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Changing Education Paradigms

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Looking forward to Comments and Opinions.

We all love to criticize the system. For all the critics out there, here’s a challenge -

• If you were in charge of a school/college what changes would You initiate? How would You improve the system?
  

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First Meet

• Date: Monday, November 1st, 2010.
• Venue: HSB 333, IIT Madras.
  
• Time: 2000 hrs.

Initial topic (Discussion starters): the Right to Education Act (RTE), Teacher absenteeism in government schools, etc.

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When Teachers Whine…

“I… don’t… want… to… go… to… school!!”

Most students in private and elite schools and colleges probably wonder why their teachers don’t bunk classes. Just imagine a world where teachers bunk. That’s right, no classes. If that sounds like paradise (as it might to any fun-loving college or school student), now imagine a world where you know nothing of what you learned at school. Imagine yourself illiterate, without basic arithmetic or counting skills, no formal introduction to “common sense” science… Are we still comfortable in paradise?

Children need education. They need teachers. And teacher absenteeism is definitely a problem. According to a World Bank Study, in government schools in India, 1 in 4 school teachers were absent and only half of the teachers were actually teaching when the survey team arrived at the schools. We do have teachers who bunk classes, and who “whine” about going to school…

So, why do teachers “whine”? Is the “whining” justified?

How should we go about getting these teachers to “wake up” and go to school?

Or, to look at it from another perspective, how do we make school “more fun” (some might say more bearable) for teachers?

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Note – Teacher absenteeism is a complex problem. Teaching in rural India is not everybody’s idea of  a dream job; many rural teachers face infrastructure and other problems. Such arguments hold quite a bit of weight, but the fact remains that we need to figure out a way to get our teachers to school. Policy makers and  educationists need to come up with carrots and sticks (and all of us prefer carrots to sticks) to get teachers to do their jobs…