A Marshall Plan for teachers

Popular cinema is not an obvious resource for educational planners in India. And yet both Hollywood and Bollywood provide salutary lessons f...

Popular cinema is not an obvious resource for educational planners in India. And yet both Hollywood and Bollywood provide salutary lessons for policy action, if we know where to look. Take Hollywood8217;s apocalyptic thriller The Day After Tomorrow. For years scientists have warned about the catastrophic impact of pollution on global warming, but attempts at environmental reform have been slow. In the film, the inevitable comes to pass, the earth spins into a new ice age, millions die, economies collapse and the US president ends up taking refuge in a third world country.

Hollywood has almost specialised in doomsday scenarios and there may be a sociological point in the fact that this type of plot has held no attractions for Bollywood. Why are no films made on stories which show how the decisions we take today have consequences tomorrow? Do we suffer from chronic optimism or indolence, that things will somehow sort themselves out?

Take educational reform. Having finally worked our way to a bold, transforming curriculum innovation with our new National Curriculum Framework NCF, how are we planning ahead? Are we doing enough to ensure that our teachers are able to adapt, or will we only consider the need for this, three years down the road?

Contrary to the 19th century notion of the educator, which saw teaching as a vocation and the great teacher as naturally born to the role, we know today that teaching is a craft which can be and must be taught. People need to be trained to understand how different children learn in different ways.

Teachers can be taught how to help both slow learners and gifted students or those with behavioural problems. Teacher education programmes should show teachers ways to organise group projects, how to teach boys differently from girls, or to vary teaching strategies to avoid boredom.

All is far from well in the way we currently train our teachers. The curriculum for new teachers is heavily weighted towards the methodology for teaching a pre-determined subject syllabus. There is no encouragement to critically examine its assumptions, so that teachers never conceive of themselves as constructing knowledge or as agents of change. And yet, the success of the NCF is heavily dependent on a constructivist learning approach. Constructivism sees learning as an energetic, engaged, problem solving activity. It turns the role of the teacher on its head 8212; from one who imparts information to one who guides and promotes student learning.

The truth is, this change of approach challenges the very fibre of most teachers. To surrender power and omnipotence is a painful process of unlearning and re-learning. What is needed if the new NCF is to succeed is a kind of Marshall Plan for teachers, one which entails a massive commitment of resource, time and planning for the next five years. It requires teachers to be released from schools in batches so that they can spend 7-10 days in workshops. It requires a multitude of trainers. And decentralisation so that these facilities are available in cities and towns, villages and tehsils.

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The responsibility for teacher education is entrusted not to the NCERT as is commonly assumed, but to the National Council for Teacher Education NCTE set up by an act of Parliament in 1993. The NCTE8217;s newly published Curriculum Framework for Quality Teacher Education does not promote optimism about imminent change. Although the new curriculum comes into effect in April 2006, we have no coherent picture of how many existing teachers will receive in-service training each year or what this will consist of. In the style of the Academic Staff Colleges at university level, school teachers need refresher courses on new learning theories and practices.

Similarly, although changes have been made to the training for new teachers 8212; the B.Ed programme 8212; they do not go far enough. The new NCTE syllabus still only allots 25 per cent of its time to actually working in schools with children. Most education training in the US, UK or Australia allots 50-60 per cent time to this. Trainee teachers need a longer internship in a school. They should be with children, observe them at work and play and sit in on classes taught by experienced teachers.

Instead of this, the practical focus in the new NCTE syllabus is on themes like 8216;8216;plantation and water harvesting, energy harvesting, soil and grassland management, celebration of local festivals and beautification of the school8217;8217;. Worthy though these objectives may be, will they actually help young people to become better teachers?

Similarly, reform is needed to incorporate new learning theories and to improve communicative competence. The heart of a teacher8217;s job demands successful communication but teachers often lack the basic language skills to do this effectively. Scratch the surface of most school teachers, in government or private schools, and there is a cynicism about change. They are cynical because they are exhausted by bureaucracy, by a devaluation of the craft of teaching. If we cannot excite our teachers into becoming learners, we can be sure our children will never be learners either. And we don8217;t need a Hollywood scenario to know that that would be a catastrophe.