Teaching is an Art

Original Post: https://ramaguru.blogspot.com/2010/05/teaching-is-art.html

Teaching is an art,which everyone must have experienced in their  school( lucky ones ). Teachers  spend more time with students than their parents. Radhakrishnan, Former President of India,was a teacher. In kind remeberance of him, we celebrate Teacher's Day.

Does  teachers of these days ( i don't mean everyone, there are few good ones.) are one,who teaches  life skills?

I have seen few teachers who teach(which they think they do), just to  complete the portions  and show it in their log book. They never worried about, " what extent a student understood the topic/subject?".

Completing the syllabus or teaching just for name sake, I don't call them as teachers. Do you?.

One example, I would like to say :

If a primary student was given a problem something like .

 Add

    57

+ 24

----------------

   711

-----------------

When this is what the student writes , the present day  teacher simply  marks wrong, without seeing or asking how the child got this as a answer?

What the child wrote is perfectly correct in his point-of-view.

Because the teacher only taught him that, 7+4 = 11 and 5+2 =7.

So, when a student makes a mistake like the above one, the teacher must say "What u have done is correct but a small correction is neccessary".

57 means 5 tens + 7 ones.

24 means 2 tens + 4 ones.

7 ones + 4 ones is 11(which in turn means 1 ten and 1 one).

5 tens + 2 tens is 7 tens.

So we must add the 1 ten to 7 tens. ( We can add apples to apples and oranges to oranges , not apples to orange.)

so the answer will be 81.

Can you say me a teacher who does all these?. Students are not the one to be  blamed for the  level of thinking. Once a child is made to be naive, we cannot make the child to think. He can't develop that any more. ( 5thil valayadhadhu 50thilum valayadhu - Tamil Proverb).

My dear fellow,if you are taking your profession as a teacher. Be a architect of the student.

Courtesy: Nair sir