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Rajesh Kumar
The Law Commission in its 259th report titled ‘Early Childhood Development and Legal Entitlement’ brought forth two significant facts. First, that 90 per cent of brain development takes place before the age of five and it is during this period that cognitional foundations of language and personality are laid.
Second, the RTE Act should be amended to entitle children in the 3-6 age-groups, which was earlier 6-11 years, for free education and child care to prepare them well for elementary education. Considering the reduced age, Commission’s observance in a way entrusted greater responsibility on primary schoolteachers, who were now required to not only educate, but nurture as well, with warmth, those who were yet to part from their mothers’ warm bosoms and hardly knew at the stage what learning or understanding was all about. A challenging job indeed that entailed their capacity building to a predetermined level of preparedness required to honouring the onerous task in all its divinity.
Grey areas that need focus
A child of 3-6 age group when steps out of his home, the teacher in classroom usually becomes the first person – second only to his mother – with whom he interacts for relatively longer periods and learns first formal lessons of his life – most primary being general interactions with children of his own age group or grown-up adults like his first teacher; academics, at the stage, however, come only next. If taught by those who are ‘job-ready’ with fairer understanding of tender precepts of child psychology and behaviour crucial to striking an emotional connect with them and building a healthier teacher-pupil relationship, learning becomes all the more enriching and meaningful, otherwise a nightmarish experience for such budding lives.
A child of such tender age primarily expects love and affection from a teacher in whom he usually sees his mother’s replica if she happens to be a lady, not straightway lessons in English alphabets or for that matter, cramming up of rhymes without having to understand their meaning as is the followed regimen in private schools and now in many government schools as well. If he fails to catch up with the pace, these are hammered upon his psyche right from the word go and scolded, it may impair his learning abilities irreparably – a disastrous situation, which may have wider ramifications as he matures with age. This necessitates, on part of teachers, cognitive understanding of psychological needs of tiny tots, who at such a tender age are factually not students yet but god’s divine reflection enshrined in innocence in real term, needing more of love and care from whomsoever they interact with.
Being inquisitive, all they look for in a teacher is a ‘friend’ who could provide answers to their fanciful queries and ocean-deep curiosities, in a playful manner not just burden them with books. But are our primary schoolteachers patient and compassionate enough to respond adequately to such innocent mannerisms without getting offended and justify being righteous mentors to them? Or ‘How many of them, especially in government sector, do really have the inclination to do justice to the job they are handsomely paid for and see teaching not as a livelihood earning ‘option’ but a ‘passion’?
A majority of them are mainly stick-wielding ‘pedagogues’ serving their own interests and not essentially real-time ‘educators’ dedicated to the cause as such, unless transformed – a task that would remain unachievable till we don’t have a well-informed and well-prepared teaching faculty capable of understanding and decoding finer subtleties of true teacher-pupil relationship. Only a finely tuned relationship between the teacher and the taught may pave the way for sound learning and improving the standard of education in primary schools.
The need becomes more pronounced in Himachal, where we have an Education Department that employs maximum employees (60,000 plus) and ends up grabbing a lion’s share of state’s spending on their salaries. And in terms of deliverables, all that it gives to the state is a highly incommensurate performance of its teaching faculty, which prepares such students of standards as high as V and VIII, who find it hard to read even standard II text books (ASER, 2016). Any justification which may absolve it of its delinquency! Equally questionable is the evaluation system in place, which assesses them of their preparedness level.
Is CTET really helpful?
Despite no negative marking, the overall percentage of those who qualified CTET (Central Teacher Eligibility Test) has never been able to breach 15 per cent mark ever since it was introduced by the Union HRD Ministry in 2011. This mirrors poor academic level preparation of aspirants. Factually speaking, CTET alone can’t qualify to be a complete evaluation system since it puts to test, though quite stringently, only subjective preparation of the aspirants, not their wholesome level of preparedness required otherwise in primary education sector, which now requires teachers to handle children as young as 3 or 4, who need more compassion and love at the stage than textual knowledge. A mandatory short-term qualifying course on ‘Child psychology’, on the lines of B.Ed programme, may perhaps prepare them well for the job.
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