Breaking away from technology
Manaswini Sridhar
There is a buzz in the field of education about the importance of technology in learning and teaching; about adapting games to help with teaching, and in the process making assignments more ‘creative’. The demand from parents for the best of teachers for their children has schools striving to find these very good teachers; however it is like trying to find a needle in a haystack because many well-educated people no longer wish to enter the world of teaching. Several schools in India still have rudimentary infrastructure. The floors have gaping holes and the benches seem to have a magic power of their own because their frail structure miraculously supports the weight of at least six children in a row. The walls are devoid of colour, with cobwebs dangling from all corners of the room. The windows seem to have never been cleaned and the doors are hanging from their hinges.
It is in this kind of environment that teachers struggle every day to go through the textbooks, trying to figure out what they hold, and how to teach them. Teachers themselves read haltingly, hesitating to pronounce words like herbivores, carnivores and chameleon. No, it is not funny that the words are mispronounced…you feel sorry for the teachers because they are not yet ready to teach someone else; they themselves toil and slave over texts, trying to decipher them. They are agonizing over the answers to the exercises at the end of each unit. The answers seem as daunting to the teachers as they are to the students. The fear of being wrong in the eyes of the parents and the management is very apparent in the faces of some of the inexperienced and newly appointed teachers. Every class thus could be an excruciating experience not only for the students, but also for the teachers.
Yes, this is the plight of schools today, especially in the districts where the road to education is more bumpy and more accident prone than the rest of India because the schools are not realistic enough to accept the fact that they cannot have books of a very high standard since neither the students nor the teachers can comprehend them. Schools vie with each other to prescribe more and more textbooks and workbooks because they like to believe that the textbooks that they opt for are an indication of the value and the standard of the school. To showcase their power, many schools and principals unfortunately refuse to give the teachers’ manuals to the teachers because they feel that the manuals will make the teachers lazy. They seem to have no idea that the struggling teacher will learn something from the resource packs and pass on that knowledge to the students.
Yes, publishers organize workshops for teachers at the beginning of the term. However, teachers go through the workshops like a herd of cattle, afraid of being asked a question, and worse still, afraid of asking questions for they fear that they may reveal their ignorance.
The huge advancements in telecommunications have beguiled us into believing that the whole of India is connected to the Internet. Publishers, in their desire to present themselves as up to date, include a lot of activities in their books that require access to the Internet or to at least a good library… and needless to say, neither is available. It is the teachers’ resource manuals that come to the rescue of teachers in this aspect since the answers are readily available for the teachers in the form of the answer keys. For the unfortunate teachers who have neither the teachers’ manual nor the Internet, life is difficult because they don’t know where to go for the answers. They shudder at the thought of skipping an exercise for lack of resources because parents readily pounce on this fact and bring this act of the ‘errant’ teacher to the notice of the principal!
So what are the resources that we are talking about for this section of teachers…teachers who have the minimum qualification, the knowledge but not the knowledge to teach in a foreign language, and also teachers who seem to be stifled by more rules than even the students? Some schools appoint special trainers who visit the schools on a monthly basis to grade the performance of the individual teachers. There is feedback offered, but there is no special effort made to mould the teacher. Teachers view the feedback with horror because they are not very confident about meeting the yardstick. They are more worried about losing their jobs or their small raise. Why can’t schools instead have trainers who come once a month to deal with the lessons that the teachers are likely to handle in the course of the month? If the same trainer makes repeated visits, teachers would loosen up and get their doubts cleared, become more confident and also look forward to this invaluable resource. Schools do not need to grade teachers; they know their teachers. What schools need to do is to upgrade their teachers so that they become a notch better and become more comfortable in teaching the textbook.
Frankly speaking, the only resource these teachers can rely on is themselves. But unfortunately, they are scampering from one class to another or handling two classes at the same time because another teacher is on leave or there is an insufficient number of teachers in the school. The lunch breaks do not offer adequate time to have academic discussions because there is a meeting to be attended or classwork that needs to be corrected. If teachers were given less administrative work, then they would have time to focus on what is important…the academics of the students.
It is an eye-opener for teachers to be told that the classroom can be fun. They imagine themselves teaching all the 45 minutes, being occasionally or always interrupted by the unruly student/students. Teachers can learn to sing songs related to the unit they are teaching. Sometimes songs teach children more than the textbook or even the teacher himself/ herself. Instead of a surprise slip test, students can have a math quiz using the hopscotch game or a deck of playing cards. Playing cards may be used to teach addition, subtraction and multiplication. Teachers will understand that games are a better method of teaching, especially at the primary level.
http://blogs.worldbank.org/edutech/educationtechnology-poor-rural recommends using the radio and the television for purposes of education. Why aren’t more people thinking on the same mode? There are several educational programs for children on the radio. Teachers can improve their knowledge of English and also other subjects by listening to the radio. The television today has several educational programs that can be watched both by teachers and students alike. The Indira Gandhi Open University made effective use of the television to deal with various subjects in the 1980s. Perhaps some of the programs should be revived and schools should be made aware of such programs. At the end of the day, it does not matter if the knowledge is coming from the Internet, the television or the radio… students and teachers must be equipped with it.
Publishers themselves could focus on creating more productive radio programs or television programs that can be broadcast or telecast in schools at least once a week.
As a country, let us admit that we are not fully equipped with technology to help our teachers and our students. Let us make use, for the time being, of what we have so that education and teachers do not die a slow death!
When I started exploring the world of television for the purposes of education, I found that Tata Sky has an educational service for children. Math and science concepts that are tailored to the NCERT syllabus are dealt with on their channels; viewers can have access to multiple choice questions, games and even mock tests. Teachers can make use of these channels so that their teaching becomes more creative. The channels also help to improve and sharpen the English skills of viewers, moving from the proficiency level to the advanced level.
Only when I let my mind block out the world of Internet, did it occur to me that not having the World Wide Web is only an excuse for not learning or advancing in one’s career. There may be no books or not enough books in the library, but every household does have a television set. It is up to teachers to navigate through the channels, weed out the serials and the melodramas, and focus on what is earning them the bread, butter and jam.
Tip of the month
Lesson plans are important; but what is important are the students in the class. The energy of the teacher has to match the mood of the students that day. That is what makes an extraordinary teacher.
The author is a teacher educator and language trainer based in Hyderabad. She can be reached at manaswinisridhar@gmail.com.
