primary school teachers the twists and turns of ... - ERU Consultants

Version 20 Oct 08, edited finalLet us contrast this statement with the responses obtained during a discussion with agroup of teachers in a district of Rajasthan in 2004, during which we asked who amotivated teacher is. They said: ‘A motivated teacher comes to school every day,does what he is told and provides information the higher-ups want’ (Ramachandran2005). In a similar vein, in West Bengal, in 2008, a group of teachers said that theyfeel they must work with dedication and show affection to the children, and ofcourse teach them—that should be their objective. Yet they have no control overwhat they should teach and how they should teach. These decisions are taken athigher levels. Therefore, one teacher said, ‘Our role is to follow orders and do as weare told.’Critically looking at themselves, teachers viewed themselves as normal government servants, thosewho suffer from political interference and non-teaching duties, multipurpose government workers,who blindly follow rules and responsibilities laid down and who do not receive any training andcapacity building for improving their teaching skills (Synovate and APF 2005).‘Orders from above’, as we have seen earlier, typically have little to do with whatchildren are learning—or how teachers are teaching. Thus teachers feel noresponsibility for learning outcomes among their students.Reflecting on a recent study where he explored who is a good teacher, H. K. Dewannotes that:During discussions teachers said that a teacher was seen as being ‘good’ as long as she wassincere, regular, punctual and seen to be teaching the class. How she taught and engaged thechildren or what material and activities she used to make learning a fun experience wasimmaterial! This ‘good teacher’ could get away with almost anything if she abstained fromexcessive violence (beating) (H. K. Dewan in Sharma and Ramachandran forthcoming).And if teachers are doing what they have been told to do, then it becomes easy toblame poor educational outcomes on other factors—like the family background oftheir students. Despite their idealised view of teachers and teaching, governmentschool teachers often express resentment at having the traditionally high status ofteachers jeopardised by having to teach poor and underprivileged children.Another reason why quality is poor is because we have no control over who we can admit—everyriffraff is allowed to be enrolled… (interview with a Madhyamik schoolteacher in Birbhum,July 2008).The biggest difference between teachers in government and private schools is that the privateschool gets the cream while government teachers have to deal with ‘kachara’—we have to teachchildren from kachi basti and slums and from the poorest classes (interview with a primaryschoolteacher from Jaipur district, February 2008).In a separate study that came to similar conclusions, Dyer (1996) sums up thesituation as follows:A majority of the teachers interviewed showed no critical awareness of the relationship betweentheir pedagogical practices, conditions in schools, and teaching problems. Some teachersunderstood teaching as imparting the content of the textbook, regardless of whether children learn.In some schools, children who had attended classes for four years could still neither read nor write.The teachers did not accept responsibility for this situation and blamed the local environment: theydid not feel that their own pedagogical practices required attention.23