), 1992. The NCERT has been contributing by assisting professionally in the preparation of key persons and resource persons in practically every area included in the curriculum of school education. At the present juncture, the major issue before the nation is to utilise the new information technology and reach every teacher in the country. Such a possibility has emerged for the first time and initial experimentation has already been conducted with considerable success.

The level of seriousness with which teacher preparation needs to be viewed by a nation, still striving to achieve universalisation of education, is still missing. The establishment of the National Council for Teacher Education (NCTE) has been a well received decision. The NCTE has contributed to the regulation of considerable number of poor quality education programmes at pre- service stage. Its recommendation to have a two-year B.Ed. programme deserves to be considered very seriously by the policy makers.

J. S. RAJPUT

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