How are today’s teachers different from those in the past?

Preeti Taneja

Entrepreneur | Posted on 5-Sep-2018

Today, education is a synonym for empowerment and progression. A student is no longer a piece of scoreboard. And parents are no longer worried about the rank-chasing society. This paradigm shift has a nucleus, and that is the teachers!

My ten-year-old son goes to one of the top-listed progressive schools of NCR and the way I sense his relationship with his teachers is more of friends rather than an authority. Teachers are part of his overall system. They are not someone who you worship but someone who you sing along with. And that’s the change I relish the most.

I remember my schooling days. It was fear that pushed me to study rather than my personal willingness. Teachers were stern. Seldom would they want to look beyond the report card.Perhaps their approach contributed majorly to my successful career.

But I do wonder how getting that ‘joy of learning’, which my son gets now, would have panned out in my personal life as I grew. Wouldn’t it have been better for us, the past-schoolers, if studying was made equally fun as singing, learning to dance or playing an instrument? It might have!

Another difference is nowadays teaching is no longer a compromised profession. My son’s school has engineers, Ph.D. holders and professionals who are teachers by choice. The advantage of this kind of diverse group is that their vision is broader and due to their corporate experience, they deal with children in a much more cultured and graceful way. Whenever I get to interact with teachers of this time, I definitely find them more evolved and extremely well in managing different aspects.

I understand that this is a narrow outlook. After all, not many children in India can actually attend such high-profile schools.The ground picture is quite daunting. Here, we are struggling with basic literacy and lack in number of adequate teachers.And, of course, the menace of altered historical facts that areserved to students in various state-run schools.

But I do see the light at the end of the tunnel. Indian education system is changing. And if we, as parents and society, support teachers of this time, I am positive that new India is a better place to live in.

So, here’s if I was granted one single wish, for my children and for others, and for the future of the country— forget about urban Naxals and the usual Modi- Rahul misery; forget about inconsistent and misleading information of GDP; and please forget about the Hindu-Muslim night-servings on Primetimes. For once, let's cherish the role of the teaching community in our society. And let’s enlighten the student and teachers within ourselves.

Happy Teachers Day!

ankit Sharma

Director | Posted on 19-Nov-2018

I can only answer from my own experience. I began school in the 50’s when parents were discouraged from teaching their child reading and writing. The theory, as I understand it, was that everybody was starting out on the same foot. However, coming from a family where reading was entertainment I was reading already and pretended I wasn’t to be in compliance with the rules. It seems that each year we spent a good deal of time and effort on things that were taught in previous years…I didn’t get much past the pilgrims coming to America before high school when we got all the way to WWII, bypassing most of WWI. Of course, we were entering the Viet Nam years so we didn’t get the fine points of the Great Depression or the Civil War. Pretty much rote work.

When I became a teaching sister our work emphasised a student’s ability to find facts for themselves and formulate workable answers. The work was directed but the individual was encouraged to find arguments and answers for themselves. This was not public school so I cannot really answer for the 70’s.

I do know that children from earlier history read at a higher level than our children do today, they read Dickens and classics because there was no Nancy Drew or Harry Potter. I’m hoping that a wider range of reading will help form more clear thinking on the part of the individual.

Good teaching is brought forward Techniques used today have a rich history going back to the Socratic method. I think the priority of teaching has always been to give people the ability to think through the issues affecting their lives and making decisions based on reason rather than reaction.