Saturday, May 16, 2015

Teaching: is it not reverred job anymore??

It’s that time of the year when students pass out with flying colours and all the toppers parrot the same ambition — to become a doctor or engineer and serve the public. But, what about the teachers? Why do we not see people wanting to be teachers? Has teaching lost its reverence? The answer, unfortunately, is yes. Reasons: It’s a mediocre-paying profession. Their remuneration does not often commensurate with the rising fees. Also, they too have ‘targets’ to achieve: completing so much of syllabus in one trimester; conducting a prescribed amount of practicals/projects; making proper assessments to judge kids’ learning curve, analysing the data — all these sans any professional development! All the more important is his/her multi-tasking ability. In days of yore, teachers could teach basic grammar and arithmetic besides moral values. But today’s demanding education environment wants a teacher to play more roles other than just being a teacher — he/she has to be a role model, a counselor, a parent figure, a judge, etc… all that in a friendly way. So, who would want to do all these with a minimal payscale? A recent paper, jointly released by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) and the Education for All Global Monitoring Report, shows that more than 27 million teachers will be needed to achieve universal primary education by 2030 and India alone needs 3 million teachers by 2030. In a rush to fill this gap, many countries, including ours, are lowering standards, often leaving new teachers with little or no training. As such, the talent pool entering this noble profession seems to be of low quality. Have you seen any coaching institutes mushrooming up for B.Ed or D.Ed aspirants? Most of them who take up teaching do so only out of their inability to land other high-demanding/ suitable jobs. So, mediocrity seems to be OK, which will be evident if you move to rural schools. Notwithstanding these, there is poor parental support. Instead of being a tad strict with their children, parents often blame teachers. Raise your voice and get yourself stabbed or shot dead by the student as it happened a while back in one of the Chennai schools. So many governments have come and gone yet there is little done to education reform. Serious steps should be taken to make teaching a sought-after profession, and to improve the hiring process of teachers. Let there be an eligibility test for teachers (irrespective of their degree) and a continual evaluation system besides a performance-based incentive/hike. Only if these are implemented properly with right vigour can we usher in achche din among the younger minds.

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