primary school teachers the twists and turns of everyday practice

Version 20 Oct 08, edited final
questions and this demands greater preparation from the teacher. Many activities go
beyond the physical boundaries of the class, as for example, in the case of EVS
teaching. Children also refer increasingly to materials other than the textbook, which
is seen as just one possible source of information. They also consult their parents
who sometimes feel that they are not learning much as a result!
For teachers, these changes imply that they are expected to have more ‘outside
knowledge’ (meaning they are expected to know more than what is contained in the
textbook) and must be prepared to answer any questions that will come their way.
Listening to the conversation one teacher said softly, ’There is no leisure for us, only
pressure!’ The teachers burst out laughing as the teacher explained further: ‘These
changes are good, but are not effective—as yet. Children are still not learning well;
their handwriting is not good now; their language has ‘deteriorated’; and their
spellings are bad. We are not giving importance to vocabulary and grammar.’
Discussions with smaller groups of teachers and teacher educators revealed that the
winds of change started blowing during the DPEP days. Participatory training was
introduced and teachers were actively engaged in exploring alternative ways of
organising the classroom and interacting with children. But this momentum could
not be sustained. With the coming of SSA, they said, things have deteriorated.
Training programmes are now designed at a higher level. In the training we
observed, for example, that the focus was on NCF 2005. The document was divided
among a number of teachers who read and discussed it in the training programme.
There were a lot of big words and big ideas—and the teachers who read and
explained them did so mechanically. An effort was made to enable many teachers to
act as resource persons so that the honorarium available for lectures was divided
among a larger pool of teachers.
The message that came out loud and clear was that the energy seen between 1995-96
and 2001 is not visible now and that the state has actually moved backwards. The
resource persons (teachers) are ‘not resourceful’ and the didactic mode of training is
back. It is somewhat strange that district and state level administrators feel that there
is a shortage of trainers and, therefore, practicing teachers double up as trainers and
temporary resource persons. Apparently teachers do not accept them as they did in
the past. There is obviously a deeper current, which may be related to the waning of
a people’s science movement or the growing trend to opt for English medium
schools leading to the rapid expansion of private schools.
KSSP has always had a positive relationship with teachers and feels that teachers have always been
central to the reform agenda in Kerala. However, KSSP is on the wane in the state at this moment.
They (KSSP) did useful work between 1962 and the 1990s. Teachers, who once formed the
backbone of KSSP, are not joining it as in the past. Their membership has come down quite a bit
over the years. Politically too, the KSSP ideology is not welcomed by the left or the right. The left
party itself has changed much over the years and today, they are very much open to private
investments, which were anathema in the 1970s and 1980s (interview with late Professor
Gopinathan Nair, CDS Trivandrum, May 2008)
Box 5.1: The role of KSSP in Kerala’s Educational Experience
KSSP began in 1962 as an organisation for the popularisation of science led by teachers.
In 1980-81 KSSP undertook an assessment (with GoI funding) of basic skills (3 Rs)
which revealed that the ‘literacy status among even Class 5 children was alarming.
Many of them could not read!’ This was an eye-opener for KSSP and the government
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