By Patricia Mukhim
A letter to the editor by a very concerned parent published in these columns and agonising about the homework burden of her kids, is only the tip of the iceberg. Those who have taken up the teaching profession seem unwilling to change and adapt to the challenges of teaching kids of this day and age. I have a neighbour whose six-year old son studies in Class I in a premier school. He is a bubbly kid and can’t sit still. He loves talking because his parents encourage him to converse at home. They believe it is mentally and psychologically healthy for a child to express himself/herself than to remain sullen. But that poor kid is punished at school and made to stand on the table for being his vivacious self. My heart breaks as I listen to several such stories. I wonder if the school is now a reformatory to change a vibrant, talkative, bright-eyed, naturally friendly kid into a petrified little underdog who is punished for being himself. What have we turned our schools into, I wonder? And what about the Principal? Isn’t he or she responsible for correcting such deviant behaviour in teachers? Are the kids at fault or the teacher? Or are teachers so hard to come by that anyone is employed even if that person has no aptitude for dealing with children?
It is my experience that it is far more difficult to teach kids than to teach adolescents. Kids are curious and full of questions. They can be mischievous and land on their heads. It can happen that the teacher might lose patience just as the parents sometimes do when their kids ask them never-ending questions. But if a person is called to be a teacher that person will never tire of answering her students. He/She has ways of engaging a hyper-active or a ‘gifted’ child. While doing B.Ed one is taught how to deal with quick as well as slow learners. A quick learner must be given more responsibility or perhaps even help a slow learning classmate. A quick learner or a gifted child cannot be punished for being so. Yet that’s what most teachers do unthinkingly. The child is labelled a trouble maker.
I have a friend who is still teaching but she continues to learn the art of teaching by reading a range of books especially those relating to counselling. She feels that some teachers are well past the age of adaptation. They are unable to accept non-conforming behaviour in kids and adolescents. They still believe in the Gurukul concept where teachers are worshipped, never questioned and whatever they say is Gospel. No, this is a questioning generation and we are happy that students today engage their teachers even if it means incurring their wrath. Students can Google and learn a lot from the internet than most teachers who are not tech-savvy do. So the teaching method has to change. Information is freely available. It is the personal counselling, mentoring and life skills that children actually need so they can deal with the world outside the classroom. But if the classroom is stifled by don’ts then where does the child go when troubled by circumstances? Mentors are imperative if our children are not to become depressive and suicidal.
Most kids today come home tired not so much from the mental work but because of the sheer boredom of having to copy verbatim from the blackboard or from their text books what the teacher orders them to do. There is almost no space for creative thinking or articulation. All creativity is throttled by the teacher who wants a bunch of conforming kids that won’t create trouble or challenge her. I use the word ‘her’ intentionally because in most schools the kindergarten and primary sections are mostly handled by lady teachers.
Last year I attended the annual concert of Loreto Convent, Junior School. What I saw was magical. It was a spontaneous burst of energy from little kids as old as five or six years to ten and eleven years. That extraordinary performance could not have been put up by kids who are scoffed at and rebuked by their teachers day in and day out for being themselves. These were confident, sprightly kids. In fact they enjoyed performing for the audience. You could see it in their expressions. They were alive and they made eye contact and smiled at their parents without any self-consciousness. This could not have been a put-on act for a day. It means they are given a lot of boost by their teachers. This is what school should be all about. Its time parents stopped competing with their children’s marks and give their children some breathing space. Childhood is the age to flower and bloom into adolescence which is a difficult period for the child and parents and for the educators too since there is so much that is not understood about adolescent behaviour.
I recall my own childhood and the concerts put up by the school. We were always so shy and self conscious and could hardly come out of our shells. That’s because we grew up in a very regimented atmosphere both in school and at home. We were tutored to enter the classroom marching single file, with finger on the lips. It was as if talking was a mortal sin. It was nothing short of military discipline and I have never stopped wondering how I and my classmates were able to speak in public after being literally brought up not to have a point of view on anything except that of the teacher’s. In that sense today’s schools have a livelier atmosphere but they are still a mismatch for our brought-up-in-technology kids. Look at the nimbleness of the fingers of a four or five year old as she handles the Ipad and switches on a movie while sitting on a flight. That’s the parents’ way of keeping them quiet with seat belts on, on a two-hour flight from Delhi to Guwahati. That kid and all our kids would grow up to be computer wizards. Sadly, teachers are way behind their students in this fine art. Yet teachers are irritated when kids know more than them.
The world is changing and very quickly so. Intelligent people adapt and adaptation means unlearning so much of what was learnt and believed to be the only way to do things. But do teachers really unlearn what they themselves have learnt at school? Don’t many of them model their teachings on that of their own teachers? Well, its not going to work. The school as a learning environment has changed. Cramming is outdated. Homework setting itself should be carefully thought out. The child cannot flourish in a mental prison. We don’t want our kids to not be able to think for themselves and think on their feet! Many of us agonise about the fact that the scholars in our universities shy away from sharing their views publicly. In fact, even on social media, one gets to read the views of so few from the community of scholars from NEHU or universities in the North East. Why this diffidence? It is because of the fear of criticism and engaging with others who perhaps have differing viewpoints and ideologies. Many scholars only share the views of their peers or faculty or other writers while not having a view of their own.
We cannot have bright students in adulthood if we have suppressed their free-thinking capacities from early childhood. This needs to be understood. But without any regulatory authority on education, schools function at their own whims. Some do give refresher courses to their teachers but since the teaching tenure itself is of a permanent nature many don’t change because they will lose nothing by refusing to change. Evaluation of teachers by students and parents is therefore imperative.
A word to the parents! Why is there so much paranoia when it comes to confronting teachers who display deviant behaviour? Why the reservation of approaching the principal to discuss the delinquency of a particular teacher? True, the parent will be called cranky and told to remove her child from the school. That’s the standard tactic employed by schools especially the elite ones and I know they know who I am talking about. But that’s because parents are not united in their fight against authoritarianism. Parents should try and get the best out of the school. There is need for a strong Parents’ Organisation in this state which will critique the functioning of schools, otherwise, our students will turn into herds with one-dimensional thinking who will be misfits throughout their lives.