To a thinking teacher who understands the importance of his/her job and puts in his or her life's effort into teaching, it must be tough to listen to people berate education, schools and teachers for the society's ills. Headteacher of a London school, Kenny Frederick writes about how teachers must stand up and defend themselves against this.
The truth is poor education is the cause for a lot of society's problems. In India's case, it is the lack of literacy in the first place. But the problem is not caused by teachers themselves but poor policy and management by governments. Yes! I am making a sweeping statement.. deal with it! This is a universal phenomenon. Public schools in the U.K and the U.S are constantly under attack because of poor pupil performance. While the U.S tries to solve this "by throwing money at the problem" which studies have shown does not help, the U.K debates merit-based pay for teachers (bringing forth backlash against government representatives from teachers).
On a universal scale, it is evident that large scale reform must be conducted on education policy. This does include allocating more money towards recruiting better teachers and training them frequently to adapt to changing requirements in education. Updating and improving school curricula and textbooks, ensuring that kids stay in school, equality in classrooms. The list is gigantic. Most solutions are close to utopian and discussions are few and far between. There is rarely any consensus. But it is clear that these solutions go beyond spending large sums of money. This is good news for developing countries. There is still hope for us!
India's story however goes one step below this in having to build and maintain infrastructure for schools in rural and remote areas, improving health and nutrition for children, stop private institutions from making education a market. I do not intend to oversimplify the issue, these are just a few important areas to focus on. There are many more issues and people do not really know all the reasons for our issues. There seems to be no lack of data and there is some analysis. People seem to be discussing this as well.
Coming back to my point: teachers should not have to bear the brunt for the large scale failure of our education system. It is unfair to them. Also, there used to be (and as far as I know still is) an idea that you become a teacher just because you found no other job or just because it was comfortable is absurd. I know for a fact that (most) teachers devote their whole life to their profession. Their work follows them home. They attach emotion to being present for their students every day. They take personal responsibility for any student's failures, yet they are most often not appreciated or acknowledged for any success their students may enjoy. There are some individuals who are not like this, but they are not the reason why we have a failed system.
So teachers, do stand up and defend yourselves. You are doing all you can when the odds are stacked against your work. At the same time, make your voices be heard. Everyone thinks that they are qualified to hurl insults at the education system, no one knows how to improve it and solve its issues. If teachers spoke up about their personal experiences with teaching maybe some solutions can emerge.
The truth is poor education is the cause for a lot of society's problems. In India's case, it is the lack of literacy in the first place. But the problem is not caused by teachers themselves but poor policy and management by governments. Yes! I am making a sweeping statement.. deal with it! This is a universal phenomenon. Public schools in the U.K and the U.S are constantly under attack because of poor pupil performance. While the U.S tries to solve this "by throwing money at the problem" which studies have shown does not help, the U.K debates merit-based pay for teachers (bringing forth backlash against government representatives from teachers).
On a universal scale, it is evident that large scale reform must be conducted on education policy. This does include allocating more money towards recruiting better teachers and training them frequently to adapt to changing requirements in education. Updating and improving school curricula and textbooks, ensuring that kids stay in school, equality in classrooms. The list is gigantic. Most solutions are close to utopian and discussions are few and far between. There is rarely any consensus. But it is clear that these solutions go beyond spending large sums of money. This is good news for developing countries. There is still hope for us!
India's story however goes one step below this in having to build and maintain infrastructure for schools in rural and remote areas, improving health and nutrition for children, stop private institutions from making education a market. I do not intend to oversimplify the issue, these are just a few important areas to focus on. There are many more issues and people do not really know all the reasons for our issues. There seems to be no lack of data and there is some analysis. People seem to be discussing this as well.
Coming back to my point: teachers should not have to bear the brunt for the large scale failure of our education system. It is unfair to them. Also, there used to be (and as far as I know still is) an idea that you become a teacher just because you found no other job or just because it was comfortable is absurd. I know for a fact that (most) teachers devote their whole life to their profession. Their work follows them home. They attach emotion to being present for their students every day. They take personal responsibility for any student's failures, yet they are most often not appreciated or acknowledged for any success their students may enjoy. There are some individuals who are not like this, but they are not the reason why we have a failed system.
So teachers, do stand up and defend yourselves. You are doing all you can when the odds are stacked against your work. At the same time, make your voices be heard. Everyone thinks that they are qualified to hurl insults at the education system, no one knows how to improve it and solve its issues. If teachers spoke up about their personal experiences with teaching maybe some solutions can emerge.
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