By Patricia Mukhim
Today is Teachers’ Day and glorious tributes will be paid on this one day to the teachers of all shades but what thereafter? Who cares? There was a time when the teacher was the sole dispenser of knowledge because we were brainwashed into believing that the home was not a place that generated knowledge. We swore it was compulsory to go to school even to learn basic manners quite forgetting that our grandparents who couldn’t speak English or even the standard Khasi Sohra were capable of helping to form our characters. Yes, in unspoken ways they lived by example. They struggled to makes ends meet and gave us the best they could. What greater teaching on selflessness can there be?
The era of teachers as knowledge dispensers is the age of dinosaurs as far the present Gen Z is concerned. Gen X born in the late 1970s or early 1980 also after them the millennials were subjected to the top-down approach of education where teachers believed they alone were the custodians of knowledge and students were recipients of that knowledge. At that time students didn’t think they could read the books that teachers read to learn and transmit to their students. Teachers were also learning. Now the meaning of education has entered a new zone as it were. Gen Z gleans much more from the internet and get the bulk of their information (not knowledge) from the internet, read Artificial Intelligence – Chat GPT. Teachers today must compete with students to bridge their own information gaps. Indeed, the information gap is a huge chasm that seems impossible to bridge. Teaching therefore is no longer business as usual. And if teachers have not got this vital life lesson, they have lost it. They have lost the revolution war and are simply in the classroom because they are permanent employees and the school management cannot get rid of them for fear of being sued. Teachers will revolt against this statement but it’s a fact. Teaching in the old mould has become redundant. A good, conscientious teacher realises this admits it and tries to get on the fast track; some even learning from their Gen Z children.
These days students are second guessing if what they learn is indeed what they really need in the world of work. Students have become smarter, more vocal and can ask critical questions because Artificial Intelligence prompts them what questions to ask their teachers in a particular lesson that was taught. In the past, questioning the teacher was a crime one dared not even contemplate in one’s wildest dreams. Now, if you’re in a school in Delhi the teachers are constantly being queried for deeper meanings to a context. And what if teachers are not prepared to answer those questions? This is where the role of the teacher as a dispenser of knowledge has ended. Technology has taken over and most answers to questions on a host of issues are available at the click of a button.
So do we still need teachers, I mean humans who are paid to teach. The answer is a resounding “Yes,” except that teachers must have the humility to accept that they need to learn afresh and unlearn all those years of information dispensing they have done, for, the internet today is far smarter about providing a wide range of information on any topic under the sun, than any human can.
So what is the role of a human teacher then? What is it that Artificial Intelligence can never replace? It is the human emotion; the empathy; the caring’ the concern that a human teacher alone is capable of expressing to a student who is scarred by what he/she might have suffered as an adolescent – a broken love affair that can make him/her feel that death is better than living with the pain. It is in these circumstances that the teacher becomes that angel without wings but who can take a heartbroken student under her caring arms and help that student come out stronger and able to cope with life’s blows. Yes, that’s the role of the teacher today. And dear teachers had better equip themselves for this role reversal – from knowledge dispenser to teaching and living what emotional intelligence is all about.
Some teachers have said they are trained to teach, not to counsel students in distress. This is because the teachers’ training programme that does not equip teachers with understanding the pangs of adolescence and dealing with them through empathetic listening. We understand that teachers too have families to look after and their fair share of emotional turmoil but having taken the oath of treading on the path of teacher-philosophers like Confucious, they cannot back away on the plea of being too busy to give time to a mentally distraught student. It’s a sacrifice that those who cannot make should not enter the teaching profession.
We are entering the era of machine generated knowledge. They are more efficient at analyzing trends, crunching numbers and generating reports but they still lack the human skills and it is here that we need human educators. Why? Because human educators alone have what are called “soft skills” such as critical thinking, communicating with a personal touch, able to demonstrate emotional intelligence and empathy and listening to a troubled soul and emoting the right feelings which a machine can never do. A teacher can hug an emotionally disturbed child and be there for her/him. Can AI ever do this? You can’t hug a cold, hard, lifeless machine and receive warmth. But you experience the warmth of a human hug because that hug transmits love, caring and a desire to help and that’s the big difference in being a human educator today. All these soft skills are what make a human teacher indispensable. Only humans understand the skills needed for team work, trust building and leadership and the value of person to person interaction. The world is a complex place and real-world situations cannot be solved by machines.
There is also such a thing as personalised learning. It’s true that even us, human teachers sometimes treat all learners the same way without recognising that every individual processes and absorbs information at different speed and pace. Also, some learners learn better from videos while others come alive in group discussions and still others learn from activities. We humans are all wired differently hence one is left to wonder if one teaching method is able to resonate with every student. It is here that India has to experiment with personalized teaching-learning methods to deliver education in a way that’s tailored to the specific strengths of individual students. So, what does this mean? It means tailored lesson plans, assessments and learning materials. Is this possible in a country of 40 students in a classroom? It’s a tough call and that is why our learning outcomes are so poor. But its high time we tried these methods.
Also, when what we learn becomes outdated so fast we need constant upskilling and re-skilling. Since technology assists education and technology changes so fast, is it possible for teachers to get into this treadmill of constantly learning so as not to become outdated? Indeed, we now understand that education does not end with graduation or the series of learnings thereafter. Many of us have enrolled for learning courses in journalism because if we don’t learn new and innovative ways of doing our trade we will become outdated and uninteresting.
Virtual and remote learning have become life savers in states like Manipur which were wracked by violence for over two years now. Many have enrolled in online classes and learned while in the refugee camps so that they do not need to lose out. Hence for trouble-afflicted populations online learning has been a boon. If not for such opportunities, many of the students from the hills of Manipur would have had to drop out of their schools, colleges and universities. Hence hybrid learning is a boon of the modern age and we need to capitalise from such technology-assisted methods.
The lesson for teachers therefore is that teaching also involves life-long learning and anyone who is not ready for this journey of a lifetime and thinks teaching is a cushy job is living in a fool’s paradise. Teaching is a conscious choice; a calling; a vocation. It’s certainly not something you get into for want of a better job. Perhaps the problem with our education system is precisely that – square pegs, don’t fit into round holes. And think how much damage is inflicted on batches and batches of students by one teacher who can’t teach!
No apologies for writing this piece which comes from the heart of one who was a teacher for a quarter of a century and learnt so many lessons in adversity!