A thought-provoking Teachers' Day analysis of the current classroom crisis by AMMU JOSEPH,
IN SEPTEMBER 1862, in the
ninth edition of his educational
magazine, Yasnaya
Polyana, Leo Tolstoy published
an article entitled, Should we
teach the peasant children to write
or should they teach us?
According to Michael
Armstrong, writing on The Role of
the Teacher in the book, Education
Without Schools, Tolstoy's article
is one of the most astonishing essays
ever written about education.
In it, the literary titan describes
in passionate detail how he " inadvertently
hit upon the right
method" of teaching children to
write, after suggesting that his students
might write a story about the
proverb, "He feeds you with a
spoon and pokes you in the eye
with the handle.'' One of them responded
by saying, "Write it yourself."
And so he did.
As he wrote, the children began
to come up, look over his shoulder
and criticise his writing.
Before
long, he was no longer writing his
own story, but acting as the scribe
for the story they told him to write.
Two boys, in particular, took over
the work and, in the end, it really
became their story.
Tolstoy was overwhelmed: "The
next day, I could still not believe
what I had experienced the day before.
It seemed to me so strange
that a semi-literate peasant boy
should suddenly evince such a conscious
artistic power as Goethe, on
his sublime summit of development,
could not attain.
"It seemed so strange and insulting
that I, the author of Childhood,
which had earned a certain
success and recognition for artistic
talent from the educated Russian
public; that I, in a matter of art,
not only could not instruct or help
the 11-year-old Syomka and
Fyedka, but only just — and then
only in a happy moment of inspiration was I able to follow and
understand them."
According to Armstrong, every
teacher who wishes to respect the
autonomy of his or her students
must, perforce, take Tolstoy's
question, and his confession, seriously.
At the same time, he admits:
"To contemplate, rigorously and
without sentimentality, the proposition
that, in the pursuit of knowledge
and truth, the roles of teacher
and pupil are often reversible, requires
a degree of radicalism that
even the most committed amongst
them find hard to practise."
To the average Indian teacher,
the above paragraph will, no doubt,
appear stranger than fiction.
Where is the question of respecting
the autonomy of students,
when teachers themselves are hardly
autonomous and, what's more,
when autonomy by and large
eludes most educational institutions?
Where is the question of pursuing
knowledge and truth when education
is no longer seen as a process
of understanding the world
and of acquiring the confidence to
explore its workings; when it is,
instead, equated with little more
than training young people to
memorise and reproduce vast quantities
of 'certifiable knowledge,'
whose relevance to their lives is,
more often than not, completely
mysterious?
Where is the question of radicalism
when teachers themselves are
virtual slaves of prescribed textbooks
and rigid, overloaded curriculam,
in whose design they play
little part, but which they must
faithfully and unquestioningly impose
on captive students?
Where is the question of reversing
roles in overcrowded and ill-equipped
classrooms, where teachers
are fully engaged in policing
and dictating notes, so that the twin
objectives of maintaining 'discipline'
and 'covering' the syllabus
can be achieved, if nothing else?
Where is the question of commitment
when teaching is no longer
seen as a noble and vital vocation,
on which depends to a
large extent the future of humankind;
when it has, instead,
degenerated into a grossly undervalued
and underpaid avenue for
white-collar employment, offering
few attractions other than shorter
working days and more holidays
than most other jobs?
Is it any wonder that, as frankly
stated in Challenge of Education,
the 1985 government document
that preceded the then New Education
Policy, we have a situation
where "progressively more indifferent
teachers" occupy the
classrooms of the vast majority of
our schools?
As Peter Buckman says in his
editorial introduction to Education
Without Schools, "It is the easiest
thing in the world to declare a crisis
in education: the condition is
practically endemic. But when education
is taken to mean schooling,
which in turn is a microcosm of
the society it serves, in talking of
crisis, we mean a crisis in society
at large."
In his recent collection of four
lectures on education, titled What
is Worth Teaching?, educationist
Krishna Kumar discusses some of
the fatal flaws of the Indian educa
tional system in the context of the
political and economic conditions
under which the system functions.
In his preface, he explains the
purpose of the lectures: "Dialogue
on education in our country mostly
takes place in a fractured discourse.
On one side of the fracture is the
language used by the planner, the
economist, and the sociologist of
education. On the other side is the
language of the psychologist, the
pedagogue, and the teacher.
Neither of the two languages is capable
of capturing the tension that
every Indian child must cope with
in order to be educated.
"The tension has its origins in
history, and it lives on because of
poorly informed planning, bur it
cannot be diagnosed if we study
history or planning in isolation
from classroom pedagogy. It is in
the curriculum and in teacher-pupil
relations that the tension finds its
sharpest expression. And this is
where educational research and its
popular terminologies reveal their
stunted, straggling development.
Only a fusion of the two languages...
can help." This, he admits,
is a tall agenda; the lectures
represent his own "small, individual
preparation for popularising the
agenda."
A recurring theme in the lectures
is the disastrous effect of the continuing
devaluation of the teacher's
role in education. Although the
book, naturally, goes beyond this
issue in its analysis of our educational
system, the fact that Kumar
returns to it again and again is significant.
For example, the first lecture,
from which the book derives its
title, deals with what he refers to
as the "problem of curriculum."
He attributes the inadequacy and
narrowness of curriculum deliberation
in India to the fact that it has
not, in fact, been treated as an act
of deliberation and, further, that it
has, by and large, excluded teachers
from the process.
According to him, "Curriculum
deliberation is a social dialogue —
the wider its reach, the stronger its_
grasp of the social conditions in
which education is to function. The
only way to expand the reach of
curriculum deliberation is to include
teachers in it, and this is
where the problem of curriculum
encounters its greatest challenge in
the culture of education in India.
"In this culture, the teacher is a
subordinate officer. He is not expected to have a voice, only
expertise.
What little curriculum deliberation
does take place in the
higher circles of educational power
remains extremely poor on account
of the absence of the teacher's voice.-
"A teacher who
teaches from
textbooks does
not impart
originality to his
pupils. He
himself becomes
a slave of
textbooks and
has no
opportunity to be
original."
- Mahatma Gandhi "
As a result of the prevailing,
limited view of curriculum deliberation,
he says, "The issues that our
society is grappling with find no
reflection or trace in the school's
daily curriculum. The knowledge
imparted in the classroom transcends
all living concerns that children
as members of the society
might have, as well as all other
concerns that the adult members of
society have and which will affect
children.
"This kind of transcendental
curriculum is not just wasteful, for
it does not use the opportunity the
school provides for imparting
useful knowledge; it is destructive,
too, for it promotes a kind of
schizophrenia.
The educated man
produced by a transcendental curriculum
sees and seeks to establish
no relation between his education
and his personal life and conduct."
Debunking the oft-heard justification
for the absurdly overloaded
school curriculum, which generates
a fatal sense of helplessness and
frustration in teachers, students and
parents alike, Kumar states clearly
that "the problem of volume of
content at any grade level does not
originate in the so-called 'explosion
of knowledge'...It originates
in the archaic notion of curriculum
as a bag of facts and in
the equally archaic view of teaching
as a successful delivery of
known facts."
"Unless we shed these notions
and accept more modern, humanist
concepts of curriculum and teaching,"
he warns, "we are going to
remain stuck as teachers with impossibly
large syllabus and fat textbooks
to cover...
"This process of mistaken action
and legitimation of action can
stop only if we recognise that curriculum
planning involves a selection
of knowledge, and teaching involves
the process of creating a
classroom ethos in which children
want to pursue inquiry. We hardly
need to add that a curriculum based
on this view of teaching can be
prepared, and implemented, only
after the teacher's right to participate
in the organisation of knowledge
and the child's right to autonomy
in learning are accepted."
In his second lecture, Textbooks
and Educational Culture, he highlights
the plight of teachers in educational
systems such as ours,
where the teacher is tied to the prescribed
textbook. Here, a textbook
is not just one of the many educational
aids available for a teacher
to choose from. Instead, in the ordinary
Indian school, the textbook
dominates the curriculum and the
teacher's primary role is to simplify
or interpret the textbook, and
familiarise students with its content
to the point where it can be easily
memorised.
According to Kumar, "The textbook
symbolises the authority under
which the teacher must accept
to work. It also symbolises the
teacher's subservient status in the
educational culture."
The textbook culture is intimately
linked to the tyranny of the
examination system, which sets
the agenda for education in India
today.
As Kumar puts it, "When
the main concern of both the teacher
and student (is) to prevent failure
at the examination, the best
possible use of classroom teaching
(can) only be to prepare students
as meticulously as possible for the
examination and this (is) done by
confining teaching to the contents
of the prescribed textbook..."
Nearly half a century ago, Mahatma
Gandhi had said: "If textbooks
are treated as a vehicle for
education, the living word of the
teacher has very little value. A
teacher who teaches from textbooks
does not impart originality
to his pupils. He himself becomes
a slave of textbooks and has no
opportunity to be original. It therefore
seems that the less textbooks
there are, the better it is for the
teacher and his pupils."
This is in tune with current
thinking on education as a process
not just of imparting basic skills,
but of assisting in the development
of the total personality of the child
through the use of child-centred
methods of teaching and decreased
reliance on prescribed textbooks.
However, such a view of education
calls for greater autonomy for
teachers which, in turn, implies
greater professional self-reliance,
as well as demands for higher
status and local control over education.
And, according to Kumar, "The
fear of such demands continues to
force the educational system to reject
the option of truly
professionalising its teachers.
"Professionalising the school
teacher would not just mean superior
academic training; it would
also mean conceding to the teacher
the right to autonomy in matters
pertaining to the choice of materials
for teaching and in the construction
of the daily curriculum.
It would also mean some chance
of thinning the textbook culture."
At present, with school teaching
regarded as a low-status profession,
teacher training remains a poorly
rated academic field.
According to Kumar, "The
training of elementary level teachers
in particular, and all school
teachers in general, remains largely
untouched by an academic grounding
in modern, child-centred pedagogy.
Such grounding could possibly
dilute the patterns of teacherpupil
interaction associated
with
the textbook culture..."
As he says in the last lecture,
titled Reading in Primary School,
"(The) situation is exacerbated by
the bleak pre-service training available
for primary teachers. What
academic content it has is largely
obsolete, and its skill-related component
lacks practical value for actual
classroom settings... What
puts the icing on this sad situation
is the old belief that teachers need
only skills, not theory...(But) the
teacher who is ignorant of the theory
behind ideas, such as building
a classroom ethos conducive to individual
interpretation and intelligent
guessing, is unlikely to be
able to build such an ethos.''
It is important, this Teachers'
Day, to reflect on the systemic
roots of the current crisis in education
and to understand the obvious
shortcomings of the teaching profession
today in this context.
It is clear that there can be no
significant improvement in the situation
unless sincere efforts are
made to remove some of the currently
insurmountable hurdles in
the path of creative teaching such as overloaded and inflexible
curricula delinked from social realities,
the textbook culture, the tyranny
of examinations, the impossible
student-teacher ratio, the paucity
of educational materials other
than textbooks, the neglect of libraries,
inadequate and ineffectual
teacher education (pre and in-service),
and so on.
Similarly, it is futile to expect
the brightest and the best to turn
to teaching as long as the profession
remains undervalued, in terms
"Where is the question of pursuing knowledge
and truth when education is no longer seen as a
process of understanding the world and of
acquiring the confidence to explore its
workings; when it is, instead, equated with
little more than training young people to
memorise and reproduce vast quantities of
'certifiable knowledge' whose relevance to
their lives is, more often than not, completely
mysterious?"
of both salaries and status (not only
within the educational system, but
in society at large).
It is obvious that unless teachers
are taken more seriously by the
educational hierarchy responsible
for policy and planning, by school
authorities, as well as by students
and parents, they are unlikely to
take their own role as educators
seriously.
At the same time, Teachers' Day
provides an opportunity for teachers
to do some introspection about
their understanding of education,
their reasons for becoming teachers,
their attitude to their work and
the value they themselves attach
to their profession, their relationship
with children, their sense of
responsibility and accountability.
Most serious and effective teachers
admit that there has been a
sharp fall in the quality of both
teachers and teaching over the past
decade or so.
While the deterioration can be
blamed on the system to a considerable
extent, they admit that
teachers are also at fault. Many enter
the profession for reasons which
have little to do with a commitment
to education. As a result, they are
unwilling to go the extra mile to
make education as meaningful as
possible under the prevailing circumstances.
For instance, although teachers
in most major cities today have access
to excellent enrichment workshops
— on teaching methodology,
as well as child psychology, learning
disability, etc. interested
school authorities are often hard
put to find volunteers to attend
these. Likewise, even though there
is at least one indigenous and affordable
publication entirely devoted
to the teaching profession,
not all teachers take advantage of
the exchange of ideas possible
through it.
As one principal with 22 years
of teaching experience behind her
put it, there is no point continually
bemoaning the state of affairs and
pleading helplessness in the face of
the general crisis in education.
According to her, the question
is: Given the overwhelming numbers,
given the heavy syllabi and
given the tight schedules, what are
we going to do to ensure that our
children have the best education
we can possibly give them?
The priority, clearly, has to be
the best interests of the child.
- Curricula for the Classroom, Ammu Joseph, Deccan Herald, 5/09/93, [C.ELDOC1.N00.05sep93dch1.pdf]
CURRICULUM
DEVELOPMENT
EDUCATION PHILOSOPHIES / ALTERNATIVE THOUGHT
DECCAN HERALD (BANGLORE)
5 SEP 1993