A blind man always thinks that the whole world is blind or dark. He has never seen the light. But a man having seen both light and darkness will distinguish between the two. So is the case with teachers through out. So far, teaching was considered an objective form of student training program. As the educational researches advanced, a new light is thrown on this matter and it is very interesting to know in nutshell.All these years we have been imitating the western model of education in India.
But the west what bequeathed to us was a deliberately designed mischief to generate the clerks and sepoys in India. Lord Macaulay introduced a new system of education in India, with a definite aim in mind. He wanted the British rule to continue forever. Therefore, he gave the basic skills of educating the child on the western model. It was a great need of the time then. After Britishers left India, we formulated our own new system of education retaining the Westminster Model.
This continued for nearly 43 years after independence. But the continuation was not towards the betterment of the lot but towards the worsening of the whole social fabric. Our educationists, U.G.C. experts were so much enamoured of the western model every respect that they never mentally prepared themselves to part with the defective system. Although the system injected a new outlook to Indian thought, and made it slavish culture. In the mean time of four decades, many independent thinkers suggested new formula of our own.
It was neglected deliberately for Indians then disliked everything having Indians in it. There started rebellion amongst educationists to have a total revolution. The visionaries like (Raja Gopalachari K.M.Munashi and Jayaprakash Narayan) resisted the moved in vain.
The regions of powers were in the hands of educated mental slaves of British education. The voice of resistance was snubbed as nonsense. But the true Sanity of Indians in Indian education system never downed for all these four decades. The result was a formation of chaotic order in the whole society. Its side effect was the generation of mass unemployment and disorder. The greatest defect of this system was that our educationists took the student community as a inanimate object, and hovered round it like sculptors trying to shape a stone or metal. But alas! They never thought that nothing is inanimate in this broad world. Everything has life; but man being the highest creation, is more living than seemingly dead stone or any other matter. But all our time, energy and money seem to be wasted. In the west, a lot of research is conducted in this direction. At last they found that the very system of education they devised made them more subjective and teacher oriented. In the new pursuit for requiring fresh knowledge, they changed their teaching methodology taking the teacher at the centre. The result was astounding.
Today in the American universities, teacher orientation programme has become as accepted policy.Recently in Teacher Forum (dtd-Aug-90) a Professor of English has written about teaching of English. Taking the clue from the broad analytical pattern we can attempt a maiden model to find out from students themselves as to what students expect from their teacher. In my personal capacity as teacher I presented a vague clue to students as to what makes a good teacher and bad teacher as well. This analogy from Indian perspective. Often we seemed to have failed in accepting the fact that the students in the class are living and dynamically divinities.
I accept Swami Vivekanand’s proposition regarding education is the manifestation of divinity already within man. Every child comes to the school to unknown what is already unknown. The teacher takes children to teach thinking that it knows nothing and begins with ABC. But the child knows, everything before it comes to the school. But its knowledge is hidden in its unconscious memory. The teacher has to work as an ignite to arouse its hidden knowledge already in it. Learning is continuous process beyond this life. Indian philosophical system accepts that knowledge is one of the five sheaths. They are
Of them the Dyanamaya Kosha (knowledge) store constitutes the subtle body that moves worth mind together even beyond life. Hence in the natural sequence, we carry forward what is learnt from life to life. And basically the soul being eternal, it is omniscient. It needs no teaching. This is cleanly and emphatically stated in Indian philosophical system. On that strength, it is obvious that each soul is potentially divine and every life it struggles hard to manifest itself within its limited scope. Because of the circumstantial reasons, the individual gets a specific area for his self expression. Within that limited scope, the profound outpouring of originality emerges forth.
The more is the opportunity, the better is the change for expression. That makes a man some times Mr. Know all or a moving encyclopaedia. In philosophical terminology it is Swabhava (the innate nature). This is true in every child. The west has tried to find uniformity in the product of out-pouring, This reduces the giant to the dwarfish size. With this proposition in view, the teacher has to stand before students. He should try to see manifestation of perfection already within the child. Then the child becomes an animate force struggling to exert itself. The role of the Teacher is just to ignite that hidden fire by his outstanding personality.
Skills like the language and command over the subject matter. That is all what a teacher is expected to do today. Instead, all these days, we thought that we are the custodians of knowledge and understanding. It was wrong.Then what the students want and search in their teacher? The answer is obviously simple. The expect a right kind of teacher in his personality. To make the matter more clearly, student expect certain standards in their teacher. Today’s loss of standard is nothing but reflection of the lack of treachery qualities in the ideals of students worship. In the west, the teacher may be seen as a computer of knowledge, but in India, the teacher is seen and worshipped as living God. In our country every child learns in its house to regard its mother as God, father as its God and the teacher (Guru) as God.
When the child has so much devotion in its teacher, what kind of teachers we are today? What type of personality we project before the child? It is very rubbish and very poor. As it stands today, we cut a very poor impression before our students. Instead of brushing aside the dust of ignorance, we are accumulating more and more dust on their minds. Being ourselves in gutter are directing others to clean their gutters.What the student today needs from the teacher can be summed up under four heads.They are
We are so much profoundly influenced by the western model of education that we have forgotten our Indians in all respects including the basic qualifications of being and becoming a teacher. The students of all standards of my college in 1990 shot back to my query with their high expectations from their teacher. They gave me a new insight in the field of teaching and showed that they (students) are wiser than the teacher. They seem to show the place of teacher in the class room. Their expectations are so high and genuine that none can disprove. It is beyond all doubts.
Experience, the real Guru.: The Taste of pudding is in eating.It is through experience that one learns the worth and utility of things in life. Whatever we learn through experience, it provides the first hand knowlede and the understanding of the nature and the worth of things , which is foolproof ,unerasible from the mind.Therefore, experience is the real teacher in life. Experience broadens our understanding.Apart from worldly knowledge ,the experience is fruitful in realising the intricacies of the higher spheres of spirituality and religious matters.
Commenting on the meaning of Upanishads and Brahma sutras Adi Shankar advocates that nothing should be believed to be true without a scientific enquiry based on the personal experience, including the edicts of scriptures too! It is a bold assertion vindicating the authenticity of experience, as a valid source of knowledge. Experience is at two levels ,namely physical and mental.Physical experience involves the participation of our sense organs like eyes ,ear ,nose ,tongue and skin.They enrich the visual ,auditory ,olfactory ,palatible and kinthetic experience and provide substancial understanding of the things.But, there is a possibility of the marginal error by dyfunctioning or malfunctioning of sense organs, that which could be verified after reconsideration.
The other, ie mental experience, belongs to the domain of our discretion(Buddhi shakti) ,which is the third eye that never fails. Yet, there is another level of the credible source of experience, gained through the valid and reliable testimony and authority of scriptures, universally acknoledged true for all times . It emanates from the intutive and highly evolved minds. It is the collective wisdom and knowledge for the mankind like that of the Rishis Buddha ,Mahaveer ,Jesus Christ ,Mohammad , and a host of many others.Their utterances are universal records and the experiences par excellence. Thus , the experience(Anubhava) is the only teacher(Guru) of man that scales the heights of the ultimate truth.
English Teaching at the college level has almost become problematic in rural places-one of the dominant reasons is that students at various levels do not have the basic skills of language. What English they have studied at secondary and primary levels is very meagre and mechanical. After studying English as one of the compulsory subjects, they neither know how to write a few sentences correctly in English nor are they exposed to use English in their day to day conversation. Most of their English study is limited to reproduce/ vomit some thing of the parrot learning. It is common experience that the majority forget, what they have learnt soon after the examinations. As a result, it is painful to place on record that our students are the victims of our outmoded system of English teaching at various levels. Instead of pointing accusing fingerers at others, it is more profitable to make an objective effort to go closer to the indisputable statement of the facts.
It is a known fact, English medium of instruction and study have become academic luxuries and nearing impossibilities. The majority has already accepted their mother tongue as the medium of instruction and writing of answers in the examination. There is nothing wrong in studying subjects in mother tongue. But English is relegated to the last position as the most difficult and impossible to master. There is a general trend among students to acquire an imaginative fear about English Learning.English is no longer an alien language in the Indian context. The flowering branch of India writing in English has proved beyond doubts that Indians, it they with, are far superior in all skills of the language.But the paradox is that, the same English today, has become a most difficult subject for out children, of course, there are honourable exceptions everywhere. In general, our students do not know how to express themselves in English. The self expression, indeed, is a terrific experience for them. The fact, that most of them are ill-equipped with the basic skills of the language. Writing a dozen correct sentences in English has become a costly and the most painful job for most of them. There is a great and urgent need on the part of English teachers to trace the source of the basic problems is students writing and speaking.
It is a well known fact that out students are basically very poor in English Grammar. Their knowledge of such a simple English Grammar is in so much a confused mess. The rudiments are grammar are distant dreams for them.
One surely sets an unerasible impression that:
In teaching of English Grammar to students, academics have made many innovative experiments. The old traditional Grammar, once taught and learnt with a great skill, no longer enjoys the privilege of remaining useful method. Remedial and generative techniques though remarkable for their theory have no longer served as the better substitutes in teaching of English Grammar to our students. It does not mean that they are not useful but definitely there in an urgency of integrating various grammatical theories, the tune of effective language teaching in the class. But the fact is that we have not been successful in Teaching English Grammar as expected.
Whether it is traditional transformative grammar or the new remedial grammar, our concern is that we have to teach them Grammar which gives good results. All Grammars leak they say. It is a fact. No grammatical structure is all perfect, there are merits and demerits as to which system of Grammar is perfect, and on the contrary. We have to evolve an integrated course of teaching some Grammar to our students.
All our efforts to teach English language and literature to our students is absolutely meaningless when our young scholars are unable to write few correct sentences in English. One has to pity our under graduate and post graduate students when they are expected and compelled to study subjects like Linguistics, Rhetoric’s and stylistic while they do not know to write English at all. All our efforts of teach them the finer subtleties of the language will be rewarding and of some use of them only when they have learnt the basic skills of writing in English.
The importance of teaching English grammar at different levels needs to be well defined and its due alteration be made the in syllabi to make it more meaningful. There is further, a greater need to evolve an integrated system of Grammar Teaching is more intense and more result oriented manner. This above all, many English teachers are to be convinced that for teaching good English to students the study and Teaching English Grammar is very much necessary, without which all our efforts to Teach English serves no better cause than adding more miseries to the already confused minds. Grammar Teaching needs to be restructured and revitalized in the present system of English teaching.
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